If you’re in that lower half of the socioeconomic spectrum, you ought to be outraged by the slur to your intelligence reflected by Caroline Kitchener’s post in The Atlantic.
While law schools are steadily becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, they remain overwhelmingly upper-middle class. Only 5 percent of students at elite law schools come from families that fall in the bottom half of the socioeconomic spectrum—a number that has hardly changed since the 1960s. The Logic Games section contributes to this lack of socioeconomic diversity.
Calling it the logic “games” suggests that’s just another ploy of the elites to keep the maginalized down. After all, it’s a game. It games law school admissions. And as the post URL says, the game is “rigged,” a word that’s bandied about a lot lately. So what is this “Logic Game”?
As soon as I told my friends and family about my plans to take the LSAT, the standardized law-school admissions test, people started warning me about one particular set of questions. Analytical Reasoning, or “Logic Games,” is a section that tests your ability to order and group information. The questions are written to seem accessible and unintimidating—they ask you to analyze combinations of ice-cream flavors or animals in a zoo—but, every year, they stop tens of thousands of applicants from attending top law schools.
Well, sure, there are tens of thousands of applicants stopped from attending top law schools because they lack the capacity to do well with analytical reasoning. That’s what tests exist to do, prevent people who lack the intellectual ability to practice law from hogging all the seats at Harvard. And, from the look of things, it’s not doing a very good job of it.
The Logic Games section is different from all other sections on the most popular standardized tests—the MCAT, GRE, GMAT, and SAT—because it’s unlike anything students learn in high school or college. The section relies heavily on formal logic, a concept rarely taught outside of high-level college mathematics or philosophy courses.
Formal logic? As opposed to, informal logic? Or what has become popularly known among humanities majors as their feelz? After all, if you’re not taught this “concept” of formal logic, then you obviously can’t be expected to be, you know, formally logical, right? And this is so unfair, it’s exhausting.
“I was a biology major. In college, I took three calculus classes, two physics classes, and six chemistry classes,” said Laurel Kandianis, a first-year law student at Temple Law School. “And still, when I got to the Logic Games section on the test, I completely blanked. I guessed on 11 of the questions and canceled my score.”
When she stands up before a court, a person’s life in her hands, and “completely blanks,” will she be able to cancel the execution?
This paean to ignorance is meant to demonstrate how poor students, unable to spend the time and money to take LSAT prep courses to teach them how to game the game, and thus snag the socioeconomic marginalized seat at HYS that will make society fair and just, must fail. It’s merely assumed by the patriarchally-challenged author that normal people can’t possibly be capable of logic. If you don’t learn how to win the game, you’re a loser. After, she couldn’t do it, and it couldn’t possibly be because she isn’t, well, very logical?
There is an alternate theory to consider, which unsurprisingly eludes the writer. This is the Age of Emotion, where your feelings matter more than anything remotely resembling reasoned thought. You’re rewarded for having the “right” feelz in high school, college and Facebook. How you get there is easy-peasy: mix up a word salad of meaningless jargon and, poof, you’re brilliant. All your friends say so. Your profs gush at your social justice sensibilities. You should be a lawyer, to change the world for the better!
Except they are all lying to you. Law requires the ability to think analytically. To reason. To draw logical connections, and separate out those things that aren’t relevant no matter how they make you feel. That this has become totally foreign to so many students isn’t a matter of not having been formally taught to think, but having been trained not to think. You’ve been taught that thinking is for squares and shitlords, and truthiness is all one needs to achieve intellectual purity.
It’s not your fault that you have a skull full of mush. The nice folks putatively paid to change that have forsaken their duty in favor of instilling in you their gender and racial politics, no matter how irrational it may be. After all, they are as enamored with their feelz as they want you to be. And they can rationalize it secure in the knowledge that it’s right, even if it’s totally illogical.
