A few years ago I read an inspiring book called Life on the Line by Grant Achatz. Grant is the head chef at Chicago’s Alinea restaurant, which has repeatedly been named one of the best restaurants in the world. He rose through the chef ranks to head up his own kitchen, only to then battle tongue cancer that nearly took away his sense of taste permanently (he’s ok now, fortunately). I liked the book so much that I made a trip up to Alinea last … [Read more...]
Studies in LSAT Perfection: Oregon’s Blur Offense
For a while now, I’ve been meaning to write a series of articles on how the pursuit of perfection in various fields can teach valuable lessons for LSAT preparation, and how that pursuit sometimes conflicts with prevailing conventional wisdom. In honor of tonight’s national championship football game, we start with Oregon’s Blur Offense. The Blur Offense If you’re not familiar with football or are just a casual fan, you may not be aware that … [Read more...]
What Are Splitters, Reverse Splitters, and Super Splitters?
If you are applying to law school, you will come across an unusual and somewhat confusing term: Splitter. And no, it has nothing to do with baseball pitches, cutting trees, or a certain San Antonio Spurs/Philadelphia 76ers basketball player. A "splitter" is someone who has LSAT and GPA numbers that are split between high and low marks. Often, the medians for a law school play a role in determining if one is truly a splitter. While this concept is … [Read more...]
The Genesis of an LSAT Question, Part II
Continuing on with our discussion from Part I, let’s take the text from the article and turn it into a proto-LSAT Logical Reasoning stimulus: “In the country of Downlandia, over 100,000 people currently live in towns with populations of fewer than 100 residents. This is an increase of over 20,000 people from a decade ago.” With this very rough “stimulus” in hand (which at this point is just a fact set), we can examine the three question types … [Read more...]
The Genesis of an LSAT Question, Part I
The other day I was reading an article about a town in the US with just two residents. In the middle of the article, the following text caught my attention: “The 2010 Census found 13 hamlets with one or two residents, including Lotsee, Okla., Gross, Neb., and Bonanza, Utah. About 119,000 people live in towns with fewer than 100 residents, up from 79,000 a decade earlier. Mr. Cantrell suspects the increase is due largely to towns shrinking below … [Read more...]
The Rise and Fall of Double-Question LSAT Logical Reasoning Stimuli
I've talked before (notably here and here) about how the content of LSATs changes from test to test. But, there are even changes in the type of question forms you see. For example, in the early 1990s, Justify the Conclusion questions were rather rare, whereas in the 2000s they appeared relatively frequently. In Logic Games, Rule Substitution questions did not start appearing until June 2009. In Logical Reasoning, one question format that used to … [Read more...]