Jake, 147 and working toward 175: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Jake came in at 147, aiming for 175. Steve Schwartz coached him live for about 24 minutes on Logical Reasoning, timing, review process, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Jake started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Jake
- Score when recorded: 147
- Goal: 175
- Target test: June, or August if pushed back
- Situation: Works full time and is a full-time student with a heavy course load, studying about 4 hours a day using office hours and time at home.
- Focus: Logical Reasoning, timing, review process
- Worked on: Flaw, Strengthen, Weaken, Parallel Reasoning
What we fixed in this session
There's work to do on pacing as well as accuracy, and neither happens in isolation.
Steve Schwartz
This is one session, in the middle of the work. I've been coaching the LSAT since 2005, and every session runs the same way: find the real problem, fix the process, reset the plan.
I diagnosed a 6-point raw score drop between untimed (about 20 of 25) and timed (about 14 of 25) LR performance, showing pacing, not just accuracy, was the core problem.
I told him to solve the first 10 questions in about 10 to 12 minutes to bank time for harder questions later, instead of spending equal time throughout the section.
The plan: I found his review process too thin, no written notes on the stimulus or method of reasoning, and had him adopt a structured wrong answer journal tracking question type, answer chosen, right answer, and why.
Where the session landed: Jake agrees to adopt a structured wrong answer tracking spreadsheet and to frontload his coaching sessions now instead of saving them for later.
If your prep looks like Jake's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Jake's words
I found I was more efficient on practice LR sections after his advice.
Jake
I just haven't been writing down what I'm pulling from the stimulus, which would supplement it. I need to document that better.
Jake
If you can identify patterns with the types of problems you're getting wrong, that's a way to move the scoring needle.
Jake
Questions people ask about LSAT Unplugged coaching
What happens in an LSAT Unplugged coaching session?
The coach finds the specific habit that's costing points, fixes the process, and sets the plan for the weeks ahead. In Jake's case: a 6-point raw score drop between untimed (about 20 of 25) and timed (about 14 of 25) LR performance.
Who runs the sessions?
Steve Schwartz recorded this one. Every LSAT Unplugged coach scored 170 or higher on an official LSAT, and students are matched to a coach on learning style and weak areas.
Where can I see finished results?
On the student reviews page at unpluggedprep.com/reviews, with video interviews and official scores.
Learn the fixes yourself: flaw questions, weaken and strengthen questions, Logical Reasoning timing.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded September 2025.
Steve: Given where you're at relative to your goal, we're looking to go from the 147 to the 175. If you wait till mid April, you're going to lose a potential month of the more effective studying. This is Jake, and he's looking to go from a 147 to a 175 in the next 3 months. My name is Steve Schwartz, and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Jake is going to bring me his biggest LSAT challenges and I'll help him address them. Tell me a little bit about where you're scoring right now, and what's your ultimate goal.
Jake: I took a diagnostic and got a 147. Untimed, I'm averaging about 20 out of 25 or 26. I haven't gotten into RC yet according to my study plan, but I feel like I've made progress, since a 147 is usually more like 13 to 14 out of 26, and I'm getting faster and more accurate as time goes on.
Steve: You're at 147 now, and you're looking to get up to a 175, right?
Jake: Yes.
Steve: When's your target test date? How much time do you have?
Jake: The idea is June. That said, if it gets to mid May and my scores are averaging in the 160s, I'll probably reschedule to August. I'm a busy guy, I work full time and I'm still a student taking quite a few credits. The good news is I have office hours I can dedicate to studying, usually 2 to 3 hours at work and an hour or two at home, so I'd say I average about 4 hours a day.
Steve: So roughly a 25 to 30 point increase in 3 months, or up to 5 if you push to August. Using office hours to study is fantastic, and even an hour or two here or there adds up with a structured plan. You mentioned logical reasoning, have you touched reading comp at all yet?
Jake: Just the one on the practice test I took, and a few sections on the live sessions through Unplugged.
Steve: How do you expect reading comp will go relative to logical reasoning?
Jake: After I spoke with Jet yesterday, he's my tutor, I have a more streamlined idea of how to attack the stimulus, and I found I was more efficient on practice LR sections after his advice. I think reading comp will go similarly to my LR, as long as that production keeps improving.
Steve: And untimed you're doing reasonably well, 20 out of 25 or so on LR, right?
Jake: The ones I'm missing are usually on the back end, 3 to 4 out of the 5 or 6 wrong are in the last five questions. If I get more dialed in on the convoluted stimuli toward the back end, I think I'll see big jumps there.
