Any Reading Material to Help With Science Knowledge For LSAT?

[Kobe]

As title says I am looking for ways to improve my knowledge of core concepts in science as a way to improve on reading comp science passages. 

 

If anyone has other ways to improve on science RC passages please let me know. I have a wide range of scores in RC anywhere from -9 to -4 and generally when I bomb a section its the science passage I struggle with. 

[Whist]

Out of the many PTs I did, only one RC question ever touched on a scientific topic I was familiar with. Granted, my major wasn't chemical engineering or anything like that, but it involved reading a lot of scientific literature for my field.

RCs aren't meant to test knowledge you already have, which is why they're often niche topics. "Core concepts of science" is so incredibly broad that it's a useless term. Your best bet to improve is to practice reading dense literature outside of the LSAT on a variety of topics. Also, you're allowed scrap paper during the test - if you're struggling with a passage, you can make quick notes to help keep your working memory in order.

[Kobe]

14 minutes ago, Liavas said:

Out of the many PTs I did, only one RC question ever touched on a scientific topic I was familiar with. Granted, my major wasn't chemical engineering or anything like that, but it involved reading a lot of scientific literature for my field.

RCs aren't meant to test knowledge you already have, which is why they're often niche topics. "Core concepts of science" is so incredibly broad that it's a useless term. Your best bet to improve is to practice reading dense literature outside of the LSAT on a variety of topics. Also, you're allowed scrap paper during the test - if you're struggling with a passage, you can make quick notes to help keep your working memory in order.

I guess I should be more specific in that I am not looking for some sort of rundown on topics but more to understand the scientific process in general and its history. It seems every Science RC passage follows the same layout of phenomenon, old explanation, new explanation opinion of the author. I think reading more stories like this and being comfortable thinking in that way would be of use but this could be off base. 

So for clarity when I say core concepts I mean what is core to all science or the story of science. So I do not think it is useless at all but instead lacking clarity. As I think you would need to concede that the scientific method is core to all science. I think it went without saying this is what I was looking for but I apologize, I see now my writing left this unclear and I agree trying to learn about a single topic will not help but being more comfortable with the way science evolves seems to be important. Although maybe you may disagree on this. 

I do appreciate the advice on making notes, I have started to make small summaries which helps, and has gotten me closer to the upper range of the -9 to -4 range I mentioned. Right now this is the only section really holding back my score so any help is much appreciated. I have scored in the high 160s even with weaker RC but I am trying to sure up this section so I don't have huge variances in scores (right now I swing between 163 to 169). 

 

 

[Telephantasm]

1 hour ago, Kobe said:

I guess I should be more specific in that I am not looking for some sort of rundown on topics but more to understand the scientific process in general and its history. It seems every Science RC passage follows the same layout of phenomenon, old explanation, new explanation opinion of the author. I think reading more stories like this and being comfortable thinking in that way would be of use but this could be off base. 

So for clarity when I say core concepts I mean what is core to all science or the story of science. So I do not think it is useless at all but instead lacking clarity. As I think you would need to concede that the scientific method is core to all science. I think it went without saying this is what I was looking for but I apologize, I see now my writing left this unclear and I agree trying to learn about a single topic will not help but being more comfortable with the way science evolves seems to be important. Although maybe you may disagree on this. 

I do appreciate the advice on making notes, I have started to make small summaries which helps, and has gotten me closer to the upper range of the -9 to -4 range I mentioned. Right now this is the only section really holding back my score so any help is much appreciated. I have scored in the high 160s even with weaker RC but I am trying to sure up this section so I don't have huge variances in scores (right now I swing between 163 to 169). 

 

 

I can't imagine that this would be remotely helpful. The questions test your ability to understand concepts and draw inferences from readings situated in a particular context. These skills don't change across topics. The science passages didn't work any different muscles than the non-science passages when I wrote the LSAT. I can pretty much guarantee that anything you use to prep in this vein will not come in handy during the exam. What will come in handy is doing a lot of practice questions across various disciplines so as to get a handle on the typical structure of questions.

Edited July 18, 2021 by Telephantasm

[Kobe]

1 hour ago, Telephantasm said:

I can't imagine that this would be remotely helpful. The questions test your ability to understand concepts and draw inferences from readings situated in a particular context. These skills don't change across topics. The science passages didn't work any different muscles than the non-science passages when I wrote the LSAT. I can pretty much guarantee that anything you use to prep in this vein will not come in handy during the exam. What will come in handy is doing a lot of practice questions across various disciplines so as to get a handle on the typical structure of questions.

