Hey everyone! I’m looking for some honest advice on how to approach my undergraduate education and LSAT preparation to give myself the best possible chance of getting into a top law school.
Here’s some background about me:
Current GPA: 4.0 at community college.
University: I’m planning to transfer to University of to complete my BBA with a concentration in economics
Work schedule: I work 45+ hours per week while balancing school.
Degree format: I’m considering completing my BBA online because of my work schedule, but I’m concerned about maintaining a high GPA. Would taking classes online or in person make a meaningful difference in terms of academic performance, learning, or law school admissions?
LSAT diagnostic: I scored a 124 on a timed diagnostic a couple of months ago.(plan to take in 3 semester)
Long-term LSAT goal: 175+.
My biggest challenge right now is figuring out where to start. I haven’t established a proper LSAT study routine yet, and I don’t want to waste time studying inefficiently.
I know a 124 to 175+ is an enormous jump, and I understand that there’s no guarantee I’ll reach that score. However, I have time before applying to law school, and I’m willing to work consistently toward that goal.
I have a few questions:
Would you recommend completing my BBA online or in person at, considering that I work 45+ hours a week and want to maintain the highest GPA possible?
Given my 124 diagnostic, what should my first steps in LSAT preparation be?
Would you recommend starting with free resources, textbooks, or a structured online course?
How would you balance LSAT preparation with a demanding work schedule and college coursework?
For those who started with a low diagnostic and eventually reached the 170s, what did your study routine look like, and how long did it take?
If you could start your LSAT preparation over again, what would you do differently?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have made significant score improvements while working or attending college full-time.
My priorities are maintaining a strong undergraduate GPA, building a sustainable LSAT study routine, and eventually reaching a 175+ score.
I’d appreciate any honest advice, personal experiences, or resources you think could help. Thank you!

This is PSA to anyone with physical disability trying to test remotely I had just had the worst experience ever. So I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user and I had spine surgery earlier this summer so got accommodation to test remotely. Big mistake- I should have just had my mom help and take me to the center.

- the virtual test security check is inaccessible. I knew I needed to show them the floor that was fine I just tilted my laptop but she needed me to bend down, get on the floor and show her underside of my chair. I told her I can’t bend she said I had to do it to start the test so I used the wall to lower myself and was able to somehow get up off the floor. I thought that would be it hard part was over I could finally start the test but then the test crashed in the middle of my second session and i needed to the whole process over again. Then a third time and after the third time i couldn’t get up off the floor… I asked if I could just take the test sitting on the floor but I couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let me take it in my wheelchair either and she just ended the session before I could call LSAC 🤦🏽‍♀️
- I filed complaint and now I just have to have my mom take me during the make up session
- LSAC was useless too I called them all they could say was file a complaint with JD services

You guys got this!! Keep working hard! WOOO!

I know a part of this test is luck. And with my official test fast approaching I would appreciate any tips from people who have overperformed on test day. Specifically what do you think helped you and what did you do in the days hours leading up to your test. Thanks in advance!

Passage 1:
Lil Guy loves his niche art form even though critics wish he wouldn’t make jazz glass blowing so political.

Passage 2:
American employers used to make us work 67 hours a week for 42¢ until one day some immigrants got here and said “Damn bitch you live like this?” sparking the first union in the region.

Passage 3: (Comparative)
Text A - Judges should tell the truth generally, but sometimes it’s hard so as long as they try their best or have some really good judicial reason to lie it’s okay ☺️

Text B - Literally if you think any judge is capable of honesty ever you are a fucking fool and you should be ashamed of yourself lmfaoooo

Passage 4: (adapted from an article originally written in 1998)
Early evidence that mass extinction of the dinosaurs was caused not by the impact of Earth by a meteor, but by the hole it tore in the ozone layer, undermines what was previously attributed to “Global Warming,” leaving the fate of America in the hands of Future President Gore yet again

Using 2022-2025 scoring data, the percentile for a 180 LSAT score among test takers was 99.9th. In fact, I don't think it has ever been lower...

