Fox Test Prep

1. What is your company's name and where is it located?
Fox Test Prep, San Francisco, CA

2. What is your web address?
www.foxtestprep.com

3. What makes you such an awesome LSAT instructor?
I just love teaching the LSAT.  It’s a fun test!  (At least it is if you’re doing it right.)  I try to inject as much humor and irreverence as possible, which helps students stay awake during four-hour classes after a long day at work or school.  My process in class is very simple:  I teach without the answers in front of me, so that I can walk students through the actual path I would use to solve a problem.  It’s especially fun to argue with the Logical Reasoning:  If the presented argument is bogus (as it usually is), I’ll say “Okay, this argument is bullshit because of X, Y, and Z.”  Students will chuckle, but this is the kind of critical thinking that allows us to answer the questions before even looking at the answer choices.  If you can get angry at the speaker on the Logical Reasoning, then you can answer 75 percent of the questions pretty easily.  It’s a lot simpler than people think.

4. Why do you think most students choose you over behemoth test prep companies?
The behemoths simply don’t pay their teachers enough money to keep the good ones around for very long.  If you go with a behemoth, you have no idea whether your teacher was just hired that day, or can actually teach.

I love teaching, and it shows in my classes--people choose me because of the reviews they read on Yelp and Google.  My book “Cheating the LSAT” has attracted a fair amount of positive attention on Amazon, which also sends folks my way.

I also do a lot more than just teach LSAT.  I provide end-to-end counseling about law school admissions, even long after the class is over.  I read personal statements, give advice on personal statements, and help students decide when and where to apply.  When they get their acceptance letters, I help them make smart decisions about where to go, including weighing the value of a scholarship vs. the value of a slightly better school.  (Hint:  Take the money!)  In short I really care about my students, and that means I’ll do a lot more for them than just churn them through an LSAT class and kick them out, which is what you’ll get from Kaplan or Princeton.

I’m confident that my classes are the best in the area, and they are also quite a bit cheaper than any of the behemoths.  When you offer the best product at the best price (think Costco) you tend to do pretty well.

5. How did you first get into this gig?
Totally by accident.  In 2005-2006, I did an MBA.  After graduation, I was teaching GMAT for one of the behemoths, and they needed an LSAT teacher.  I didn’t like teaching GMAT that much anyway, so I took the LSAT (scoring 179 on the Feb 2007 test), and started teaching LSAT.  I immediately loved it—it’s a superfun test, and prospective JD students are (on average) a LOT smarter than prospective MBA students.  (I can say this since I have both degrees.)  Then I got tired of the behemoth getting rich off of all my hard work, so I quit and started Fox Test Prep.

6. Did you go to law school? If so, where?
UC Hastings (San Francisco, CA), class of 2011

7. What do you love most about your job?
Really, there are too many things to count.  But I’ll name three:  1)  Positive feedback from my students.  I get Yelp reviews that say “My LSAT instructor made me laugh every night in class”—that’s awesome, and it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.  2)  I LOVE being my own boss.  I make my own schedule, and I call all my own shots.  Part of the reason I’ve never had a bad review is that I have full authority to make things right when I make mistakes (which happens all the time!).  Students have my cellphone number, and they know that they can use it.  It’s very satisfying to take care of people.  3)  I love giving away seats in my LSAT classes.  This is something I’ve done since the very beginning of Fox Test Prep.  I’ve never turned someone away for lack of funds.  It’s a great feeling to be able to do something so tangible toward enhancing racial and socioeconomic diversity in law school and the legal profession.

8. Could you please share with the world on of your most memorable LSAT (horror/fun/heart-breaking) stories?
I’ll share a couple horror stories.  My point isn’t to shame these folks, but to let others learn from their mistakes.

I always tell my students they can call me on the morning of the actual test if they are hyperventilating and need someone to talk them down from the ledge.  Only one student has ever taken me up on this.  It was two minutes before the scheduled start of the test, and this guy called me as he was RUNNING across campus at SF State:  “Nathan, they changed the test room on me!  It’s all the way on the other side of campus!  What should I do?!?!?”  My response was obviously “hang up the phone and run faster,” but what I really wanted to say is “Why didn’t you show up earlier, like I advised you to, and WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ACCOMPLISHING BY CALLING ME AT THIS POINT?”  I was glad he reached out to me, but that moment probably wasn’t the best time to do so.  Anyway, I think he did well on the test in the end--but definitely not that day.

Then there was the student who called me four weeks after the test and said:  “Well, I was doing pretty good on the first couple sections, then I got to a very weird section of Logic Games.  It was totally unfamiliar, and it was OBVIOUS that it was the experimental section.  Since I knew, for sure, that it was the experimental section, I just closed my eyes for 35 minutes and rested, rather than waste my energy. … But um… when the scores came back … as it turns out … that was actually NOT the experimental section, so I bombed the entire test.” I had told her, but she didn’t listen: YOU CAN’T TELL WHICH SECTION IS EXPERIMENTAL WHILE YOU’RE DOING IT.  Unfortunately for her, she became a horror story that I now tell all my classes.

9. What is the most frequently asked question that you receive from your LSAT students, and what is your response?
One that I get a lot is “why do I always narrow it down to a 50-50 and then guess incorrectly?”  My response is “that’s not actually what’s happening… you just don’t review the ones where you’ve narrowed it down to a 50-50 and guessed right.  You need to start circling all your guesses as you go, and you’ll immediately see that you guess correctly half the time on your 50-50 guesses.”  Students don’t love to hear this, because they want a magic bullet, but that’s one of my trademarks as a teacher:  I am NOT going to bullshit my students.  Accepting reality is necessary if you want to do well on the LSAT.  These students will benefit from reviewing their CORRECT guesses just as much as their INCORRECT guesses.  Just because they got lucky doesn’t mean they actually understood the question.

10. (Just for fun) if you could be anything in the world (besides an LSAT guru), what would you be? Why?
My heroes include Ricky Gervais, Willie Nelson, and Miguel Angel Jimenez.  So I guess I’d be a standup comic / potsmoking outlaw country singer / professional golfer.