How Khan Can Improve the LSAT Prep
Note: If there is a better place for me to direct these concerns, please let me know.
At the beginning of June 2018, I decided to pursue law school. I spoke with the schools I plan to attend and one of them mentioned to me that Khan Academy had just launched a free LSAT prep course in collaboration with LSAC. This was music to my ears, because I was very concerned about the cost of prep books and a prep course.
I started prepping with Khan alone. I have since been lucky enough to receive numerous LSAT prep books free from a person who took the test last year, and I'm really glad that I received those books, because they showed me the weak parts of Khan's LSAT prep, which I didn't realize at the time were hindering my progress.
My issues with Khan's LSAT prep are as follows:
- The inability to take paper tests. This reason alone is enough to make me abandon Khan in favor of prep test books. It's very hard to complete the test without the ability to underline and annotate the logical reasoning and reading comprehension sections. While the highlight tool for reading comprehension is helpful, the inability to annotate in reading comprehension or highlight in logical reasoning makes the passages very difficult to navigate. Beyond that, I know many individuals like me prefer to read on paper, rather than on a computer screen. After all, the actual test is on paper! Khan should allow you to print practice tests and then input your answers into Khan for scoring and analysis.
- The high rate of repeated drills. I know this has been addressed by Khan and it's something they're working on, but I could not get past how many times I was getting the same drill over and over again. In a single practice session, I would get the same analytical reasoning setup and questions two or three times. This made completing these drills very tedious and frustrating.
- Practice not adapting to improved scores. Despite overcoming my obstacles in the analytical reasoning section, I would repeatedly be given "high" priority analytical reasoning drills. I would complete five AR drills in a row with 100% precision and it would still tell me my next high priority practice area was analytical reasoning. Instead of focusing on areas where I actually needed practice, I ended up having to sit through the same few analytical reasoning setups for an entire practice session.
The biggest issue I have is definitely taking the practice tests on a computer, and it shows in my score. My practice test scores, both from Khan (indicated with an asterisk) and from the LSAC official prep test (paper) books, are chronologically as follows:
159, 159*, 162, 158*, 164, 162*, 166, 169, 162*
As you can see, my scores are significantly higher on paper tests than on Khan's practice tests. Additionally, my scores improve over time on paper tests, however they fluctuate with Khan's tests. I think this is a function of the computer vs. paper test issue.
I just wanted to share these thoughts in the hopes that they can allow Khan Academy to improve the LSAT course. I certainly think it has its uses but I found that once I had prep books, Khan Academy was not worth my study time and did not help me as much as it could.
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