A sample LSAT study plan: 8 weeks from a mid-140s diagnostic

This is a complete LSATPathway study plan, published in public — because a plan you can read beats a plan described in adjectives.

The student is fictional. Every number attached to her — the diagnostic, the percentages, the estimate range — is illustrative, invented for this page. What is not invented is the structure. This plan follows the same rules the plan generator applies to a real diagnostic, in the same order, with the same tasks. If your diagnostic looked like hers, your plan would look close to this one. It won't — and that is the point of taking the diagnostic.

One formatting note: in a real account, each week below is broken into study days. Here the weeks are grouped whole, so you can read the whole plan in one pass.

Where this plan came from

The sample student took the full diagnostic (the roughly three-hour one) before she studied anything. Her results:

Logical Reasoning: 28 of 50 (56%). Her weakest section.
Reading Comprehension: 20 of 28 (71%). Her strongest section.
Score estimate: 144–150. (The diagnostic returns a range, not a single number.)
3 questions left unanswered. The plan tracks blanks separately from wrong answers — a blank is a pacing problem, not a knowledge problem, and it is worked on differently.
Weakest Logical Reasoning types: Necessary Assumption at 40% (4 of 10), Parallel Reasoning at 43% (3 of 7), and Flaw at 50% (5 of 10) — with Strengthen and Weaken next in line. Those five are the rotation the Phase 1 drill blocks cycle through; the plan's weekly focus line names the first two.

Types are ranked on adjusted accuracy, not raw percentages — a type you have only tried twice cannot outrank one you have tried twenty times on the strength of a lucky guess, and a percentage is only treated as measured once there are enough attempts behind it.

Her inputs: a goal score of 165, 10 hours a week across six study days, and a test date 8 weeks away.

Three decisions the generator made from those inputs:

Week 1 opens with her weakest types — not with lesson one of the curriculum.
Half the plan is foundation. An 18-point gap on an 8-week runway means four weeks of untimed drilling before the clock becomes the focus. A smaller gap shortens that phase; a bigger one stretches it.
Reading Comprehension gets maintenance, not teaching time. It is her strongest section. The plan keeps it warm and spends her hours where the missing points are.

The rules underneath the plan

Drills come in sets of 12, untimed, with every explanation reviewed. Speed built on a wrong method just makes you wrong faster; timing arrives in Phase 2. In the foundation weeks the sets rotate through your five weakest types in order — not one type for a month, and not all ten at once.
Missed questions come back. Miss one and it is due again the next day. Answer it correctly and it moves out — 3 days, then 7, then 14. It leaves the queue when it stays clean, not when you have seen it once.
The plan re-reads you every week. Once a week it re-ranks your types from your last 14 days of work and rewrites the coming weeks. A type stops being "weakest" when your results say it is. You will see one of those weekly notes in Week 5 below.
Recommended drills stay at your level. When a drill is recommended to you, it is 10 questions — about 60% from your weakest types, 40% from types you have not drilled recently — picked near your current level: hard enough to stretch, gettable enough to learn from.
Four answers are very wrong. One is very right. Every drill set is built around that: learn what makes the four wrong answers wrong, and the right answer stops being a judgment call.

The plan, week by week

Week 1 — Foundation · Necessary Assumption + Parallel Reasoning drills

2 curriculum lessons — the method lessons behind the types below (about 2 hours)
Drill sets of 12 (untimed, review explanations), cycling her five weakest types in order — Necessary Assumption, Parallel Reasoning, Flaw, Strengthen, Weaken — each set about 35 minutes including review
Drills together: about 6 hours of the week, roughly ten sets
Re-drill missed questions (about 2 hours — every miss from the diagnostic is already in the queue, and a miss comes back the next day)

Milestones this week: Answer 25 drill questions — and, at roughly ten sets, Answer 100 drill questions lands in Week 1 too.

Nothing in Week 1 is timed. The only score that matters is whether the method is landing.

Week 2 — Foundation · Necessary Assumption + Parallel Reasoning drills

The same shape as Week 1: two more curriculum lessons, the same five-type drill rotation, and the missed-question queue, which is now fed by Week 1's drills as well as the diagnostic.

After this week, the plan's first weekly re-read happens — from here on, the ranking underneath the plan moves with her results.

Week 3 — Foundation · Necessary Assumption + Flaw drills

The two-lesson block drops out of the weekly plan after Week 2 — the method lessons for her weakest types are in. The time it frees goes to extra reps on her weakest type. In this sample, the Week 2 re-read has re-dealt the rotation: Flaw moves up to second, Parallel Reasoning improves enough to drop out of the five — it still shows up in her missed-question queue and in recommended drills — and the next type in line takes the fifth slot.

Drill sets of 12 (untimed, review explanations), cycling the re-ranked five weakest, Necessary Assumption and Flaw first
Extra reps: Necessary Assumption
Re-drill missed questions

Week 4 — Foundation · Flaw + Strengthen drills

The rotation continues, re-dealt again by the weekly re-read — in this sample Strengthen has moved into the first two as Necessary Assumption's numbers improve and it rotates to maintenance reps. This is the last foundation week. The plan does not ask whether she feels ready for the clock: the phase change was set by the gap and the runway she started with, and four weeks is what they bought.