Until now. Using 2023-2026 scoring data, a 180 is a 99.8th percentile score when rounded to tenths/99.85th percentile when rounded to hundredths.

What's interesting, though, is that 2023, 2024, and 2025 are constants in this data. The new percentile just drops 2022 and adds 2026, which suggests there were a LOT more 180-scorers in 2026 than 2022.

The percentile shift may seem small, but it strikes me as quite significant given that the number of 180s in a given year is in the hundreds and that this data includes 3 years of constants.

I don't think it's possible to say how many more are being scored year-over-year because LSAC doesn't release the number of scores earned in a given year. Although LSAC released the number of applicants from last cycle and the year before that earned each score ( https://report.lsac.org/VolumeSummaryOriginalFormat.aspx ), applicants in a given year use scores from multiple cycles.

I love statistics, but I'm not an expert. Anyone have theories or different ways of interpreting this? Is it possible to draw any more definitive/precise conclusions?

Here's historical tests administered data if anyone finds that useful ( https://report.lsac.org/TestTakers.aspx ), but LSAC may use reportable scores instead of administered for calculating percentiles and I think we only have access to the number administered for older cycles.

If anyone is considering using the 175 method taught by Ava, use this as a WARNING to save your money.

I was one of the first students to enroll, at the time the fee was $500, which was incredibly steep. Now it's $1,997, which imo unreasonable for what you're paying for.

Why I signed up: At the time I was looking for a community to join and have a few people to study with. I watched her intro video and fell for the confidence she had when she was mentioning her methods. I was also struggling with reading comp so I thought it would help. BOY WAS I WRONG. Ava mentioned a 14 day money back guarantee, but I learned the catch was that you weren't able to access the reading comp portion until after those 14 days.

When I was able to finally access it, I learned RC module was ONE video that was a "deep dive" that was essentially telling us to "read quickly and retain the important parts, highlight effectively so you can quickly glance at the passage during questions and remember what's going on. Identify and summarize the main point(s) of the passage be able to go back to those important parts" she said it comes with practice. Like are you kidding me? How are we even supposed to know what the main point is if I'm just starting studying for the test?

It's not worth you're money, especially if you've already started studying, here's why:

I say this with absolute confidence because I talked to other students and someone even reached out to me to ask if I'd be able to teach them. They said, and I very much agree, that her "method" is not understandable.

Her "deep dive" into LR teaches that every question type falls into 3 different buckets, "Argument, Premise-Set, Debate, and Paradox" and to think of multiple "what-if" scenarios that could happen that would make the argument wrong, look for the overlap in the premise-set, figure out what two people are debating over, and ask "What would make this make sense?” for paradox questions. She goes over 6 flaws (if you've been studying you would know there are more), and she has one video about Sufficient Assumption vs Necessary Assumption which didn't cover conditional logic (which was what got me in the 160s).

Overall it's very general, and doesn't go into the nuances that are very important to know for the test and would actually increase your score.

She was says "I went to a normal college, I have a normal brain, and I had a normal amount of time." which is true but I believe she was an econ major, or some type of major that involved lots of analytics, that was able to train her brain before she even started studying. I on the other hand got a BA (I'm worried to say what my actual major was because she might find out who I am) and started with a lower diagnostic. She was already in the 160s on her diagnostic and after a year of studying I was able to get there by the time I started the course so I was already skeptical of her methods when I first joined, but stayed past the 14 day window to access the reading comp.

Overall she's a great person, incredibly friendly, and I have absolutely nothing bad to say about her. If you do ask her a question she will get back to you, and she made a personalized AI that will tell you if they don't know the answer to something instead of pretending it knows like GPT.

That said, there was recently someone who asked for tips in the argumentative writing portion which she just said it's nothing to stress about and she'll talk about it during a live lesson. BUT when I was studying for just the writing portion, a lot of people said it's becoming more important and schools will look at it to figure out if your personal essay involved any AI...

