Why You Should Use LSAT Tests for GMAT RC & CR

The beginner's guide helped me find the problem at least - I think i fall in love with the first answer that kind of/sort of strikes me as correct and from there on its me defending that answer against others. And you very rightly pointed it out here,"And if you’re struggling on CR, I’ll bet that you’re missing those little modifiers more often than you’d like."

It's a very good post. Need to spend more time on it.

Thank you so much GMATNinja!

Hello everyone,

does any of you have the pdf/link for Lsat practice RC passages.

I found only 3 rc's on their website

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.

Got questions? Feel free to ask us anything about the LSAT below.

Dear GMATNinja,
Thank you for this wonderful post. After reading your post, I am excited to find out about official LSAT RC and LR material . I was looking for additional material to boost my GMAT Verbal scores and I agree with you that LSAT RC and LR material can be helpful.

In summary, my question here is, just like I can now work with Official LSAT RC and LR problems, are there any place I can find high quality Sentence Correction material outside of Official GMAT resources?

To give you a brief background information, I scored 730 (Q50/V38) on an official GMAT back in 2013. That score has expired and now I am trying to retake the GMAT to apply to business school hopefully this fall. I retook official GMAT's this summer and have canceled those scores because I am not happy with my scores.
Here's what I got in April and May this year (2019):

700 (Q49, V35, IR8) on April 24, 2019
720 (Q49, V40, IR7) on May 11, 2019
720 (Q49, V40, IR8) on May 28, 2019

From the ESR's as you can see below, it seems like my strengths and weaknesses vary from one test to another:
April 24 —> May 11 —> May 28
Sub-section rankings:
CR - 65th —> 94th —> 88th

RC - 88th —> 76th —> 60th

SC - 59th —> 81st —> 96th

Why wasn't I aware of this? I am pro LSAT all the way! *No bias* *No B.S.* *Just J.D.*

Hi,

I wanted to check if threre is any free source for LSAT RC passages..with explanations?

Thanks in advance!

Shinrai

Aw man, I thought that all moderators were required to read and memorize all of the articles in my ludicrously bloated forum signature!

For anybody out there who ends up doing a lot of the LSAT CR questions here on GMAT Club, nightblade354 is one of the guys who does a killer job of breaking those down. So I might be ruining his life here, but he's a good guy to tag in whenever you have questions on LSAT stuff.

GMATNinja

I used to score 5/8, 6/9 types in GMAT RC questions irrespective of the source.
Now, Ive gone through a few LSAT RCs and Im incredibly scoring more, something like 6/8, 7/9 types.

The improvement isnt vast and the idea is ofcourse to nail every answer, but is it weird that Im finding the LSAT RCs a lot more easier than the GMAT RCs?
Maybe it could be because of the predictable nature/order of the questions (Main Point, Highlighted Meaning, Intended Meaning, Purpose)

What I understood though is that the inference level questions are much less in number and less harder on the LSAT than the ones in the GMAT.
I remember struggling to connect information across paras in GMAT to arrive at an inference. I dont have that difficulty in LSAT RCs. The meaning of any whole LSAT RC, to me, is lucid and quite straightforward.

Am not able to say the same for GMAT.
Any thoughts?

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.

Got questions? Feel free to ask us anything about the LSAT below.

Hi GMATNinja I just gave the LSAT prep test 71 and scored a 17/25 in the CR section using around 55 mins for the exam, how far do you think I am from scoring a V40 in my actual GMAT exam? Any advice on how to bring this number of correct questions upto atleast a 20 out of 25 questions?
Would really appreciate your input. Thanks.

Hm, looks like this question disappeared from the thread. But if you're still here somewhere, sv2023, you're on the right track: as a very broad rule of thumb, I like your odds of hitting 40V if you can score 80% or above on LSAT CR and RC sections in under an hour.

For more on how to improve on CR, check out this CR guide for beginners, or our verbal videos. There's no magic bullet, but hopefully some of the processes in those resources help a bit.

Hey, GMATNinja thanks for the advice . I have been using lsat for RC and i have seen alot of improvement!!!!! . I wanted to ask , can i use lsat questions for CR for 700+ questions too ? Is there any better source or this is best? I have done OGs and I just wanna perfect it to get 730+ score.