LSAT is learnable: a theory Forum

[manwithplan]

One time I sat down and basically diagrammed a legal reasoning section of the LSAT with no timer. What I observed was that as one progressed through the section (that is, from question 1 to question 25 or 26), the percentage of the words in the prompt that one needed to actually incorporate in their thinking in order to get the question correctly was larger. In other words, what made the later questions "harder" was not so much that they were longer, or that the material itself was more complicated, but that a higher percentage of words within the prompt could be logically critical to the ideas. Basically, my theory is that what logical reasoning tests is your ability to keep track of an increasing number of factors that affects the logical answer to a question. In the early questions, the prompt can be very long, but ultimately, there are only going to be 1-3 little factors to keep track of. In the later questions, almost every word in the prompt creates a detail that can change the answer, so there are probably a dozens variables that could affect the answer. So basically, you just have to come up with an exercise that forces you to keep track of many factors which are practically disparate but logically connected, and do that over and over again. It makes sense if you think about it — they are showing you larger and larger amounts of data and making you sift through that data to find the correct answer.

There are two ways to beat this system: either you do the earlier, simpler problems in less time, leaving more time for the later problems, or you genuinely become better at the harder problems.

I don't think you have to get literally "smarter" in any fundamental way to do the harder problems better. All you need is an awareness that the test makers are looking to hinge the later questions on smaller and smaller little factors. So the key skill will be how quickly you can filter through the little factors.

Skills at the beginning of LR are totally different than skills at the end.

[Pneumonia]

Yes, the entire exam tests only a single skill. In games the premises are free. In LR they are free at the beginning and lightly disguised by the end. In reading comp they are heavily disguised and surrounded by irrelevancies.

[manwithplan]

Yes, the entire exam tests only a single skill. In games the premises are free. In LR they are free at the beginning and lightly disguised by the end. In reading comp they are heavily disguised and surrounded by irrelevancies.

In my next life, I will start (rather than finish) my LSAT journey with this insight, and finally break 175…