Take this with a grain of salt this was just my experience.

hey guys i’m new here, but i hope you’re all doing well.

i signed up for the october LSAT 3 months ago and ended up not studying at all. life threw me a lot of curveballs and this was not on my radar AT ALL. my testing date is in 5 days. i will probably get a really really bad score because even though i consider myself quite sharp, i absolutely do not have what i need to do well. i am now in a position where i will have more time to study in the coming months.
i’m essentially torn between biting the bullet and taking the test despite my complete lack of preparation or canceling my test and taking it another time after adequate preparation.
so, here are my main questions/concerns:

1. how late can i possibly take the test before i would no longer be able to send a score for the upcoming admissions cycle?
2. is it even possible to cancel/reschedule this testing date anymore, or is my money fully down the drain?
3. if i DID take the test, what would you say the pros/cons would be?

apologies if these are questions i could easily figure out myself. to be honest my anxiety is so bad about all this that even thinking about it is killing me. i was completely irresponsible with all of this, and i definitely have a lot of regrets. i just want to know if it’s COMPLETELY over (for this cycle at least) or if this situation is salvageable at all.

Weaken questions build directly on the skills you use in Flaw and Evaluate questions. In a Flaw question, you identify the gap between the author’s evidence and their conclusion. In an Evaluate question, you ask what would help you judge how much that gap matters. A Weaken answer supplies information that makes the gap more damaging, reducing support for the conclusion.

Most Weaken mistakes happen when students skip the Flaw and Evaluate steps. Without a gap and an evaluation question, there is nothing to measure the answer choices against except how negative each one sounds for the conclusion, and the LSAT reliably supplies answers that sound negative while leaving the actual reasoning untouched.

So the fix is to decide what reasoning you’ll use to find the right answer before you read a single choice. That means pinning down three things: the conclusion, the evidence, and the gap between them.

Thankfully, a lot of Weaken questions follow recognizable patterns. Below, I’ve modeled seven of the ones you’ll run into most often. Each follows the same format: an example argument, the gap, the Evaluate question, the weakener, and why it works. The goal isn’t to memorize seven templates (though that doesn’t hurt). It’s to recognize familiar weakeners faster and to understand the connection between Flaw and Weaken well enough to adapt when an argument or answer takes a less familiar form.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. A Competing Explanation

The author is trying to explain a phenomenon they have noticed, such as a difference between two groups, a change over time, or a pattern in a study. They propose a cause and point to evidence they believe supports that explanation. The problem is that the evidence leaves room for the same phenomenon to have occurred for another reason. To weaken the argument, we introduce information that makes an alternative explanation plausible in this particular situation. If something else could account for what happened, the author’s evidence gives us less reason to attribute the phenomenon to the cause they picked.

Example: A café replaces its small printed menu with a large, colorful board featuring photographs of its pastries. During the following month, pastry sales increase by 30%. The owner concludes that the new board is the main reason for the increase: seeing the photographs encouraged customers to add a pastry to their orders.

Gap in the argument: All the owner really knows is the order of events: first the new board, then more pastry sales. That’s not enough to say the board caused the increase. Something else could have brought more people in or changed what they were ordering, and the owner hasn’t ruled that out.

Evaluate question: Besides the board, did anything else change that month that could explain why the café sold more pastries?

Weakener: That same month, a large office building across the street reopened after a lengthy renovation, bringing back hundreds of employees who regularly bought breakfast at the café.

Why it weakens: The returning office workers give us an alternative explanation for the additional sales. The café might be selling more pastries because a large group of former regulars is back, making the owner’s original explanation less certain.

2. Results from Different Situations

The author compares results across two situations and treats the difference as evidence that one person, product, method, or institution is worse in some broader respect. The problem is that the two situations may not be comparable. A weakener identifies a relevant difference between the circumstances that could explain why the results differ, making the author’s evaluation less justified.

