How I Made $400,000 Studying For The LSAT (And How You Can Too)
The highest-paying job I ever had was studying for the LSAT. While I didn’t realize it at the time, every hour I spent poring over necessary assumptions and sequencing games was yielding me about $1,000 dollars in profit.
What is this secret trick to getting paid to study? It can be summarized with one word: scholarships. After grinding on the LSAT for over 300 hours, I ended up scoring a 179 on test day and, as a result, was met with multiple full tuition scholarship offers at T-14 schools.
In sum total, I was offered around $400,000 in scholarship money, all because I had put the work in and nearly aced my LSAT!
The LSAT is so valuable to law schools because it is the most important student-influenced factor in determining a school’s rankings, which in turn is how schools boost their reputation and, ultimately, their bottom line. Higher median LSAT scores (and GPAs) mean better rankings and, in turn, a more successful law school.
This means that schools are willing to compete for students who will raise their medians - both those with great GPAs and great LSAT scores. The way they do that is by giving out scholarships to the students they really want. They’re literally paying you to come to their school. Here’s a crazy fact for you: In 2020, 73% of law students were on a scholarship of some kind. Almost no one is paying full price for law school - why should you?
What all this means for you is that a good LSAT score won't just get you into the best possible schools, it can also yield you tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarship money. Even the best, most expensive LSAT tutors get paid less to teach the test than successful students get paid to study.
So: how do I get a law school scholarship?
Whether or not you get a scholarship will largely depend on two numbers: your LSAT score and your GPA. Generally, if both of those numbers are above a given school’s median, you’re in the running for a scholarship from that school. The farther above median you are, the more money you’re potentially looking at getting.
Chances are, your GPA is already pretty set in stone. If it isn’t, my advice is pretty simple: do everything you can to bring it up!
Your LSAT score, on the other hand, is entirely up to you and the work you put in over the next several months. I’d need 100s of pages to explain how to get a great LSAT score, but the general idea is to study, take, and retake the LSAT as much as you need to get the score you want. With 100,000s of thousands of dollars and your future career on the line, you can’t afford not to!
So while LSAT prep can seem like a big investment (and it is — especially of your time!), what you put in pales in comparison to what you could get out of it. This fact remains true regardless of whether you self-study or work with a coach: the more you put it, the more you stand to gain. And that’s exactly how you want to think about it — when you embark on an LSAT prep journey, you aren’t buying a product, or even enrolling in a course — you’re investing in your future.
