Why You Should Use LSAT Tests for GMAT RC & CR

GMATNinja I am scoring V33-35. Do you think I can use LSAT or I should be more skilled on verbal before using LSAT?

Sure, if you're worried about running out of official GMAT CR and RC questions, give the LSAT a shot! The LSATs will be a challenge if you're scoring in the 33-35 range, but not an overwhelming one -- and you'll definitely learn from them if you have the patience to absorb a little bit of a beating at times.

Try a few sets, and see what you think? If you can get 80% correct on the LSAT CR ("logical reasoning") and RC questions, that would be a sign of HUGE progress.

Let me know how it goes!

Using LSAT for GMAT CR and RC

If you’re a regular visitor to the GMAT Club verbal forums, you might already be familiar with the painful fact that it can be difficult to improve on GMAT CR and RC. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who can effortlessly conquer CR and RC, you probably also know that there are no magic formulas or quick fixes on CR or RC.

Some of my favorite stories of GMAT glory come from test-takers who improved by leaps and bounds after Herculean efforts on CR and RC. After several years(!) of battling the GMAT, GMAT Club legend Abhishek.pitti completed his quest from 420 to 570 to 590 to 700 to HBS only after he started focusing on CR and RC.
I once worked with a student who did 4,000 CR and RC practice questions – and she was rewarded with a 750 and a ticket to HBS.

Hopefully, you won’t need to take your CR and RC studies to such extremes. But if you think that you’ll need extra practice on CR and RC, you might consider using our favorite non-GMAT tool: official LSAT questions.

LSAT questions aren’t perfect for everybody, but here are a few reasons why the LSAT might be a worthwhile supplement to your GMAT study materials:

Reason #1: you’re running out of official GMAT RC and CR questions

As many of you know, absolutely nothing beats official GMAT questions. The GMAT spends somewhere between $1500 and $3000 perfecting every single test question – and even the very best test-prep companies simply can’t compete with that.

But there’s a huge problem: there really aren’t that many official GMAT questions available to us. The GMAT OGs, the official verbal review guides, and the GMATPrep Question Pack offer a grand total of around 400 CR and 400 RC questions, even if you dive into older editions of the books. That might sound like a lot, but if you do 20 CRs and 20 RCs every day, you’ll exhaust the supply in a few weeks.

The LSAT is the next-best thing. Each LSAT question is painstakingly tested and vetted – just like official GMAT questions. And the supply of official LSAT questions is nearly limitless: there are currently about 80 official LSAT exams in print, each of which contains roughly 50 CR questions (known as logical reasoning on the LSAT) and 25 RC questions, for a grand total of around 6000(!!) high-quality practice questions.

So if you need extra CR or RC practice, you’ll never run out of LSAT materials.

Reason #2: official LSAT questions are harder than most GMAT questions

Another problem with the official GMAT questions is that many of them are too easy if you’re shooting for a GMAT score of 650 or above. The OGs and Question Pack feature a reasonably representative cross-section of questions, ranging from the very easiest (“200-level questions,” in theory) to the very toughest (“800-level questions”). So if you crave a top-tier GMAT score, perhaps only the toughest 50% of GMAT Official Guide questions will give you an adequate verbal workout.

But LSAT questions are consistently really, really tough. If we imagine that the questions in the GMAT OGs range in difficulty from 200 to 800, I’d argue that LSAT questions range from something like 500 to 850. LSAT RC passages are, on average, much longer than GMAT RC passages, and the language is generally more challenging than anything you’ll encounter on the GMAT. And that’s wonderful if you’re striving for an elite GMAT score. Even if your reading skills are absolutely spectacular, we promise that the hardest LSAT CR and RC questions will make you sweat.

So if you want to work out your reading muscles at a high level, nothing in the test-prep world is better than retired LSAT exams.

Reason #3: the differences between LSAT and GMAT questions are mostly cosmetic

Let’s be honest: the LSAT isn’t exactly the GMAT. LSAT RC passages are, on average, longer and wordier than their GMAT counterparts. The GMAT prefers realistic-sounding passages about business and politics, while the LSAT often strays into abstract philosophical, literary, and legal topics. Many LSAT answer choices sound like “legalese,” with plenty of mumbo-jumbo about premises and patterns of reasoning. And some LSAT question types – most notably the parallel reasoning questions – barely appear on the GMAT at all.

But after assigning LSAT questions to hundreds of GMAT students over the years, we're convinced that the LSAT is 100% worthwhile for anybody chasing an elite score. Despite the cosmetic differences between the two tests, the skills required to succeed on the LSAT are exactly the same as those needed to beat the GMAT: you’ll need to read the passages with pinpoint precision, apply airtight logic, have a flawless understanding of the structure and scope of the passage, and ensure that outside information never sneaks into your thought process.

The bottom line: if you can consistently crush LSAT questions, you’ll do really, really well on GMAT CR and RC.

Ready to get started?

I’m the first to admit that a pile of LSAT books won’t magically cure all of your GMAT verbal problems. If you’re struggling with the language or logic of basic GMAT verbal questions, the LSAT might be overkill. In the long run, LSAT questions can definitely help you improve your fundamental reading and logical skills – but they’re no magic bullet, and they can be demoralizing if your skills aren’t already pretty good.

But if you’re interested in challenging yourself with some LSAT materials, I’d recommend starting with the 25 RC and 50 CR (“logical reasoning”) questions available in sections 2-4 of the free, official test on the LSAT website. (I’d also recommend ignoring the LSAT’s ridiculous time limit of 35 minutes per section. If you can do each set of 25 questions in less than an hour, you’re doing great.)