Checkpoint: end of Phase 1. Her weakest types have had four weeks of first claim on her drill hours, re-dealt weekly as the numbers moved — nothing she was already good at got a single drill block.

Week 5 — Timed sections · First timed work

Timed LR section (35 min) — with review
Timed RC section (35 min) — with review
Drill: the top two remaining types × 12 — about a third of the week
Re-drill missed questions — the rest of the week

Milestone this week: Finish a timed section.

Her plan carried a note at the top of this week. Real plans write these automatically; this one is illustrative, in the same words:

"Week 5 refreshed from your last 14 days: refocused on Flaw — these slipped; Necessary Assumption looking solid — maintenance reps only."

Week 6 — Timed sections · Pacing becomes visible

Same shape as Week 5. The new information is in the timed sections: blanks. She left 3 questions unanswered on the diagnostic, and timed sections count unanswered questions separately from wrong ones, so the plan can tell a pacing problem from a knowledge problem — untimed drills keep fixing the second kind; only timed reps fix the first.

Week 7 — Timed sections · Depth over coverage

The last full Phase 2 week. Drills now cycle only her top two types — by now the plan is spending her hours on depth in what is still costing points, not coverage of what is already solid. Timed sections continue, one LR and one RC, each reviewed.

Week 8 — Full test + review · Test week

Full timed practice test (the plan budgets about 2.5 hours for the test itself)
Deep review: every missed question, with explanations (about an hour — and not optional; a practice test you do not review is a measurement, not training)
Timed section (alternating LR / RC) and re-drill missed questions fill the rest of the week

No new lessons. No new question types. The final week is tests and review.

Milestone this week: Finish a full practice test.

Her milestone checklist at the end of the plan — the same checklist a real plan page carries:

✓ Complete your baseline diagnostic
✓ Answer 25 drill questions
✓ Answer 100 drill questions
✓ Finish a timed section
✓ Finish a full practice test
☐ Complete 8 lessons
☐ Complete all 16 lessons

The two lesson milestones are still open, and that is the generator working as designed: it only schedules lessons in the first two weeks — four of them, aimed at her weakest types — and spends the rest of her hours on drills, because her diagnostic said the gaps were in two question types, not sixteen. The full curriculum stays on her plan page whenever she wants it.

Why your plan will not look like this one

A stronger diagnostic shortens the foundation. With a gap of about 6 points instead of 18, roughly a quarter of the runway is foundation and timed work starts almost immediately. A gap of 20 or more pushes foundation to about 60% of the plan.
A weakest section of Reading Comprehension changes the foundation weeks: the spare slot goes to RC passage sets instead of extra LR reps.
More or fewer hours changes the volume, not the shape. The phases stay in the same order; the weeks get heavier or lighter.
An exact test date switches the plan from week-by-week to a day-by-day countdown ending on that date — same study load, scheduled to the day, with the final week tapering.
A retake shifts the weight again: timed reps and your weakest types from recent practice, not a fresh pass through the foundations.

Read this before you copy this plan

This is not a real student, and no result is attached to it. Nothing here shows or promises that this plan — or any plan — produces a 165, or any other score. Anyone who promises you a specific gain in a specific number of weeks is selling something.
The estimate is not an official score. The diagnostic is built from LSATPathway's original LSAT-style questions, not licensed LSAC material. It tells you where to work; only official PrepTests calibrate an official score.
Copying her topics is copying the answer to someone else's test. Her plan leads with Necessary Assumption because her diagnostic did. Without your own diagnostic, this page is a picture of a plan, not a plan.
The plan is generated, not tutor-built. It is built by rules from your diagnostic and your accuracy as you study. If you want a person reading your work, tutoring is $70 an hour, no membership required.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a real student's plan?

No. The student, her diagnostic, and every number on this page are fictional and labeled illustrative. The structure is real: the plan follows the same generator rules, phase order, task types, review ladder, and milestone checklist as a plan built from an actual diagnostic.

Will my plan look like this?

Only if your diagnostic, goal, hours, and runway happen to match hers. Change any of them and the plan changes — different weakest types lead, the foundation phase stretches or shrinks with your gap, and an exact test date turns it into a day-by-day countdown. The section above lists the main differences.

Is the first week really free?

Yes. The diagnostic is free, and the first week of the plan it builds is included in the free Starter plan — along with all 16 lessons. The full plan, every week unlocked, is part of Self-Study at $49 a month.

Does the plan change as I study?

Yes. Once a week it re-ranks your question types from your last 14 days of work and rewrites the coming weeks, with a short note saying what changed and why. Missed questions also return on a fixed ladder — the next day, then 3, 7, and 14 days out as you answer them correctly.

Should I just follow this sample instead of taking the diagnostic?

No. The plan is the diagnostic's output. Her Week 1 is Necessary Assumption and Parallel Reasoning because those were her weakest types; yours are probably different, and drilling the wrong two types for four weeks is expensive. The diagnostic is free and takes about an hour in its quick form.

Your Week 1 is free. Take the diagnostic, and the plan it builds opens with your weakest types — the first week is on the Starter plan, no credit card.

Start with the free diagnostic → · See how the plan is built →

Last updated October 21, 2026