Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars

I watch Dancing with the Stars - all however many seasons, from the Bachelorette Trisha to the sad, recent, farewell of Kurt Warner. For some reason, however, this season, where Bristol Palin made it into the finale, has bothered me, Jodi Triplett, the most. I wrote about it on MostStronglySupported.com.

Blueprint LSAT Prep Expands

I, Jodi Triplett, am very excited to announce that Blueprint Test Preparation will be expanding to five new cities in spring 2011. In addition to our live classroom locations throughout California, Blueprint will hold live classes in Boston, D.C., Philadelphia, Austin, and Phoenix.

In addition to our new locations, we also have our online course, Blueprint: The Movie 2.o (the best online LSAT prep course out there in the humble opinion of Jodi Triplett).

Check out our new Blueprint live LSAT course schedules.

Education News interview with Jodi Triplett

After the new Blueprint LSAT video course: Blueprint the Movie 2.0, came out, I got a chance to sit down with Education News and talk about it. Here's the interview with me, Jodi Triplett. Our maze logo is perhaps displayed more prominently than I would have chosen, but it was nice to be able to talk about what I think is a really great product for LSAT prep.

LSAT Testing Centers

When you take the LSAT, you might be in a hotel, you might be in a lecture hall, you might be in a dance hall (seriously). And, despite what your parents may have told you, not all LSAT centers are created equally. Things that can make a testing center better or worse are seating arrangements (tables are generally better than desks, sparse rooms provide less opportunity for distractions than cramped sardine can-like rooms) and noise (being in the middle of a forest sounds pretty good; being under a highway, not so much). This might sound sort of silly, but a couple of years ago an LSAT was administered in a hotel near LAX that was having a Harley convention the same day.

If you’re in a Blueprint class, then we’ve already sent you an email telling you about the historically best centers near you. Make sure you sign up for these early, as the good ones go quick. If you haven’t yet signed up for the LSAT, though, it’s probably the case that the great centers are gone. So are the good ones. So are the close ones. In fact, LSAC can make you drive up to 100 miles to a testing center. Fun way to start the morning when you’re taking the LSAT.

If you’re in one of these less-than-desirable locales, then we’re here for you. Read on.

So what can I do about it, Jodi Triplett?

Glad you asked. If your center of choice is all filled up, then you have to pick a different center, as long as something is open within a hundred miles of you. They’ll only consider opening closed centers once everything within that radius is booked.

So one choice is to bite the bullet, register at a distant center, and wake up early to drive there the morning of the test. You could also consider getting a hotel the night before, as long as you think you’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep in an unfamiliar bed.

But if you’ve got your heart set on a specific location, you’ve got some work to do. First of all, you need to be regularly checking the LSAC website to look out for opening spots. This has been very successful for many individuals. Perhaps you can have a window open on your desktop that you toggle to a few times per hour to refresh. As students cancel their registrations, spots open.

If it’s been too long, and seats still aren’t opening (the last day to register, with late fee, is 9/4), then you can go ahead and take a seat in a center you don’t really want. But you then go back to checking the LSAC website multiple times per day for openings in your center of choice. The only problem now is that you’ll incur a $34 switching fee. But considering the benefits of a good center, that seems to be worth every cent.

If everything within your 100 mile radius is totally full, the rules start to change. You can sign up, but you get on a waiting list. LSAC says that they’ll do their best to put you in your desired locale, but they generally just throw you in the first spot that has an opening within the blast zone. And, just because they love you, LSAC doesn’t let you be registered at one center and on a waiting list for another; you’ve got to choose.

A dirty little secret is that you can actually take the test wherever you want. If you’re registered at one location, you can show up at any disclosed location and hope that there are open seats. If some people don’t show up the day of the test, you can take their spot. This almost always works, but is still extremely risky, because if it doesn’t work, you’re really, really screwed. As such, this method does not come highly recommended.

So what’s an LSAT student to do?

In our opinion, your best bet is to just take the closest center that you can, and then try to forget about it. The absolute most important factor is how much you study, and your seat size or driving distance isn’t going to mean a damn thing if you don’t know a circular argument from a sufficient assumption.

However, if you can’t keep yourself from freaking the hell out about taking the test anywhere but your desired center, then Jodi Triplett’s advice is to hold out a couple more days and try to sign up on the 3^rd or 4^th of September. Why? Well, that’s the deadline to change dates or pull out of the test all together. During these days a swarm of registrants will be canceling for various and unimportant reasons, so there will be spaces opening up. Spend these days refreshing LSAC’s website to get a center (bear in mind that other people are doing the same thing, though, so be patient and diligent).

