Why We Are the Best
The current format of the LSAT was introduced in June of 1991, and the content of the test has been remarkably consistent over the past fourteen years. The Law School Admission Council has released forty-nine of the exams that it has administered over this period, thereby making available an abundance of real LSAT material to study—almost 5000 LSAT questions collectively. Since every LSAT is designed to measure the same set of reading and reasoning skills, students can gain valuable insight into what types of questions will appear on future LSATs by examining the questions that have appeared in the past. In fact, nothing that has appeared on the LSAT in the last few years has been entirely new; the test writers have simply been manufacturing variations on previous themes.
TestMasters is officially licensed by the Law School Admission Council to use and reproduce released LSAT questions. Every student in our course receives a personal set of course material that incorporates all of the released LSAT questions that are currently available. The questions that appear in our coursebooks have been carefully organized according to type. This approach enables students to concentrate on each type of question in turn and to become proficient in each type separately before undertaking consolidated practice tests. By the end of the course TestMasters students have become completely familiar with the LSAT because they have worked through the maximum amount of authentic LSAT material. On the day of the real exam our students know exactly what to expect and are not surprised by any of the questions they encounter.
The cost of licensing released LSAT questions is determined by the total number of questions licensed and the total number of copies that are made of each question. Unlike TestMasters, most LSAT preparation companies are not willing to bear the high cost of providing each of their students with a personal set of all available real LSAT questions. Consequently, many of these companies give their students copies of only some of the released LSAT questions. This works to the disadvantage of their students in two important respects. First of all, those who would like to work through additional questions must assume the financial burden of purchasing the questions themselves. Secondly, the decision not to provide every available LSAT question—a purely economic, nonacademic decision—gives students the mistaken impression that it is not necessary to review all of the LSAT questions that have appeared on prior exams. Yet there have been many instances in which material from one LSAT has resurfaced in nearly identical form on a later LSAT. For example, the third logic game on the December 1994 LSAT was directly reproduced as the first logic game on the October 2000 LSAT. Of the students who sat for the October 2000 exam, those who had reviewed the third game from the December 1994 exam enjoyed a significant advantage over those who had not. Students who want to be thoroughly prepared cannot afford to overlook any of the real LSAT material that is available.
Some companies avoid the cost of licensing real LSAT questions altogether by using simulated LSAT questions in their courses. Whereas real LSAT questions are created by a carefully selected group of experienced psychometricians, simulated LSAT questions can be written by just about anybody. In addition, real LSAT questions, unlike simulated LSAT questions, are pretested on thousands of test takers in experimental sections in order to weed out questions that may be flawed or biased in some respect. As a result of these differences, simulated questions tend to be poor approximations of genuine ones. They contain language and exhibit syntax that the real test writers would never use, and the subject matter of these questions often deviates substantially from what appears on the real exam. Incredibly, many of the answer choices that are labeled correct on simulated questions would constitute incorrect answer choices on the real LSAT. Students who work with simulated questions confuse what is not the LSAT with what really is the LSAT and may end up lowering their scores as a result. Consequently, students should avoid LSAT preparation courses that make use of simulated questions. In addition, consumers should be aware of the fact that simulated questions are especially prevalent in many LSAT preparation books that are currently on the market. Publishers such as Barron's, Cliffs, Peterson's, and Arco sell inexpensive study guides that contain only simulated questions. These publishers collectively define the low end of the LSAT preparation industry.
Students who enroll in the TestMasters LSAT Course should not study any LSAT material until the course begins. TestMasters teaches proven strategies and techniques that help students significantly improve their test performance in terms of both accuracy and speed. Students who work through released LSAT questions without first having learned these strategies and techniques are not likely to achieve optimal results.