June 2009 LSAT PrepTest 57 Logic Game 4, 18-23.. Zen Wants: HP Touchsmart tm2t as law school laptop.. Personal Statement, Harvard Law School.. Zen Student Journal: New Vistas after 10 Point Increase..
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June 2009 LSAT PrepTest 57 Logic Game 4, 18-23
I've finally gotten around to making a new pencast for the logic games in PrepTest 57. Hopefully posting by individual game will help me keep on track with my goal to have all the modern PrepTests finished before the September 2010 LSAT date.
Zen Wants: HP Touchsmart tm2t as law school laptop After doing some research, I decided on how I want to approach taking notes and studying for law school classes. Even though I've been on a two-year hiatus from strenuous academic coursework, I've picked up some nifty tech skills in my quest to engage my students that I hope will apply to my own work as a student.
And since Microsoft OneNote appears to be the note-taking choice du jour, I figured I'd go with an ultraportable laptop with a keyboard and full operating system--i.e. no consumption-only iPad--that can also serve as a convertible tablet for my artistic and logic games tutoring side.
Here are some of the more relevant video introductions/reviews of the HP Touchsmart tm2t, and as soon as I get my laptop loan, I'll let you know what I think of it.
I can't imagine a note-taking situation where I would use the tablet to recognize my handwriting like in the video below, but the ability to draw in diagrams and highlight text in the heat of the moment sounds wonderful.
Personal Statement, Harvard Law School Now that my admission cycle is basically over--still waiting to hear back from Stanford--I feel comfortable posting the final version of my Harvard Law School personal statement. As I went through the writing process, I knew that I would have to address my Teach For America experience in a meaningful way. Incorporating a story about a student I taught into my personal statement seemed to be the easiest and most effective way to convey what I learned from them during my two year commitment. It took a long time--and many edits and suggestions from friends and family--to hone the story into a coherent message about my hopes for a career in intellectual property law.
“Do you make these every day?” my student George asks, staring down at the packet of worksheets. I nod and then hand out snacks to the students diligently following along in their guided notes with my prerecorded interactive lecture. George isn’t interested. He struts toward the front of the room. His one good eye—the other was made useless by a head injury years ago—travels from the windows facing the cloudy sky across to the larger-than-life-size hanging posters of students’ work. I follow his gaze, where the order of operations process chart stands out from the others. A few weeks ago, I encouraged George to use crayons on that worksheet, and he broke down the problems into color-coded steps—purple parentheses, emerald exponents. George transformed my original handout into a functional, cleanly executed work of art: a riot of color that made the other students’ black and white worksheets appear lifeless.
George knows the answer, but he asks anyway: “Is that mine?”
I nod, and something clicks for me. George needs to experience success before he will desire success. His participation in a culture that values his learning process and effort convinces him that my/our/his math class is worth the time, but his participation depends on my efforts to make the class accessible to him. George walks calmly to his seat and works for the rest of the hour we have together, transforming another worksheet I created into his own product of learning.
The potential to equalize the dissemination of and access to knowledge is one reason I joined Teach For America. Imagine if, instead of allowing George to use color on his order of operations worksheet, I had insisted he interact with the handout only in the way I had originally intended all students to use it, as a regimented template for guided notes. If I had treated my intellectual property the way most corporations and artists treat their products, George would have been disenfranchised from the class and his right to learn; my classroom would have had a lesser exemplar for students to reference. Surely the balance should fall more equally between my right to choose how to impart knowledge and my students’ right to seek and apply their learning.
Information has traditionally been controlled by those with extensive resources to filter it. For the first time in history, the infrastructure—the Internet—exists that can not only catalogue the majority of that knowledge but also allow everyone to access and analyze it. As technologies increase the level of detail we understand inside the nucleus and beyond our galaxy, the scale of human knowledge will grow exponentially; thus decisions to control access to new information will have ever-expanding ramifications.
I believe that the right to universal Internet access and participation, the most equitable distribution model yet developed, must be guaranteed. Unless stakeholders with the resources to take concerted international legal action fight for the disenfranchised, I fear that the 75 percent of the world’s population without Internet access will continue to respond as my students do: They will not fight for knowledge because they have experienced only the lack of it. If the rights to access the Internet, find and analyze relevant information, and contribute to global conversations are not protected and expanded, the gap in knowledge distribution will only increase.
With a law degree, I will be able to play a part in setting the appropriate balance among the competing interests of the producers, distributors, and consumers of knowledge. Although much of the progress needs to be made within the business spheres of distribution models and alternative revenue streams, such transformations will take place only with prodding legislation and strict oversight. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s commitment to exploring and shaping intellectual property law, combined with the potential for a dual degree from the world’s premier business school, convinces me that I would be best able to ensure equal access to knowledge with a degree from Harvard Law School.
Zen Student Journal: New Vistas after 10 Point Increase Since my first session with Mr. Bennett, I have made a lot of progress in all of the areas that we have worked together on. In my last few practice tests I have climbed into a different "tier" of schools because of my raised LSAT scores.
When I first started working with Mr. Bennett my LSAT score was around a 164-165, which had me looking at schools such as George Washington, Notre Dame, Boston College, and Boston University as possible law school destinations. After only a few weeks my outlook on schools has changed because I have consistently been scoring ~175. This has moved my focus to schools solely within in the Top 14; even Harvard and Yale seem like viable options with over 2 months left of studying until the June 2010 exam.