But that doesn’t mean the problem with the LSAT, with your woeful incapacity to do well on the Logic Games isn’t your fault. Your need to find an external excuse for your intellectual deficits, and to impute your irrationality to poor people under the misguided assumption that because you have mush for brains, they must too, is entirely your fault. If you were just a wee bit more logical, you would grasp that the crap shoved into your head was nothing more than crap. You would realize that you can overcome it. But only if you have intellectual capacity to begin with.
There are reasons why the poor are underrepresented at top law schools. The education offered them in public schools tends to be poor at best. And then it’s disrupted by a plethora of collateral problems, ranging from not having sufficient food to eat to not having support for the value of education. Not to mention disruption in school because of behavioral problems, or the cultural lack of appreciation of higher education. And yes, there is also the lowered expectations imposed on the poor by racism.
You might have understood that there are other reasons, sound reasons, why this phenomenon is happening. And if you did, you might be better able to look to solutions to these problems. But the one “answer” that you came up with, that the poor are too stupid to be capable of logic, is total bullshit. That you may be has nothing to do with them. Good thing you’re a writer, because at least you can’t harm anyone as a lawyer.
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I grew up poor, for the most part. (Ride on the back of mom’s bike to the foodstamp office, poor. Duct tape repairs to shoes, poor.) I didn’t go to college. I’m self-taught in my day job, which requires logic and analysis, and took the sample LSAT a few years ago — I got a 178. Some people, rich or poor, of any race, are more analytical naturally. When I hire a lawyer, I want one who comes by that naturally, not one who had to hire a tutor for it and force a change in his natural thought patterns.
But, but, but that’s not possible. Poor people can’t be capable of analytical reasoning. Oh wait.
I think there is a valid complaint (not stated and perhaps not understood by Caroline Kitchener, but reflected in a few of the comments below) that the ability to solve these logic games is, rather than an esoteric roadblock set up by The Man, a very useful life skill that should be, but isn’t, taught properly as part of the core K-12 education.
But…
I don’t necessarily buy this. I have noticed that some of the people who come by things “naturally” and don’t have to apply themselves never develop more than a superficial understanding of a field, while some of the people who have to struggle a bit can actually develop a deeper comprehension.
For example, my wife struggled terribly at high school with English — think D- student. Her writing has improved tremendously with age, and she has done things like editing newsletters for the PTA and a neighborhood association.
She’s a fantastic editor — even though writing still doesn’t come all that easily to her, she has an inherent grasp of where the pitfalls with comprehension are likely to lie. I’m sure I have read much more legal writing than the average layman, and I’m sure that my wife could be a potent tool for any lawyer struggling to make his written argument comprehensible. As a bonus, she’d be 30% under the page limit.
Cool personal anecdote, bro. That proves everything. Have you met my good pal, Dragoness Eclectic?
Yeah, I’m maudlin lately. No, I shouldn’t inflict it on the world.
The “logic game” of being able to do basic math is probably keeping a lot of people with lower socioeconomic backgrounds out of law school.
That’s unkind. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some very smart people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. And some not so smart people from other backgrounds. Problems abound, but innate intelligence isn’t one of them.
I think he means that the basic math of debt/employment outcomes is leading lower socioeconomic people to realize that law school is a bad idea financially.
Then I totally misread the comment. My bad.
I did find it rather quaint that the author decided to complain about the cost of LSAT prep. Between the cost of an undergraduate degree, the cost of law school, and the employment prospects of new law-school grads, it’s rather like complaining that the slope between the castle wall and the alligator-filled moat is too rocky.
Ironically, plopping down the $1k or whatever it costs for the LSAT course could very well be worth it if it boosts your LSAT score and allows you to snag a scholarship.
But then again, what do you expect from someone who, per her Linkedin page, is a 24 year old gender studies major?
I saw no point in noting that she was a gender studies major. It seem rather obvious.
Online self-paced study with Kaplan is $799, “Live Online” is $1299 (but currently a $180 discount is being offered) and the other methods are even more insane.
