Sometimes, for one reason or another, traditional prep courses simply do not work for a student’s learning style and budget. This is where Magoosh comes in—an alternative prep option with a value price point. But is this affordably priced course with a new age approach to LSAT prep any good? Find out below in this detailed review of the Magoosh LSAT prep course.
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Above is our video review, where team member John gives you the low-down on the major Magoosh LSAT prep highlights, including quality of the prep materials, pricing, supplemental resources, and more. Otherwise, keep reading for more details on the Magoosh LSAT prep course.
The Magoosh LSAT prep curriculum does not follow a standard prep course structure. Most test prep companies design their courses so that students move through a series of preplanned lessons and modules, all of which follow a linear and logical order.
You start with foundational principles and work your way up, building on them as you learn more advanced concepts and work tougher problem types. Magoosh is not that.
Instead, Magoosh provides you with a library of video lessons covering the two major sections of the LSAT:
You’re given a catalog of video lessons and are free to watch them in any order you’d like, if at all.
Magoosh has them methodically grouped by concept and problem type under each major section, and even provides a recommended order of viewing, but there is no rigid structure around how and when to watch them.
I personally don’t mind this more relaxed approach to learning core lessons. In fact, the freedom of selection was kind of a breath of fresh air from more traditional approaches.
That said, this library of videos approach may not work for some students – those seeking formalized coursework with a linear study plan might be turned off by the Magoosh setup.
The video lessons themselves are, I would say, serviceable. There is a digital whiteboard with the instructor providing their lesson verbally, as notes and graphics roll across the screen.
It kind of reminds me of a PowerPoint slideshow, with a professor voicing their lesson over it and making highlights and notes to the slides. And just to be clear, no instructor ever appears on screen.
These video lessons are a far cry from the interactive and modern video lessons of Blueprint LSAT, but are nonetheless effective.
The lessons are detailed, the substantive content is dead on, and the instructors do a great job of breaking down difficult subjects into actionable strategies and tips. Bottom line – the content is there, even if the format is somewhat lacking.
The video lessons do, however, offer a couple cool onscreen features. There is a notes tool, where you can quickly type up notes in a text box next to the video and save them for later review. I found this to be a handy little tool that I used often.
From the dashboard, you can access all of your notes in one place for a convenient review session of your self-notes at a later time.
There is also a transcript function with a dynamic highlighting tool that follows along word-for-word with the verbal lesson. This was helpful too, so that when you missed a few words, you could just quickly glance down at the transcript rather than rewinding and re-watching.
All in all, the video lesson quality and layout are alright. I personally prefer video lessons where the instructor appears on screen – at least somewhere. I feel more engaged when I can watch the person giving the lesson and connect better with the material as they work through problems and concepts in front of me.
And the videos themselves are of average quality – but keep in mind that this is budget course. In terms of dollar-to-quality ratio, this is pretty good bang for your buck.
Beyond the video lessons, the rest of the Magoosh coursework is comprised of practice questions, practice tests and problem explanations. You can access practice problems from the dashboard through a “quick practice” function that will just throw you right into problems of a certain category, or through the “custom practice” section.
Under this tab, you can choose the category of problems that you want to work, and then further filter it down by subject, question pool, time and mode.
I personally found this to be a nice function, and it generally seemed more accessible than the practice problem section of some other test prep courses. Within seconds of logging in, you can be working a narrow subset of problems of your choosing.
It is also important that I mention that all Magoosh practice problems are official LSAT questions. The only problems you will see during your Magoosh studies are problems that formerly appeared on a real LSAT. Magoosh has licensed these problems from LSAC and provides you access to over 7,000 of them.
And accompanying 800+ of these practice problems is a video explanation of the problem from one of Magoosh’s in-house LSAT experts.
In fact, there is an entire “explanations” section of their platform dedicated to explanations of every question of PrepTests (official LSATs) 62 through 80. The video is of the same general type as the lesson videos, and breaks down the problem type, setup and why each answer choice is either right or wrong.
These video explanations, while of similar “okay” quality as the video lessons, were well-placed and super helpful. There is a video following every practice problem in the practice section, and each does a great job of breaking down the problem into understandable terms.
