I recently had the opportunity to try out the Magoosh online LSAT preparation course. With so many options for online LSAT prep, it’s often difficult to figure out which is best for you. As a professional LSAT tutor, I hope to shed some light on how the Magoosh course is set up, the resources it offers, the content it covers, but most importantly its overall quality and usefulness. In all, I was quite impressed with many aspects of the course, though there were a couple of shortcomings.
PROS:
- Impressive Logical Reasoning coverage especially in conditional logic and quantitative logic. Indeed, no stone is left unturned.
- Hundreds of additional questions to practice, filterable by practically every metric imaginable.
- The Explanations Tab provides video walkthroughs of every single Logic Game and Reading Comprehension Passage from PrepTests 62-72 and 77-80.
CONS:
- Some of the videos sound as though the instructor may be reading from a script and thus feel flat and unstimulating.
- The amount of Reading Comprehension content is relatively small. Students who seek extensive Reading Comp coverage or a large number of practice passages will be disappointed.
Read on for details!
Magoosh LSAT Online Course Review
From the very first page, I was impressed by the clean, intuitive layout. The home screen consists of pie charts that track your progress and pace. There’s also an area for your notes and a panel with suggestions for your next video lesson to complete.
A nice surprise immediately upon signing in was a chat pop-up where I could ask questions and receive assistance. Great feature! However, because it’s a person responding, the response can sometimes take a few hours. Still, it was nice to know I had a quick access feature to turn to with any questions.
Course Organization and Content
For each of the three sections of the LSAT (Logical Reasoning, Logic Games, and Reading Comprehension), there is a series of short video lessons, typically between 3 and 15 minutes long. For visual learners and those on the go, this course of solely video content is great. An eyeball icon marks the videos you’ve already watched. An option to turn on a transcript which auto-advances with the video is a fantastic feature as well.
The videos are not of a person conducting a face-to-face lesson. Rather, they are either powerpoint-style slides with an instructor’s voice commentary or whiteboard-style videos showing an instructor’s writing while they explain the steps. Unfortunately, this style of video can suffer from a lack of engagement and human connection, especially when the instructor seems to be reading from a script. The lamentable result is several dull (though still informative) videos.
Logic Games
The Logic Games portion has 7 videos about scoring, pacing and structure; 3 videos about formal logic (conditionality); and 13 videos about the setups and gameplay for sequencing, fixed grouping, floating grouping, matching, and hybrid games.
The lesson section offers a great introduction to game setup and analysis, but, at only one game per game type, is not sufficient on its own to provide a full mastery of the variants you are sure to see. Thankfully, the Explanations Tab offers many additional video walkthroughs.
Reading Comprehension
The Reading Comprehension portion of the course has 13 videos ranging from strategy to specific question types, to study tips. This portion is the smallest of the three. If you struggle particularly with Reading Comprehension, you may need to supplement Magoosh’s course with additional materials like prep books or a private tutor.
Logical Reasoning
The Logical Reasoning portion is the most robust at 35 videos devoted solely to strategy, conditional logic, and quantitative logic. Because these concepts are some of the most important but least understood concepts on the LSAT, I was thrilled to see such a detailed and thorough analysis. The extensive videos on conditional logic are where Magoosh shines. Absolutely everything you need to know about this topic is covered!
The section goes on to present 22 videos about specific question types including the oft-ignored “principle” questions. It contains multiple video lessons on necessary and sufficient assumptions, which are two difficult question types that deserve the additional focus given. In all, Magoosh’s excellent Logical Reasoning coverage is the standout feature and certainly merits the relatively inexpensive course price.
Additional Content
Magoosh has an impressive amount of content in addition to its main video lesson course.
The Explanations Tab contains video walkthroughs of every game and reading passage on PrepTests 62-72 and 77-80. The extensive coverage of games is especially valuable since many students prefer to see a game completed in real-time, as opposed to reading about how to complete it via text.
The Practice Tab allows you to choose what section you’d like to work on, and provides a slew of useful filtering options like specific game or question type, length of practice session, whether you want unseen questions only, and whether you’d like to see the answers after each question or at the end of the session.
The Review Tab offers clean charts and graphics to examine your progress on completed questions. The information is filterable by things like question difficulty, how long ago you did the question, specific section types, specific game or question types, and more.
A final tab offers additional resources like study schedules, prep book reviews, and blog posts.
Overall, the Magoosh LSAT Online Prep Course is a great value. It is especially beneficial for visual learners who prefer to watch instead of read, and those who seek to beef-up their Logical Reasoning skills in particular.
A free 7-day trial, though extremely limited in course access, should be enough to determine if the Magoosh course is right for you.