What can you expect to find in the Analytical Reasoning section?
This section of the LSAT will test your ability to understand what must be true, based on a set of facts or rules. Its purpose is to evaluate how well you can assess a given argument based upon several factors.
Law schools want to know you have the ability to use the knowledge you gain from each class in a practical manner. By scoring well on the analytical reasoning section, law schools will see that you can take what you learn, analyse the information and effectively apply it to real-life situations, which will be important once you begin to practice law.
The analytical reasoning section consists of a series of questions related to a particular passage. The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) understands that you have not yet started law school, so the questions are not directly related to law scenarios. Instead, they are often more general, such as facing issues with class seating arrangements or ordering tasks according to priority.
Each passage requires you to apply a variety of skills, such as the ability to comprehend relationship structures, effectively form solutions to problems, form conditional statements, infer likely truths within a passage and recognize correlations.
Since the content is not necessarily directly related to law issues, studying laws and understanding legal procedures is not nearly as important as having the ability to analyse a general situation and find a reasonable solution to a problem.
You don’t need to worry if you don’t have a lot of experience with logical problems. The test doesn’t require you to have specialized knowledge in order to perform well on this section of the LSAT.
All the knowledge you need will be presented to you through the questions and information provided to you during the exam, as well as the basic reasoning skills you’ve already picked up from your undergraduate studies.
What is the structure of the Analytical Reasoning section?
In the Analytical Reasoning section, which is also known as "logic games," you will read four short textual passages that are referred to as "setups."
Each setup will be between 100 - 130 words and will consist of two parts:
a descriptive list of items (e.g. Person A, B, C, D, and E) and,
a list of conditions (e.g. Person A is older than Person B; Person C is younger than Person D).
You will be asked to answer 5-7 questions about what can or must be true about that specific scenario. All of the questions will have five answer options.
The topics in the setups are general and will not be about any academic subject. Instead, examples of setup topics could include appointment schedules, participants in a meeting, or conditions for manufacturing consumer goods.
The four setups may be very different from one another in terms of how they are written. This means you will have to pay careful attention to the information being presented to you as well as what each question is asking of you. The questions might change the information initially being given to you by supplying you with additional conditions, meaning you will have to alter how you think about and approach each question.
The Analytical Reasoning Games
The setups in the Analytical Reasoning section will be based on one of the following four types of logic games.
1. Grouping
Grouping games rely upon sorting several entities provided to you by the informational paragraph into distinct groups. The game’s information will give you the appropriate scenario, which in turn will tell you how you are supposed to approach the sorting process.
2. Basic Linear Sequence
Basic linear sequence games are fairly cut and dry in terms of what you are supposed to do to solve them. You will be expected to take the provided information and arrange its entities, so they fit into one neat line. How this line is meant to be organized depends on the game’s rules. No matter the details of the game, however, you should expect and arrive at the same end result: a neatly organized string of information.
3. Basic Grouping
When solving a basic grouping game, you will be presented with a selection of information which will contain several sets of entities. You will then have to sort them all into collective groups based on the game’s information. This game type should prove to be easier than the grouping section described above. However, you will still need to read closely and create a careful organization system in order to ace basic grouping questions.
4. Linear Sequence
The linear sequence game is similar in requirements to the basic linear sequence but will be on a higher difficulty level. You will still have to arrange entities into an orderly sequence. However, it is likely you’ll be expected to arrange more than one set of information into two related sequencing categories. It will be on you to keep both sets of information straight as you work through problems under this category and know how you should properly sort each set.
An Example of an Analytical Reasoning Setup and Questions
Six trains, designated A, B, C, D, E, and F depart one at a time from the same station. Only one train may leave per day, under the following conditions:
Train C must depart on the day before either Train D or Train E;
Train E must depart before Train B and Train F; and
either Train D or Train F must depart the day before Train A.
Questions on this setup might be:
"Which of the following departure orders would be acceptable?"
"If Train C leaves on the fifth day, when must Train E leave?"
"Choose from the following groups of trains, any one of which cannot leave last."
How you can approach the Analytical Reasoning Section and some strategies for success.