For a bunch of folks, that cost is more than worth it – if the private tutor service ($2599) gets you $450 bucks more a semester in sweet, sweet scholarship money, it has more than paid for itself, AND helped you get into the law school of your choice…
But the upfront cost could easily be outside the reach of a whole bunch of people.
You realize that the amount paid for test prep is the Logic Game, right? The person who pays nothing gets a perfect score.
Eh, Kaplan prep covers way more than just the logic portion…
If I could be certain that it would add 10 points to my LSAT, I’d call it money very well spent.
You just failed the humor portion. Minus 7 points. Here’s an app for Cooley.
Indeed. If I were a kid getting out of high school today, I would look at the cost of a university degree and a law degree, and weigh that against the highly uncertain prospects of even clearing the debt. All the more so if I didn’t have any money and was going to have to borrow it all. I would pursue some kind of a service business that can’t be outsourced to India, like HVAC or plumbing or auto mechanics or pool maintenance, and I would never go to law school.
It’s almost as if the collective cultural decision to make education focus on teaching students to think good rather than think well has had some negative consequences. Who’da thunk it?
You spelled “feel good” wrong.
I did at least a month of developing proofs in analytical geometry in high school, which is most certainly a form of formal logic. Was this unusual? Come to think of it, exactly how does one teach mathematics up through the 12th-grade level without formal reasoning?
You haven’t met new math, where 2 + 2 = whatever the hell you want it to.
Or as we say in the Field Artillery, roll the chicken bones, what’s the worst that could happen?
Any chance there’s a logic games captcha? That’d be fun.
Also: https://youtu.be/wNw6LINafQU
A logic games captcha would be fabulous. If only.
It would certainly cut down on some of the comments…
I see a bright future for you in the forensic sciences.
(You’ll have to lose the Math Captcha, though. They are not general enough.)
By understanding that knowledge is constructed by the student, so it is far less important that the student get an answer that is correct than it is for them to get an answet that feels correct in their personal experience.
Ditto, but that was decades ago. Do they still do that in high-school? I also took calculus, which doesn’t care about your “feelz”. In college or self-taught, you learn logic in Programming 101. You can’t write computer programs if you can’t think logically and analytically. It’s really hard to solve problems in general if you don’t know how to analyze them… which explains a lot of kids these days.
As for socio-economic status and reasoning: my mother-in-law is from rural, not-very-much-income southern family and never went to college. Some years back, she passed me some sample logic questions from an aptitude test for C-store managers. I solved them using formal logic transformations; she got the same correct answers by just looking at the questions and thinking about it. She’s a smart woman (and probably would have made a kick-ass lawyer, as she doesn’t put up with nonsense from anyone).
Cool story about your mother-in-law.
On a background note, what this sounds like is systems thinking (versus emotion). Women tend to be more emotional thinkers; men tend to think more as “systematizers” per Simon Baron-Cohen’s research — which isn’t to say women are incapable of systems thinking (or this sort of logic). I happen to be good at it and my best friend, who’s a woman who’s an engineering professor, must be good at it, because you need that sort of thinking for engineering.
PS Even as a person with a uterus, I was somehow able to master the Captcha below. Can I please have a cookie and the key to the women-only study lounge?
Must every woman ask for a cookie for completing the math captcha?
Better than Robert Heinlein’s voting idea: Make them solve a simple quadratic before the polling machine unlocks.
Sorry, it’s specifically empathizing versus systematizing.
Once again, I’m proud to say I mastered the captcha.
But not the reply button. No cookie.
Formal Logic, eh? No more of this false modesty about your math skills, Mr. Greenberg. Admit it. Calculating usurious interest rates is in your blood.
We learn that young at Jew School.
OK, that was pretty, perhaps a bit cruel or callous, but funny. I’m pretty sure it qualifies as a microaggression, though. But an amusing microaggression.
Somewhere a Vulcan is crying because of this article.
