According to the 2013 survey, only 2.2% of you are in law-related professions, but I was wondering (1) if anyone has personal experience studying for this exam, (2) if they felt like it improved their logical reasoning skills, and (3) if they felt that these effects were long-lasting. Studying for this test seems to have the potential to inculcate rationalist habits-of-mind; I know it’s just self-report, but for those who went on to law school, did you feel like you benefited from the experience studying for the LSAT?
(1) Yes, but I’m an outlier. I started in the 99th percentile and “improved” 6 points through self-study.
(2) Honestly? Not really. For me, most of the difference in performance from test to test was not due to logical misapprehension, but because I skimmed a question or misjudged the time limit. If you have taken an undergrad logic course and have a grasp on conjunction/disjunction, sufficient/necessary, etc., then your experience will likely be similar. For instance, you said this about the games:
I’d guess that most LSAT test prep is about strategies for dumping this burden into some kind of written scheme that makes it all more manageable.
This is true, but it’s also true of the args, too. I’ve taught for two of the major test prep companies and the courses are mostly just an undergrad logic course bolted onto their own proprietary shorthand and systematic categorization so students can recognize types of questions and diagram them accordingly. When I tutored independently, I just used regular old symbolic logic.
P1: AW↑ ==> Right
P2: AW↓ <=> Wrong
P3: ____________
C: ~AW↑ & ~AW↓ ==> Right
The only tricky part about teaching that question (which I can’t recall teaching specifically) would be that most novices will diagram AW– or something similarly distinct from the premise elements for neutral welfare. So you have to teach them to diagram conclusions in the form of premises whenever possible.
(3) Well, I already had most of these skills, but I would say I definitely got a lot out of teaching. It’s a fun test compared to, say, the MCAT. I don’t think it would be all that great as a self-improvement tool, though. Without a tutor you won’t always understand where you’re screwing up, and some of the questions are sometimes tricky for the sake of being tricky. For instance, there may be a version of that question where the answer turns not on logic, but on one of the premises subtly leaving out the word “reasonably.” Additionally, there really aren’t that many different kinds of questions. Once you start looking at more than a few tests you will start to recognize lots of questions that are logical repeats with different subject matter, or maybe a reversed answer condition (which of the following is NOT implied versus which of the following IS). If all you want is to improve your logical reasoning personally, I’d just take the undergraduate logic courses.
Thank you for this awesome, informative comment. I’m glad to get some perspective on this; at the end of the day I guess it is just a test of basic logic concepts… I guess I shouldn’t expect that to carry over to other areas of one’s daily life.
(1) Yes, but I’m an outlier. I started in the 99th percentile and “improved” 6 points through self-study.
(2) Honestly? Not really. For me, most of the difference in performance from test to test was not due to logical misapprehension, but because I skimmed a question or misjudged the time limit. If you have taken an undergrad logic course and have a grasp on conjunction/disjunction, sufficient/necessary, etc., then your experience will likely be similar. For instance, you said this about the games:
This is true, but it’s also true of the args, too. I’ve taught for two of the major test prep companies and the courses are mostly just an undergrad logic course bolted onto their own proprietary shorthand and systematic categorization so students can recognize types of questions and diagram them accordingly. When I tutored independently, I just used regular old symbolic logic.
The only tricky part about teaching that question (which I can’t recall teaching specifically) would be that most novices will diagram AW– or something similarly distinct from the premise elements for neutral welfare. So you have to teach them to diagram conclusions in the form of premises whenever possible.
(3) Well, I already had most of these skills, but I would say I definitely got a lot out of teaching. It’s a fun test compared to, say, the MCAT. I don’t think it would be all that great as a self-improvement tool, though. Without a tutor you won’t always understand where you’re screwing up, and some of the questions are sometimes tricky for the sake of being tricky. For instance, there may be a version of that question where the answer turns not on logic, but on one of the premises subtly leaving out the word “reasonably.” Additionally, there really aren’t that many different kinds of questions. Once you start looking at more than a few tests you will start to recognize lots of questions that are logical repeats with different subject matter, or maybe a reversed answer condition (which of the following is NOT implied versus which of the following IS). If all you want is to improve your logical reasoning personally, I’d just take the undergraduate logic courses.
Thank you for this awesome, informative comment. I’m glad to get some perspective on this; at the end of the day I guess it is just a test of basic logic concepts… I guess I shouldn’t expect that to carry over to other areas of one’s daily life.