According to the statistics recently posted on LSAC’s website, there was a 16.9% decrease in LSAT ‘administrations’ (LSAC’s term for tests given) in October 2011 compared to October 2010. The number of October 2010 LSAT administrations was also down 10.5% from the previous year (when a record number of students–60,746– took the exam). October administrations aside, the data shows that overall, there have been fewer LSATs administered over the last two years:

Law School Aspirations, in Line Graph Form

Notice that there are two major “spikes” in LSAT administrations over the years.  Did law school suddenly become the “in” thing to do? Did LSAC and the ABA run some sort of blockbuster ad campaign for law school in 2002 and 2009?  Not quite. In 2002, right after the ‘dotcom bubble’ burst, LSAT administrations were up a whopping 23.5%!  In 2009, shortly after our economy plunged into a recession (that we’re still trying to climb out of), LSAT administrations increased by 19.8%. Correlation certainly does not mean causation, but hey – this isn’t an LSAT question – and I’m proud of my theory!

One explanation for these increases could be that during times of economic uncertainty, people are more attracted to careers that are seen to be secure routes to a comfortable income. Historically, a career in law has been held in this regard (although the New York Times would disagree). Perhaps this mini-dip in administrations means the recession is finally over!?

What does this news mean for you, the prospective law school student?  Well, you’re probably encouraged by these trends, as this likely means that there are fewer students applying for those coveted 1L spots in our nation’s law schools–here’s hoping!

What do you think?  Is the spike in LSAT-takers during times of economic hardship strictly coincidence? Are you feeling better about your chances based on this data?  Or do you think competition for the top law schools will be as stiff as it’s ever been?

Decisions, decisions!

A member of the Manhattan LSAT Forum community – who, like a good lawyer-to-be, is keeping himself anonymous – sent me an interesting article in the NY Times magazine that has some interesting implications for LSAT study. Take a look at the article and what he had to say about it – I think this is spot on:

The article is about “decision fatigue”: how merely making a large number of decisions (whether deciding LSAT questions or deciding your breakfast cereal) leads you to a point where you are more liable to make bad decisions or take shortcuts to avoid having to invest yourself in more decisions.  There were  a few things I think are relevant to LSAT study:

#1. This could underlie the fatigue students often feel towards the end of an individual test (it’s not just having to read a lot or analyze a lot of logic—it’s literally the act of making so many decisions)

#2. This could definitely underlie LSAT burnout. Having to make so many decisions in a short period of time has a major taxing effect. One test is about 100 decisions—when combined with the other decisions we make from day-to-day that’s a serious workout

#3. The way to recover from decision fatigue is through glucose, so this would support the idea of eating sugary snacks during the break. And that’s not just because you’re using energy in general—in fact making decisions doesn’t use more brain energy, it just shifts what parts of your brain are active.

I found it especially relevant when it said that decision fatigue leads to an otherwise wise person falling for misleading logic or tricks. And perhaps something to take from it aside from how it supports practices already done (like taking some time off before test day, etc.), would be that no matter how good a person is on the LSAT, merely making so many decisions will burn him out. It also may suggest that doing 6 or 7 section tests is not productive—according to the findings a person doesn’t build up more decision energy—they merely learn how to conserve it better. So doing 6 or 7 sections may in a person’s mind take the pressure off when it comes to 5 sections, but if decision fatigue is a major or deciding factor, it would seem that practicing with 6 or 7 sections would have little benefit.  

It definitely also shows why it’s so important to do 5 section practice tests because it’s very possible that most people start to feel the effects of decision fatigue especially strongly after 4 sections—that would be the perfect zone for a person to falter.

Interesting stuff! I do think it’s still worthwhile for some people to try doing a 6 section LSAT just to push their mental stamina – learning to conserve your decision energy can actually be useful. It’s good to know when to think a lot, when to pull the trigger, when to simply guess.  These are all characteristics of a good test taker.

Speaking of test taking skills, if you are in NYC on September 15th, stop by our office at 6:30 for a free workshop on maximizing your test taking potential.

Warm Up Those Medulla Oblongatas!

Yet another sign of my geekiness: I love Tuesdays because that’s when the NY Times has a science section. (And for those who are struggling with science passages on the LSAT, it’s not a bad place to start getting some extra practice – though throw in some more technical material as well). Last Tuesday there was an article that caught my eye: Brain Calisthenics for Abstract Ideas is about research on training kids’ intuitive senses about abstract problems. What the white lab coat folks did is develop a computer program that made kids match graphs to equations. The kids didn’t need to solve anything, they just needed to match them on gut instinct (which here means a general understanding of how equations graph out).

I love it! I used to teach math and I did some of this sort of thing – we’d always work on estimating answers before we learned algorithms (the formal steps for solving something). I think building up a student’s intuitive sense of a problem is essential. The question is how to do it for the LSAT?

One way we do it is through the LSAT Arcade. Our curriculum team came up with a bunch of different games, that work very specific mental micro-muscles and builds your intuitive sense of things.