Steve: So it's mostly the harder questions, but when you add timing, accuracy drops quite a bit. There's work to do on pacing as well as accuracy, and neither happens in isolation. Accuracy comes from working the foundation in the right areas, which is why it's key to track your progress and note trends in what you're getting wrong and why. Getting faster comes from developing muscle memory, so a new question automatically relates back to similar ones you've seen. How often are you meeting with Jet?
Jake: I met with him for the first time yesterday, haven't scheduled the next one, I have about 17 sessions left and I'm weighing whether to stack them as I ramp up closer to the test, maybe two a week starting mid April.
Steve: You have your day by day personalized study plan. Have you been following it? Is it serving your needs?
Jake: Yeah, I'd say so. I've been super diligent with the drilling and untimed sections. For the platform portions, I still go through them for dedicated practice time, but I streamline it and bounce around to the parts I find most useful. The plan itself is effective.
Steve: Talk to me about how you're reviewing your mistakes.
Jake: I go to each wrong answer, look at my choice, and dive deep since it's the wrong one, looking at the specific verbiage, going back to the stimulus to pinpoint where I went wrong. A good example today: a stimulus said studies show the amount of information in a news broadcast at one time is not more than reasonable, and that phrase "at one time" was where I tripped. Usually I try to find exactly what was wrong and why the right answer is right. Not groundbreaking, but the devil's in the details, those phrases can make all the difference.
When I'm reviewing, usually it's a simple detail I made an assumption about or passed over without enough attention. A lot of times it's quantifiable words or strong language. Strong language I'm good with now, quantifiable words are ones I've had to work on.
Steve: As you go more in depth in your review, the insights around missing key details like that will help a lot. I want to look at what you're currently doing to see if there's a way to level it up. I've pulled up the document you sent, from PrepTest 104, section 1. Is this typical of your review process?
Jake: I'd say so, that was probably a more detailed one from yesterday. Questions 21, 23, and 24 I didn't fill out because I couldn't figure out why the right answer was right, so I went to Jet with those. But the general application is typical.
Steve: I see you noting, for question 7, a sentence for choice A and choice C, the wrong and the right, same for 15, where you wrote A is correct and B is wrong because, etc. We'll dive more into that. For logical reasoning, are you noticing trends in particular question types you have more trouble with?
Jake: I don't think so, I probably need to track that better. I have a pretty healthy mix, though parallel reasoning ones take me longer.
Steve: There might be room to track more, to notice trends. What about pacing, have you done any timed sections yet?
Jake: Yes. We run out of time. The best I've done, I got 16, without guessing on the final questions. Of the ones I attempted, I got 2 wrong, so I'd done 18.
Steve: How often are you taking practice tests overall?
Jake: I took my diagnostic about 3 weeks ago, but my study plan hasn't told me to do a practice test until this coming Saturday.
Steve: That sounds good, there's still more foundational work to do before lots of timed exams. A couple thoughts: on timed sections you're seeing roughly a 6 raw score drop, from maybe 20 correct untimed down to 14 timed. Six out of 25 is roughly a quarter of the section, so there's a lot of work to do on pacing. At the same time, to get you to 175 we also need to raise your accuracy even untimed.
Start tracking your results by question type. With more data, we'll see if there are trends in what you're getting wrong. If we notice you're getting flaw questions wrong a lot, for example, that indicates drilling flaw on the side, since it's high yield. Tracking what you're getting wrong, plus reviewing in more detail, shows you where to spend more time, which raises accuracy.
For pacing, look at where you can speed up and where you need to slow down. For anyone aiming for 165 or above, I'd recommend solving the first 10 questions in roughly 10 to 12 minutes, building a time bank for the tougher questions later, since questions get tougher as the section goes on. Those first 10 are your gimmies, don't second-guess yourself, get through them fast so you have more time later, about a minute per question on the first 10 so you can devote 2 and a half to 3 minutes on the harder ones. Pacing is the middle of the three phases of prep: accuracy, pacing, endurance, your stepping stone to full length timed exams where you stitch four sections together with on point pacing and work on not getting fatigued by section 4.
Are you flagging questions?
Jake: Yeah, if I get through every answer and none are working, I'll flag it and go back.
Steve: Good, try flagging maybe three or four max, upping that a bit to maintain your pace through the section.
Jake: That's a good point, helpful.
Steve: Then in your review process, could you document more of what you're getting wrong and why? It looks a little minimal to me, honestly, there's room to flesh it out. Look at not just the wrong and right answer but also the stimulus, the method of reasoning, since that's often where the misunderstanding stemmed from.
