Benevolent Brainwashing (Ep. 127)

Ben is holding down the fort in DC while Nathan is gearing up for a cold and rainy golf trip to the PNW. But that doesn’t stop the guys from answering a bevy of listener mail, and reminding you that there’s a great new way to listen to the show. Head on over to theThinking LSAT YouTube channel and enjoy hours of Thinking LSATpodcasts just as you would in a podcast app! Except it’s on YouTube. Pretty great, right? We think so. And guess what else: there’s now aThinking LSAT Patreon page. So if you love the show, or if it’s helped you increase your LSAT score, consider supporting the show as a patron.  

5:41 – Email 1—L hasn’t had the easiest go of it. They had to drop out of community college after jumping from school to school in order to take care of their grandmother in the final years of her life. Happily, they just graduated from the University of Phoenix, but now they’re wondering how they’re supposed to get letters of recommendation since all of their classes were online. The guys weigh in with some advice for L.

17:20 – Email 2—Alex has been binging on Thinking LSAT episodes. They listened to 45 hours of the show while on a road trip to visit law schools. Forty. Five. Hours. Holy smokes. But it seems to have helped. Alex has seen his practice-test scores jump from around 160 to around 170. Awesome news, Alex! Clearly a hound for everything law-school related, Alex sniffed out an interesting article that indicated more people than ever before took the December 2017 LSAT, and that test scores were up a significant amount. The guys share their different perspectives on why this might be.

22:21 – Email 3—Anya’s juggling a lot. School’s busy. She helps run a club that has her traveling often. And she’s signed up for the June LSAT. With everything going on, she’s not sure if she’s got enough time to prepare for the test in June and wants to know if she should just cancel and sign up for the July test instead. Nathan and Ben give her an earful of pro tips starting with this: don’t cancel the June test, and sign up for July AND September. Take the test as many times as you can to get your best score. Oh, and start putting LSAT prep on your calendar. Everyday. For an hour. It’s not that much to invest in your life’s work.

30:24 – Email 4—@Spicybutt99 writes in with some very sweet things to say about Thinking LSAT. In fact, she includes a full-blown Thinking LSAT radio advert in the middle of her email. But she’s also got a question. Her undergrad GPA rounded out at a 3.27. However, in the midst of her college career, she spent a semester abroad with her university’s law school taking two law courses. She doubled up on a B+ for each course, giving her a 3.3 “Law” GPA. So how about this? Will admissions offices weigh her “Law” GPA differently than her undergrad GPA? Ben and Nathan agree: probably not.

39:49 – Email 5—In-laws sure can be a bitch. Don’t you agree? Well. Not alllll—we know. But when you’re a computer scientist working in silicon valley with a perfect math mind, and your future in-laws are telling you that your MS degree isn’t good enough, things could get dicey. Such is the situation with John. His entire life he’s scored perfectly on math and science tests. And though he’s got a decent job in the valley, he’s been getting pressure to become a lawyer, or at least get an advanced degree of some kind. He tells the guys about how he’s scoring on his practice exams. The guys tell John he should never, ever go to law school. At least not if he’s paying for it.  

52:51 – Email 6—Jake asks Nathan and Ben if they know what their practice-test scores were before taking their first tests. The guys—or at least Nathan—have mentioned that their practice-test scores jumped up during test day. Jake points out that way back when Nathan and Ben were just wee law-school hopefuls, they couldn’t have had the understanding of the test that they have today. Thus, it doesn’t require the level of masterful understanding found in prep classes and prep-book question breakdowns to score in the 170s. But he’s wondering. How the hell do you build up that intuition in the first place? Tune in to hear some deep wisdom from Ben and Nathan.