If you want more, you can move on to any of the LSAT’s creatively-named books: 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests, or The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests, or any other similarly-named book – though none of them include answer explanations. Alternatively, you could pick up The Official LSAT SuperPrep I or The Official LSAT SuperPrep II, each of which includes three tests with detailed, official explanations.

If you have questions about LSAT materials – or if you want to share your experiences with them – we’d love to hear from you! And if you want to join a live discussion of the LSAT and anything else related to GMAT verbal, join us on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. PST/8:30 p.m. IST for the GMAT Club verbal experts’ weekly chat.

obviously, I guess strategy for LSAT questions are different from Gmat questions?

Thank you for the kind words, Heseraj! And awesome to hear that you're putting so much effort into RC and CR.

The tough thing about CR and RC in general is that you can hit a plateau really quickly if you're struggling to decipher the language. Tons of practice over time will help, but it can be a long, slow process to get fundamentally better at fighting your way through that nasty LSAT language. So keep at it, and the language part of it will get better!

And if you end up feeling like your progress is slowing down, you might want to check out carcass's post in this thread: https://gmatclub.com/forum/i-am-in-the- ... l#p1148290. There's some good general advice in there.

I'll also post some more general advice about how to approach RC in a Topic of the Week later this month. We talked about general approaches to RC quite a bit in our Wednesday verbal chat, and I'll put some of those ideas into a new thread. You might be too advanced for my basic advice at this point, Heseraj, but keep an eye out anyway, just in case.

And for whatever it's worth: if you can get to about 80% accuracy on the LSAT materials, you'll have a good shot at something around a 40 on GMAT verbal. So you're not too far off!

Hello Ninja
Thank you for your contribution to this wonderful conversation !!
From this, i bought the official LSAT previous tests 1-80 and started practising! Would you be so kind answering one question for me since i ve put myself throught such costs ? On LSAT logical reasoning every LR part has 25 questions. My accuracy is 80-85 percent on that. Can you please tell me what the accuracy AND TIME should be in each LR part (25 questions) in order to qualify for around Verbal 43(in the critical reasoning section) on the GMAT ?
Thank you Ninja

Thank you for the kind words, Alex! And holy crap -- you bought all 80 tests? That's a lot.

Somewhere around 80% accuracy on LSATs would correlate (very!) roughly to a 40V, so for a 43V, you'd need to miss no more than 1-3 questions on each 25-question LSAT section. As long as you're doing each set in under an hour, you're OK for the GMAT.

This part has nothing to do with the LSAT, but for anybody who's shooting for scores in the mid-40s on verbal: scores tend to be pretty unstable at that end of the scale, just because one or two questions can be the difference between a 43V and a 45V or 46V. So if you're consistently above a 42V on your practice tests, be prepared for a fair amount of variability from test to test, even if you're 100% consistent in your approach to things.

Have fun studying, and let me know how it goes!

Thank you for your help Ninja. This really helped me decompress. I do tend to miss approximately 4 questions in each 25-question LSAT set. They are usually principle, parallel reasoning and 2-speaker questions. I am not sure if they appear on the GMAT. Generally, do these obscure, ''more abstract'' questions appear on the GMAT when striving for V42 or more ?
Thank you Ninja

Hi Gmat Ninja expert,

I got the main idea question wrong. Could you please help me - how could we get to know that author was challenging a widely accepted explanation.

Awesome question! You're very unlikely to see parallel reasoning questions on the actual GMAT -- as far as I know, there are exactly zero of those in any of the published GMAT materials, though I did see one on an actual GMAT once (on RC, oddly enough). So you don't really need to worry much about those. You also won't see much of the "which of the following principles, if established..." sorts of things on the GMAT, and the two-speaker ones are rare, too.

Here's the funny thing, though: I've found overall LSAT results to be remarkably consistent, accurate predictors of my GMAT students' verbal scores, despite the fact that a decent proportion of LSAT questions don't really appear on the GMAT. Parallel reasoning questions basically test your ability to take a passage and break down its logical structure six times (once for the passage itself, once for each of the five answer choices); that's a valuable skill. The two-speaker questions test your ability to figure out what, exactly, is the conclusion and scope of each speaker's commentary -- also the type of skill that you'll need on the GMAT, albeit in a different format. The "principle" questions are basically just really screwball "strengthen" questions.

So out of one side of my mouth: yeah, don't lose much sleep over any of those question types. Out of the other side of my mouth: practicing them still builds some valuable skills. If you're going to miss four questions per set, it sounds like you're missing "the right ones." But I'd love to see you break through on those, too, even if you won't see exactly those questions on the GMAT. It would be a good indicator that your skills really have become bulletproof.

Keep us posted!

Hello Ninja
Thank you sooo much about your amazing help. Your 2 answers have helped me a lot in my effort to go throught the LSAT materials and CR RC. I have solved approximately 1000 RC questions and around the same LR questions from LSAT tests only. My accuracy in LSAT logical reasoning is above 80-85 percent and my timing is under an hour or less.
But now i think i might be in a plateau. I ve seen that i am doing really great when i analyze the stimulous very well(recognizing assumptions and flaws mainly and the logical structure generaally). In this regard i think that reading some general critical thinking books might help. You know, books about arguments, logic books, how to build strong arguments, why some arguments are weak and more.
Do you know any books of this kind to help me ? (my target score is V42 or more).
I was thinking about undertaking some private tutoring with you, but your prices are really outside my reach, since i am only a student.
Thank you Ninja

I ve seen that i am doing really great when i analyze the stimulous very well(recognizing assumptions and flaws mainly and the logical structure generaally)

People swear by the PowerScore books -- the LSAT version is basically just a longer version of the GMAT version -- so you could give those a shot if you'd like.

GMATNinja



I have seen quite a few solutions by Kaplan too for LSAT paper based tests floating around. How do you compare its solutions with PowerScore?