Interesting, it seems a lot of people are divided on the subject of if the actual subject matter at hand matters. I think one of the reasons I do better on the social sciences passages is the familiarity in reading these kind of passages. For example, I did a PT recently scored 169 -4 on LR(-2 on each LR), -2 on LG and -5 on RC, in the RC 4 of those wrong answers were within a 8 question science passage (this was the absolute best I have ever done and may be an outlier). In this sense I see that passage hurt my score tremendously and I do notice more wrong answers coming from science RC than other types. 

I do appreciate the input on thinking another way be more beneficial though. Maybe focusing on practicing as many science RC passages as possible could be more effective, but I also would be using my method to supplement my studying by having my regular reading (which I do anyway) in someway connected to my studies. 

Anyway, maybe it's of no benefit but the opportunity cost is nothing. 

[Goblin King]

I went -0 on my RC section on test day so here's my two cents. I think the actual content of the passage doesn't matter, but you should be comfortable extracting the core arguments of relatively complex material from a variety of fields. Something that helped my RC was reading magazines that often did analytical deep dives. This is because their complexity and style were usually similar to that of the RC passages I encountered (somewhere between an academic journal article and a newspaper).  I've put the ones that helped/interested me the most below and sorted them by field in case that helps you. You can find a lot of articles online and subscriptions are fairly cheap.

Social Sciences, Business, and Politics:

• The Economist 
• Foreign Affairs 
• The New Yorker (also good for arts)
• Bloomberg Businessweek
• The Atlantic 

Science and Tech: 

• Wired 
• Popular Science 
• National Geographic 
• Scientific American

Arts and Culture:

• Time 
• Vanity Fair 
• Monocle

Best of luck!

[Kobe]

1 minute ago, Goblin King said:

I went -0 on my RC section on test day so here's my two cents. I think the actual content of the passage doesn't matter, but you should be comfortable extracting the core arguments of relatively complex material from a variety of fields. Something that helped my RC was reading magazines that often did analytical deep dives. This is because their complexity and style were usually similar to that of the RC passages I encountered (somewhere between an academic journal article and a newspaper).  I've put the ones that helped/interested me the most below and sorted them by field in case that helps you. You can find a lot of articles online and subscriptions are fairly cheap.

Social Sciences, Business, and Politics:

• The Economist 
• Foreign Affairs 
• The New Yorker (also good for arts)
• Bloomberg Businessweek
• The Atlantic 

Science and Tech: 

• Wired 
• Popular Science 
• National Geographic 
• Scientific American

Arts and Culture:

• Time 
• Vanity Fair 
• Monocle

Best of luck!

Thank you so much! I am an avid reader of the Economist and I actually think that sort of helps too. I will check out a lot of these very appreciated. Pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Art is another that bores me, maybe trying to take an interest in it will help the passage not feel as boring LOL.

Hoping I get to -0 as well! 

 

[SoIWantToBeALawyer]

This is going to go a little against what you’re looking for but I think what helped me a lot with RC was accepting that I’m not going to know every term I see.
 

As someone who stopped taking science classes as soon as I could, science passages made me nervous. During my first few pts I would panic every time I came across a word I didn’t know and waste way too much time trying to figure out what it meant, when it usually didn’t really matter. At some point, I started highlighting the words I didn’t know so I could speed read the passage and come back to the word if I was confused by the passage because of it it or I wasn’t able to answer a question, this really helped me. 
 

of course reading some articles and becoming more familiar with some concepts wouldn’t hurt but it’s important to remember that they’re not expecting us to be experts and we shouldn’t dwell on understanding every concept or word in the RC. 
 

 

[dimsum1]

11 hours ago, Kobe said:

Art is another that bores me, maybe trying to take an interest in it will help the passage not feel as boring LOL.

Part of the RC challenge is to "power through" those one or two passages that you have no interest in, or don't really understand the content.  

The way I went about it is not caring about the actual content but just look at how the passage is organized...almost to the point of replacing dense tech/science words with "widget" or "orange".  The questions won't test you on what exactly those technical terms mean, but how they fit into the overall passage.  

Hope that helps.

[QueensDenning]

LSAT doesn't test science knowledge, it tests reading comprehension. Science knowledge isn't going to help you (regardless of the fact that one of your RC passages will be on the topic of science). 

Edited July 19, 2021 by QueensDenning

[Kobe]

20 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

LSAT doesn't test science knowledge, it tests reading comprehension. Science knowledge isn't going to help you (regardless of the fact that one of your RC passages will be on the topic of science). 

Not into debating this point. As I said before I think being comfortable reading science material that is written in a hard way will help. I think I have a good grasp on the test I have been able to already score in the high 160s so I think I understand what is being tested. But thanks for nothing ! 

9 hours ago, SoIWantToBeALawyer said:

This is going to go a little against what you’re looking for but I think what helped me a lot with RC was accepting that I’m not going to know every term I see.
 