Jake: I do that, I just haven't been writing down what I'm pulling from the stimulus, which would supplement it. I need to document that better.
Steve: I'll show you an example from another student. Here's a wrong answer journal, on a spreadsheet, I'm not particular which format you use. It's the level of detail: test number, section number, question number, question stem type, method of reasoning, the answer chosen, the right answer, whether they flagged it, why their answer was wrong, what made the wrong answer tempting, why the right answer is right, what made it unappealing, and miscellaneous notes. Getting structured about review means not missing opportunities to go deeper.
Collecting that data is critical, because if you don't know what you're getting wrong and why, you'll probably repeat the mistakes, since the people who write the LSAT reuse the same methods of reasoning, the same flaws, the same tricks and traps. Just looking at the answer key exam after exam and saying "oh I get it now, how could I have been so dumb," then doing the same thing on the next exam, is different from having a bird's eye view of the past 5, 10, 15, 20 exams, where you'll start noticing trends in the wrong answers you pick, the question types you miss, the traps you're prone to. Once you recognize those, you can take concrete steps to avoid repeating them.
Too often students use a notebook or blank document with no structure, so they don't go deep enough and can't easily return to it later. A structured document or spreadsheet with separate columns forces you to go deeper on every question and lets you glance back at your most common mistakes before your next test.
Jake: That makes sense.
Steve: Try adopting a template like that to go deeper, and you'll be able to note commonalities in certain question types.
Jake: Is that spreadsheet available as a template?
Steve: We have similar ones inside the program, I'll have the team send you a link so you can download and work off that. You were also asking about how to use your coaching sessions, whether to save them for later or use them now. Given where you're at relative to your goal, going from 147 to 175, I'd recommend using more sessions now, to make sure you're on the right path. If you wait till mid April, you'll lose a potential month of more effective studying. Even an hour a week for consistency could keep you on track with regular check-ins, and Jet could review your review with you to make sure it's accurate and thorough. Expert guidance earlier in the process can make your path forward that much smoother.
Rather than waiting a month out of the only 3 months he has until his June LSAT, I'd recommend Jake frontload his coaching time now, so he's on the ramp to success sooner. He's looking to improve 25 to 30 points in 3 months while working and in school. Quick wins in the short term keep morale up, and additional accountability earlier can make all the difference.
For some question types, prephrasing is really helpful, like flaw, where you can articulate the flaw in your own words. For others, like strengthen and weaken, there could be several ways to strengthen or weaken an argument, so you won't always predict the exact answer, and that's okay. Sometimes it's more useful to recognize the method of reasoning in the stimulus, referencing patterns you've seen in prior prep, so even if the surface topic differs, the underlying structure remains the same, which helps you move faster.
Jake: When I'm reading the stimulus in LR, I'm determining whether it's a valid or invalid argument. I have some trouble arriving at predictions, being skeptical of arguments, finding a bridge, the prephrasing. When I do predict, I'm pretty accurate. Any tips?
Steve: With fact sets there's not really a gap to evaluate, but for arguments there is. I don't have a prephrase in mind every time, maybe half the time I do. For flaw questions there's a clear error to articulate. With strengthen and weaken it's more like categories of issues. The question I always come back to: how is it possible for the evidence to be true yet the conclusion false? How can we problematize the conclusion? Just open ended curiosity for whatever could pose an issue for the argument's validity.
Pattern recognition, as you get more exposure to LSAT questions, helps you predict when you read something new. But you don't always have to predict, recognizing it in the answer choices is often enough. That ability comes from familiarity, both with the method of reasoning and the topic. The short answer is it comes with practice.
Before we sign off, Jake, what's the biggest insight you got from our call today?
Jake: If you can identify patterns with the types of problems you're getting wrong, that's a way to move the scoring needle, since you're addressing specific weaknesses.
Steve: Fantastic, keep at it, get on that progress tracking and the review method to go a lot deeper. A lot of your gain is going to come from tracking the data, what you're getting wrong and why, and the question types, that'll give you direction. Regular weekly meetings with your coach will help with consistency and accountability.
Jake: I appreciate it.
Steve: Awesome, Jake, it was a pleasure. Keep in touch, if you need anything going forward, just reach out, I'm happy to help.
More coaching sessions: Zabdi, 141 to 155, Abigail, 147 to 160, Leah, 153 to 170, Dominic, Alina, 157 to 170. Student results and reviews.
I've written free explanations for every question in LSAT PrepTest 159, 158, 157, 156, 155 and 154, with the right answer and why each wrong answer fails. All LSAT explanations are here.
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