The last feature worth mentioning in this section is the “review” tool, which allows you to go back and revisit every problem that you have answered.
It also provides analytics around your responses so that you can work on your pacing and identifies where you have weaknesses. It has a nice filter function and was easy to work. I liked this review function, especially compared to similar tools I have seen from some other more expensive courses.
While the course structure may be a little laissez faire for some students and the video lessons of average quality, the overall value of Magoosh’s study materials is quite impressive given the super affordable price point. I was pleasantly surprised with the amount and quality of coursework provided.
There is no point in beating around the bush on this matter – Magoosh is a value course that strives to give you extreme bang for your buck.
And that is the exact reason why they rate out so highly on our list of best LSAT prep courses. Magoosh offers its LSAT prep course in two packages:
The two packages are identical in all respects except for price and, of course, the fact that one offers live classes. That means you get access to all of Magoosh’s materials (7,000+ LSAT questions, practice tests and more), but it is up to you how long you need to study.
The Self-Paced package is priced at the incredibly approachable rate of just around $200. This course will grant you one full year of access to all Magoosh LSAT materials.
Alternatively, the Guided Study package carries a price tag of around $500. Thus, for $300 more, you get 12 hours of live class time.
These course prices are by far and away the most competitive in the LSAT prep space (apart from maybe LSAT Lab). Magoosh is all about value and they deliver once again.
Keeping with their non-traditional style, and unlike most other test prep companies, Magoosh offers no hardcopy lesson books with its course. This should not come as a total surprise given the value nature of this course.
Hardcopy textbooks are heavy and clunky and old school – all things at odds with Magoosh’s style. But that said, I personally like a good old fashion paper book that I can make notes in and highlight. But given the price points here, we can’t complain too much.
Magoosh uses nothing but official, past LSAT exams for its practice tests. No made-up content or guesswork by a team of in-house experts here – they use only the real deal. Now this is not novel in the LSAT test prep space today as almost every LSAT prep company uses real LSATs.
But what is nice to know is that even though Magoosh is priced at roughly ¼ the cost of the traditional courses, you’re working off the very same practice test material.
In addition, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll be getting your practice on real LSATs under exam-like conditions. As part of your access to the official LSATs, you will be taking these tests under an official LSAT test day digital interface. Pretty cool.
Like Kaplan and Princeton Review, Magoosh gets access to the past LSATs through your subscription to LSAC’s LawHub program. This means you have to buy a $120 pass to these tests from LSAC (the administrators of the test). This is fairly common practice among prep providers today.
A cool resource offered by Magoosh is its set of custom study schedules. Whether you’re studying for a week or six months, Magoosh provides you a suggested study plan to get the most out of your prep.
These study plans are fairly helpful and provide a good basis for planning your prep attack on the LSAT. While you are very unlikely to follow it to a “T,” choose the plan that most closely aligns with your study timeframe and use it as a guideline. I found it to be of some value.
The Magoosh LSAT user experience and interface is shockingly good for the cost of this course. The dashboard is clean, well-designed and provides quick access to the most important stuff.
From the dashboard you can dive straight into a set of practice problems (in the section of your choice), launch a suggested lesson, or track your overall course progress. It is both aesthetically pleasing and useful.
The rest of the digital platform is easily navigable, with straightforward sections and limited ways to lose yourself down a maze of materials (like some other platforms we’ve reviewed). It utilizes simple dropdowns, radio buttons and filters to make for a clean and easy to use interface.
I personally loved both the dashboard and the practice problem setup. After answering a practice problem, you get instant feedback with a video explanation, text explanation and notes section. All very clean and easy to follow.
The video quality is lacking and a little outdated, but I otherwise dug the rest of the user experience. It truly surprised me how much I liked it given the low price of the course.
Up until recently, Magoosh did not offer any live classes. Everything was self-paced and online, ready for consumption anywhere, anytime and from any device. However, this is has all changed in the last year or so, and Magoosh now offers live online classes.
If you sign up for this package, you get 12 hours of live class time over the course of a month. After having reviewed the Magoosh online-only course a year or two ago, when we saw that Magoosh had added live classes, we signed back up and re-reviewed the course to get a look at this new teaching element. And honestly, Magoosh didn’t disappoint.
