LSAT Podcast Episode 40: January 2020 LSAT Recap

The first of 2020's ten LSATs has now been administered, and Jon and Dave are here with their take! Listen as they deconstruct the January test from an overview of student feedback and general difficulty to a section-by-section breakdown to their scale prediction and what that means for your results. They also discuss what this latest LSAT and its content mean for the upcoming February, March, and April exams.

Episode Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro. Dave and Jon pour their drinks of the week in honor of the late, great Rush drummer Neil Peart. Dave has a Tom Collins, and Jon has a Sawyer cocktail, and those two drinks combine into the song of the day, Rush’s Tom Sawyer. See what we did there?

5:57 – This Week in the LSAT World. Are they ever going to announce the June 2020 and onward test dates? Yes, and we think it will be this week. Plus a recap of the international January 2020 tests. Visit our Forum for more info and discussions about these.

The January 2020 LSAT

15:15 – The Bad News. While this test went much more smoothly than the past few LSATs, there were still a handful of test center and tablet issues that Jon and Dave discuss.

35:23 – The Good News. Fewer test center issues overall and the rapid reaction time with which LSAC addressed the problems that did occur are both signs of things heading in the right direction for the digital LSAT era. This was, happily, the cleanest of the Digital LSAT administrations so far, and we hope that trend continues!

39:23 – Overall Test Info and General Impressions. An overview of the general test difficulty and how the experimental section panned out.

46:22 – Logic Games Discussion. Of course LSAC made the Beer game the hardest one on this test. Why do they try to hurt us so? But, Dave has discovered they administer the LSAT at a casino in Nevada, so he’s thinking of moving there. Or at least recording this podcast from there every time in the future.

56:38 – Reading Comprehension Discussion. This was the section most students found the hardest, and Dave and Jon debate whether they would have enjoyed taking this section based on the topics. Also, Jon tries to school Dave on the correct pronunciation of senescence, but later we find that he might not even be right. Most interesting though is a discussion of Peppa Pig and why one episode is banned in Australia.

1:08:44 – Logical Reasoning Discussion. Overall not the toughest pair of LR sections, which is great for test takers!

1:12:12 – Scoring Scale Discussion. Jon and Dave discuss how the difficult Reading Comprehension section and possibly slippery Logical Reasoning content leads to a prediction of a -10 scoring scale. Read more about how the LSAT scoring scale works here.

1:18:00 – Score Release/Writing Sample Reminder. January 2020 LSAT scores will be coming out on Thursday, February 6th around 9:00am EST. If you haven’t yet, make sure to complete your Writing Sample soon. Listen to Episode 15 for more information and tips about the Writing Sample.

1:20:21 – Outro