Too hard for her to accept that she’s incapable of analytical reasoning?
Wanted desperately to find a way to turn this into a social justice issue?
Atlantic needed clickbait, so went for low hanging SJW fruit (a la ATL)?
Hates poor people who are smarter than her?
Had tears in eyes and didn’t know what else to do with them?
BTW, been paying attention to DE since you pointed it out, and yeah, total pathological narcissist. Every comment is all about her, but she doesn’t grasp her sickness at all, even after you explicitly pointed it out to her. Fascinating and disturbing at the same time.
She’s not a bad sort, but yeah, fascinating to watch. Like a train wreck.
Look, I’ve figured it out, y’all just don’t like me. if I talk about my own experiences and those of people I know, I’m a “total pathological narcissist”. If I talk about people I’ve never met, I’m an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
I’d rather be thought a narcissist than an idiot. The one may be true–more likely, it’s ADHD with poor social skills, but the other is definitely not true.
On the contrary, if I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t publish your comments. After all, they add nothing to the discourse, provided your personal experiences aren’t fascinating to everyone on the internet because you are the most special person ever. In all sincerity, you really don’t grasp this at all, but since I’m a lawyer and not your therapist, you’ll have to look elsewhere if you want help.
I checked back here prepared to find I’d been reamed out; instead, you’ve said perhaps the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Thank you.
And yes, I know it’s a problem of mine going way back; it would probably help for me to stop typing and ask myself “Does everyone here *really* want to hear about this? Seriously?” I’ll work on that more.
Thank you.
I recommend the preparatory regimen I followed for the LSAT; go out the night before and get wasted. It worked for me.
As I dimly remember, the whole damn test was about reading comprehension and therefrom drawing conclusions. A good vocabulary helped. It didn’t strike me then as unfair. Maybe they changed the test since I took it.
And here I thought I was the only person who prepped like that.
Slackers. That’s how I passed the bar exam.
In defense of the author, I thought she had a pretty good point about the nature of the LSAT logic games themselves. Reading the original post, I was left wondering if SHG is actually familiar with how the logic games on the LSAT. They are analytic reasoning puzzles, but they represent a very specific, stylized form of analytical reasoning. You can very smart, and very logical, and still not know how to solve them.
I will share my personal experience with the LSAT logic games. I am now a senior associate in a very technical field of law. I wasn’t a STEM major, but I took through Calculus II in college, and did well. However, as soon as I saw a sample LSAT test, I knew those logic games were going to take up most of my prep time. I understood the questions, but I didn’t know how to solve them, let alone, how to so quickly. Because there is a specific set of steps you have to take to solve them. I had seen such puzzles as “bonus questions” a few times in high school, but that was it. I dimly recalled someone had once said you had to make a chart to solve them, but I had no clue how to go about that.
The point I’m trying to make, and that I think the author of the article is trying to make, is that logic games are a specific skill that has to be taught. Other those few “puzzles” that were thrown at us in high school, I had never done the kind of formal logic games that are on the LSAT, even with a very solid eduation. The joke about “informal logic” aside, “formal logic” is a real thing that classes are offered in (Google it) and this is the kind of problems that are on the LSAT (//www.griffonprep.com/logicgame.html). Unless you have taken a class that taught formal logic, that part of the LSAT can be disproportionately difficult. If you are very smart, you could muscle through on sheer brain power, but if you’ve taken a class it will be much easier (and this being a timed test, that matters).
In my opinion, it is possible to pass the rest of the LSAT simply by being smart, widely read, and having a critical mind, but the logic games are a very specific skill. Once you have the skill, then the games can test how analytical you are, but you must know how to do them in the first place. Which is what I understood the author’s point to be–people who can afford extensive pretest preparation (or had this in school) have a real advantage over people who have never learned to do this kind of logic puzzle. I don’t doubt my LSAT score would have been a few points higher if I had had a tutor rather than teaching myself how to do the logic games. My score was fine and I went to a very good school, but a few points can make a huge difference, especially in getting a scholarship (which is very important for the poor).