But while you wait, may we suggest that you go get yourself some Rum Raisin ice cream. It’s the most underappreciated ice cream there is.

So You Want to Go to Law School

Highly amusing youtube video about an interview between an attorney and an aspiring lawyer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMvARy0lBLE

Jodi Triplett's interview with Admissions Dean

So Jodi Triplett (that's me!) got a chance to sit down and talk with Admissionsdean.com the other day. The interview was about Blueprint and what we offer for LSAT students. You can read the interview here.

Admissions.com is a great resource for students who want to research their chances of admission to law school, read interviews with law school deans, and find out whether the Twilight movies will ever stop being made. (Perhaps not this last one).

Post by Jodi Triplett

The Defenders

Another new legal drama is making the rounds of prime time television. Set in Las Vegas, The Defenders chronicles the partnership of boozy Jim Belushi and the who knew he was that hot Jerry O'Connell. Will it be the next Law and Order or suffer the fate of the recent The Deep End? Blueprint's very own Todd Baynes offers his thoughts at MostStronglySupported.com.

Post by Jodi Triplett

Blueprint: The Movie 2.0, part 2.0

Blueprint: The Movie 2.0 continues to blaze a glorious path across the galaxy of interwebs. The latest comet dust sparkling in the reflected light from a nearby star? The Ivey Files. Written by Anna Ivey, law school admissions consultant extraordinaire, the Ivey files give sage advice about everything from letters of recommendation to applying with a DUI. Ms. Ivey kindly put up a post written by my very own self (Jodi Triplett) about Blueprint's newest online LSAT course. You can view samples on the Blueprint youtube page or check out the Blueprint website for more information. It is, in my very biased opinion, amazingness in video form.

Post by Jodi Triplett

Blueprint: The Movie 2.0

Well the Blueprint online LSAT course, written and created by Trent Teti, Matt Riley, and yours truly (Jodi Triplett) is making the rounds of the blogosphere. Ann Levine of LawSchoolExpert.com has a nice little write-up about the newest addition to LSAT prep here.

A former law school Dean, Ms. Levine opines that the LSAT score is important for law school admissions. We agree, and it's the hope of Trent Teti, Matt Riley, and Jodi Triplett that our newest addition to LSAT prep will help students obtain the scores they want. Because the course is fully animated with professionally hand-drawn illustrations, its calculated to retain student interest while explicating difficult LSAT concepts like logical implication or causal assertions.

Samples of Blueprint: The Movie 2.0 may be viewed on youtube and the Blueprint website.

Post by Jodi Triplett of Blueprint Test Preparation

Studying for the October LSAT

Ann Levine of US News fame has a nice article about you can do in the final month before LSAT study. It includes a quote from Trent Teti of Blueprint LSAT preparation. The upshot? you can know if you're not ready, but there's still so much time to study that you can't know if you are. Yet. But there are some good indications. Read more to see what they are.

Post by Jodi Triplett

A Golden Age for Law Professors

Things for legal educators seem to be going quite well right about now. According to the National Jurist, during the latest decade law schools increased faculty by 40% on average, in stark contrast to what’s happening to Humanities faculty these days (they’re being fired a lot). This is good news for law students, as it raises the student-to-faculty ratio and gives the lecturers more time for legal scholarship. But this is also sort of terrible news for students of the law, as this increase is what accounts for nearly half of the tuition increase witnessed in the last decade. You win some, you lose some…

So, would the average law student (or pre-law student) prefer a more intimate setting or a lower price tag? I, Jodi Triplett, walked around and surveyed about eight people, who coincidentally all work in the Blueprint office, and in this very representative sample the answer was a resounding “lower tuition, obviously. Is this a trick question or something?”

Consider this: I swap my thirty-person graduate school class for an identical class, but with ten times the people, and in return I get a grand off my loans. Would I go for it? Jodi Triplett says: definitely. Even if there weren’t a financial incentive, I’d prefer the bigger classes; it’s a lot easier to get away with not doing the reading when you can hide in a gigantic crowd, gchatting the hour away.

But it’s not quite as black-and-white, as it turns out. The National Jurist reports that the increase in faculty is made to satisfy two very different goals. First, there is more and more specialization in the law, and you need more specialists to address and teach the corresponding concepts. Makes sense. But the other big goal they’ve had in mind is to increase their rankings with USNWR. By lowering the student-to-faculty ratio they get ranked higher. That added prestige leads to a higher sticker price for your education. Once again, USNWR is making the world a much better place.

Article by Jodi Triplett

Matt Riley talks about Blueprint LSAT

So Matt Riley, my business partner in Blueprint LSAT Preparation, did an interview for Accepted.com in which he sings the praises of our LSAT prep course. Of course, I may be biased, but I think he's entirely correct.