These can look similar to ordinary cause-and-effect weakeners. The key difference is the conclusion. Instead of simply claiming that one factor caused an outcome, the author uses the outcome to make an evaluative judgment about something involved.

Example: A workshop supervisor compares the number of furniture repairs completed by three full-time restorers. Nora finishes twelve jobs during the month, while each of her coworkers finishes about twenty. Because everyone works roughly the same number of hours, the supervisor concludes that Nora is less capable than the other restorers.

Gap in the argument: The supervisor compares ability by job count without showing the jobs took comparable work. Equal hours don’t make the counts comparable if the assignments were very different.

Evaluate question: Was Nora doing the same kind of work as everyone else, or were her jobs harder and bigger?

Weakener: As the most experienced worker, Nora is often assigned difficult projects involving broken frames and missing parts. Her coworkers mostly handle simple surface painting.

Why it weakens: This gives Nora’s lower number an explanation that has nothing to do with how good she is. She does harder work, so the counts can’t fairly measure ability.

3. A Broad Claim from a Narrow Indicator

The author wants to evaluate something that cannot be measured directly, such as how much a person values an item. Instead, they use a more observable characteristic as a stand-in and assume that differences in that measure reflect differences in the underlying value. The weakness is that the proxy may capture only one part of what the author actually wants to measure. A weakener shows that the measured characteristic differs in some notable way from the underlying value, making the proxy less trustworthy.

Example: An organizer reviews attendance at the planning meetings for a neighborhood food festival. Rae attended only two of the eight meetings, fewer than any other volunteer. The organizer concludes that Rae is less committed to making the festival succeed than the other volunteers are.

Gap in the argument: Showing up to meetings is one way to be involved, but it’s not the only way. The organizer is using it as if it captures everything relevant to commitment.

Evaluate question: Does Rae contribute time or effort in ways that meeting attendance does not capture?

Weakener: Rae misses most meetings because she’s collecting donated supplies during the only hours donors are available, and she spends every Saturday organizing those supplies for the festival.

Why it weakens: The very work keeping Rae from meetings is strong evidence of her commitment.

4. Disanalogous Populations Being Compared

The author takes a result found in one population and extends it to a different population without adequately justifying the transition. To weaken the argument, we show either that the original evidence tells us little about the new group or that there is some relevant difference between the two populations that makes the generalization less reliable.

Example: A meal-kit company tests a new set of illustrated recipe cards with students at a culinary school. Almost every participant prepares the dishes successfully without asking for help. The company concludes that the cards will allow customers with no cooking experience to prepare the same dishes without additional instruction.

Gap in the argument: The trial shows the cards work for people who already know how to cook. The company applies that result to beginners without showing that the difference in skill won’t matter.

Evaluate question: Did the culinary students use cooking knowledge that beginners wouldn’t have?

Weakener: The cards leave several key prep steps unexplained. The cooking students already knew how to do them, but the beginner customers have never learned them.

Why it weakens: It tells us the culinary students succeeded partly because of knowledge the cards didn’t provide. Beginners might get derailed because of those missing steps, so the trial is now weaker evidence about whether beginners can succeed with the cards alone.

5. An Overlooked Tradeoff

The author recommends an option because it provides some benefit, but overlooks what choosing it may require someone to give up. We weaken the recommendation by identifying a better alternative that would be displaced, or by showing a cost, loss, or missed opportunity created by accepting the author’s proposal.

Example: An online shop finds a supplier offering mailing boxes that cost forty cents less per order than its current boxes. The owner recommends switching, reasoning that using the cheaper boxes will reduce the shop’s costs and increase its profits without changing the products or their selling prices.

Gap in the argument: The owner treats the box’s price as its full cost. A cheaper box could create new expenses once an order ships.

Evaluate question: Would the cheaper boxes create other costs larger than the savings?

Weakener: In a trial, the cheaper boxes led to enough extra damaged orders that replacements and return postage averaged seventy-five cents more per order.

