Dental student earns first perfect LEET score in 19 years to prove his study method

A perfect score on the Law School Admission Test — known in Korea as the LEET — has been achieved for the first time since the exam was introduced in 2008, drawing wide attention nearly two decades after its debut.

The man behind the milestone is Lee Jin-woo, 33, a student at Seoul National University's School of Dentistry, who earned a perfect score in both the verbal reasoning and analytical reasoning sections of the 2027 LEET, held July 19. Lee did not sit the exam with any intention of attending law school. He said he took the test to find out whether the study methods and lifestyle management system he had developed actually worked.

"I wanted to prove that the brain-cognition optimization and lifestyle management framework I have built and practiced is not limited to any one exam — that it is universally effective in other tests that demand high-level thinking," he told the Legal Journal.

Lee was hardly a natural at verbal tasks; he received a seventh-grade score in Korean on the College Scholastic Ability Test. But he said a pivotal turning point came in 2022, when he spent three weeks traveling across the country without a smartphone.

"In a completely analog environment where walking all day and talking with companions was the whole of daily life, I felt my concentration and thinking become far more stable than before," he said. "I experienced firsthand that the human brain can fully unleash its latent capacity when external stimulation is stripped away and homeostasis is restored."

After that trip, he built what he calls a "cognitive optimization system" — cutting back on electronic devices and managing his sleep, diet and exercise across all aspects of daily life. He applied the same principles when preparing for the LEET.

He studied for the exam just one to two hours a day, focusing on internalizing the logical structure of test questions by repeatedly working through the past 10 years of past exams. "From July, right before the test, I shifted into the rhythm of a full-time exam candidate," he said. "My dental school coursework, rather than being a distraction, actually served as good discipline that sharpened my concentration."

Lee said reducing distractions matters more than adding new study techniques. The first two culprits he identified were screen time on electronic devices and refined carbohydrate consumption. "If you cut out these two things, you can feel improvements in sustained concentration and clarity of thought within two weeks," he said.

While the LEET is widely regarded as a test of innate intelligence, Lee said high scores require not only natural ability but also the management of reading comprehension, reasoning skills, and physical and cognitive condition. He estimated that innate ability, direct LEET training, and a long-accumulated reading and reasoning framework each account for 20 percent of performance, with the remaining 40 percent depending on what he calls "physical and cognitive optimization" — sleep, diet, exercise, stress management and control of external stimulation.

Lee also cautioned against the notion, common in test-preparation circles, that LEET scores are essentially predetermined by innate talent. While natural differences exist, he said, they should not be over-interpreted as fixed limits. "If your scores are not improving, instead of piling on new textbooks and lectures, you should first strip away the external stimulation and lifestyle inefficiencies that are degrading your brain's function," he said. "Your full potential emerges when your brain's baseline state is optimized."