Someone said that this had "too much comedy." I disagree. If anything, the comic relief helps to demystify the LSAT. The LSAT is not this HUGE thing that only certain respectable people can do well on. We all can do it. Thank you for this video.
you all probably dont give a damn but does someone know a trick to get back into an instagram account..? I was dumb forgot my password. I would love any help you can offer me.
@Alfredo Gage I really appreciate your reply. I found the site through google and im in the hacking process now. I see it takes a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
This was the best way I’ve ever seen reading Comp be strategized in video form. I’m hoping to turn my 21/27’s into 27’s so hopefully now that I know what qualifies means I can land me a few extra. You guys are great!
Never did I think I would laugh out loud so much while studying for the LSAT. Thank you, Patrick, for bringing some joy to my LSAT studying! (And really helpful test-taking tactics!)
This took me an hour to get through with note-taking, and was an hour pleasantly spent- which is rare in lsat study lol. Also, extremely power packed and packaged in a digestible way. Best I’ve seen on YT. Thank you for the work you put into this!
I love this new setup you guys have with the animations, funny commentary, all the while still explaining so well. Thank you! Visuals and the organization is so helpful for me. Thank you LSAT Lab! ❤️
Thank you for the feedback! I encourage you and any other student to let us know if the "fun" starts to get in the way of the learning. That would be self-defeating.
Thanks a lot! We'll have another one up this week, and then hopefully we can crank out the more lesson-y ones more quickly, as they will take less time to produce than these absurdist conceptual ones.
I just want to say that I've found your videos to be incredibly helpful and am very grateful that they're free for everyone! Thank you Thank you Thank you
THIS VIDEO IS SO UNDERRATED!!! This is the best video that I have ever seen for reading comprehension. I am studying for MCAT and CARS is killing me but this video is literally gold and I am so happy that I found this before my exam. Thank you so much!!!!!!
I love how you make it fun and enjoyable instead of serious and boring like most other LSAT channels. I’m comfortable with every section besides RC, and this helped a ton. THANKS!!
Patrick, you're awesome. This was absolutely brilliant. Having a review at the end was really cool. This isn't just a great LSAT lesson, it's one of the best "lessons" I've ever watched overall... I'd say deserving of the educational equivalent of an Oscar for best writing, acting, animation, actor and picture! Can't even begin to imagine all the work that was necessary to put this together. The sheer creativity, production value, just wow!
Thank you so much to the people who made this video! It was super helpful and it was the first LSAT video I’ve ever watched that made me laugh out loud!
I dont usually leave comments but this was just too great, thank you so much! I will probably be doing the "pivot word" dance in my head on test day lol
This was awesome! You guys are so talented! It’s probably outside of your scope, but given how important reading comprehension is to academic success I’ve no doubt there would be thousands of parents of middle schoolers and high schoolers who would appreciate these kinds of videos for their kids. Turn it into a curriculum and they would buy it for sure.
Jeeeez. You're right! That probably is the audience where my aesthetic most makes sense (and my kids'll be entering middle school in a couple years so I'll have free market research). Theresa, you just gave me the security blanket of thinking, "if LSAT Lab implodes, what next?" :) Thanks!
Absolutely! As a retired homeschooling mom, I would have happily purchased dvd’s or videos like this to help my kids learn and understand reading material better. Reading comprehension is vital to doing well in all other subjects. Your videos are organized, clear, entertaining, and fun. You ‘put the cookies on a lower shelf’ for everyone to understand, and that’s gold, parents want that.
Thank you! They take astronomically longer to make. :) Or at least the 1st and 2nd pancake did. But man-oh-man, can I feel 3rd pancake taking exponentially less time 🤞
I am so happy about this video. I have been studying for LSAT (only one week) and was so sad about my diagnostic results. This video is helping me grasp the "Big Picture" concept in ways that are well illustrated and thoroughly explained. 😅
Awesome, glad it's helpful! Don't let the test get you down too much. Your initial diag mostly tells you how well or how not-well your intuitive way of thinking is aligned to that of LSAT's. If you start off lower, it just means there's a big gap between how you're initially thinking of the material and how you'll want to think of it in order to optimize your score. It often takes people many months to shift their instincts to align more with LSAT's (re-aligning thinking is like steering an aircraft carrier), so have a lot of humor, humility, patience, and enthusiasm in the tank. :)
Hey, there .. we post as often as we can, but that can sometimes means weeks between posts (there's only two of us, and we still have to do a lot of teaching / tutoring / other work to keep the lights on). p.s. if you have a fee waiver, you can use LSAT Lab for free.
thanks for the feedback. that's definitely a big concern in making a "fun" educational video. the learning is still supposed to be the centerpiece. what would you recommend .... less animation ... more time for screens to breathe ... or just don't use animation at all?
