I just posted this on Blawg Wisdom:
"I took the LSAT twice. The first time I think I got a 163, just by doing some practice tests. But it was hard to stay focused on regular studying, and I never really found any handy insight on how to work through the logic problems.So the next year, when I did this all again, I sprang for the review course. This was all new to me – I'd never taken a review course before so I shopped around a bit (good idea). I ended up opting for the Princeton Review. I chose it because after attending the free review classes offered by both them and Kaplan (also a good idea), I was much more impressed with the Princeton Review. Or perhaps I should say I was very turned off by Kaplan. I found them extremely hard-selling, smarmy and slick, like snake-oil salesmen. And in one of those free review sessions I found the instructor pompous and insulting. So I chose Door #2 and went for the Princeton Review, who always struck me as much more straight forward and professional in all the introductory dealings I had with them.
They were also candid up front: normally their students see a 7 point jump in their scores, but because I was nearer the higher end of the scale I was less likely to see that much of an improvement. But I did go up 3 points, which was a greater improvement than what you'd expect just from taking the exam again. It probably was also enough to expand my options as an applicant. I am a little surprised I didn't have a bigger jump, but I chalk it up to test-taking fatigue. That might be the downside to taking a class: you're kind of sick of the LSAT by the time it rolls around. On the other hand, it does help pace the studying.
And I actually enjoyed the class. The instructor, an undergrad at Stanford, knew how to teach the material, and I thought the insight was handy. Particularly for the logic problems, whose solutions are particularly unobvious, but also for the analytical reasoning sections. In fact, I really enjoyed that part as a lesson in logical thinking and in some way probably still draw from the material today. I did tune out the instruction on reading comprehension though because I did just fine on my own and didn't want to accidentally break what was already working.
So my advice probably boils down to the suggestion to take a few pretests on your own to see how they go. Then depending on what needs to be done to improve, decide whether it's something you can do your own with a book and more pretests, or if you'd benefit by more structure and concrete lessons. If you decide the latter, a class can be worth it."
Despite the date I've put this in "Law school - the process (1L), although it probably should be in a '(0L)' category, which I don't really have because I didn't start blogging until I was almost on my way to school."