Mcgraw-Hill / "Curvebreakers" LSAT prep book

[starfish]

I am taking the LSAT on Saturday (Dec. 2nd 2006) and I have "McGraw-Hill's LSAT", advertised as "the Curvebreakers course created by students at Harvard Law School!" I have also been using materials from Kaplan's LSAT prep course, as well as a few other assundry materials.

McGraw-Hill's is by far the worst test prep book I have come across for the LSAT. I have no problem with the first part, it gives decent advice about symbolization for the logic games, breaks down different types of test questions like other test prep material does, and gives practice problems with sufficient explanations. The second part, made up of five practice tests (I bought the one without the cd rom), none of which, as far as I can tell, were real LSAT tests, are rife with typos and misunderstandings. Here are a few examples:

Practice test 5, section 3, problem 25, the (e) answer choice reads as follows: "A does not shoot fifth". The explanation for choosing choice (e) as the correct answer choice reads as follows (emphasis is always mine): "Correct Answer: E. A cannot shoot first [should read fifth], because that would cause B and G to take the place or [should be of] C, D, E, or F."
This answer, along with other answers to this particular logic game rely on the idea that if A shoots fifth, B and G must shoot third and fourth, respectively, despite the rules clearly stating "If A shoots before fifth, then G shoots fourth and B shoots third", which needless to say alters the correctness of the answer choices.

Practice test 5, section 3, problem 14 gives two possible correct answers, (a) and (e), despite giving only one correct answer (a). A rule clearly states "Exactly one space is between A's and H's seats". Question 14 asks which of the following must not be true. The (e) answer choice reads: "H sits next to A" - impossible to be true given the rule just cited.

Practice test 5, section 3, problem 11 (I'm starting from what I have just finished) should read "designers" instead of "developers", and technically "programmar" should be "developer". The game classifies people into developers (A-E) and designers (R-V), and this question's answers are in terms of designers (R-V), not developers. "Programmar" was never mentioned in the game before this question.

There are many more examples I could cite, but for the sake of brevity I'll stop. There are numerous other, smaller complaints I have with the book. Misleading advertising on the cover indicates there is "Free online help from curvebreakers coaches", and after reading the opening material I was under the impression that more questions could be accessed on the curvebreakers website - neither was the case, as far as I could tell, though I could easily pay them lots of money to coach me from the website. Also, by concurrently using Kaplan's material (real LSAT tests) I could recognize substantial differences between the practice tests contained in the McGraw-Hill and the real LSAT tests, particularly in the logical reasoning section. The reason why an answer choice was correct was not always clear, and oftentimes the reasoning seemed muddled, I consistently achieved better scores on the real LSAT tests than on the McGraw-Hill practice tests. Of course, the poor explanations that come after the practice tests didn't help matters. For example, on page 421, question 19, the correct answer choice is given as B. The reason for the other choices being incorrect? "(A, C-E) These choices do not describe the squib's reasoning." This kind of attitude is not very helpful, particularly when one wants to understand the flaw in one's reasoning. By comparison, Kaplan's materials have nearly a full page devoted to each logical reasoning problem, explaining precisely why each wrong answer was wrong.

I would stay away from McGraw-Hill's curvebreakers for LSAT test prep. Good luck.

Benjamin Keep

[Erin]

Very helpful. Good luck on your LSAT!

[OxLaw]

Mcgraw-Hill / "Curvebreakers" LSAT prep book is a scam!

I've been trying to get in contact with the curvebreakers staff in order to access the promised extra practice this book mentions....and just as others in this forum...there is zero support....just a scam.

the book should be banned....for promising extra things it doesn't really support!!