Why it weakens: The shop saves forty cents on the box but spends seventy-five cents more on damage, so each order costs thirty-five cents more overall. The owner’s premise about purchase price is accurate, but it does not establish the conclusion about total cost.

6. A Broken Link in the Chain

The author predicts a sequence in which one event leads to another, which then produces the final result. We weaken the argument by showing that one of those links may fail, so the predicted chain does not necessarily reach the conclusion.

Example: A museum surveys visitors about a proposed free shuttle from the railway station. Hundreds say they would use it. The director predicts that the shuttle would substantially reduce crowding in the museum’s parking lot because visitors would take the shuttle instead of driving.

Gap in the argument: The director jumps from “people would ride the shuttle” to “fewer people would park.” That follows only if the riders would otherwise have driven.

Evaluate question: Would the shuttle riders otherwise drive to the museum?

Weakener: Nearly all the interested respondents currently take the train and walk from the station to the museum.

Why it weakens: The shuttle could fill up while replacing almost no car trips, because its riders weren’t parking at the museum to begin with. Popularity alone doesn’t show the shuttle will reduce parked cars. The riders could just be swapping a walk for a ride.

7. An Unsettled Prerequisite

The author offers a way to resolve a question, but the proposed approach works only if some other issue can already be settled reliably. A weakener shows that this required judgment remains disputed or difficult to make, undermining the usefulness of the proposed method.

Example: A historical society owns several unsigned posters that may have been created by a particular local illustrator. A curator proposes comparing their lettering and drawing style with works already attributed to that illustrator. If the styles closely match, the curator argues, the question of who created them could finally be settled.

Gap in the argument: The comparison works only if the reference collection really is the illustrator’s work. Otherwise, we’re using invalid evidence to settle the issue.

Evaluate question: Do we have good reason to believe that the illustrator actually created the posters in the reference collection?

Weakener: None of the reference posters has verified authorship, and experts disagree about whether several were created by other illustrators.

Why it weakens: Now a match doesn’t mean much. If some of the reference posters were really made by another artist, an unsigned poster could look just like them because that other artist made it too. The proposed evidence therefore cannot confirm the new attribution until the earlier attributions are verified.

A Process for Unfamiliar Arguments

These patterns cover a huge share of Weaken questions, but you’ll still run into unusual arguments that refuse to fit any of them. My advice: don’t go rogue. The less familiar the question, the more important I think it is to fall back on first principles.

You can afford to slow down a little on the few LR questions that really test you, as long as you’re working efficiently on the rest. That’s usually more successful than trying to wing it in the answer choices on a max-difficulty Weaken question. So when an argument doesn’t fit, keep your wits about you and run this template.

State the argument in simple form:

“The author believes ___ because ___.”

Find the gap:

Identify where the author’s evidence fails to prove their conclusion completely. If unsure, use one of these two approaches:

1. Ask what’s missing: What would you ideally need to know to be completely sure of the conclusion? Now, what are you missing from that? For example, if the argument makes a correlation/causation error, you might say, “I need a guarantee that A causes B, but I only have evidence that A and B tend to occur together.”
2. Try to break the conclusion: Imagine the premises are true. Under what condition would the conclusion still be false? For example, you’ve proven that A correlates with B, but you can imagine that’s because a separate condition, C, causes both. If so, you can’t claim A causes B from the correlation alone.

Pre-phrase the weakener:

Now that you have the gap, come up with the weakener that matches it. The easiest way is to ask what the author assumes to be true, then say that it’s false.

• They assume A and B are connected? Well, here’s evidence they’re not.
• They need a certain type of evidence to be a reliable indicator? Here are some examples of it being unreliable.
• They’re assuming an outcome you’d normally consider very likely? Unfortunately for them, this is that one abnormal day, and they’re not getting that outcome.

