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.

ScoreItUp LSAT Prep

1. What is your company's name and where is it located?
ScoreItUp LSAT Prep in Irvine, CA (in Orange County, between Los Angeles and San Diego)

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

3. What makes you such an awesome LSAT instructor?
I suppose I could sum it up with four words that all begin with "e": experience, enthusiasm, expertise, and energy.

1. Experience: In addition to enormous LSAT Prep teaching experience (I began teaching LSAT Prep before attending Harvard Law School), I also taught over 35 full-length University law courses and gained a tremendous amount of experience working with the logical reasoning concepts tested on the LSAT in law school and as a practicing attorney. Candidly, I don't think students are likely to find an instructor with  more depth and breadth of relevant LSAT Prep experience anywhere!
2. Enthusiasm: For me, teaching LSAT Prep happens to be a perfect example of the old saying "if you love your work, you'll never work a day in your life." I think my enthusiasm and passion for teaching comes through strongly in my classes.
3. Expertise: Doing extremely well on the LSAT helped me get into law schools of my choice, and having a deep and solid understanding of the LSAT helps me as an instructor. However, LSAT Prep is about teaching and what truly matters is an instructor's ability to teach students how they can maximize their potential on the LSAT. That is one of the reasons I provide extensive and independently verifiable student evaluations online. I believe a LSAT Prep instructor ideally should have tons of teaching experience, a law school degree, and expertise in explaining the LSAT's legal reasoning concepts. 
4. Energy: I prioritize bringing a lot of energy into the classroom to make LSAT classes a really fun experience. I like to have fun when I teach, students like to have fun when they learn, and students' results are enhanced if they enjoy the experience. Students routinely tell me that they are convinced my course was much more helpful than a course from one of the large test prep companies would have been, and a lot more fun than they ever would have expected.

4. Why do you think most students choose you over behemoth test prep companies?
I suppose I can best answer this question with an analogy.  Imagine craving a hamburger, and seeing two places:  McDonald’s and Mark’s Burgers.  McDonald’s is everywhere, but Mark’s Burgers offers larger hamburgers, higher quality hamburgers, a much better value, and is a fun place to eat a burger.  And the burgers at Mark’s Burgers are guaranteed to be prepared by a highly experienced, well-trained burger chef.  Students who see the obvious benefits of the bigger, higher-quality, better-value burger would be the ones who choose ScoreItUp.  Students will get the same training in the basics they would receive at one of the large test prep companies, but much more. Students tend to like ScoreItUp if they value clear, straightforward advantages and proven results over the advertising gimmicks and fake student comments frequently used by other test prep companies.

5. How did you first get into this gig?
I was looking for teaching opportunities and I really enjoyed preparing for the LSAT, so I began teaching LSAT Prep for one of those large test prep companies.  It became apparent to me that I could do this far more effectively on my own, using recent and real LSAT questions, and guaranteeing I would teach the course myself – students would not have to worry about getting a part-time student instructor with questionable student evaluations or limited teaching experience, or who had not even gone to law school.  After getting very positive feedback from students in the University courses I taught, I started ScoreItUp.

6. Did you go to law school? If so, where?
Yes, I graduated from Harvard Law School.

7. What do you love most about your job?
As for my LSAT Prep teaching, a couple things immediately come to mind:  (1) watching students go from being utterly confused to extremely confident (often most dramatically when dealing with the Logic Games section), and (2) the point in every course when the class develops a sense of deep confidence in the course and their instructor – that’s a very rewarding feeling!  I also am a practicing attorney - the excitement of jury trials and the satisfaction of assisting victims are two very rewarding aspects of that job. 

8. Could you please share with the world one of your most memorable LSAT (horror/fun/heart-breaking) stories?
This is a story that only LSAT nerds would find funny, but here goes.  I once had a very animated student who was expressing frustration with a Reading Comprehension question after class.  He felt the information in the passage was wrong, and therefore the correct answer choice was wrong.  I told him that he needed to focus only on the information contained in the passage, and explained the question’s reasoning process to him.  He wouldn’t let the issue go.  His face turned bright red, he began gesturing wildly and pacing back and forth across the classroom.  He got so worked up that other students became worried, and thought he might have a heart attack.  One of the students then found the official LSAC statement indicating that information contained in LSAT passages is not necessarily correct, and to base answers only on the information provided.  He relaxed and we had a good laugh over his passion – LSAT questions can sometimes do that to you!

9. What is the most frequently asked question that you receive from your LSAT students, and what is your response?
I’d say it’s a two-part question:  “When should I start preparing for the LSAT, and how much time per week should I plan on devoting to it?”  It depends upon the student, but I would say that serious LSAT Prep students ideally should plan on spending a minimum of 2 months time preparing.  During those 2+ months, they should assume that LSAT Prep will be roughly the equivalent of a full-time job (or a full and challenging quarter of college courses).  One certainly can have a life while preparing for the LSAT, but having a full-time job or a full set of college classes on top of LSAT Prep is likely to be overwhelming for students seeking to maximize their potential on the exam.

10. (Just for fun) if you could be anything in the world (besides an LSAT guru), what would you be? Why?
This may be an unusual answer, but I suppose I’d be a philanthropist along the lines of Warren Buffet.  Everyone may not agree with me, but I really admire him - certainly much more than athletes or celebrities.  He spends half his time outsmarting the world with his brilliant investments and the other half of his time figuring out how to save/improve the world by donating his massive fortunes to the causes and charities he finds most worthy.  That sounds like a fun and very meaningful way to live one’s life, and I have a lot of respect for him.