Examkrackers’ materials are different from other LSAT preparation materials in a lot of ways. Our core philosophy is that to improve your score, you need a deep understanding of how the test works today. Many other companies rely on flashy marketing gimmicks, outdated versions of the LSAT, or tricks for “outsmarting” the test, but our experience has shown that none these really helps people do better.
Home Study
If you are studying at home, you’ll find that our books (sold individually or bundled together in the Complete Study Package) offer a uniquely detailed program that prepares you for every aspect of the test.
Many companies offer only a watered-down version of their books to people studying at home. They hope you’ll discover that, after using their books, you still need more help and will sign up for their course. In contrast, Examkrackers gives home-study students absolutely every tool we have to offer, except for one of our talented instructors. And you can still get interactive help through our website Forum, where the authors of the books and our admissions experts can answer any question.
Our books are built on a number of features that help you gain a deep understanding of how the test works today:
• A better approach to Reading Comprehension
Most companies treat Reading Comprehension like the forgotten stepchild of the LSAT. They don’t really have much to say about it, and most students are happy to not discuss it much (they figure they already know how to read). This is a big mistake. Books that do feature a lengthy discussion of RC universally tell students to organize their approach around the topics of the passages. This is nonsense. Getting questions right on the LSAT revolves around understanding the logical structure, not the topic. Our approach to RC is just as detailed as our approach to Logical Reasoning. We train you to focus on the logical elements that are most likely to be the subject of questions. Students using our approach typically find the RC section to be a tremendous source of additional points.
• Drills
Our textbooks feature nearly 100 drills that are unlike anything else on the market. Solving a real LSAT question involves lots of small steps and individual techniques brought together. However, most books simply give you all the steps and expect you to assemble them into a complete approach right away. Our drills isolate individual skills and ensure you have them mastered before you assemble them into your overall approach. These proprietary questions are specially designed to teach a single technique without interference from other factors. No other company can offer these unique teaching tools.
• Topic-specific timed exams
Of course you’ll be taking lots of full LSATs as part of your preparation, but sometimes you’ll want to hone your skills in just one area. After each chapter, we offer a timed exam that reinforces the techniques you just learned, so you can make sure you’ve achieved complete mastery in that area.
• Detailed written explanations
The written explanations to these exams are so detailed that they can teach you almost as much as the rest of the book. They provide a full treatment of not just the correct answer, but also every incorrect answer and the best approach to the problem as a whole. No other book offers such detailed explanations.
• No missing pieces, no inaccurate techniques, no outdated material, and no over-complication
In our development of the books, we read every prep book on the market and looked at all 5,600+ past LSAT questions. We found that most books have missing pieces: they lack an approach to one or more things that commonly show up on the LSAT. The Examkrackers materials are complete. If you went back and looked at every official LSAT question, you’d find the Examkrackers books have a technique for solving every single one of them.
Even worse than missing techniques are inaccurate techniques. A lot of books out there feature strategies that lead students to answer questions incorrectly. Examkrackers techniques are specially designed to lead you to the correct answer every time.
Some books discuss things that have not appeared on the LSAT in many years. We don’t do that. If something doesn’t appear on the LSAT, we won’t discuss it in our books.
Other LSAT prep books get into deep discussions of the type of formal logic you might study in a university course, or they make things much more complicated than they need to be. Although this looks impressive on the page, it’s not what you need to raise your LSAT score. Our strategies are as simple as possible while still allowing you to answer every single question.
• A way to structure your studies
It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do to get ready for the LSAT. Without structure, you can fall behind, get burned out, or spend too much time working on the wrong things. Examkrackers provides three unique study regimens that show you how to put our books together with additional real LSATs to create a perfectly balanced home study program. You’ll be at the peak of your LSAT abilities right when it’s time to take the real test.
• Teachers
You’ve already read about the features that make out books great, but our classroom students get even more. Our instructors set us apart from our competitors. We pay our instructors twice the market rate, and, as a result, we get our first choice of top quality instructors, while our competitors get what’s left over. Each instructor is an LSAT expert personally coached by the author of the books. We also closely monitor the performance of our instructors by asking you to evaluate them throughout the course.
• Class Format
Our class format is built on the Lecture-Test-Review system. Each class consists of a 60-minute lecture, followed by a 25-minute mini exam and a 25-minute exam review session.
If you’re fighting off sleep during long lectures, you’ll miss important LSAT content and you won’t have the techniques to answer questions on your real LSAT. Examkrackers lectures are brief, so you can stay alert during the entire lecture. Practice exams are given every night of every class after each lecture to solidify new concepts, reveal weak areas, and to get you thinking LSAT. Best of all, the exams are reviewed immediately, so you learn not just the correct answer, but also the fastest, most efficient method to find the correct answer. You’ll see how an LSAT expert approaches each question so you can develop your own expertise. Your instructor can immediately clarify difficult concepts so you don’t “practice in” mistakes in your homework.
• Additional features
Throughout the course, you’ll take five full practice exams, which are real official past LSATs. Afterward, you don’t just get your score and a handshake. You get a seven-page score report that breaks down your performance in every way possible. The more you can learn from your mistakes, the more you can improve. Class time is set aside for you to discuss your individual performance on the test with your expert instructor.
Only Examkrackers offers Zen Week. Some students are intellectually, but not mentally prepared for the LSAT; their practice scores are strong, but on LSAT day their nerves get the best of them. During the final week of our course, we focus on mental preparation. This is our Zen week.
• Thousands of real LSAT questions
The best way to get a deep understanding of the real test is to look at real test questions, and we provide over 2,700 real test questions from past LSATs. We chose these questions because they give you the most realistic picture of the current state of the test, and because they give you ample opportunity to practice every technique you’ll need.
BEWARE of companies that include every past LSAT in their course package! They do not have your best interests at heart. This is a flashy marketing gimmick that really indicates one or more of these troubling possibilities:
Their techniques are ineffective. Of course you need a lot of practice, but quality matters just as much as quantity. If their techniques haven’t gotten you to the peak of your LSAT abilities after 2,700 questions, there is something wrong with the techniques. You shouldn’t “practice in” those mistakes on another 3,000 questions.They don’t realize the test has changed over the years. An LSAT from 1991 looks the same on the surface as one from today, but there are substantial differences in logical content and the best approach. You won’t be taking the test in 1991, so it makes no sense to prepare using outdated material.
They don’t understand the time it takes to use official questions effectively. If you worked at maximum testing speed (which few students can do anyway), you’d have to spend 14 hours a week for 10 weeks just to get through all these questions. But just blowing through tons of questions does not really prepare you for the test. You have to learn from the questions by looking for patterns and understanding nuances. To really use all those questions effectively (not to mention learn the techniques in the first place), it would require 30-40 hours a week. Imagine adding another full-time job to your schedule! That’s neither realistic nor necessary.
They are looking for a way to squeeze every last penny out of you. LSAC charges a lot of money to license those questions, and these companies pass that cost (along with a hefty slice of profit for themselves) along to you. We know an LSAT course is expensive, and we show our respect for you and your budget by not piling on unnecessary extras to jack up the price. You’ll find that our courses are considerably more affordable than other courses of similar length.