Post by Jodi Triplett

Free Blueprint LSAT Help in New York This Weekend

Interested in some FREE study help from Blueprint instructor Colin Elzie? He'll be offering free advice in Manhattan this weekend. Whether you're studying for the October test or getting things in order early for December, he'll impart his bearded wisdom free of charge. Check out the Manhattan LSAT meetup group for more details. Did I, Jodi Triplett, mention it was free?

http://www.meetup.com/New-York-LSAT-Help/

Post by Jodi Triplett

Jodi Triplett and the Giant Sequoias

This weekend I, Jodi Triplett, found myself in the Sequoia National Park. I've been to Yosemite scores of times, but have always passed over Sequoia as the red-haired stepchild of the northern California park system.

Well, General Sherman proved me wrong. Who knew that the largest tree in the world was in the Sequoia National Forest? Or that it was named after a Union army general? Furthermore, said tree was only a 10 minute walk away from a waffle cone with mint chocolate chip ice cream.

The whole experience made me, Jodi Triplett, a believer in Sequoia National Park. Next vacation? Pamela Open Space Preserve outside of Duarte. I hear the barbeque fire pits are amazing.

Post by Jodi Triplett

Taking Your Second Practice LSAT with Jodi Triplett

The 2nd Practice Exam

Back when you took your very first LSAT, you may have not scored all that well, but really, did you care? Your less-than-stellar score could be easily attributed to a number of things, such as insufficient sleep, insufficient focus, or insufficient lack of being hung over (though the real reason is just that the LSAT is super hard, and it was the first time you saw it). But by the time you’re taking your second test, you will have spent quite a bit of time studying. Presumably your score should go up, no? These expectations can make taking your second exam a rather daunting task.

In truth, you should not at all be obsessing over the actual score. You should still have well over a month before you’ll be taking the actual LSAT, and that’s a lot of time to improve. There are some things to be learned from this practice exam, but the numerical score itself isn’t going to one of those helpful tidbits. At the time of the second exam you have yet to acquire all the tools for attacking all the questions, so it really isn’t reflective of what will turn out to be your ultimate score. The truth of the matter is that it’s pretty common for students to have their scores drop on this test, but then they then bounce back up after they’ve learned the remaining concepts, like a rubber ball hurled at a hardwood floor. In this article I, Jodi Triplet, will be will be going over the things in exam two that actually are informative.

The fine print: This advice is geared toward people taking a test for the second time, and who have around a month and a half or more until the test, not for people who are well into their studies and who have taken multiple tests already.
The finer print: If you have taken tons of practice exams without much of a strategy, you might want to rethink your approach…

What you can glean from your test performance:
1. Whether you’ve learned and are internalizing your methods.
When you’ve completed the test, pour over it carefully and identify the questions that require you to utilize the skills you have already acquired. The ones you got right are good indicators of which skills with which you’re probably fairly strong. The ones you missed might indicate weakness in certain areas, areas that should now be reviewed. Luckily, there remains a good deal of time until test day to review and refine the methods that you’re still shaky with.

2. How good you are at ascertaining how well you did.
You need to learn how to predict your score, and every exam you take should be used as practice for this. After you take a test, but before you score it, go through it mentally and try to recall which ones you think you missed. Using all the data you can remember, try to predict your score. Then see how it actually went. If you were way off, try to figure out why it was at such variance with your expectations (for better or worse). By doing this exercise for your practice tests, you will learn how to accurately predict your score on the day of the real test, which will inform your decision as to whether or not you should cancel.

3. How to build your endurance
The LSAT is a long test, and you can’t adequately prep for it by just doing homework here and there for short intervals. Taking practice tests from time to time will force you to do intense hours-long marathons, increasing the focus and stamina that you’ll need for test day.

So as you take and score your second test, remember that the score itself is of little importance. Endurance, prediction, and question-by-question analysis are what matter.

Post by Jodi Triplett

Watch Blueprint: The Movie on your Phone!

Blueprint: The Movie is now available on your phone! Jodi Triplett and partners are pleased to announce that you can now study for the LSAT anywhere you can take your cell phone - the subway, that coffee shop that charges for wifi but where you can get a cell phone signal, or the county fair. (In the event of the latter, Jodi Triplett recommends purchasing a churro and an Oklahoma funnel cake because you just haven't lived until you've eaten deep fried dough rolled in cinnamon and sprinkled with powdered sugar at the fair).

Where were we? Oh yes. You need a phone that has the Android 2.2 operating system that allows you to play Flash. The iphone does NOT fit this category but the Sprint’s HTC Evo does. Read more about the details here.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled activities. Which I hope includes winning a goldfish by throwing a ping pong ball onto a coke bottle.


