Mary, 160 and working toward 170: a live LSAT coaching session
This is what LSAT Unplugged coaching looks like. Mary came in at 160 to 162, aiming for 170 on the April 10th LSAT. Steve Schwartz coached her live for about 37 minutes on Reading Comprehension, and the whole session and transcript are below.
The numbers here are where Mary started and the goal we set together in this session. Individual results vary.
- Student: Mary
- Score when recorded: 160 to 162
- Goal: 170
- Target test: April 10th
- Situation: Studying full time, 6 to 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, taking prep test April 10, first time taking the LSAT, non-native English speaker (English is her second language)
- Focus: Reading Comprehension
- Worked on: necessary assumption, flaw, principle, main idea
What we fixed in this session
You cannot afford to be lazy if you want a top score on the LSAT.
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 showed her that her wrong answer journal combined six types of analysis (stimulus, question stem, tempting wrong answer, why it's wrong, unappealing right answer, why it's right) into one cramped cell, and had her split them into separate columns so nothing gets skipped.
She was spending too little time reading art and humanities passages carefully and recommended two drills: summarizing each passage's main idea in her own words, and rewriting dense passages in simpler language.
The plan: I reframed her raw correct counts into number wrong per section, showing she is losing about 11 to 12 points in reading comp versus 3 to 5 in logical reasoning. That pinpointed reading comp as the real point source.
Where the session landed: Mary commits to restructuring her review sheet into separate columns and starting the passage-rewriting and main-idea drills that same day.
If your prep looks like Mary's did, that's fixable in one session.
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In Mary's words
I never thought about it.
Mary
I can definitely start doing it today.
Mary
I started with nothing, now I can see there's a lot of progress that's been made.
Mary
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 Mary's case: her that her wrong answer journal combined six types of analysis (stimulus.
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: necessary assumption questions, flaw questions, Reading Comprehension.
Student reviews and finished results.
Full session transcript
Recorded December 2025.
Steve: If you do these three things, level up your wrong answer journal, level up your Socratic review method using the sheet, engage in these reading comp drills for articulating main idea, and start rewriting the passages to level up your understanding, the questions will flow a lot easier. That's where your next 10 points are going to come from between now and the test next month.
This is Mary and she's looking to raise her LSAT score from a 160 to a 170 in the next month. My name is Steve Schwartz and I've been teaching the LSAT for the past 20 years. Today, Mary's going to bring me her biggest LSAT challenges and I'll help her address them as we look to get her next 10 points.
Where are you scoring right now, and what's your ultimate goal score?
Mary: I did a few, like over 10 of the prep tests, and I'm between 160 and 162. The goal was 170, but I found it a little tough. English is my second language, so I'm still struggling with RC. I guess this is where I'm losing the most points, not with the LR.
Steve: So you're at 160 to 162, looking to hit 170. How much time do you have before test day? When are you taking it?
Mary: The April one, April 10th.
Steve: A little less than a month between now and then. How many hours per week are you able to put into your LSAT prep?
Mary: Probably 6 to 7 hours, probably 8 hours a day.
Steve: 6, 7, 8 hours in a single day?
Mary: Yes.
Steve: Over the course of the week, what's that breaking down to?
Mary: If we take 2 hours away, it's about 6 hours every day I spend by myself practicing, going back through videos if I have something, beside the 2 hours of group study and class.
Steve: So outside of your group study and one-on-one, it comes down to 6 hours of focused solo studying, 7 days a week.
Mary: Seven days a week.
Steve: Amazing. Tell me about your LSAT study week. How often are you joining the small group classes?
Mary: I'm doing the group session every day, and the tutors every single day too. I don't think I've missed anything since December.
Steve: So you're joining all the classes every single week.
Mary: Yes.
Steve: And tell me about your solo studying.
Mary: I start with a whole section of LR and review after, where was the trap, what I missed. Sometimes I go back to the videos, especially for necessary assumption, where I still get a little trapped. I do a whole section of LR and one section of RC every single day and review them after.