So, although I often agree that today’s young lawyers often lack in intellectual rigor, I don’t think this is a sign of it, nor is the author 100% wrong. Aspiring lawyers who can afford tutors will have a advantage because of that section more than any other section. Therefore, I don’t think this is the best target for mocking people for only learning “feelz.” You can learn a lot very substantive things, and not learn this specific skill. Nor is the right way to solve a logic game something you are ever likely to use in the course of your legal career.
I also don’t think that author saying the poor are not capable of logic. She’s saying the poor may not have the opportunity to learn how to solve a very specific type of logic puzzle on a timed exam. That’s a fair objection to the test format. Whether the test should be changed is another issue, but I think she raises a valid point.
I am going to hide under my desk now, since I’m sure this comment is about to be torn to shreds.
As is my usual way, I read the first paragraph of an absurdly long comment to decide whether it’s worth my time. I am familiar with analytical reasoning on the LSAT. From what I’m told by others, it’s not a big deal to people capable of analytical reasoning. Your mileage may vary.
While I’m sure your personal anecdote is remarkably fascinating, I will leave it to others to enjoy/discuss. I decline.
So if i want you to read the entirety of any hypothetical future long winded drug addled rabbit hole rants all I have to do is not break it into paragraphs? Asking for a friend.
Paragraph breaks help, but not enough.
Porter, I google searched “LSAT logic games” and took the first example test. It was easy without even having to use chart. I have not taken or practiced such a test in almost 20 years. I’ve never had formal training for how to do it, I have those skills naturally. It is exactly as J.A. Sutherland describes in the very first post here. Go read it again, along with the other posts that are contrary to yours.
Let’s not forget that this “very specific skill” is sufficiently amenable to self-teaching that it forms the subject of newspaper game sections and newsstand puzzle books, sold to the general public. People do this stuff for fun.
“The price of logic” is about 12 bucks on Amazon (even cheaper in the bargain bin at the Dollar Store).
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]
There’s always the library, for those with sufficient initiative.
Elaborating without the presumptuous link (sorry-I shoulda done it this way the first time): both the library and Amazon offer book after book of “Logic Puzzles,” plenty of training for those horrid analytical questions on the GRE/LSAT/MCAT, sans economic barrier.
(I routinely recommend these books to undergrads, but do people really do these horrid puzzles for fun?)
I enjoy logic games, but then, that’s me. I don’t know whether it matters if you enjoy them, learn them from books or test prep, or just think analytically, but that the idea that logical thinking is, in itself, foreign to what people are capable of doing.
Not everyone is good with analytical thinking, which is fine. But then, not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer, which is also fine. What is not fine is ignoring this (or pretending it isn’t true), learning to circumvent one’s intellectual limitations and becoming a lawyer when you’re not cut out for it. Then, you suck at law, are miserable, but most importantly, aren’t good at it to your client’s detriment. That’s not fine at all.
TL;DR Version
I don’t think she’s saying the poor are stupid, nor do I think this is because people are only learning “feelz.” Unlike the rest of the LSAT, the logic games are much easier if you have learned the specific techniques used to solve them, like how to make charts to find the solution. It’s possible for someone to go through college (and take rigorous classes like Calculus) and never learn the “tricks” to solving these kinds of puzzles. People who didn’t take a class that included formal training in logic will be at a disadvantage, and if they can’t afford an LSAT prep class, that may seriously impact their score. Moreover, unlike the other sections of the LSAT, although analytical reasoning will serve you well as a lawyer, knowing how to solve a formal logic puzzle is not a skill you are likely to need in your career. The author’s conclusions are far too broad and melodramatic, but she raises a valid point about the nature of the logic games.