It’s your job to be as critical and uncharitable as possible without disputing the premises, which you have to accept as true. The better the author’s argument seems by default, the more you should require them to prove each microscopic claim one by one.

Fix Missed Pre-phrases during Review

Sometimes you won’t be able to come up with a pre-phrase. Eventually, you’ll just have to hit the answer choices and finish the question. That’s fine in the moment. But effectively reviewing these harder questions is one of the best ways to improve your overall Weaken performance.

These questions are frequent enough that it’s worth pausing on each one you couldn’t pre-phrase and pinpointing where your analysis broke down. Also, between Weaken, Strengthen, and Assumption questions, you’ll spend a lot of your LSAT prep time working on manipulating the gaps in an argument. It’d be a waste not to make the most of your opportunities to target your specific issues with a quality review. Here’s how I’d recommend making those improvements:

• If you couldn’t find a pre-phrase but you found the gap, got the question right, and felt confident, I’d consider that fine. Some people can get to Weaken answers consistently by identifying the gap alone. Don’t complicate a process that works well.
• Anything else. I’d consider these issues that need fixing, whether you weren’t completely confident, couldn’t find the gap, or (especially) missed the question. Prioritize breaking down these specific weaknesses and adding them to your known argument templates, because you’ll most likely see them (or close variations of them) again.

Over time, more of your misses should move from the second group into the first as you more confidently find the gap in the argument, pre-phrase a weakener to exploit it, and match your pre-phrased exploit to the right answer choice.

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If you like these kinds of breakdowns, you can find more on my blog:

https://www.germainetutoring.com/blog

I scored 147 in Sept. I’m writing in Nov. and possibly Jan.

Timing is my main problem and lack of practice. I scored 162-168 on the few untimed PTs I took. I only took one timed PT a week before the test and scored 149. On test day, I lost track of time and guessed on about 10 questions per section and didn’t answer one.

I’ve been studying and improving speed. I created a tailored study schedule targeting weaknesses. I feel confident I will improve by Nov. I am aiming for 158-163.

I need to write Nov because it’s the last date UofT accepts. I’m a mature Ontario-based applicant with relevant experience (+ UofT masters) and applying to Ont schools, UBC or UVic. I think my resume positions me well for most schools if I score a 163, and basically a 50/50 chance for UofT.

I’ve had mixed responses towards canceling my 147:
- those who say KEEP the score argue that I may perform worse in Nov so it’s best to keep this score on file.
- those that say CANCEL my score note that I will improve and since it is a very low score, having that on file may be unattractive to schools.

Thoughts? Should I cancel? What are the cons for both?

Is there a drawback of applying to schools for Nov 1 with NO LSAT on file?

I believe in myself there’s no way I’m scoring a 147 or lower in Nov 😭

I don’t really know what’s going on. I took the September test. Before then I was going -3 to -7 on RC (the -3 was the last RC section I took before the actual LSAT). I even felt pretty great on the RC sections on the September test.

However, to say that my RC scores have drove directly off a cliff, crashed and burned; whatever metaphor you like, has been an understatement. I’ve now went -9, -10, -10, -11, -10, -12. Not only that, but my pacing feels WAY off. Before this I was comfortably pacing myself, getting to the ends of sections confidently. But through this stretch I’ve been a complete deer in headlights; barely even getting to the fourth passage (and missing the ones from passages 1-3).

After the actual exam I took a a little bit over a week off. Which then apparently the universe decided I will suck at RC going forward (jk… hopefully?)

I take this test again on Friday of this week. I’m honestly dumbfounded. Does anyone have any emergency advice? Or has anybody went through something this severe, and if so what did you do about it?

Hey everyone,

I’m currently deciding whether to buy the LSAT Score Preview or not, and I wanted to get some realistic feedback from people who have been through this.

On one hand, the idea of having a "safety net" to cancel a bad score sounds great for my peace of mind and anxiety. On the other hand, I know most US law schools only care about your highest score anyway, so I'm wondering if it's just a waste of money.