As someone who stopped taking science classes as soon as I could, science passages made me nervous. During my first few pts I would panic every time I came across a word I didn’t know and waste way too much time trying to figure out what it meant, when it usually didn’t really matter. At some point, I started highlighting the words I didn’t know so I could speed read the passage and come back to the word if I was confused by the passage because of it it or I wasn’t able to answer a question, this really helped me. 
 

of course reading some articles and becoming more familiar with some concepts wouldn’t hurt but it’s important to remember that they’re not expecting us to be experts and we shouldn’t dwell on understanding every concept or word in the RC. 
 

 

I think this is good advice, part of wanting to read more science material is exactly that, seeing new words and not giving up. I have seen some progress in this regard by trying to tell myself as I am reading that this is a really interesting passage. 

I thank you for the advice! 

[Kobe]

2 hours ago, dimsum1 said:

Part of the RC challenge is to "power through" those one or two passages that you have no interest in, or don't really understand the content.  

The way I went about it is not caring about the actual content but just look at how the passage is organized...almost to the point of replacing dense tech/science words with "widget" or "orange".  The questions won't test you on what exactly those technical terms mean, but how they fit into the overall passage.  

Hope that helps.

This does help for sure, I have started writing like two or three words to remind me what each paragraph is doing and that certainly helps. 

The thought in reading science is to be able to come across more new words and be able to imagine what they mean. This is core from what I have noticed to RC. Where a question asks to infer something based on a certain paragraph. I feel your strategy would be useful in doing that. 

Thank you for the advice!

[QueensDenning]

51 minutes ago, Kobe said:

Not into debating this point. As I said before I think being comfortable reading science material that is written in a hard way will help. I think I have a good grasp on the test I have been able to already score in the high 160s so I think I understand what is being tested. But thanks for nothing ! 

I wasn't trying to debate, just giving my advice, the same advice that was once given to me and that I found helpful - I scored perfect on RC (in my opinion, largely due to strategies, none of which included reading science material beyond previous LSAT tests). Each to their own, but no need to be an asshole. Oh well. 

Edit: if you think your science knowledge is being tested, you are simply wrong - which is NOT to say that reading "science material that is written in a hard way," whatever that means, won't help. Maybe it will.

Edited July 19, 2021 by QueensDenning

[Kobe]

20 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

I wasn't trying to debate, just giving my advice, the same advice that was once given to me and that I found helpful - I scored perfect on RC (in my opinion, largely due to strategies, none of which included reading science material beyond previous LSAT tests). Each to their own, but no need to be an asshole. Oh well. 

Edit: if you think your science knowledge is being tested, you are simply wrong - which is NOT to say that reading "science material that is written in a hard way," whatever that means, won't help. Maybe it will.

This time you give advice, the first one was just to say you don't think it will be helpful without any addition of what might actually be helpful like literally everyone else did. I could argue you came off like an asshole as well. It does make you sound like a know-it-all to not even acknowledge that this could be helpful (I recognize in your second post you did) without even a hint at what you might consider helpful. 

Anyway, sorry if I came off like an asshole but the first post was not helpful in anyway, your last comment was so I thank you for that. 

Edit: Also sorry for my sloppy english, it should have read something like reading science articles, journals, books etc. which are written for a reading level you may find in an academic journal, would be helpful so far as aiding my ability to imagine in my mind's eye what is being discussed. Which I would argue is exactly what RC is testing (your ability to comprehend what you read). 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Kobe

[QueensDenning]

11 minutes ago, Kobe said:

This time you give advice, the first one was just to say you don't think it will be helpful without any addition of what might actually be helpful like literally everyone else did. I could argue you came off like an asshole as well. It does make you sound like a know-it-all to not even acknowledge that this could be helpful (I recognize in your second post you did) without even a hint at what you might consider helpful. 

Anyway, sorry if I came off like an asshole but the first post was not helpful in anyway, your last comment was so I thank you for that. 

Edit: Also sorry for my sloppy english, it should have read something like reading science articles, journals, books etc. which are written for a reading level you may find in an academic journal, would be helpful so far as aiding my ability to imagine in my mind's eye what is being discussed. Which I would argue is exactly what RC is testing (your ability to comprehend what you read). 

I get it - I apologize if my comment came off ass-holy (also, sorry for commenting on your phrasing - that was certainly me being an asshole - you have nothing to apologize for there). I was trying to be helpful, though, as it's totally logical to think (1) I don't understand the scientific dogma so (2) I should read scientific dogma to familiarize myself with it. In my experience, however, it hasn't helped (as your RC passage on test day will almost certainly contains words and concepts that you wouldn't have seen during your reading of the scientific articles and what not). In my opinion, it's more helpful to embrace the fact that you're not going to be as comfortable with the science passages, and focus more on the structure of the passage as others have mentioned. Anyways, best of luck!