Very insightful and excellent explanations. Also, I think we can use answer choice elimination methods you taught in LR section to get rid of wrong options. Trap answer choices in LR are dissected deeply.
Hi, thanks for the video. I am intrigued by your definition of hypothesis -- would you say that a "causal explanation for something that happened" could be an explanation based on evidence that has already been evaluated? I missed rc question #13 on practice test 151/85 due to feeling certain the intro paragraph had a conclusion, theory, explanation, or interpretation, but definitely not a hypothesis. Turns out the correct answer was hypothesis. I thought a hypothesis had to be something tentative or at least an assumption. That is, something untested which you might later gather evidence for in order to evaluate its correctness. Merriam Webster agrees with me, but what matters is how LSAT uses the word. Do you know whether LSAT uses this word more in the way "theory" or "conclusion" are used at the end of research papers? I am asking because I would like to know whether I failed to notice that the conclusion stated at the beginning is actually tentative, or whether I was misunderstanding the way LSAT uses the word "hypothesis." Thanks again for the helpful information.
We're moving into a period during which we are able to produce these more quickly than has been the case for the past few months. The next one is ready to go. I'm about to post it now. Should be live in 30 minutes.
You get one million points for commenting on that. You're either the first or second to have ever noticed it (I may have dreamed the first comment). I knew at the time "this joke is just for you, and maybe six other people, Patrick" but no one is looking over my shoulder to offer notes on these, so I left it in!
@@LSATLab lol I love covert quips. Being of a um, certain age (just turned 44 and re-pivoting from finance to law) DS is right in my wheelhouse. I’m a fan of LSAT lab too. I’m trying to watch them all!
Hello! Thank you for this amazing video. After coming across it, I decided I wanted to sign up for one of your plans. I was wondering if the practice and analytics upgrade would also unlock all the videos in the video library which are labeled premium? Thank you!
Hi, thank you for this video, I found it very helpful. Clearly this passage was written by a “Problem Solver”. I’ve learned that the author types consist of 1. Journalists/Reporter, 2. Critique, and 3. Problem Solver. My question is... will this method of Chungking work for the other two types of author’s? Some passages don’t have clear cut issues of A. Having a problem, and B, offerings of a solution.
Chunking is something we can always do (in RC and real-life); it's just an attempt to self-summarize in a way that compresses and simplifies. But I think your question is, "Can we really always condense the Main Point down to 2 or 3 big ideas"? Yeah, pretty much! Of the five main frameworks (C.H.O.P.P. - Challenge Position / Highlight Noteworthy / Old New / Problem Solution / Present Debate), the one that is sometimes tricky is Highlight Noteworthy. Those are the passages that sound more like they're written by Journalist / Reporter (to use your terminology). Because of their straightforward descriptive style, you have to listen/look harder for moments of emphasis or for umbrella claims that get fleshed out, but it's still doable.
I think maybe the video doesn't ever say "main idea," just "big idea." I think main idea and main point often mean the same thing. The difference between big ideas in a passage and the main point of a passage is that there is only one main point of a passage. There are multiple big ideas. A passage about why running is good for you could have two paragraphs explaining why some people think it is bad for you. If you had to summarize the passage into a very short bulleted list, "some people think running is bad for you because it causes knee replacements" would be one of the bullet points. Each bullet point might be a big idea. But the overall argument that the author of the passage was making -- running is good for you -- would be the main point. In this video, I think LSAT lab is using the term "big idea" to describe the two or three types of things that happen in each question framework. If you go to 4:15, they have an example of what the big ideas are in a romantic comedy movie. Then they show how the LSAT explicitly tells you to look for some different types of big ideas, and different big ideas are found in different types of question. At 6:20 and 9:18 they explain the big ideas are for a couple different question types. E.g. There is an old thing and a new thing for each old/new passage. If you get that passage, you can figure out a one sentence summary for the old thing and the new thing. Later they show how to identify the main ideas in the Irish grain analysis passage based on its question type. If you search big idea and main point in the search bar for the transcript, you can go right to the part of the video that mentions those terms -- but you might want to rewatch it and keep a lookout for those terms. Main idea note: (If the main point is "cats are good unless you have severe allergies," you could argue that that is two points (1. cats are almost always good. 2. Cats are bad if you have severe allergies,) but in this context the LSAT calls the main thesis/argument/idea of the passage as the main point.)
