#5 in a series of Q&A's with representatives of leading LSAT companies. Make sure you read all the way to the end. If you don't read the whole thing, at least read the last paragraph.

Jeff Thomas, LSAT Director for Kaplan, revealed his company's secrets to success.

How long have you been offering LSAT prep?

We have been offering prep for the Law School Admissions Test for the last 40 years, and we have prepped millions of students for the exam over that time period. We’ve been in the business of test preparation for an additional 30 years beyond that as well. So we’ve been around for a while.

Where are you located?

We are located where our students are, really, so we have thousands of physical classroom locations all around the United States and varying countries around the world, and we’re also located live online as well. We have our programs that are delivered in a virtual classroom environment, which allow students in some of the more remote areas or business settings to have access to our programs as well, wherever they have internet access.

Please describe your traditional in-class courses?

It’s interesting, we don’t really have a traditional in-class course for LSAT preparation, because we have a multitude of classroom options. One of the things that we have realized over the 40 years of prepping for the LSAT is that, frankly, not all students are the same. Every student comes to us with a unique set of challenges and issues that need to be addressed, and so we’ve learned that we really need to personalize the prep experience for the student, both in the class and outside the class.

So, in terms of our traditional in-class courses, we actually have three: we have our LSAT Classroom course, we have our LSAT Advanced course, and our LSAT Extreme course. The content taught in each of those classes is pretty much the same—we go through each and every question type tested on the exam; we cover each and every skill that is tested on the LSAT in logic games, in logic reasoning, and in reading comprehension, but we present them in different formats depending on the type of student that you are.

So, for example, we have a student who is coming to us on a very condensed time frame who needs to have comprehensive preparation—coming to class once or twice a week—that’s what our LSAT Classroom option is for. But we also have a cadre of students who want a lot of time in the classroom. They really want to spend a lot of time with their instructor, working through a variety of problems in the skills. That’s what our LSAT Extreme course is for—it’s our long course option, it’s 109 hours, it comes with four hours of private tutoring, because students really want extra attention with their instructor. And then we also have our LSAT Advanced course, which is for the student who walks in the door with a real sufficient understanding of the exam from the get-go. They’re scoring at a 158 or above; it’s a score-qualified required course. And we focus on the same skills, but looking at advanced questions along those skills.

Please describe your online options?

We actually deliver all of those courses both in class and online. So, we have our LSAT Classroom course live online, we have our LSAT Advanced course live online, which means the student still comes to class—it’s via the internet of course, but they still come to class with their instructor, with a TA present, they interact, they answer questions, they ask questions, etc. And then we also have in case a student can’t commit to a particularized class schedule, we have asynchronous options, or on demand options, the ability for a student to take our LSAT class via the internet on their own schedule, on their own time by watching videos on demand.

Do you offer a self-study option or study guides?

We certainly do, we have a variety of additional online workshops, and certainly a large publishing division for students to purchase study guides and supplemental prep opportunities. What we have found over the years, though, through the millions of students that we’ve taught, is that students motivate or benefit the most from the comprehensive prep options that we offer, because they often find the classroom experience is really one that motivates them to interact with the material, to engage with their instructor, to do the homework assignments as the course continues on, and they’ve found that to be the most beneficial to their preparation.

Do you offer any one-on-one or individualized tutoring?

We have a variety of private tutoring programs for our students as well. They come in a variety of different hour sizes, because we understand that students will have different needs and need to spend varying amounts of time on the various skills of the exam, so they come in 15- and 25- and 35-hour programs. And then we also have a summer intensive program, which is a residential academic program at Boston University for six weeks each summer, that really allows the student who is looking to inundate themselves or immerse themselves in LSAT preparation to go to one location with like-minded students for 300+ hours of LSAT preparation and get the whole fell swoop done together in a residential academic environment in Boston each summer.

What is the focus of your instruction?

The focus of our instruction is to make students understand the varying skills that are required for success in each section of the test. The test is not just one skill; it’s not just the LSAT. It is a variety of skills tested in logical reasoning, for example, assumptions, and inferences, and strengthening the argument questions and weakening the argument questions. There’s a variety of skills within logic games, such as sequencing, and distribution and matching. And so what all of our classes do is they teach students the varying skills that are required to be successful on the LSAT as a whole.

But, importantly, each of those skills is personalized to the student. Every student who comes through our class receives personalized guidance. They have a Smart Reports prescriptive technology system that gives customized homework assignments for each and every student, because we very well may have a student who comes to our class who struggles in logic games per se, where another student might struggle in reading comprehension per se, and we give different homework assignments to each student based upon how they’re performing to make sure they’re successful on test day. It’s our personalized approach that’s really a hallmark at Kaplan.