[Disbarred]

I had a major break through in RC when I stopped trying to “game” the test and stopped listening to weird highlighting/skimming/re-reading strategies. 
 

RC tests your reading comprehension, so I quite literally just slowly read each passage at my own pace until I understood it (one good read not two). And then I answered the questions. I very rarely had to go back to the passage at all, and scored close to perfect going forward after this, including on the actual test. 

[Kobe]

37 minutes ago, QueensDenning said:

I get it - I apologize if my comment came off ass-holy (also, sorry for commenting on your phrasing - that was certainly me being an asshole - you have nothing to apologize for there). I was trying to be helpful, though, as it's totally logical to think (1) I don't understand the scientific dogma so (2) I should read scientific dogma to familiarize myself with it. In my experience, however, it hasn't helped (as your RC passage on test day will almost certainly contains words and concepts that you wouldn't have seen during your reading of the scientific articles and what not). In my opinion, it's more helpful to embrace the fact that you're not going to be as comfortable with the science passages, and focus more on the structure of the passage as others have mentioned. Anyways, best of luck!

Thank you for the advice and good wishes! Although to early to tell I think this strategy is helping me where by to write a couple words in order to keep track of the structure of the article. Now just to put this to use, RC is standing between me and 17x haha!

Also, side note I appreciate how can we set off the conversation wrong between us and still ends up giving value.

28 minutes ago, Disbarred said:

I had a major break through in RC when I stopped trying to “game” the test and stopped listening to weird highlighting/skimming/re-reading strategies. 
 

RC tests your reading comprehension, so I quite literally just slowly read each passage at my own pace until I understood it (one good read not two). And then I answered the questions. I very rarely had to go back to the passage at all, and scored close to perfect going forward after this, including on the actual test. 

How do you draw the line in terms of time? Did practice make you read the passages more effectively? I find sometimes doing one really close read of each passage sometimes has me running up against the clock at the end. 

I assume it's just practice but maybe you had some insight there.

Thank you for sharing this!

[Disbarred]

20 hours ago, Kobe said:

How do you draw the line in terms of time? Did practice make you read the passages more effectively? I find sometimes doing one really close read of each passage sometimes has me running up against the clock at the end. 

I assume it's just practice but maybe you had some insight there.

Thank you for sharing this!

I found that when I read slowly until I understood the passage, it actually made me go faster overall because I often flew through the questions. 
I would try to not worry about time at all, better to ace the first 3 and a half passages and guess/go fast through the last 2 or 3 questions than rush the whole section. 
 

To add to my previous post, aside from very rare instances, I would only go back to the passage for the questions that make specific line references, otherwise I found that I knew the answer/had a good enough guess so it was worth moving on. 

[AllanC]

I’ll offer a slightly different take:

I agree with those above that suggest, at a fundamental level, subject matter should not pose an impediment to the task at hand. After all, your task is to retain and critically think about the information they provide you with. That doesn’t change no matter what the subject!

However, it would be silly to suggest that it should be just as easy to retain and critically analyze a passage on a topic that one has never heard of before as it is for one on a subject that one knows well (for the same level of difficulty). And in that sense, having a broad familiarity with the topics you are going to be reading about can be rather helpful.

Certainly, this is something which we all have to contend with! For me, it is art history and the like. When it’s a mix of dates and historical figures, with no connecting logic, I have a terrible time retaining info. On the other hand, if it’s about economics, law, statistics or of a similar ilk I will have no issue retaining information because I can relate the concepts to those to which I am already familiar.

Put simply: familiarity with subject matter helps.

That said, despite my strong belief that familiarity is useful I wouldn’t suggest reading about particular subjects outside the LSAT for this purpose. The reason is that the number of concepts one would need to read about (and understand) in order to be assured of usefulness on a single given administration is, well, daunting. If anything, you would be better off reading more passages and accumulating familiarity that way (subjects and arguments tend to repeat).

That being the case, I would suggest you familiarize yourself not with scientific writing per se but rather scientific reasoning more generally. The notion of corroboration or support of a conjecture / theory is central to any scientific passage, and understanding how that works will better enable you to follow the thinking of whatever passage you are reading. This is better bang for your buck than reading a bunch of random scientific articles because universally underlies all such passages (even the bad ones because they try but mess it up).

The other benefit of such study is that it will help with A) other causal reasoning questions in LR and B) life generally.

I’d highly recommend watching reading or watching Paul E. Meehl (about 16 minutes in + pretty much all of his lectures in this series) and reading Andrew Gelman for this purpose.

Best of luck!