​My LSAT prep journey was, to be frank, long and arduous. What you will read next is an honest account of someone who thought of giving up many times along the way but endured to the very end.

Pride had always been my weakness. I had lofty ambitions growing up, aspiring to be a famous lawyer one day. I excelled in undergrad at the University of Toronto with a near-perfect GPA. I founded the U of T Public Speaking Club in my third year and was co-president of another student club. I had the ideal profile for getting into the law school of my dreams.

 

My dream school was U of T Law School. Prior to taking a diagnostic, I thought my acceptance was all but a foregone conclusion. 

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In the summer prior to my fourth year of undergrad, I took my first full-length diagnostic LSAT prep test. The world came crashing down around me as I slogged my way through the Logic Games section (which has now been fortunately eliminated). I was befuddled, to say the least.

 

I remember being able to solve only one or two questions and having to guess my favourite letter D) for the rest of the section. I ended up with a 4/23 on the LG and scored a 151. 

 

Eventually, I locked myself in my bedroom and sulked under the blanket. My fragile ego couldn't take it. I had shattered the image I had of myself as a bright young man to pieces. I was devastated by the diagnostic score, knowing that I would have to improve by at least 15 points, or 45 percentile points, to achieve the U of T Law admissions median. 

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After sleeping away my sorrow, I began to work out a game plan. I knew I had a steep hill to climb, but I was determined to improve. I devoted myself to LSAT studying for the next three months, full-time. Every day, I would bike or drive my way to my nearby Markham public library in the morning and return by night, eating homemade meals for lunch. ​

 

By the time the school year had ended, I was consistently hitting the high 150s. Knowing that I was still not ready, I decided to take a gap year just to continue studying for my LSAT. 

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And in the summer of that year, I hit my first major score plateau. I just couldn't quite break the 160 mark, the minimum admissions score for most Canadian law schools at the time. After a string of 158's and 159's, I remember sitting alone in my car's driver seat in the library parking lot before going home one night, sobbing with my head rested on my steering wheel.

 

I felt embarrassed to come home and to face my mother, who would wake up early in the morning to make and pack my lunch. I waited close to half an hour in the parking lot for my tears to dry up so that I wouldn't worry my parents when I got home.

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But I kept on going. I kept slogging on, no matter how many times I fell down.  One day, I finally crossed the elusive 160 and then came tears of joy. "What changed?" you might ask. "What did you do differently?" I wish I could tell you something magical. 

 

Here's the plain, honest truth: Nothing changed. It was all practice. Before then, my LSAT fundamentals just weren't solid for me to break the 160 mark. But now they were - through endless hours of practice, refinement, and constant repetition. 

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After 2 months, I hit another plateau - the longest plateau in the entirety of my LSAT prep journey - the low 160s. I remember scoring 162 on three consecutive prep tests. And for 3 full months, my score did not budge. This was the period where I had to confront a major weakness of mine - making too many careless errors.

 

It was also a period of immense frustration, but this time I did not shed tears. I had an unwavering conviction that I will eventually break through. The LSAT taught me not only humility and hard work, but resilience and grit. I was no longer the easily-discouraged boy I once was. 

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The day finally came when I broke through the low 160's ceiling. This followed having cultivated better habits to reduce my careless mistakes in reading and perfecting my comprehension and retention of Logical Reasoning arguments and passages. 

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During the few weeks before my actual writing, I reached a point where I would consistently practice in the high 160's and low 170's on prep tests. Knowing that I might lose focus or run out of stamina on my actual writing, I took extreme measures to equip myself to improve my LSAT-taking endurance and deal with all kinds of horror test day scenarios.

 

I took the entire day off before my actual sitting. Then D-day came. Sitting beside my father who gave me a car ride to my LSAT, I felt a sense of calm. I knew I was ready after one year of prep.

 

I got to the test centre and then wrote the test just as if I'm taking another prep test. About two months later, I received my score of 166. I applied to U of T Law School and received admissions in the first round. 

 

I want to cap off this long story with this note: If I knew back then what I know now about the LSAT and about the prep process, I would not have walked so many rocky roads. But I eventually realized that my 1-year LSAT prep journey was actually a blessing in disguise.

 

Personally going through this odyssey helped me gain an uncanny ability to diagnose and very effectively address various challenges students face at every stage of their LSAT prep journey. My long and tumultuous prep journey has prepared me to become the LSAT tutor I am today, and a helpful law school admissions consultant.  

 

And that is my LSAT story: the prideful boy who shed many tears, now the LSAT expert who has seen it all. 

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