Steve: When Mary told me she's able to study full time and put in 6 to 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, I knew there was a massive opportunity, because she's able to take full advantage of all the resources. She can join all the small group classes, all the study groups, her one-on-one sessions, still take a full exam a week, review it in depth, and do additional drills. When I looked at her review sheet, I saw she's leaving a lot of points on the table because her review isn't detailed enough. There's some structure there, but she could do a lot more to organize it so she's not missing any angle of the questions. Once she implements this, I think she's going to get her 10 points from that alone.
Reading comp being the weakest area as a non-native speaker, would you say timing is more of an issue, or accuracy, or endurance, or something else?
Mary: I don't think it's about time. It's more about understanding what the passage is talking about. Some I can get a complete point with, but with others, if I don't really understand the argument, I get distracted, and when I move to the answer choices I mess it up. Sometimes I eliminate two to three answers but end up choosing the wrong one, which happens a lot with RC. I guess this is where I'm losing about 10 points most of the time.
Steve: So you'd say it's more accuracy and understanding first and foremost.
Mary: Yes.
Steve: Talk to me about your accuracy in terms of number incorrect between LR versus RC.
Mary: LR, majority of the time, about 90%, I knock out 20 to 22 questions. RC, probably 15, 16, barely 16 questions.
Steve: To frame it the opposite way, since total questions vary per section: LR, if you're getting 20 to 22 correct, you're probably getting minus 3 to minus 5. In reading comp, out of about 27, that means minus 11 to minus 12.
Mary: Yes.
Steve: So either way you look at it, reading comp is clearly the area to work on. Now, talk to me about how you review mistakes.
Mary: I started a little late on this. When I start, I did not follow the strategy of finding the gap between evidence and conclusion. Now I go back to the argument, read it again, and ask myself what made me choose the wrong answer, what was the trap, what makes it wrong versus what makes the right answer right. I do sometimes write the main takeaway from the question type.
Steve: Good, you're speaking my language here. You're clearly articulating the points you've got to be hitting during review. You know what you need to do and you're taking the steps to do it. I do think there's opportunity to go even further, which is exciting because that means there's untapped potential. You're looking to get 8 to 10 points or more in the next month, because there's something you could be doing but haven't gone all the way on. If you just do the thing, you release that potential and get the score increase.
Before I dig into that, a couple more questions. Let's look at the reading comp tab. You're dividing passages up: social science, natural science, law, art, humanities. Columns A and B are pretty empty, columns C, D, E are more filled in, D and E especially. Should I take that to mean art and humanities give you more trouble because there are more of them logged?
Mary: Art is the worst thing. When they talk about history, pictures, something that happened 20,000 years ago, no way. If I read a sentence and don't know what it means, it's hard to predict what they're talking about. In LR, if I don't understand a word here and there but get the main takeaway from the stimulus, I get 100%, I don't have to know every word's meaning. But here, if I don't know the attitude of the author, I'll get it wrong. Sometimes they use analogy questions, or what the author would agree with. There's no way I'm answering those. Art is a little tough for me.
Steve: Good to know. It's good that you know which topics give you more trouble, since that suggests where to spend more time. Do you find you're running out of time in the art or humanities passages?
Mary: I spend most of the time with it, yes. But I noticed when we have dual passages, I get those right even if they're in art. Mark, the RC tutor, always tells us to read the first passage by itself, move to the answer choices, then get back to the second one, and that helps a lot. But when it's just a full passage, with multiple people talking and arguing, I lose the connection between the paragraphs.
Steve: When you're doing your initial read, what's your note-taking strategy, if any? Notes on scratch paper, highlighting, underlining, or in your head?
Mary: I do underline and highlight, though the highlight kind of blows my eyes, so that's not a good thing to do, I started underlining instead. If I finish a paragraph, I summarize it in one or two sentences, the main takeaway, and note if the next paragraph disagrees with the first. Underlining if there's people talking, but I don't think it's helping, I lose track.
Steve: So the underlining is of limited usefulness, and you're jotting a couple of sentences on scratch paper. How much time is all this taking? If you have say 8 minutes 45 seconds on average for each passage plus questions, how much is going toward the read versus the questions?
Mary: I spend like 4 minutes reading, I'm a slow reader. For art specifically, it's taking me 10 to 11 minutes per passage, which means I wouldn't have time to finish the last passage.