Have you ever heard a stand-up comic whose last joke includes a reference to something that was said earlier? That's called a "callback". In conversations with friends, you can often get a laugh by sneaking in a reference to something that was said earlier. in an RC passage, author's will say something in paragraph 3 that alludes to something they said in paragraph 1, but they won't necessarily use the exact same word choice. One of the ways we can tell if our comprehension is truly on point is if we understand these moments when an author is subtly referring back to something they said earlier in the passage. Let me know if that didn't make sense.
haha, congratulations you are genuinely the first and only person to have ever commented on that joke (which is one of my personal faves). let's go edit Duncan's wikipedia page to include his time spent dating Sniffles the Clown back in San Antonio.
If the main reason why you're here is trying to improve your ability to answer questions correctly, you might prefer the videos from episode 3 onward. The first two videos are specifically about improving our ability to understand and retain the most important ideas (and ideally a few subsidiary ones as well) in 2-3m mins. They're more conceptual and metaphorical and cartoon-laden. They're baiting people who don't have the attention span for reading comp into trying to have the attention span for reading comp. As the series progresses, the ratio of humorous tangents / serious LSAT question analysis slims down quite a bit. But at the end of the day, it's still an unabashedly silly style that isn't for everyone.
I’ve been using 7Sage and finding it hard to raise my PT score. I decided yesterday to sign up for your premium plan to get access to all material and drills😊 it’s so affordable, especially compared to other prep material
Someone said that this had "too much comedy." I disagree. If anything, the comic relief helps to demystify the LSAT. The LSAT is not this HUGE thing that only certain respectable people can do well on. We all can do it. Thank you for this video.
you all probably dont give a damn but does someone know a trick to get back into an instagram account..?
I was dumb forgot my password. I would love any help you can offer me.
@Javier Darius Instablaster =)
@Alfredo Gage I really appreciate your reply. I found the site through google and im in the hacking process now.
I see it takes a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Alfredo Gage It did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. Im so happy!
Thank you so much, you saved my account !
@Javier Darius Happy to help :D
This was the best way I’ve ever seen reading Comp be strategized in video form. I’m hoping to turn my 21/27’s into 27’s so hopefully now that I know what qualifies means I can land me a few extra. You guys are great!
Never did I think I would laugh out loud so much while studying for the LSAT. Thank you, Patrick, for bringing some joy to my LSAT studying! (And really helpful test-taking tactics!)
the sheep as the face of ireland and the “welcome back!” after i unpaused the video absolutely killed me. well done
This took me an hour to get through with note-taking, and was an hour pleasantly spent- which is rare in lsat study lol. Also, extremely power packed and packaged in a digestible way. Best I’ve seen on YT. Thank you for the work you put into this!
This was absolutely amazing and right on time! Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
We're hoping we'll be able to add one more each week leading up to the Jan test.
The most helpful resource I've used so far for RC, and I've used 7sage and PS Bibles. Thank you!!
I love this new setup you guys have with the animations, funny commentary, all the while still explaining so well. Thank you! Visuals and the organization is so helpful for me. Thank you LSAT Lab! ❤️
Thank you for the feedback! I encourage you and any other student to let us know if the "fun" starts to get in the way of the learning. That would be self-defeating.
It's the best I've seen so far on Reading Comp! Looking forward to the next videos!
Thanks a lot! We'll have another one up this week, and then hopefully we can crank out the more lesson-y ones more quickly, as they will take less time to produce than these absurdist conceptual ones.
Thank you for helping us get into our dream schools !
Thank you, Patrick! These are the best reading comp teaching videos which make me love reading and give me confidence!