A lot of people view this jump from a 164 to a 175 as a huge difference in test scores; however, in terms of raw score the difference is not as large as one would believe it to be. It is only a difference of 9 questions on most exams. By attacking around three or four Zen task strandswith Mr. Bennett, I was able to close this gap in just two weeks. I am now able to intuitively choose answers from the outset of problems by using paraphrasing techniques and understanding the language the LSAT creators use to trip up unwary test takers. With this ability, the LSAT now is easier to understand and the process of eliminating answers is very rarely an issue. When you are able to understand the language throughout the LSAT, the test becomes very basic in nature. To me, this raised test score and understanding is well worth the time and effort spent to achieve it because it opens my options immensely for the admissions process.
If I were to score in the range that I have settled upon at a score of 175, I will have more presumptive acceptances as calculated by LSAT and GPA--almost all of the T14 with some outside as safety schools. Such a high LSAT score will allow me to use acceptances and scholarship offers at different schools to bargain different financial aid packages at various institutions. This greater flexibility, especially in this economy, may offer me a chance at little debt upon graduation.
Aside from the scholarship potential, I now have the option to attend some of the best schools in the country, which I formerly never dreamed of attending. My application process is becoming more exciting and intriguing as I keep scoring at such a high level because it provides me with more viable avenues, not only in my law school choice, but also career options.
This feeling of excitement is something that I wish everyone could feel about the law school application process. By allowing myself to focus on the LSAT, I have been able to see improvement that I never would have thought to be possible, especially in such sort time. I owe this excitement to Mr. Bennett and his services because he got the ball rolling and the success has snowballed since.
Harvard Law School Acceptance Karma
I'm incredibly happy to post that Zen of 180 is officially expanding into a new genre of blog: Harvard Law School experience.
In addition to blogging about the LSAT and the law school admissions process, I'll also be providing color commentary for my own upcoming law school experience. I can't wait to analyze the welcome packet and report to you all on my findings. If you're interested in my application cycle, I have it posted on lawschoolnumbers.com
For now, beware the Harvard acceptance--what the kids are calling a JR2 these days--as it has the predictable result of bringing bad karma.
Logical Reasoning Zen Task Standard: Resolve Discrepancy As we mentioned, during the spring we'll be going through the 22 different Zen task standards on the logical reasoning section of the LSAT. We feel that this LSAT classification system is more comprehensive than other methods of categorizing the section, as it not only breaks down the section by question stem, but how to perform the task to receive credit.
For today we'll explain how we approach one of the tasks, resolve the discrepancy, which is where the LSAT asks you to choose from a list of possible explanations the one that best explains two seemingly contradictory elements from the stimulus.
While this task is prompted by several different question stems, as exemplified by the sample one we chose below, the LSAT has, in general, codified their question stems since 2007. On modern LSATs, the most common versions of this question stems are:
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain the difference between [piece 1 of stimulus] and [piece 2 of stimulus]?
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent [discrepancy] described above?
These two different structures also often correspond with different stimulus structures, with the former for lengthier stimuli--with lots of evidence--and the latter for short stimuli with conflicting principles.
The key to correctly answering a resolve the discrepancy question is to highlight the two conflicting portions of the stimulus and prephrase the type of evidence needed to explain their relationship. As with depends upon assuming, the goal is not to describe the specific evidence--as the LSAT answers will invariably mention the "correct" parts--but rather the gap in relationship between the two pieces of the stimulus
The example we chose for this task is taken from the Sample Questions with Explanations document on LSAC's website. You should be actively reading the stimulus and marking it with both highlighter and pencil, focusing on identifying the two different pieces of the stimulus and their relationship. If the question stem is of the lengthier variety, actively marking the stimulus should be much easier as the LSAT has already spelled out the two conflicting pieces.
The orange highlighted text of the question stem is a fairly standard version of the modern LSATs. The LSAT tells you to pay attention to the two different ways the Romans used--or didn't use--water power in their empire, specifically in outlying parts and large cities, respectively.
The correct prephase after reading the stimulus should be something along the lines of:
I need evidence that shows why it was harder to use water power in cities than in outlying provinces.
Or, the contrapositive:
I need evidence that shows why it was easier to use water power in outlying cities than in cities.
Answer choice E mentions all the necessary evidence in the correct relationship from the prephrase. It describes wow in one of the regions from the stimulus, the cities, the extensive use of water power would cause a negative reaction, social unrest, which would not occur in the outlying provinces.
Note that there are thousands of possible reasons why the Roman cities might not depend on water power; the specificity of this answer with social unrest as the cause is a perfect example of why it's impossible to prephrase the answer choice. The distractors below all have relevant pieces of evidence, they are just presented in the incorrect relationship.
Distractor choice A mentions the large cities, but provides us with a reason why water power should have been feasible for them. Thus it is exactly the opposite of what we're looking for.
Distractor choice B is similar to choice A in that it mentions the cities and then quickly tells us that there was substantial water throughout the year. "Some seasonal variation" is not nearly strong enough of a negative to provide the explanation we're looking for.
