Hey there, mrohtbart, thanks for the question and for giving our online course a try! I hope you'll find it to be very useful for you, as well as fun.
Online course students are encouraged to take a pre-course diagnostic, and to score it in the Online Student Center. It really doesn't matter very much which one you take, although we typically suggesting taking Test 1 in the books we send you with your course materials. You could take any of them, and you could also take some other test. The June 2007 test, for example, us available free to download for anyone. The difference between most tests that you would buy or otherwise download and the tests that are included in your course books is that we have included in each of those four tests an extra section that simulates the experimental section of the real test. It's a real test section from an older test, not something we made up ourselves (because we don't do that!), and having that extra section gets you to start building your stamina for the real test, which will include a fifth, unscored section. Knowing how it feels to have to keep performing through the end of five sections is pretty important, and you don't want to have that experience for the first time when it actually counts!
Nothing else is needed to prep for the course, as it is designed to walk you through from concept to concept, building on a foundation of basics as you go. In fact, working ahead is strongly discouraged. It never fails, in my experience, that when a student works ahead, they end up unhappy with the course, either not staying on task with us when we are teaching the material (because they already feel like they know it) or feeling like it's moving too slowly (because they are hearing a lot of what they have already heard). So just take the diagnostic test, score it, and then get ready for a great course! You can do some other sorts of homework in the meantime, if you wish, like 1) buying some old-fashioned wood #2 pencils and getting used to using them instead of a pen or a mechanical pencil; 2) getting an analog watch, with no digital features at all, including no digital date feature - you'll want to be able to track the time on your own, because proctors are human and make mistakes, and because you want to know when that five minute warning is coming before it actually does (so as not to be startled and thrown off your game); 3) looking up, if you like, some samples of LSAT Writing Samples, since we don't cover those in the course (but they are pretty low priority, so don't sweat that); and 4) exploring the Online Student Center to see what resources you have available and how to use them.
After the course ends, your study is going to be a combination of practice tests, averaging about 2 per week, and study time to build on what you learned in the class. That will include doing the homework that you didn't have time to do during the course, because most students simply don't have the bandwidth to get to all of it during the course. It's designed that way - we want you to have some extra material to use to continue studying after you've finished the classes.
We do have some study plans available, although those are aimed mostly at students who are not taking a course but are only doing self-study. That said, you can certainly use them and modify them to meet your unique needs. You'll find a variety of plans in our Free Help area, right here:
http://students.powerscore.com/self-study/index.cfm
Enjoy the course, and best of luck in your studies!
Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT, GRE, ACT and SAT Instructor
Follow me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/LSATadam