Another tool in your arsenal is lots of practice! The tests conducted in the NY Times article all included lots of practice. So don’t think that you can simply play our cool video game and get a 175 on the LSAT. You need to do tons of LSAT practice tests too. Your goal is to train your brain to begin to, “pick up on differences before [you] can fully articulate them.” But you also want to learn what you’ve picked up on – that’s where learning LSAT strategy comes into play.

One thing I want to make clear about this approach to the LSAT is that it’s only one part of the puzzle. Anyone who has taken a practice test knows that the LSAT requires some very close reading. It’s very easy to be fooled by a stray word so going on instinct alone is far from enough. But, having a strong instinct allows you to know what to look for, what moves to make to get out of “corners,” and generally be a flexible test-take instead of an automaton.

I’m pretty psyched about this article because I know our teachers and our curriculum push students to develop their intuitive skills along with formalized approaches. The article mentions that the ability to transfer skills “is among the highest goals of teachers at all levels,” and we agree. Don’t simply focus on dichotomizing the LSAT, also consider how the different question types are related.

Villanova Law School has recently made headlines after their dean, John Y. Gotanda, wrote a letter to students and alumni admitting that members of the school staff had knowingly passed along bogus data about the GPAs and LSAT scores of the students they admitted “for years prior to 2010″.

"What rules through yonder window your LSAT reporting breaks.."

In the letter, Gotanda promised that the university would deal with these deceitful acts “swiftly and thoroughly”.  Apparently Gotanda went so far as to retain the legal counsel of Ropes & Gray to determine the “nature and scope” of the data fudging.

Lest we forget, the US News and World Report weighs LSAT and GPA scores quite heavily in their evaluations of the top schools in the country. Love them or hate them, these rankings are widely considered to be the authority in determining who is who among institutions of higher education.

So a law school has been inflating the GPA and LSAT statistics of their admitted classes in order to achieve a higher ranking from US News and World Report – hardly earth shattering news there! You can bet that Villanova is not the only law school out there that has “cooked the books” when it comes to the LSAT and GPA statistics of their students, and in my opinion, Gotanda deserves some credit for coming clean about these past transgressions (although this confession must have been made easier by the fact that Gotanda was not the dean of the school at the time of these forgeries).

What’s more important to glean from this article is the fact that - despite flashes of opinion that suggest otherwise – the LSAT remains as important today as it has ever been when it comes to differentiating oneself from the rest of the law school applicant pool. If a prestigious institution is willing to risk its good name through dishonest LSAT and GPA reporting, imagine how favorably they will look upon an applicant with the type of LSAT score they are pretending their students have.

Here are some interesting tidbits on this story from across the web:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/new_villanova_law_dean/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=ABA+Journal+Daily+News&utm_content=Netvibes

http://articles.philly.com/2011-02-09/business/27328846_1_director-of-data-research-rankings-law-placement

http://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/article/villanova_law_law_school_rankings_11777/

Don't burn those LSAT prep books just yet

If your LSAT spidey senses  were particularly aflutter over the last 48 hours, it’s probably because a very interesting article was published by the National Law Journal Wednesday, creating a lot of buzz around the law school blog-o-sphere.

The article outlines the potential plans for the ABA to no longer require the LSAT to be taken in order to be admitted into Law School. I know, right – after all those cups of coffee, weeks without seeing family, friends, sunlight or SportsCenter!! Alas, take comfort: prospective law school students after you will be forced to suffer the same cruel and unusual punishment that is the LSAT.

This change in policy may be adopted, however it certainly does not signify the end of the dreaded exam. I think it very unlikely that the top law school programs will cease desiring prospective students to report an LSAT score, for the simple reason that they believe in the test’s diagnostic capabilities and gives them another quantifiable statistic to boast about. It’s no secret that the top schools want the top students, and the LSAT has been the standard for determining one’s ability to succeed in law school for the past million years (citation needed, but it’s been roughly that long). And as long as the top schools are requiring the scores, you can bet that others will follow suit.

What is more interesting to consider is the relevance of such a change in policy to the vaunted US News and World Report Rankings. Graduate programs in every style of ivory-tower architectural influence go to great lengths to ensure that they are as highly ranked as possible. Predictably, the average LSAT score of admitted students plays a role in where an institution will be ranked on this list.

Does this mean that schools might now admit certain students that they like without requiring LSAT scores? It’s possible, and this would certainly allow schools to be more liberal with their admission standards while still keep their precious average LSAT score statistics up to snuff. Lower tier schools may jump at the opportunity to disassociate themselves with the sub standard LSAT averages of their students by dropping the requirement. Only time will tell, but this seems to be a classic example of Shakespearean comedy: Much Ado About Nothing.

Check out some of the reactions from across the web:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/01/13/is-the-lsat-going-to-go-the-way-of-the-dodo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wsj/law/feed+(WSJ.com:+Law+Blog)

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lsat_would_be_optional_under_possible_aba_accreditation_change/

http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/01/killthelsat.html

http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2011/01/will-the-aba-make-lsats-voluntary.html