Since the analytical reasoning section is not directly related to knowledge but instead relates to your ability to understand and find a solution to a problem, experience dealing with similar questions is far more important than studying content.
As a result, when preparing to take the LSAT, answering practice questions and reviewing why a certain answer is correct or incorrect is likely far more helpful than reviewing study material for the LSAT exam.
The following tips and strategies should also help you succeed when answering the questions in the analytical reasoning section.
1. Be sure to read each scenario and the questions that follow carefully.
One of the most common mistakes you could make on the analytical reasoning portion of the LSAT exam is not taking your time and rushing to finish. Of course, there is a time limit to be mindful of, but overall it is important to not rush any section of the test.
One of the best ways to gain an advantage is to read each passage very carefully, rather than skipping back and forth from the questions to the passage. In fact, taking the initial time to read the passage slowly and carefully in its entirety can save you time by not having to constantly refer back to what you read to answer the question.
2. One question at a time.
Remember, each set of questions pertains only to the current scenario and not any rules from past scenarios.
Reading the questions before you read the passage is helpful for some, but when it comes time to answer the question directly, be sure to focus in on the precise question, rather than looking ahead to the next or thinking about how the particular question might relate to others. It may seem obvious, but the questions tend to run together and become confusing if you do not take your time and commit focus to each question you answer.
3. Take notes.
Take notes while you read. If you come across a fact or statement that you feel is important – such as a statement that is raised more than once in the passage – then make a mental and written note of it. This way, you can quickly reference them for each of the 5-7 questions in that section.
Otherwise, you might forget about the important part of the passage when it comes time to answer the questions.
4. Pay close attention to the wording of the scenarios and questions.
Words like, only, except, must be, and cannot be, make a big difference in meaning.
5. Don’t forget about the time limit.
The Analytical Reasoning section lasts only 35 minutes, meaning you’ll have to use your time as efficiently as possible. Ideally, you should try to spend less than 10 minutes on each puzzle. It is perfectly fine if you wind up taking a bit more time on one question, especially considering the difficulty level this exam section presents. You do not, however, want to spend all of your time on one or two setups and risk leaving questions about other setups unanswered.
6. The process of elimination.
An effective approach to Analytical Reasoning questions is to use the process of elimination to exclude answer choices that don't match the circumstances of the setup or question text.
For example, if the setup specifies that event A must occur before event B, it is possible to quickly eliminate any answers that list B before A. You can go item by item through the list of circumstances in the setup, each one of which will preclude certain answers until there is only one remaining. Obviously, learning to conduct this process quickly is essential because of the section’s time constraints.
7. Draw it out.
In order to keep track of important information, you should try drawing up a diagram marking the most significant elements of each statement you read.
Diagramming will prevent you from getting your facts mixed up, since the questions given to you can supply new information that is all too easy to muddle with the old.
You will need to create your diagrams as quickly as you can, but don’t go so fast as to render your notes unreadable.
8. Draw it out earlier rather than later.
Begin planning out your diagram early on, as you’re still reading through information. This will help the answering process to go more smoothly.
There are different ways you can compose a diagram, but it is important that you have a system for your diagrams that you can apply to any question format. Having a solid plan for drawing out your diagrams will make it even easier for you to keep track of relevant information and cut down on the chance of disarray as you work through questions.
Your diagram should give you the full picture of the scenario being presented by the logic game you’re trying to solve. A well-composed diagram should effectively serve as an abridged version of the specific logic game it’s tied to and provide you with all of the necessary information you’ll need to figure the problem out.
9. Beginning to study for this section.
When you first start to study for and practice taking the analytical reasoning section, you should take as much time as necessary to deduce the correct answers. Then you should gradually reduce the time per question over the rest of study plan period.
As you prepare to take the LSAT, learn to read setups carefully, paying special attention to the difference between words such as "and" versus "or" and "could" versus "must."
10. It’s just like life - It’s all about relationships.
The most important thing to remember about the Analytical Reasoning section is that it is all about relationships. It’s about how two situations or conditions compare to and interact with one another.
If you keep this fact in mind, it will prove to be very helpful as you work through this exam section.
Comments