Last-Minute Tips for Reading Comp (Advanced) with Lewis

Welcome everybody. I am going to give maybe another, you know, minute or something like that to see if people are still trickling in.

No, we'll get started. But if anyone has any questions about anything in the meantime, feel free to throw them in chat or speak up.

Okay. You guys can maybe see the background through the board are kidding. Yeah, I have two kittens in there going crazy in the background.

That's one. All right, we're going to go back to the special one. Okay. Yeah, they're they're they're feeling insane right now.

So they're hard flooring like madmen across the furniture in the house. But If you hear sudden crashing sounds in the distance, that's why.

Okay. Okay. Okay so. Okay so. Okay so. Okay, so let's get started guys. I think this is a reasonable, a reasonable crew to have assembled here.

So I guess I see many familiar names. I would say familiar faces, but I don't see any faces at the moment.

Maybe a couple of new names as well. Just to sort of, I guess, orient things, these live classes are, they're sort of, they serve many functions at once.

One thing they're sort of here to do is supplement the curriculum. So if there's some particular subject that you are, you know, that you're maybe struggling with especially, or just especially interested in sort of diving into as deeply as you can, and you can kind of supple, you can, you can watch these live classes.

do, I guess, deepen and broaden your understanding of the subject, right? And another thing that they do, another form of supplementation, is they just give you access to a slightly more diverse, I guess, set of perspectives on things, right?

Not all tutors approach the test exactly the same way. In fact, there's quite a bit of variation in the way people view these things.

There are more than one ways. There's more than one way you can look at even the same principle in the logic.

There's more than one way you can characterize it. And it can be helpful to, you know, shop around a variety of perspectives until you find someone whose brain works similar to the way yours does, right?

Not all approaches are going to work equally well for all types of minds. So that's one concept. And another purpose of these live classes is to just give you guys a chance to get essentially facetime with a tutor outside of one-on-one tutoring, which can be

quite expensive. So, yeah, those are, I guess, I see those as being the core functions. And, you know, in service of that, we've spent most of this session talking about the assigned topic, which is last minute tips for reading comp, but I don't want to you guys to feel like we're 100%.

I guess, locked into that or anything like that. So in other words, I want you all to feel like you have the opportunity to ask me any question you want to ask, at least at the beginning of the session, and it can be about anything related to the LSAT or just the law school application process.

I'm happy to address address your questions and concerns. Okay, on that note, oh, yeah, also basic ground rules, I'll be monitoring chat.

So if you have anything you want to say, question, comment, whatever, feel free to type it, and I'll see it there.

You can also just unmute yourself and speak up. don't mind that at all. I like that. So if you if you have the space,

in your home right now where wherever you are to use voice and you don't mind doing that you're not that's go right ahead no pressure you don't have to um you don't need to raise your hand first to get called on you can also interrupt to me and i that won't bother me in the slightest i like being interrupted um yeah that's that oh yeah and you know look some for some of these sessions there's like a pre-assigned you know set of problems we're solving together like maybe six or seven lr questions um there is there's no like preset material today's subject is a little bit more open-ended than that but i'm probably at some point gonna end up sharing my screen and pulling up some sample passages here just because otherwise i think this conversation might get a little too abstract and maybe little too boring um okay before we dive in though to this

Reading comp subjects. Does anyone have any questions about anything? Okay. Well, see no questions at the moment. I will just charge on ahead.

Oh, same one question. Okay. Well, this is a perfect way to start. It's a question about RC. Ava, if I mispronounce a name, please correct me also.

So, Ava says, or Ava says, what do you suggest for pacing of the RC section, especially with making time for the last passage?

And this is a fantastic question and truly a fantastic topic to start our discussion here because from my point of view, now I don't know if you all agree with me, I think timing on RC is probably the hardest.

I think RC is probably, well, especially now the games are gone. I think RC is significantly harder than LR when it comes to timing, and there's more than one reason for that.

And I think timing can be one of the nastiest constrainers of the reading conversation in general. I actually, I'm never sure how much it helps most people to get extra time on LR.

I mean, maybe an extra five or ten minutes would help most people, but after that it can start to backfire, because it ends up just basically needing the state focused for longer, which is really

hard, but RC, it's a lot easier for me to understand how extra time translates into more right answers on RC.

You just have more time to pull over the text and find the line that answers the question, you know.

So timing is really tough. There's some structural issues too here. RC is, I'm trying to find the right way to put this, that because it goes passage by passage.

It's a lot harder to find a productive way to use one extra minute of time. Whereas on our one extra minute just translates into another question that I can attempt, right?

The classic example of this is let's say you are struggling with time on RC, you're moving quickly enough at this point that you can finish three passages and you've got a little better recently, you can finish three passages and you have three minutes left over.

Well, It's super not obvious what you're supposed to do with those three minutes, right? Those can feel like three useless minutes to people.

Three minutes is not enough time to read the fourth passage and solve anything. Maybe I'll just barely finish reading it in three minutes.

And I'll get to none of the questions. And it doesn't feel the most people like you can, like, I can skim it.