Best video I’ve seen to address reading comprehension. Such a boring topic and this video made it so fun and the speaker was so relatable. Amazing
I just want to say that I've found your videos to be incredibly helpful and am very grateful that they're free for everyone! Thank you Thank you Thank you
THIS VIDEO IS SO UNDERRATED!!! This is the best video that I have ever seen for reading comprehension. I am studying for MCAT and CARS is killing me but this video is literally gold and I am so happy that I found this before my exam. Thank you so much!!!!!!
Congratulations @myatsan3694! How are you doing now in CARS?
One of the most fantastic LSAT Videos. Extremely well done.
I love how you make it fun and enjoyable instead of serious and boring like most other LSAT channels. I’m comfortable with every section besides RC, and this helped a ton. THANKS!!
I will never forget pivot words ever again after watching this video
haha, phew. mission accomplished
I created a funny wording for the pivots. BYHR: Be Your Heaviest Rock haha
Patrick, you're awesome. This was absolutely brilliant. Having a review at the end was really cool. This isn't just a great LSAT lesson, it's one of the best "lessons" I've ever watched overall... I'd say deserving of the educational equivalent of an Oscar for best writing, acting, animation, actor and picture!
Can't even begin to imagine all the work that was necessary to put this together. The sheer creativity, production value, just wow!
Wow, thank you so much. That might be the nicest compliment I've ever gotten.
Thank you so much to the people who made this video! It was super helpful and it was the first LSAT video I’ve ever watched that made me laugh out loud!
It was just lonely ol' me, which is why it takes forever for the next installment to come out each time. :) Glad you liked it!
This is simply the best!!! I watched almost everything, but this is the one and only! 5 stars, great job really!
Thanks for the encouragement!
I’m extremely grateful that I stumbled upon this content!
I love you guys !!!
2024 and this video was still very helpful! Made learning the steps enjoyable as well, considering I've been dreading studying RC.
I dont usually leave comments but this was just too great, thank you so much! I will probably be doing the "pivot word" dance in my head on test day lol
haha, thank you. there's no higher compliment than you risking participation in the hellscape known as UA-cam comments.
wow. this is the best video on RC! thank you for explaining it in such a fun and easy-to-understand way!
This was awesome! You guys are so talented! It’s probably outside of your scope, but given how important reading comprehension is to academic success I’ve no doubt there would be thousands of parents of middle schoolers and high schoolers who would appreciate these kinds of videos for their kids. Turn it into a curriculum and they would buy it for sure.
Jeeeez. You're right! That probably is the audience where my aesthetic most makes sense (and my kids'll be entering middle school in a couple years so I'll have free market research). Theresa, you just gave me the security blanket of thinking, "if LSAT Lab implodes, what next?" :) Thanks!
Absolutely! As a retired homeschooling mom, I would have happily purchased dvd’s or videos like this to help my kids learn and understand reading material better. Reading comprehension is vital to doing well in all other subjects. Your videos are organized, clear, entertaining, and fun. You ‘put the cookies on a lower shelf’ for everyone to understand, and that’s gold, parents want that.
OMG This is so helpful! Honestly best way I've learned about Reading Comp so far! Thank you!
Thank you, that's very encouraging to hear!
Y'all's new videos are astronomically better than your old ones
Thank you! They take astronomically longer to make. :)
Or at least the 1st and 2nd pancake did.
But man-oh-man, can I feel 3rd pancake taking exponentially less time 🤞
I personally liked the old more serious toned ones. But these new fun ones are a breath of fresh air espicially for RC.
Cant wait for part 2, hopefully we get it in time to implement some of the strats before Jan lsat in about 3 weeks time.
Patrick is best teacher out there
What an AWESOME video! And so hilarious, too. Thanks so much, LSAT Lab!
I am so happy about this video. I have been studying for LSAT (only one week) and was so sad about my diagnostic results. This video is helping me grasp the "Big Picture" concept in ways that are well illustrated and thoroughly explained. 😅
Awesome, glad it's helpful! Don't let the test get you down too much. Your initial diag mostly tells you how well or how not-well your intuitive way of thinking is aligned to that of LSAT's. If you start off lower, it just means there's a big gap between how you're initially thinking of the material and how you'll want to think of it in order to optimize your score. It often takes people many months to shift their instincts to align more with LSAT's (re-aligning thinking is like steering an aircraft carrier), so have a lot of humor, humility, patience, and enthusiasm in the tank. :)
Wish I discovered your content sooner, this was very helpful!
this was incredible. love the animation. you are a genius. keep up the creative storytelling.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Your funny voices are making this so fun. Thank you soo much!!
