In case you missed it, the latest buzz in the law admissions world is that those of you applying might be advantaged this year thanks to the drop in applications among high LSAT scorers. The basic idea is that a dearth of top applicants has made room at top schools for folks who wouldn’t normally squeeze in, which leaves more spots open in the tiers below for folks who wouldn’t normally be admitted at that level, and so on. (You know… like Reagan.)

But is this a reason to apply? I’ve written before and will again: don’t apply to law school unless you want to go. You shouldn’t apply just because your chances of getting into a higher ranked school have increased any more than you should become a doctor because one year you make a particularly strong med school applicant. You should become a doctor because you want to be one, and you should become a lawyer because you want to be one. For some reason, the common sense of this notion is more often forgotten in law than in other professions.

So what’s to be gained from this potential, newfound flexibility in law admissions? Well, if you already planned to apply, why not aim a little higher? Make your reach school a bit of a farther reach. Who knows? You could be surprised. If not, there’s always the circus — I hear their numbers are down this year.

To make up for lack of flight ability, Pen Gwynn (pictured) took up heavyweight boxing

Inference questions in Logical Reasoning ask you to infer what must be true. This means that the answer choice you pick shouldn’t stretch beyond the scope of the text in the stimulus. You want to stay as close to the text as possible, which is why we say things like, “Be literal!” and “Make only baby inferences” (maybe that second one is just me).

Here’s an example of one way wrong answer choices try to trick you. The stimulus will provide statements in black and white—light switches, not dimmers. For example, “all artists are attentive to detail,” “no kangaroos are stupid,” or “most birds fly.” (Notice that even this third example offers a trigger, not a sliding scale. They either fly, or they don’t.)

Sometimes on these kinds of questions, you’ll find answer choices that create issues of degree that don’t exist in the argument. For example, wrong answer choices corresponding to these examples, respectively, might say that artists are more attentive to detail if they eat bacon for breakfast, or that large kangaroos are stupider than small one, or that birds fly better if they are flying with other birds. All three of these are examples of false inferences from the statements above that you can recognize because they create issues of degree that do not exist in the argument.

You can think of this kind of wrong answer as a dimmer (when the argument is a clapper), or a sliding scale, when the argument discusses no such scale.

To try the kind of problem that I’m talking about, check out PT43, S2, Q22 and PT41, S1, W2, and then check out our forum explanations of each.

Another Friday signals the near-end of yet another week of LSAT prep ahead of the October exam. Here are some of the stories that made the rounds among our LSAT crew this week:

The Short on Long-Term Planning: 10 LSAT Tips That Aren’t About the Actual LSAT (jdMission)*

*jdMission have a wide ranging list of LSAT planning tips and application strategies. You should get in the habit of checking back with them!

8 Ways That Judges Have Cited Star Trek From the Bench (io9)

Who knew that judges were such science fiction nerds? Our was #5.

Law School Admissions Tip #6: The Importance of Micro-editing (Law School Podcaster)

Law School Podcaster goes over some helpful editing tips for your admissions essay.

Conquer Back To School Season For Your First Year At Law School (LawRiot)

Four tips for students starting law school. Get the jump on your classmates!

A Work Soundtrack (gradhacker)

A round up of recommended music, playlists, podcasts, and radio stations to listen to while studying, and where to listen to them.

Beauty blogger and former Manhattan LSAT student Jessica (twitter: @JessicaVCloset) has been creating videos about women’s fashion, beauty, and lifestyle tips as a hobby. She’s gathered quite a following for herself in the last year (take a look at her website //www.victoriascloset.ca, and it’s easy to see why). As Jessica is about to begin law school, she was kind enough to share her 0L experience as well as some thoughts on her LSAT prep. Yes, we’re still blushing!

Yesterday, the President of the United States of America logged onto Reddit, the popular online forum community, to participate in one of the site’s online threads called “Ask Me Anything,” where experts on various subject matter make themselves available to the community to answer questions. One question  the POTUS responded to came from a recent law school graduate: Read more

The LSAT is one damn hard test: time is short, the language dense and deceiving, and the answer choices deliberately designed to throw you off.

As if those challenges weren’t difficult enough, imagine taking it in a foreign language. This is the challenge that non-native English speakers (ESL) students taking the LSAT face.

