If your February LSAT scores didn't make you as randy as you were hoping, there's still time to crank up the mojo for the June exam

following groups:

• I took it, I rocked it, I’m done with this nonsense forever!
• I took it, I did OK but I might be able to do better
• I took it, I bombed it, please help!!

• 5 Unique Career Paths for Law School Grads (US News and World Report)

Practicing law isn’t your only career option post-law school. Check out these five nontraditional fields where you can leverage a law degree.

• How to Pay For Law School (Hello Law School)

There is no denying that law school is an expensive investment. Here are some suggestions on how to lower the amount of money you have to borrow.

• Is Law School At Middle Age Worth Doing? (The Careerist)

Looking to change careers? Find out the pros and cons of going to law school in your 30′s and beyond.

• Top iPad Apps For Lawyers (Legal Skills Prof Blog)

Have an iPad? Here are 10 helpful apps for a lawyer or lawyer-to-be.

She's probably hanging out with your December LSAT score

@*&%$#^!!!

That pretty much sums up the collective sentiment of December 2011 LSAT takers everywhere. Forget Waldo and Carmen Sandiego, where the #$&% are the December LSAT scores?! Well, the wait is over:  LSAT scores started rolling out at approximately 5:20pm EST. The curve for the December exam was -14 for a 170, -28 for a 160.

Remember, it is inadvisable to open up that email from LSAC while driving a car, operating heavy machinery, or standing in the same room as minors or others who might object to vulgarity.

Lastly, remember to check out our free review of the December LSAT happening next Tuesday night. Two of our geekiest instructors will be on hand to review some of the more difficult games from the exam, as well as give their sage-like advise on whether or not you should consider a retake.

Best of luck!

The Art of the Sketchy Attorney Billboard - via Copyranter

the number of distractions that this time of year can provide. Try telling that to someone who has spent the last 8 months studying, however, and I’m sure they could convince you otherwise. When it does finally get released, be sure to join our Free December 2011 LSAT Review Session.

Regardless, I know most December 2011 LSAT takers are craving some sort analysis/advice as to when that crucial  email will hit inboxes. Past trends tell us that you can anticipate scores being released some time either shortly after Christmas, or shortly after New Year’s Day. Last year, scores were released on January 6th – but for SEVERAL years prior, scores were  released before the New Year.  It remains to be seen if last year’s January release date was an anomaly, or the start of a new trend of later December LSAT score releases.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for lawyer-ly things to pass your time, check out this hilarious blog entry from ‘copyranter’ depicting six hysterical roadside billboards advertising local attorneys. It’s worth a click- I promise!

Calm After the LSAT Storm

Score release day is a nervy affair for students (first and foremost), parents, and test prep companies alike. We are all intimately familiar with the amount of hard work that has gone in to preparing for the LSAT, making the moment that you open that email from LSAC an impossibly sudden crescendo to the hundreds of hours of hard work put in by law school hopefuls.

As sweet as it was to hear the numerous success stories of our students in the early moments after the score release, our immediate attention is always turned to the people out there who still have a bit more work to do. There will be many students who should think about retaking the exam in December (or February, depending on when you are trying to start Law School), and many more who should not – much more on this decision will be forthcoming in my “Retake Manifesto” blog post later this week.

For the unsure student, (or anyone else curious about what was going on with this exam), we’re offering our free live online review of the October LSAT.  Mike Kim and Noah Teitelbaum will be presenting the answers to several of this exam’s more difficult questions, as well as providing insight in to whether or not you should be considering a retake.

If you already have your sights set on December for one last shot at this thing ahead of the Fall 2012 application deadlines, here is some helpful info:

• The deadline to register for the December 2011 LSAT is Friday, November 4th (receipt deadline)
• Ann Levine’s blog post regarding the retake decision is a useful read
• It’s not too late to self-study! Perhaps a bit of organization was all you were lacking from previous prep efforts.
• If you’re looking for more than self-study, we offer in-person and live online Private Tutoring – a fine option for the compressed timeline between now and the December test.
• Our live online Logic Games Intensive course begins on Sunday, October 30th and finishes up before the December exam. Try it free.

He just heard the news of the October LSAT score release

Hopefully you’re where you need to be and thus can start focusing on applications. For the rest of us mere mortals, there is still some work to do.

I would suggest attending our free online review of the October LSAT on Wednesday of this week. Two our our geeky-est instructors will be going over the more difficult questions on the exam, and providing some insight in to the “should I retake?”  dilemma that many of you are likely facing now.

If the December LSAT is in your future, be sure to get yourself registered before Monday’s (October 31st) deadline.

Be sure to tweet your LSAT score @ManhattanLSAT for a chance to win a cool prize!

In my humblest of opinions, throwbacks are not necessarily a bad thing! I can think of several examples of this: the hand written thank you note, the sky hook, rec specs, Warren Buffet, the Pythagorean Theorem - I think you get the point. When it comes to the LSAT, aren’t you somewhat appreciative of the fact that the test is in the same format as most of the tests you’ve taken since elementary school? Other grad school hopefuls must take entrance exams which require them to submit their answers in to a computer that actually determines the next question on the exam based on their last response. I’ve heard horror stories of students accidentally kicking the power chord of their machine out in the middle of the exam – the horror!