Post by Jodi Triplett.

Law School: It's All Who You Know. Sometimes.

A slew of emails from the University of Illinois Law School reveal what all of us probably already suspected about law school admissions. Namely, there are students who get in based, not on grades and LSAT scores but on who they know.

While I, Jodi Triplett, have never been the beneficiary of such a relationship (though once I got a free brownie because my office manager is an amazing cook), it does raise the question about how to feel that such things exist. Should we all throw down our LSAT prep books in disgust and rail at the state of the world? The answer is probably not, and you can check out my article at Vault.com to see why.


Post by Jodi Triplett

Trent Teti talks about Blueprint LSAT Prep

Trent Teti gives an interview to LawSchoolPodcaster describing Blueprint's live and online course offerings.

Posted by Jodi Triplett

The Golden Age for Law Professors

Things for legal educators seem to be going quite well right about now. According to the National Jurist, during the latest decade law schools increased faculty by 40% on average, in stark contrast to what’s happening to Humanities faculty these days (they’re being fired a lot). This is good news for law students, as it raises the student-to-faculty ratio and gives the lecturers more time for legal scholarship. But this is also sort of terrible news for students of the law, as this increase is what accounts for nearly half of the tuition increase witnessed in the last decade. You win some, you lose some…

So, would the average law student (or pre-law student) prefer a more intimate setting or a lower price tag? I, Jodi Triplett, walked around and surveyed about eight people, who coincidentally all work in the Blueprint office, and in this very representative sample the answer was a resounding “lower tuition, obviously. Is this a trick question or something?”
Consider this: I swap my thirty-person graduate school class for an identical class, but with ten times the people, and in return I get a grand off my loans. Would I go for it? Jodi Triplett says: definitely. Even if there weren’t a financial incentive, I’d prefer the bigger classes; it’s a lot easier to get away with not doing the reading when you can hide in a gigantic crowd, gchatting the hour away.

But it’s not quite as black-and-white, as it turns out. The National Jurist reports that the increase in faculty is made to satisfy two very different goals. First, there is more and more specialization in the law, and you need more specialists to address and teach the corresponding concepts. Makes sense. But the other big goal they’ve had in mind is to increase their rankings with USNWR. By lowering the student-to-faculty ratio they get ranked higher. That added prestige leads to a higher sticker price for your education. Once again, USNWR is making the world a much better place.

By Jodi Triplett

Why are students still going to law school?

Vault looks into why there are so many students applying to law school when job prospects have flattened recently:

LSAT Advice: Eschew the Facial Tattoo

So you also probably know that Michelle McGee, the woman who had an affair with Jesse James (Sandra Bullock's ex-husband) is highly tattooed. Soon after the affair graced the cover of a bevy of highly reputable magazines like US Weekly and In Touch, Sandra divorced Jesse. It was clear that his adultery was a motivating force. However, as much as the public denigrated the adultery, it seemed that Ms. McGee's heavily tattoed appearance exacerbated the crime.

That thought made me, Jodi Triplett, a bit mystified. Why should McGee’s facial tattoos make us even more condemning of James' adultery? I think the LSAT can shed some light.

Sandra Bullock is an actress known for being in entirely wholesome, middle-of-the-road fare. She’s about as all-American as they come. This might lead one to assume that James is attracted to this type of woman, and thus the next woman he would be with would likely be cut from a similar cloth. Sort of like when Pam Anderson started going out with Kid Rock. This wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone, given the fact that she had previously been with Tommy Lee. She’s clearly got a type; scummy rockers with bad boy reputations. Brad Pitt going from Jennifer to Angelina is still pretty unsurprising – they’re both famous celebrities, and they’re both very attractive. One might be vanilla and the other lemon chiffon, but they’re both variations of cake.

But assuming that this must be the case is highly fallacious, and the McGee-James-Bullock love triangle demonstrates rather pointedly. Sure, James went for the all-American white bread candidate the first time, but we can’t assume anything about his future picks in women based on one single solitary case, an extremely limited sample if there ever was one. If we think he’ll go for another Bullock incarnation, then we’re committing the sampling fallacy (covered in lesson 6, if you’re taking Blueprint LSAT Prep).

When you’ve got a sample of some sort, three things have to happen: the sample has to be intelligibly related to any conclusions being made; the respondents cannot have to reason to lie (or be purposefully misled), and the sample has to be representative. If any of these conditions fails to be met, you’ve got a big old sampling fallacy on your hands. Here, the sample size is too small to know if the sample is representative. It turns out, (as US Weekly was so quick to show us), it wasn't.

by Jodi Triplett

Free LSAT Help in New York

Blueprint is sponsoring a free meetup in Manhattan for the October LSAT. So if you're interested in prepping for the October LSAT and could use a little knowledgeable help (for FREE), check it out here.