Steve: So typically 4 minutes reading, leaving about 5 minutes for the associated 7 questions. Art might take 10 or 11 minutes, which has to be balanced out by going faster on the science or social science passages you're stronger on. Is that the time allocation here?
Mary: Yes.
Steve: On the LSAT reading comp section, you'll see four major topics: natural science, social science, humanities, and law. They vary the topics because chances are you don't like one of them, and that one risks getting you bogged down and stuck, and sometimes spending more time on a passage doesn't actually help. You've got to focus first on getting the big picture. What's the main idea, the primary purpose, the author's opinion? If they could leave you with only one central idea, what would that be? Take that, run with it, knock out the general, global, big picture questions. Then circle back to the passage with specific line references for detail-oriented questions. Don't try to memorize the entire thing up front. Just get the big picture, then go back when you need to. That saves time and lets you finish the section with time to spare.
You mentioned that in logical reasoning you want to look at what makes the wrong answer tempting, what makes it wrong, what makes the right answer unappealing, what makes it correct. All that analysis is happening for a single question, and you're also looking at the stimulus and the answer choices.
Mary: I think majority of the time, yes.
Steve: In this sheet, all of those things, stimulus, answer choice, the tempting wrong answer, why it's wrong, the unappealing right answer, why it's right, those six things are all combined into one section of this sheet. Each cell is combining all of that analysis.
Mary: Yes. The main takeaway for the majority of questions is the same. For a flaw question, the main takeaway is find the gap, what's missing in the conclusion that's not mentioned in the evidence. But most questions include the same idea: the wrong answer, the stimulus, where I get trapped, why the right answer is right and the wrong one is wrong.
Steve: Okay, so you're doing a lot of those things a lot of the time. But if we look at this PT 155 section 1 question 4, and this necessary assumption question next to it, look at it plainly: column B's analysis is a lot bigger than column C's. Column C is maybe a third of the size of column B.
Mary: Yeah, that's correct. My tutor already talked about it, said I have to write a little bit more.
Steve: So your tutor was telling you to write more, and I agree. But rather than just saying write more, I want us to get concrete about what to write more of. I think you already know the different points you want to hit, even without my saying it. You probably hit more of them in this principle question than in the necessary assumption question just based on length. But I'm wondering if the opportunity is to structure this journal differently, with dedicated boxes for each point. Rather than orienting the sheet by question stem type, row one has flaw, principle, necessary, resolve, agree, and so on, what if that became a column instead? A column for question type, a column for stimulus, a column for question stem, a column for tempting wrong answer, a column for unappealing right answer, and so on.
Mary: That's a good idea. I never thought about it.
Steve: I want to make it foolproof, like a checklist, so you actually hit each point, and it's obvious which one you missed during review. Just go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: stimulus, stem, wrong answer, right answer.
Mary: Yes, I can do that. This is my first time taking the LSAT, I didn't really know anything before I joined the team. I figured if I didn't hit the goal the first time, I still have at least two more chances to retry.
Steve: It's good to keep in mind it's not all riding on one test date. Let's give it our all for April. There's room for you to get there given you're able to study full time and haven't been going as deep on review as you could, but once you adopt a more structured process, you'll get a lot more out of your studying. If you're looking to get 10 to 12 points in the next month, this is the opportunity, because you already have the time. You just have to devote it to the right areas.
I wanted to illustrate this with logical reasoning because the questions are bite sized, but the same applies to reading comp. There, the paragraphs are bigger because reading comp is larger. First step, divide your analysis of each question into its own row. One section for your analysis of the passage itself, which is 450 words, given its length it deserves its own section. Then each individual question gets its own dedicated area: question type, the wrong answer, the right answer, what made the wrong answer tempting, what makes it wrong, what makes the right answer unappealing at first, and what ultimately makes it correct.
Mary: I can definitely start doing it today. I never thought about it. Probably I should've started earlier, but we still have some time.
Steve: You have time because you've got a month to study full time. If you want 10 points and make your first take your only take, which you can do, it's going to involve leveling up the review. I think at least 7 of those points are going to come from reading comp, the other 3 from logical reasoning, given the proportions of where you're having trouble right now. How many practice tests have you taken?
Mary: Full preps, 12 total.
Steve: And how many more are you planning to take over the next month?