The downside to the old school nature of the LSAT, however, is that you’re forced to wait up to 25 days for your results. This is an eternity when you take in to consideration the importance of the exam and the months that went in to preparing for it. You couldn’t have predicted that after tussling with so many logic games and dense reading comprehension passages to prepare for the exam, all you needed to do was ask Tom Petty (speaking of throwbacks!)  what the hardest part of the exam was??

Trying to predict the score release date of October LSATs has been a fairly easy exercise over the last several years.  Historical data shows that in each of the last 7 years, October LSAT scores were released exactly three days before the planned LSAC release date – which for this past is Wednesday, October 26th.

The trouble is that for the last seven years, the scheduled release date was on a Monday, meaning the Friday before was your safest bet.  What to make of this year’s Wednesday release date? Not much.  I would anticipate that like the June 2011 LSAT, which also had a Wednesday release date, scores will be released on the Monday before, if not sooner.  One thing you can bet on is that they will NOT be released over the weekend, so we’re realistically looking at Friday, October 21st (tomorrow!!) or Monday, October 24th. Take it on faith, take it to the heart – the waiting really is the hardest part of the LSAT!

What have you been doing to pass the time?  Preparing your applications? Occupying Wall Street? We’d love to hear from you.

It's over!! It's all over!!

As we lay the October 2011 LSAT to rest, it is important that we remember the legacy it will leave behind. We mustn’t forget the blood, sweat, and tears that went into preparing for this exam. Hopefully, you’re coming off of Saturday’s exam feeling content with your performance. If that’s how it went for you – congratulations! I hope you celebrated properly, and cannot wait to hear about your results.

As for the rest of you, who didn’t quite skip out of the exam center whistling “Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah“, all is not lost! If you’re certain things did not go well for you on Saturday, you ought a cancel your score (if you haven’t done so already, today is the last day!). And luckily, December is not too late – you can still get in to law school in the Fall 2012 using your scores from the December 2011 LSAT!

What’s important is for you to recognize what’sholding you back from achieving your LSAT goals, and then to do something about it. Here are three common reasons why you might not be seeing the results you wanted:

1)  You underestimated the beast that is the LSAT.  You knew the LSAT was hard, but you had no idea just how much time and energy was necessary to adequately prepare for the exam. –We see this often—students who expect that a few hours of homework and studying each week will be sufficient for maximizing their potential on this test. Unfortunately, for most people it takes much more than that. Set your sites on the December exam with your expectations adjusted.

2) I just can’t seem to get over the hump on the ___________ section.  This is natural. Often students who have been studying for a while start to have a few sections of the exam really “click” for them, while one or two sections remain  problem areas. You should embrace this opportunity to hone in on your weak areas and really address what’s holding you back (note: if you’re struggling with Logic Games, consider trying our Logic Games Intensive Course).

3) You prepped hard, but not smart. At Manhattan LSAT, we’re big proponents of self-study. Maybe you’ve been studying on your own, but have never really had a structured approach. This is one of the major advantages of our Self Study program: it gives you structure.  It tells you what to focus on, when to focus on it, and how to channel your efforts on a particular question type or exam section. If you’ve chosen to do it yourself, be sure to add some sort of structure.  Our Self Study program comes with a syllabus and course recordings, ensuring that you have a very structured plan of attack.

For those of you who are going to continue the LSAT battle from now until the December exam, perhaps we can help.  We’re offering a free, live online review of the October exam and have an lsat class beginning October 17^th that will prepare you for the December test.

Manhattan LSAT: Offering Classes on a Foothill Near You

Noah, our Managing Director, has moved to Denver to escape the NYC summer heat, subject himself to 300+ days of sunshine, and live out his dream of actually needing a 4-wheel drive vehicle. He’s still leading the MLSAT charge and he’s about to start up classes in Boulder. So, for all of you college kids who decided to go to school up there for the skiing but now realize you’d rather not work a chair lift after graduation, head to the first session of the Fall class.

Did you put up the numbers you were hoping for?

If you took the June LSAT and didn’t know that the scores were just released, you are a hermit! Go check your e-mail inbox!

For the rest of you non-hermits, if you’d like to review that LSAT with us, we’re holding a free Live Online Workshop on July 11^th, at 8pm ET.

You rocked the LSAT? Awesome – good luck with your applications.

You didn’t rock it? Let’s talk. If you decide to retake, you should know that the average re-taker only does a few points better, so you better dig deep to beat that statistic! Don’t just repeat what you did last time and expect a different result – that’s the definition of insanity. Take a look at our various prep options. And, if you already took a class with someone else (gasp!), we’ve got a discount for “refugees” – folks who took another course and need to get down and dirty with us.

You kind of rocked it? Same advice as above – if you simply go and re-take, you’ll probably score about the same as this time. If you’re going to go for it, go for it. If you’d like to talk through this decision (and no, we don’t try to get everyone to take a class with us!), feel free to give us a call – (646)-254-6480 or shoot us an e-mail at studentservices@manhattanlsat.com.