This video was very entertaining and helpful!
“It’s just like the game Red Light Green Light!”
*sweats in Squid Game*
hahaha. I'll admit, I only know what you're talking about because of an SNL squid game parody.
Oh my god everything about this video is just genius 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
Thank you so much for the videos. I understand so much better what big picture means.
Thank you for these videos for someone who can't afford private tutoring or classes. How often do you post?
Hey, there .. we post as often as we can, but that can sometimes means weeks between posts (there's only two of us, and we still have to do a lot of teaching / tutoring / other work to keep the lights on). p.s. if you have a fee waiver, you can use LSAT Lab for free.
I appreciate the amount of animation & narration of them but it really takes away from what I am trying to learn.
thanks for the feedback. that's definitely a big concern in making a "fun" educational video. the learning is still supposed to be the centerpiece. what would you recommend .... less animation ... more time for screens to breathe ... or just don't use animation at all?
Just loved it😍🥰 lots of love and thanks from India dear☄️❤️
Awww thanks! Glad you liked it.
Pure GOLD
Very insightful and excellent explanations. Also, I think we can use answer choice elimination methods you taught in LR section to get rid of wrong options. Trap answer choices in LR are dissected deeply.
i wont forget the sheep !! great videoo !! simple to understand
Such an informative video
Hi, thanks for the video. I am intrigued by your definition of hypothesis -- would you say that a "causal explanation for something that happened" could be an explanation based on evidence that has already been evaluated? I missed rc question #13 on practice test 151/85 due to feeling certain the intro paragraph had a conclusion, theory, explanation, or interpretation, but definitely not a hypothesis. Turns out the correct answer was hypothesis. I thought a hypothesis had to be something tentative or at least an assumption. That is, something untested which you might later gather evidence for in order to evaluate its correctness. Merriam Webster agrees with me, but what matters is how LSAT uses the word. Do you know whether LSAT uses this word more in the way "theory" or "conclusion" are used at the end of research papers? I am asking because I would like to know whether I failed to notice that the conclusion stated at the beginning is actually tentative, or whether I was misunderstanding the way LSAT uses the word "hypothesis." Thanks again for the helpful information.
Anyone else here for the MCAT 👀👀
Thank you so much for this!
Excellent video. Thank you.
This is so helpful. Do you have a schedule for the remaining RC videos that will be released?
We're moving into a period during which we are able to produce these more quickly than has been the case for the past few months. The next one is ready to go. I'm about to post it now. Should be live in 30 minutes.
@@LSATLab Great, Im going to watch the new video shortly! Thanks again!
I love the Duncan Sheik reference. Studying for the LSAT has me barely breathing.
You get one million points for commenting on that. You're either the first or second to have ever noticed it (I may have dreamed the first comment). I knew at the time "this joke is just for you, and maybe six other people, Patrick" but no one is looking over my shoulder to offer notes on these, so I left it in!
@@LSATLab lol I love covert quips. Being of a um, certain age (just turned 44 and re-pivoting from finance to law) DS is right in my wheelhouse. I’m a fan of LSAT lab too. I’m trying to watch them all!
That was very helpful. Thank you. :)
Hello! Thank you for this amazing video. After coming across it, I decided I wanted to sign up for one of your plans. I was wondering if the practice and analytics upgrade would also unlock all the videos in the video library which are labeled premium? Thank you!
That’s great Houra! Yes, all of our videos are included in our Practice & Analytics plan.
Hi, thank you for this video, I found it very helpful. Clearly this passage was written by a “Problem Solver”. I’ve learned that the author types consist of 1. Journalists/Reporter, 2. Critique, and 3. Problem Solver. My question is... will this method of Chungking work for the other two types of author’s? Some passages don’t have clear cut issues of A. Having a problem, and B, offerings of a solution.