Mary: Usually once a week, so probably four or five more. Besides that, I do two sections every single day, four full ones from now to the day of the test.
Steve: Roughly one a week between now and then, reviewing those in detail with your new leveled up sheet, plus timed sections here and there. One more recommendation based on your struggles with reading comp as a non-native speaker: you mentioned difficulty understanding the passage text given the vocabulary. Have you ever tried taking the entire passage and rewriting it in simpler language?
Mary: I know sometimes details won't matter, but honestly, it's hard. Sometimes it pisses me off, what does that word mean, what is that thing they're talking about. If I don't understand two or three sentences and get to the second paragraph, I lose track. There are passages where my understanding is only 10%, literally 10%, and I usually skip those.
Steve: As you were talking I was smiling a little, because I get it. This exam is incredibly frustrating, because they're such bad writers, and not because they don't know how to write. They're bad writers because they're looking to disguise and mask the concepts they're presenting. It's layers upon layers, so if you don't get one part and everything builds off that part, the whole thing's a lost cause.
I'm going to recommend two drills. One, read some passages and articulate in your own words the main idea. What's the author's opinion? If they could leave you with only one central thesis, what would it be? Put that in your own words without looking at the questions, then solve only the main idea questions.
Mary: I can work on this today, try it and see how things work.
Steve: I'm recommending this because you have so much time to study that you still have room for creative exercises like this that might unlock additional reading comp understanding. Even though they present concepts in a frustrating way, the concepts themselves aren't that bad, they're just written at a much higher, more sophisticated and convoluted level than we're used to reading. When you rewrite a passage in simpler terms, it forces a deeper understanding. If you can explain it simply, that proves you actually get it. But without an exercise like this, without someone keeping you accountable, a coach, a study buddy, even your wrong answer journal, you end up gliding over concepts you don't truly understand, because the mind is lazy, it gravitates toward what's easy. When you engage in these drills, you force yourself to stick with every element of the passage, leaving no points on the table. You cannot afford to be lazy if you want a top score.
Those who get 170 or above don't do so by accident. They understand every sentence in the passage, every LR argument, they're not leaving anything to chance. If you don't understand it now, you're not going to magically understand it on test day. The test writers are extremely lazy, they keep reusing the same concepts and traps because most students keep falling for them. But there are thousands of released LSAT questions, over 400 released reading comp passages alone. If you thoroughly understood even a tenth of those, that would be enough to get a 170 or above.
Mary: Honestly, I majored in political science, I've read so many books and articles, it was never that tough. It's the transformation of the language, I feel like they just bring words and put them together to make a sentence. When I started studying, I tried translating the passage, but even in my own language it doesn't make sense the way it's written. It's not like a normal person writing something, even in my native language it's hard to capture everything.
Steve: I agree. It's legalese, a contract language, yet another language where even if you know English, that doesn't mean it's easy to interpret contracts written in that style, because lawyers have a very particular style. In a sense, they're taking primary sources, scholarly journal articles or whatever, and turning them into a contract-style presentation, but a lot more roundabout, with complex, multi-layered sentence structures. One drill is summarizing the main ideas, the second is rewriting the entire thing in simpler language. If it's written at a graduate school level, can you reverse engineer it to the explain-like-I'm-5 version?
Reading comp is often the biggest hurdle for non-native English speakers. The vocabulary can be overwhelming, the structure can feel confusing. But like anything else on the LSAT, it's a skill you can build, not a test of your intelligence. It might take more work to see the patterns in the structure of the passages, but you can get there, same as anybody else. I often recommend breaking passages into component parts, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, redefining and simplifying every word. The concepts aren't what's difficult, it's just how the LSAT presents them. With more time and drills to establish that foundation, you can increase your accuracy, and speed will come with time.
Mary: I'll start doing this, see how things work. There's still a month, everything could change. If I increase it by even 4 points, that's better than nothing.
Steve: Even if you do any of the single things we talked about today, I'm confident that could get you at least 5 points. Combine them all together, I think you can get at least 10 points in the next month.