Start Studying for the October LSAT

The October LSAT is a bit less than 3 months away. If you're smart, you've already begun studying or will begin soon. The LSAT is not a test of memory, and there is no good way to cram for it. Instead, it tests a way of thinking and approaching arguments and problems - skills that will help you in law school and as a lawyer.

So if you haven't already begun studying for the LSAT, now is the time to start!

by Jodi Triplett

The First LSAT Practice Exam

As thousands of LSAT takers around the country begin their sojourn to becoming lawyers, the initial hurdle of many looms on the horizon: the first practice test. This LSAT rite of passage has occasioned self-doubt, renewed vows of studying, and countless trips to KFC.

To explain. For students taking courses for the LSAT, the first class typically begins with a practice exam. Note: for those of you self-studying for the LSAT, a practice exam is a good way to begin your studies. This is because the exam gives you a baseline from which to track your progress during your study. However, for many their first practice exam score grows, hydra-like, past this initial purpose and becomes a measure of their self worth, imposing a ceiling of dread in the form of a score they believe will define their progress for the duration of their LSAT study.

So, in an effort to bolster self confidence and inject a modicum of practicality into the process, there are two important items to remember about your first practice exam:

1. You haven't studied for the LSAT yet. It's understandable and even expected that you won't have a great score on your first shot out of the gates.

2. Your score does not define how high you can rise. Blueprint (the LSAT company I own) has an average 10 point increase per student.
However, we also have students who increase their scores by 20 points or more. It all depends on how much effort you put into your studies.

So take your first practice exam with a very large grain of salt. Preferably one from the KFC double down. A chicken sandwich where the chicken is the bread? As glorious as a first practice LSAT score, kept in perspective.

by Jodi Triplett

Starting an October LSAT Class Soon? Some Do's and Dont's.

The September/October LSAT is typically the largest of the four LSAT administrations during the year. This is because students can do the bulk of their studying during the summer, when they don't have pesky interferences like classes or spring break as a distraction. Most LSAT classes for this test begin in early to late July and we often have students asking us in June what they should do before class begins.

To that end, I've put together a list of what students should and shouldn't do before the start of LSAT class.

1. Take a break
You won’t get another rest without the LSAT hanging over your head between the time your course starts and the October LSAT, so head out to Ibiza/Greece/7-11 now. Fine-tune your late night disco dancing, watch re-runs of America's Next Top Model while eating beef jerky—whatever you want to accomplish for vacation for the summer; now is the time to do it.

2. Don’t open your LSAT books
Particularly for a Blueprint LSAT course, the first classes are the backbone of the class. This means that if you start without the benefit of a teacher, you’re covering the most important material on your own, and probably not comprehending it as well as you otherwise could. For video course students, don’t open your lesson books until you do so with the videos.

Don't forget that if you start doing homework before your course begins, you’re tackling real LSAT questions without a solid method of approach. The probability of tackling them incorrectly is thus much greater than if you had sat through your lesson first. In the end, you’re just wasting real LSAT questions.

3. Don’t take practice LSATs
You definitely want to set a baseline LSAT when you begin studying so that you can chart your improvement. However, taking a bunch of practice LSATs before you have a grasp on the methods for approaching the different question types is a bad idea. While you will build stamina by taking tests, you'll also be building bad habits by tackling questions you don’t know how to approach correctly. By waiting to take your practice exams deeper in the course, you'll be able to use the LSATs to diagnose weaknesses in your approach to particular questions and build stamina at the same time. So lay off the tests for now.

4. Read dense, academic articles

At Blueprint we've found that most students are the most apprehensive about logic games when they first come to class. While logic games are difficult, they're also a very learnable section of the exam. Students often struggle with improving their score in reading comprehension, on the other hand. This may be due to the fact that students come to class believing they already know how to read, thus discounting the difficulty of the section. From here, they don't learn the best method to approach reading comp and subsequently don't improve.

The place to begin improving in reading comprehension is to understand what it is you're reading. Taking the time to read dense, academic articles from sources like The Economist or New York Times feature articles will provide a good foundation for reading comprehension. It is also something you can do before LSAT class that won’t interfere with your LSAT class study.

So don't forget to rest while you can and if you simply must begin studying before class begins, some good reading between episodes of that America’s Next Top Model marathon should suffice. Now go forth and be fierce!

by Jodi Triplett