Would it make you sad to learn that others did not share your struggle with logic games? One of the problems with a personal anecdote is that it’s deductively useless but inductively damning. Protip: don’t assume that you’re the norm unless you are prepared to learn otherwise in an unpleasant way. This is a corollary to never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
The solution is just for people to play more Minesweeper and less Far Cry.
Alternatively, they can go play pretty much any of the Everett Kaser games. I favor Sherlock, myself. It’s a lot cheaper than redoing the entire educational system, that’s for sure.
(seriously, they’re the best logic game company I’ve ever seen.)
And not to be TOO much of a jerk here, but when I see
“I was a biology major. In college, I took three calculus classes, two physics classes, and six chemistry classes”
My gut reaction was “what classes precisely, at what school, and with what GPA?” Because I note nothing about how well the author did.
Some college courses are advanced. Some college courses are merely the equivalent of high school AP classes. I have no idea whether she means “six chemistry classes” to equate to “one year each of organic, inorganic, and physical” or whether it’s “one year of intro and one semester of organic, with labs.”
Same goes for everything else. hell, I’d have two more semesters of “college calculus,” but I took them in high school instead.
Given her whining I do not want to give her the benefit of the doubt.
She isn’t actually arguing that lower income folks can’t think analytically. She’s arguing that most college grands can’t. Thus, wealthier kids can spend more money on test prep and do better. Assuming the first part is true (and her anecdotal evidence isn’t very compelling), the answer isn’t to teach poor students to learn specific tricks, but to look at what’s going wrong with education. As to the second point, wealthier folks have advantages, that’s just life.
The second part is what she believes she’s arguing, but because the first part is false (no one can do well with analytical reasoning unless they’re specially prepped), and because her assumption is false (test prep is the reason why poor people can’t get into good law schools), her third part is just offensive to poor people.
That rich or poor, it’s good to have money, is a truism.
In the future, we’ll have computers to assist us in every endeavor, so soon you should be allowed to bring your personal AI into the test with you, just as you can use a calculator on some tests now.
You could have an AI, written in Lisp or Prolog or C+= to help you out. Whichever you prefer. I’m sure they will all perform about the same.
“The traditional LSAT prep companies play this game where they lock up their information. They have the information you need to solve the Logic Games, so what are you going to do about it?”
What, there’s proprietary (formal) logic now?
I take it that she’ll never realize how the bit about LSAT prep now being freely available kinda undercuts her lede (not that “How the internet levels the playing field for the poor and anyone who wasted $250,000 on a worthless degree” would get as many page views). I also wonder if she double checked how foreign students — especially those from non-english speaking countries, like, say, Vietnam — who presumably have even less access to LSAT prep, do on the section….
I hope for their sake that all the free prep material is ADA-compliant.
On a related note, and in keeping with the author’s implication that poor people might need accomodation, and remembering that Pew’s surveys say that computers are a middle-class luxury, any bets on how long until a 9th circuit court rules that web material that works better on a desktop than a smartphone is discriminatory?
I finally figured out a few years ago that “thinking outside the box” was so inclusive it included Anything At All Why Not & Cheetos All Around.
Cheetos all around is just a cheap ploy to meet girls. You’re not fooling me.
Sure. Inexpensive though.
I’m not a native english speaker, so, sorry if this sounds a little bit off.
While I agree with you, I want to add that the text you’re quoting makes a good point:
“The section relies heavily on formal logic, a concept rarely taught outside of high-level college mathematics or philosophy courses.”
I theorize, and it’s something I would love to know if it has been tested anywhere, It would be really good for society if children were teached formal logic and rethoric aside the usual courses. I think it would have positive impact in study and behaviour.
People like Caroline would become increasingly rare as society would grow to become more resistant to ideologues, demagogy and manipulation.
There was a time when logic and rhetoric were routinely taught, but it was hard so it was watered down until it disappeared. That’s how we got to this point.
And some day the same will be said about gender studies….
Will they say gender studies was too hard? I don’t know if that’s definitionally possible.