So, to recap your next action steps, taking full advantage of the 6 to 8 hours a day you have available: number one, level up your review process, restructure your wrong answer journal to use the Socratic review method fully. In logical reasoning, make the question stem type a row, then have separate columns for stimulus, question stem, answer choices, two columns for the wrong answer (what makes it tempting and what makes it wrong), and two columns for the right answer (what made it unappealing and what ultimately makes it correct). Do this both for logical reasoning and reading comp. In reading comprehension, you'll have a separate column for the passage analysis, a column for question type within the passage set, then the same thing as in logical reasoning.
Restructure the Google sheet for your Socratic review, and engage in the reading comp drills: taking the entire passage and rewriting it in simpler language, and reading the passage and articulating in your own words the main idea, the author's opinion, tone, best title, then looking at how the LSAT describes it in their language.
Mary: That makes sense. My last question: if I get down to two questions and it's hard, eliminate three and I'm between the right answer and the wrong answer choice, what would be the best advice? It doesn't have to be a specific type of question.
Steve: It depends on the specific type of question, because where I lean between two choices depends on the perspective the question stem is asking me to apply, what lens am I looking through. For a main idea or tone question in reading comprehension, I'd gravitate toward something more moderate, because they're rarely extreme in their viewpoint. If a choice is emphatically enthusiastic or super positive, it's probably not that. They're probably also not super negative, they might be a little critical or skeptical, or have reserved optimism, but not at a polar extreme.
Mary: But for the main point question, some answer choices literally have been said in the passage, and even if they argue about it to the end, it's not the main point. Sometimes it surprises me, I think maybe this is the right answer since they're arguing about it from the beginning, and I choose it, and it's not the one, I get trapped. Same view, same wording, same idea, but it just isn't the right answer for some reason.
Steve: To your point, the main idea needs to be the global main point of the entire passage, even if mentioned in one particular part. If it's not encompassing the whole, then even though it's technically true, it isn't the main idea. You want the proper lens, global versus specific. But broadly, if you're down to two for a tone question, the correct answer will not be super extreme on either end, it's going to be reserved or qualified, more moderate. Same for a necessary assumption question in logical reasoning. All else being equal, gravitate toward the more moderate answer choice, because that's more likely to have been supported or required by the stimulus than more extreme language.
The people who make the LSAT aren't dumb. They're extremely clever at creating tempting traps. They're good at making the wrong answer seem appealing and great at making the right answer seem unappealing. So in the Socratic review method, look at not just why the right answer is right and the wrong answer is wrong, but what made the right answer unappealing at first glance and what ultimately makes it correct. For the wrong answer, look at what appealed to you at first, and then upon reflection, what makes it wrong. Look at what traps you personally were prone to falling for. Highlight those insights so when you go back to your wrong answer journal, you can see the traps to look out for and avoid making the same mistake again.
Before we sign off, what would you say are the three biggest takeaways from our call today?
Mary: I have to work on my logical reasoning sheet, figure out how to organize it better. Try to rewrite it in a simple way, if I can explain it to a 5-year-old, I can really understand what they're talking about. We didn't talk about time management for reading comp.
Steve: Accuracy first. We've got to build up your foundational understanding of the passages through these drills, and speed will come as you develop that understanding. We could talk down the line about allocating time between passage and questions, but first I want to make sure you actually understand the passage text thoroughly, because once you do, the questions come a lot easier.
Mary: I'll think about it. On the last passage, even reading and answering two or three questions, sometimes four out of five or six, I'm not able to get to all of them. Some passages are harder and take more time, but I'm going to work on all of this now, since I don't have anything besides studying for the LSAT.
Steve: Good. Keep at it, I'm excited to see where you take it. If you do these three things, level up your wrong answer journal, level up your Socratic review method, engage in these reading comp drills, and start rewriting the passages, the questions will flow a lot easier, and that's where your next 10 points are going to come from between now and the test.
Mary: Hopefully. I wish.
Steve: It'll get there. You have the time, you can put it in. If you have any questions or need anything, shoot me an email or a text, I'll be happy to help.
Mary: I do appreciate everything. It means a lot to me, the whole process, the team and stuff like that. I started with nothing, now I can see there's a lot of progress that's been made. I really do appreciate your team and you.
Steve: My pleasure, Mary. Reach out anytime. In the meantime, I wish you all the best. Have a good one, I'll talk to you soon. Have a nice day.
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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