Do you cater to any particular kind of student?

We cater to all kinds of students, really. I hope what you’re getting through the assessments of the different types of classes that we have, how we customize the homework experience, that what we do—as big as we are—we understand, as I mentioned, that all our students are different. And so when someone comes to us and says, “Hey, I want to take Kaplan for LSAT preparation,” our first question to that student is, “Well let’s talk about you.” And we really want to understand where the student is coming from, how much preparation they have done before their Kaplan experience, if any, and we prescribe the appropriate preparation program based upon that student’s experiences and that student’s expectations and goals.

What qualifies someone to teach for Kaplan?

A lot, is the short answer. Really two things make for a great Kaplan instructor. The first of which is a terrific LSAT score—someone who’s absolutely mastered the exam themselves, has knocked it out of the park. That is absolutely necessary to becoming a great Kaplan instructor, but certainly not sufficient.

The real key to being a great Kaplan instructor is just simply the ability to teach. The ability to communicate the skills in an effective, in an efficient, in a concise, in a compelling manner, so you get students to not only understand the material, but be motivated to work hard as well. And so we put our instructors through a very rigorous audition, interview, and training process to make sure only the best of the best make it into the classroom. In fact, fewer than one in six do.

To give you an example of that, I had two instructors who came to me personally in the past year and a half looking to teach for Kaplan, and they had both scored perfectly on the LSAT—perfect 180. And so you understand what that means—last year about 150,000 people took the test, 30 of whom scored a perfect 180. So it’s incredibly rare to have someone come to the door with a perfect LSAT score for law schools or Kaplan, and two of them had come to me personally, and many more around the country. Of those two, neither of them ended up teaching for us, because while they could take the exam themselves and score spectacularly well, they were not convincing in the classroom and couldn’t teach. And it’s important to us that our instructors are excellent communicators, in addition to excellent test takers.

What are your company’s unique strengths?

There are really three hallmarks to Kaplan that we promise our students: it is personalized preparation, it is unmatched expertise, and it is guaranteed results. In terms of personalized preparation, you heard the lines before how we personalize both the in-class and the out-of-class experience, different class options depending on the student’s wants, different out-of-class homework assignments based on the student’s needs.

We have unmatched expertise; you know, we’ve been doing this LSAT prep for 40 years, we’ve been in the business of test preparation for 70, we have been through test changes, we have been through changes in the admissions process, we have seen every possible type of student, every possible student concern come through our doors in the millions of students that have over the years. And so, there’s no surprises to us. We have been collecting data on our students for 40 years, we understand what makes them tick, we understand where their most likely strengths are, where their most likely weaknesses are, and we utilize that to inform the creation and implementation of our classes year over year. And so that’s something that we really pride ourselves on, on our ability to make sure that we have the absolute most relevant and most effective preparation methodology on the market.

And then of course, our guaranteed results—we promise our students if they come and take our class and their scores don’t improve, we’ll give them every penny of their tuition back. But for LSAT students in particular, the two other things that we promise them is readiness and satisfaction. Because it’s a skills-based test, I’ve worked with many students for whom they’ll go through the class once and say, I just wish I had more time to study, I now see how this exam works, I need more time to practice logic games. If a student is not ready to take the test for whatever reason once they complete our class, they can take the class again a second time, no questions asked. And if a student goes ahead and takes the exam and they improve their score but they’re not satisfied with their performance, or they feel they can squeeze out another five questions out of logical reasoning, or another logic game right in logic games, they can take the class a second time for free, no questions asked again. In short, we like to work with our students and are committed to them, so long as they’re committed to their preparation. That’s what makes us unique.

The thing that I would probably like to add, we know this year that many students are interested in going to law school. By all statistical indicators, this fall’s application class is likely to be the greatest application class in quite some time. More students took the June LSAT then any other June LSAT in the history of the administration. Lots of folks are applying to law school this year, and it’s important for students to work hard to make themselves look more competitive to law schools than ever. But students need to understand this process takes time. They can’t wake up one day and decide they want to go to law school tomorrow and just apply. It takes several months of preparation for the LSAT—on average two, three months of time, 10-15 hours of week in my experience—and there are a lot of other factors that go into the admissions process as well. So for a student who’s really looking to be competitive, particularly for your tier one law schools in the country, understand that they need to start the process early, they need to understand all the things they need to do to make themselves look competitive, and understand all they have in their control to make themselves look competitive as well. The great news is that we routinely survey law school admissions officers every year around the country, and they tell us that the LSAT is the most important factor in the law school admissions process, which means by working hard, by studying hard, by approaching the exam from a smart perspective, they can do well and do wonders for their application portfolio.