Chunking is something we can always do (in RC and real-life); it's just an attempt to self-summarize in a way that compresses and simplifies. But I think your question is, "Can we really always condense the Main Point down to 2 or 3 big ideas"? Yeah, pretty much! Of the five main frameworks (C.H.O.P.P. - Challenge Position / Highlight Noteworthy / Old New / Problem Solution / Present Debate), the one that is sometimes tricky is Highlight Noteworthy.
Those are the passages that sound more like they're written by Journalist / Reporter (to use your terminology). Because of their straightforward descriptive style, you have to listen/look harder for moments of emphasis or for umbrella claims that get fleshed out, but it's still doable.
Please do the remaining videos as well
Thank you sm it's just amazing way
Patrick... God of CR and humor....
I LOVE THIS
This is so cute! Thanks :)
how am i just finding you???! great content
This is awesome
what is the difference between main idea and main point ???
I think maybe the video doesn't ever say "main idea," just "big idea." I think main idea and main point often mean the same thing. The difference between big ideas in a passage and the main point of a passage is that there is only one main point of a passage. There are multiple big ideas. A passage about why running is good for you could have two paragraphs explaining why some people think it is bad for you. If you had to summarize the passage into a very short bulleted list, "some people think running is bad for you because it causes knee replacements" would be one of the bullet points. Each bullet point might be a big idea. But the overall argument that the author of the passage was making -- running is good for you -- would be the main point. In this video, I think LSAT lab is using the term "big idea" to describe the two or three types of things that happen in each question framework. If you go to 4:15, they have an example of what the big ideas are in a romantic comedy movie. Then they show how the LSAT explicitly tells you to look for some different types of big ideas, and different big ideas are found in different types of question. At 6:20 and 9:18 they explain the big ideas are for a couple different question types. E.g. There is an old thing and a new thing for each old/new passage. If you get that passage, you can figure out a one sentence summary for the old thing and the new thing. Later they show how to identify the main ideas in the Irish grain analysis passage based on its question type. If you search big idea and main point in the search bar for the transcript, you can go right to the part of the video that mentions those terms -- but you might want to rewatch it and keep a lookout for those terms.
Main idea note: (If the main point is "cats are good unless you have severe allergies," you could argue that that is two points (1. cats are almost always good. 2. Cats are bad if you have severe allergies,) but in this context the LSAT calls the main thesis/argument/idea of the passage as the main point.)
I am wholeheartedly depending on you to save my LSAT score
this is best
What are callbacks?
Have you ever heard a stand-up comic whose last joke includes a reference to something that was said earlier? That's called a "callback".
In conversations with friends, you can often get a laugh by sneaking in a reference to something that was said earlier.
in an RC passage, author's will say something in paragraph 3 that alludes to something they said in paragraph 1, but they won't necessarily use the exact same word choice. One of the ways we can tell if our comprehension is truly on point is if we understand these moments when an author is subtly referring back to something they said earlier in the passage.
Let me know if that didn't make sense.
@@LSATLab thank you so much!
What did Duncan Sheik do to someone at LSAT Lab lol
haha, congratulations you are genuinely the first and only person to have ever commented on that joke (which is one of my personal faves).
let's go edit Duncan's wikipedia page to include his time spent dating Sniffles the Clown back in San Antonio.
Like schrodingers cat!
“Mastuhs of the ansuhs”
Maggio Fort
This is sooo funny
Haha 16:10
This has too much bull and not focused enough on the main reason why i'm here!
If the main reason why you're here is trying to improve your ability to answer questions correctly, you might prefer the videos from episode 3 onward.
The first two videos are specifically about improving our ability to understand and retain the most important ideas (and ideally a few subsidiary ones as well) in 2-3m mins. They're more conceptual and metaphorical and cartoon-laden. They're baiting people who don't have the attention span for reading comp into trying to have the attention span for reading comp.
As the series progresses, the ratio of humorous tangents / serious LSAT question analysis slims down quite a bit. But at the end of the day, it's still an unabashedly silly style that isn't for everyone.
way too much "comedy" and irrelevant commentary. Jumps around on ideas instead of finishing one thought.
This is so awesome. Thank you
Thank you for these. I can’t afford to spend thousands on a course. Your videos are amazing
Not to mention I actually smile instead of wanting to cry
I’ve been using 7Sage and finding it hard to raise my PT score. I decided yesterday to sign up for your premium plan to get access to all material and drills😊 it’s so affordable, especially compared to other prep material