Our friends over at Law School Podcaster recently did one of their excellent podcasts on this very topic in their most recent show Tackling the LSAT As An ESL.

The show features our own Noah Teitelbaum, as well as Steve Schwartz from the popular LSAT Blog. Featured also is first-person testimony from an ESL test-taker (and former Manhattan LSAT student) who rocked the LSAT on exam day to the tune of 169 (97th percentile).

Think of your LSAT Prep as Oil for the Machine That Is Your Brain

Neuroscientists at the University of California-Berkeley have published a study that suggests that heavily training one’s brain to develop sharper reasoning skills (sound familiar?) can can fundamentally reinforce tangible connections between neurons in areas of the that are used when thinking and reasoning.

The study focused particularly on LSAT students, since you all are essentially training yourselves to be better at reasoning. Allyson Mackey, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute who led this particular study, says “What we were interested in is whether and how the brain changes as a result of LSAT preparation, which we think is, fundamentally, reasoning training. We wanted to show that the ability to reason is malleable in adults.” The findings of this particular study led by Mackey supported this hypothesis.

Silvia Bunge, associate professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute adds “A lot of people still believe that you are either smart or you are not, and sure, you can practice for a test, but you are not fundamentally changing your brain. Our research provides a more positive message. How you perform on one of these tests is not necessarily predictive of your future success, it merely reflects your prior history of cognitive engagement, and potentially how prepared you are at this time to enter a graduate program or a law school, as opposed to how prepared you could ever be.”

Scientists, prelaw students, and educators the world over should be very excited by this discovery; it is encouraging to know that when trained properly, the brain – like any other muscle in the human anatomy – can be made stronger and more powerful. Study on, my friends, study on!

Source: University of California – Berkeley. “Intense prep for law school admission test alters brain structure.” ScienceDaily, 22 Aug. 2012. Web. 23 Aug. 2012.

When you’re looking for a necessary assumption, remember that you’re looking for what must be true, and what must be true doesn’t necessarily “fill the

Barry's suit & briefcase disguise: necessary, but not sufficient

whole gap,” as we say. It could be a small piece of the puzzle, but a critical one. Imagine a bridge supported by several buttresses, each of which is necessary (you knock it down and the bridge falls) even though it could never support the bridge on its own. Therefore, the buttresses are necessary, but certainly not sufficient, for supporting the bridge.

For these reasons, you generally want to be wary of answer choices that seem sweeping—words like “always” and “never” are tip-offs. (This isn’t to say those answers are never right, though. If the argument is extreme, there can be a necessary assumption that is, too.)

A good rule of thumb is that the conclusion caps how “strong” the necessary assumption can be. If the conclusion is on the milder side of the spectrum

—“Jenn will probably choose cake over pie” or “Jim is likely to find the suit distasteful”—it wouldn’t make sense to choose answers that read, respectively, “Jenn will always choose cake over pie” and “Jim will definitely find the suit distasteful.” These wrong answers push the arguments beyond their scope, which has already been set.

This isn’t a new concept but simply another way of thinking about the same old idea. The conclusion caps off the argument, and at the cap, it stops assuming.

Take a break from your LSAT prep work and check out some of this week’s lop legal and law school-related stories. Happy reading!

Law Schools Are Upset About New York’s Proposal That Lawyers Put In Time Working For Free (Business Insider Law & Order)

Law school deans around the country are voicing concern about the pro bono work proposal for new law grads. Many fear such a mandate will place a financial burden on law schools to provide training if they hope to have their grads land jobs in New York.

“I Hate My Classmates” and Other First-Week Problems (The Girl’s Guide To Law School)

Heading to law school in the fall? Here are some common problems you may encounter and some tips for how to deal.
Read more

When it comes to Orientation questions, always let the rules be your guide

The first question on a logic game often asks for a possible ordering (or assignment, or grouping) of the elements. We call these Orientation questions, and they can usually be answered by simply applying the rules, one by one, to the answer choices. For example, if there is a rule that Sam arrives fourth (yay, simple rules!), scan the answer choices to check for Sam. There’s almost certainly going to be one where he’s not fourth—get rid of that one.

While moving through the rules this way is, generally, a reliable and efficient approach for Orientation questions, we also teach that you can use your diagram. On some games, such as relative ordering, this is a good idea. It can be faster.
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