Getting Over the Content of a Question Forum

[ChrisW]

I'm not familiar with a lot of the science material in LSAT questions, and whenever I come across a science heavy question, it's a lot harder for me to organize it. Even if I'm good at a specific question type, I can get thrown off by a bunch of scientific terms.

What strategies do you guys use for getting past unfamiliar material, mostly in LR and RC?

[SpiritofFire]

Abstraction.

Something like... Plants utilize photosynthesis as a way to derive energy by having carbon separated from oxygen within the mitochondrial structures.

The above is prob not accurate, since I'm not a science person. But if I saw that I would read: plants use P to get energy by separating c from o inside M.

That way you can focus on the reasoning without getting lost.

[eljefe1]

the only solid advice I have for you is this: get a science specific degree. I isolated all of the science related material in each test, from the first to the most recent, and parsed it for statistical info regarding its content. From my study, i found that most of the science related material is about climatology, animal behavior, and plant biology. So I decided to go back to school for a BA/MA in biology with a minor in climatology. We'll see how this strategy works come test time. I'll report back in 4 years.

[banjo]

Science passages are not about science at all--they're about imagination. When you come across a science passage, try to visualize the process, model, or study that the author is describing. I basically turned every passage into a silent documentary in my head. I can still picture the purple loosestrife from PT 55 forcing the starving aquatic furbearers out of their habitat.

[Balthy]

Abstraction helps a lot, but i was also surprised by how much reading random science articles on my off time helped. Just familiarizing yourself with more vocab/concepts makes the reading easier to quickly digest.