If you've done more than a few PrepTests by now, you're probably sick of questions about cholesterol-lowering drugs, climate change, and potential reasons the dinosaurs died.We get it. Some folks at LSAC (perhaps Stephen Luebke is among them) haven't gotten over their childhood obsession with dinosaurs. It's as if they think writing 1,000 questions about dinosaurs will bring them back. Sometimes I wish the dinosaurs were still around too, but Jurassic Park didn't work out so well in the end.
The dinosaur logic game is the straw that broke the camel's back. It was one thing to have dinosaurs appear in Logical Reasoning on every other exam, but to have them spill over into Logic Games? It's time for a change. After all, you're looking to go into law, not paleontology.
I propose LSAC stop beating us over the head with dinosaur-related topics. In fact, it's time to get rid of all the common LSAT Logical Reasoning topics. LSAC needs to find new obsessions. To pave the way, here are 25 proposed topics for future Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions.
In no particular order, they are:
1. Reasons for the decline of, and ways to save, the newspaper industry
2. Connection between Internet, cell phones, and Twitter, and decreased attention spans
3. Morality of illegal file-sharing and counterfeit goods
4. Effectiveness of meditation, acupuncture, and feng shui
5. Potential effects of media publishing "top secret" info during wartime
6. Prisons and alternative rehabilitation techniques
7. New/undiscovered life-forms and aliens
8. Pirates (music, software, and traditional ship-sailing)
9. Medieval (knights and samurai) and Mafia codes of honor and loyalty
10. Continental drift and its effects on evolution/speciation
11. Pyramids and how they were built
12. Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot
13. Reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire
14. Fuel efficiency, hybrid cars, alternative energy sources (particularly, algae as a biofuel)
15. Weird sea animals and plants living in the Mariana Trench and chemosynthesis
16. Great Pacific Garbage Patch (credit: my student Tory)
17. Evolutionary links between humans and apes
18. Effectiveness (and effects) of standardized testing, particularly its potential to perpetuate/correct societal inequities
19. Spam-fighting technology
20. Milgram experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment
21. Contemporary musicians, artists, and scholars
22. Economic recession and government policies - proposed ways to end it (bailouts, etc.)
23. Effectiveness of businesses' recession "specials"
24. Plea bargaining in exchange for testimony
25. Salem Witch Trials and how they might have been caused by a psychedelic fungus
What topics would YOU like to see on the LSAT? Leave them in the comments!
Photo by mtsofan / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
How about examining why women make (roughly) 80 cents to the male dollar, or the causes for the underrepresentation of women (and people of color) in the uppermost echelons of law firms, major corporations, and the U.S. government? See, re: women and the latter topic:
ReplyDeletehttp://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?cat=46
Because for hundreds of years the world has been run by white men according to white men norms and practices and such "balancing" doesn't just occur overnight. Also, re: women making less, maybe it has to do with the fact that men, on average, spent more hours at their work, as studies show.
DeleteBut Steve, everyone I know wants to know how you can determine whether extinct animals were herd animals by studying their teeth and facial structures!
ReplyDelete(or that a logically fallacious statement?)
;)
How about peep's LSAT scores and how successful a lawyer they become? Would really get my heart beating in the test not that I have no love for the dinosaurs.
ReplyDeleteHow about questions on the morality of including names like Laquisha or Mackmoudi instead or normal names in the game sections.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is supposed to add to the "diversity" of the exam, which I am sure makes all the minority test-takers feel more confident about scoring a 180, since they can now relate to the ethnic names that are incorporated into the games section....yeah, right. Antics.
ReplyDeleteThere was some claim recently about lead paint poisoning and crime rate: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/the-crime-of-lead-exposure/
ReplyDeleteI could definitely see some possible weaken, strengthen or flaw questions popping up from this.