Every session, the Magoosh LSAT teacher walks you through a series of different LSAT question types, tipping you off to common trap answers and showing you how to solve some of the tougher problems. Then, they assign you homework from the online content between classes (mostly problem sets).
In my opinion, the new live classes are not nearly as robust as those from Kaplan, Princeton Review, or Blueprint, but all things considered (especially the price tag), they’re pretty good.
If you have the few hundred extra bucks to spare and need some structure, I think leveling up to this package isn’t a bad idea.
Again, they’re not the best live classes I’ve taken, but far from the worst. To me, more than anything, you’re just not going to find a deal this good on live classes elsewhere.
Magoosh offers a few nice extra resources to go along with its course. The first is the email support available to students. If you get hung up on a question, don’t understand a concept or just plain need clarification on something, you can email one of their remote LSAT tutors 24/7. One of their experts will get back to you within a day or two.
I tried this feature out and found it to be fairly effective. I was nervous that my question would sit in a queue for days, only to come back with a one sentence answer, but that wasn’t the case at all. My question (on a logical reasoning practice question) was responded to same day and with a decently detailed answer. I’d give this feature 4.5 stars on a 5-point scale.
Magoosh additionally gives you access to their LSAT Blog. While this is a nice basket of general LSAT articles, it was just that, general. The articles cover a wide range of LSAT topics, but nothing really detailed or in the weeds that you can put into action.
If you need some advice on what to bring to the test center on exam day, it’s great for that kind of stuff, but nothing to implement in your actual prep.
No matter which Magoosh LSAT prep package you roll with (Self-Paced or Guided Study), you get 12 months of access. The only thing to consider is when to take the live classes if you go that route. Make sure to time these classes so that you can have some free study time after classes end before your exam date.
To help make their content even more accessible and appealing to the modern student, Magoosh offers a cool mobile app. This app, which is available on both Apple and Android, is full of flashcards for studying while you’re on the train or waiting around on campus between classes.
The app itself is helpful, but definitely not the best resource tool we’ve seen. The flashcards hit concepts rather than practice problems, making it nice for reviewing lesson work, but not practice. The material contained in the app is also fairly limited and you can blow through everything in a few hours’ time if you try.
👉 Read Also: Magoosh vs Blueprint LSAT Comparison
Yes. Magoosh is confident that its prep course will boost your baseline LSAT score. In fact, they are so confident that if you don’t get a 5+ point score increase, they’ll give you your money back.
There are some technicalities that must be followed, like emailing them your last official LSAT score (you must have taken the test previously), but nothing outrageous in order to comply. A 5+ point score increase guarantee is a pretty nice assurance.
Magoosh has a no questions asked, 7-day refund policy if you don’t like their product. You can just email them within 7 days of purchase, say you want your money back, and they’ll take care of you.
No matter which way you cut it, Magoosh is a budget LSAT prep course that gives you excellent bang for your buck. It doesn’t have the same level of study materials or resources of some of the big boys, and the video lessons are a little lacking, but all in all, it’s a great value.
For just a couple hundred dollars, you get thousands of real LSAT practice problems with top flight video and written explanations, targeted feedback, all the same practice tests as the big companies in the space, and some decent core lessons. Plus, the new live classes are a major value add if you opt for them.
Don’t confuse Magoosh with other courses – if you need in-person classroom lectures, or a mountain of study material, this likely isn’t for you. But if you want a quality course that allows you to study from anywhere at any time, and gives you a good amount of study material with detailed analysis and actionable strategies, Magoosh may be a great fit. Especially at just under $200.
👉 Read Next: Our Rankings of the Best LSAT Prep Courses
The Magoosh LSAT prep courses costs either $200 or $500 depending on the package you choose (self-paced vs guided study with live classes). This is a high value budget course.
Yes. With Magoosh’s LSAT prep course, there are no in-person lessons or hardcopy textbooks. Everything is online and accessible from just about any device.
Yes. Unlike most test prep companies, Magoosh offers a very helpful mobile app (for both Apple and Android) with LSAT flashcards.