180 Degrees LSAT Prep

1. What is your company's name and where is it located?
My company's name is 180 Degrees LSAT and it's located in Brooklyn, NY. However, I also teach in Manhattan, and the surroudning areas.

2. What is your web address?
www.180degreeslsat.com

3. What makes you such an awesome LSAT instructor?
I treat each of my students as individuals. I recognize that the LSAT is a test that is testing not only student's skill, but their level of confidence, anxiety, and general state of being. I recognize that the LSAT is a skills-based test, and the best way to improve skills is through effective practice. I recognize that the LSAT requies a worldview that is completely different, and necessarily so, than the one we use in our every day life.

Anyone can sit down and go over problems withsomeone, but no problem appears on the LSAT twice. Although many issues are repated, the LSAT can always include novel issues. Even if the test has no new issues, problems can be presented in so subltle or unusla a way that it can confuse many people taking the test. My job is not to answer the problem for you, it's to teach you the underlying logic so that even if the problem is presented in an unusual way you have the skills necessary to answer the question.

4. Why do you think most students choose you over behemoth test prep companies?
I would say for two reasons. The first is that a lot of my students have already tried a behemoth test prep company and it hasn’t worked for them. The large class sizes, the cookie cutter methods, and the unqualified teachers leave a lot of students no better, and sometimes worse off, than before they started. They take those classes, unfortunately, and then come to me when they don’t work and oftentimes it can take more time to teach a student who has been to other classes than someone who has never seen the test.

The second reason is that many of my students are attracted to the holistic way I approach the test. I try very hard to teach the individual who is sitting next to me and to treat them differently from the “average student”. This is why I prefer to teach one-on-one tutoring (although I may expand into classes in the near future because I recognize that many people cannot afford one-on-one tutoring). This approach to tutoring can create some really amazing results and that shows in my students scores.

5. How did you first get into this gig?
After I took the LSAT in 2005, I just started teaching for a little extra money on the side. I found I enjoyed it so kept doing it. After I graduated law school, I realized being a lawyer wasn’t really my thing and that I loved teaching and was quite good at it (or so they tell me).

6. Did you go to law school? If so, where?
I graduated from NYU Law in 2010

7. What do you love most about your job?
I love how it’s a combination of therapy, philosophy, logic, problem solving, and just pure unadulterated critical thinking. To really improve someone’s score you need to figure them out and learn exactly why they are picking the incorrect answers they are. The human mind is infinitely complex and trying to figure it out is a constant challenge. I once had a student who I worked with briefly who had been brain damaged in an accident and had multiple issues surrounding it. It was incredibly interesting to look at how she was thinking in comparison to how other individuals think. I just took on a student who is blind. These novel issues are what make the test fascinating to me. Solving the problems on the LSAT involves critical thinking for the student, but figuring out what people’s weaknesses are involves critical thinking on my part. As I get more interested in the LSAT as an institution, I am exploring not only how to improve peoples scores, but also why demographics are correlated so strongly with LSAT score. There are numerous demographic traits that cause discrepancies including income level, race, undergraduate major, school choice, geographic region, and countless others. These differences have been studied, but not in a comprehensive way. Trying to figure out why these demographic traits are so strongly correlated and what that means for teaching individuals from these backgrounds is my next project.

8. Could you please share with the world on of your most memorable LSAT (horror/fun/heart-breaking) stories?
I always talk to my students about the anxiety that the LSAT causes. In part, this is because of an old student of mine. She had completed 3 courses from a major test prep company and in that time her score only went down. They kept letting her re-take the course since her score wasn’t improving, and it just kept sinking. She wanted to go to law school so badly and had such a hard time with the test that whenever she opened a book it made her cry. The first time we met in a Starbucks, I remember sitting down and talking to her about preliminaries and then being shocked when she started sobbing as soon as we opened up a book. I thought I had offended her somehow, but she explained to me that it was just the effect the test had on her. It’s very humbling to watch that happen. Stories like that reminds me of how much of an impact I have on people’s careers and lives. Having that much impact means that failure isn’t an option and that whenever I teach I need to give it my all.

9. What is the most frequently asked question that you receive from your LSAT students, and what is your response?
I get asked a lot if I can help people improve their time. And my answer is no. I can’t. What I can do is help you learn the material better, help you think better, and help you to learn what the prompts mean. This will allow you to answer questions faster and naturally improve your time. But it’s extremely difficult to improve your timing just by focusing on timing. My point here is twofold. The first is that although time is an incredibly important part of the test, the way to improve on time is by improving your understanding of the test. The more you understand the test, the faster you will go. The second point is a point many individuals make, that all the information to learn the LSAT is out there and available so there is no need to hire a tutor. And they are right. The answers to all the questions are out there. But do you know which questions to ask?


10. (Just for fun) if you could be anything in the world (besides an LSAT guru), what would you be? Why?
I would be either a social worker or a Philosophy professor. I love delving into people’s minds and figuring out what makes them tick, how they think, who they are. I would be a Psychiatrist but after law school I am done with school for quite a while now.