Like, there's no way I'm going to skim pass it before I get, get enough comprehension to answer anything, right?

So it can feel really bad. In fact, timing is so hard on the section that as many of you probably know, we actually advise people unless they're aiming for like a 170 plus.

We advise many people just to even to give up on solving all four baskets, to just attempt three yes on questions on the fourth.

And that is a viable strategy, even to score like a 160 score. So it's tough. I think it's actually.

Oh, wait, well, uh, I've tried to decide where I want to start. Fine. I'll start with my, it's a little niche, but, and it's a little silly, but here's like, uh, almost like a, like a party trick I like to do sometimes.

Okay. So I love the opinion that, for minor point questions, they're almost all solvable without having read the passage.

Okay. And to prove this to you, I'm just going to hear, we're just scrolling randomly and I'm going to open this section.

Okay. Here's an old test. Let's go into RC 27. Okay. So there are some question types that you obviously cannot answer unless you've read the passage on, on question.

Okay. Um, the most obvious of which is the main point question, but any question that requires a holistic reading of the passage as a whole, your, your due

So, main point, that's not going to work. Any question asking about the overall tone, even arguably a question asking about the main purpose of like a paragraph, you could technically try to read that paragraph, but the purpose of the paragraph requires that you understand the structure of the overall argument, right?

So I wouldn't attempt any of these without reading the passage, but to this main point, now, primary purpose, that's the same.

I don't know how that's different than main point, but no, I wouldn't try that. Okay, now this however, this looks like a minor point question.

This is just, there's going to be a line in the text that gives a straight up answer to this question.

Okay. And it's on a narrow factual point, somewhere a claim was made. Okay. The author made a prediction. So, of course, because I haven't read this passage, I have no idea where that line.

is. But I might be able to find it quickly. So if I had one minute of extra time on a passage, I didn't get time to read, I would try to solve this.

Let's do it right now. What should I search for here? Increased? Okay, and look at that already. Oh, crap, that was easier than I thought it would be.

All right, let's see what's make sure it's referring to the right thing. If people refer to a firm and receive service, the firm will get.

But it is unlikely to increase the use of such plans will result in the long-term client satisfaction or in a substantial increase in profits.

Those look like predictions. So we might need to get more specific. Let's keep going. Ah, provide less satisfaction to clients?

So I see a prediction of less client satisfaction. I see less time devoted to complex cases and a general lowering of quality.

Let's see if any answer tracks that. Oh, lowering of rates. Do they say that here? No, we're talking about fees here, not rates for membership.

Oh, I don't know why that took me so long. We found that easy. Yeah, it's just me. Ah, I just accept that in chat.

didn't even see. Ah, yeah, okay. Good call, Jeff. Perfect. Yeah, exactly. Looks like it's E. I mean, it wasn't, you know, that wasn't amazing, but I'm pretty sure we got it right.

Oh, enough. So we were able to solve that one. Okay, that was a one difficulty question. I bet that would have been way easier if we'd read the passage skip.

I had to do different passage and see if we can find one main point. No, thank you. I don't want to do it.

Authors purpose for, okay, I probably wouldn't try this one because I could go into the third paragraph and find the mention, but I don't know that I would have confidence that I know why it's being mentioned unless I had read the passage as a whole.

So I don't know what the hell they're talking about here, having not read this, but this seems solvable. The passage states implies that the right answer will be in the text almost verbatim.

So. We're now talking about primary history of historical graphics sources. Let's see. No, I think I should have searched for primary source maybe.

Let's look up primary. In the field of historiography, the writing of history No, okay, hold on, do they mention more?

No, never mind. Let's look up Pacific Coast. Okay, have traditionally depended on the records left by European-American explorers of the 19th Ah!

Yeah. They are counseled by Europeans. Spores kind of feels like it might be what do you guys think? I'm going to address what you just said just in one second.

It's an interesting question I feel like I would spend a little longer on this I wanted to actually see if I'm gonna get right.

I don't feel confident about this one, but Oh, sure enough. That was it. I was just right there. All right.

I'm gonna stop this because it's kind of waste of time But I do want to address Joe's question, but I just want to point out.

Okay, this is this is vital um So if you're struggling on timing If you if you think to yourself, I don't want to only aim for three passes because guessing on a full fourth passage seems really bad That's guessing on like five or six questions.

That's too many to drop Well, if you can have an extra three minutes and in those three minutes steal

two or even three minor point questions then you're only guessing on like two or three questions and it really isn't that costly to skip the fourth passage read that's really not unless you're aiming for like I need to go to either Stanford or your old law school and I need a 175 plus unless that's you you can afford to make strategic compromises like this in your approach to R.C.

that timing okay now Joseph says because I had been poo pooing the idea that you should even attempt a main point question without a full read but he says could we theoretically in crunch situations time crunch situations you know maybe skip to the last paragraph or even the last sentence of the first paragraph to try to get a quick guess as to the main point of the passage I like that point that's not a bad point as long as you're aware that that's very far from sure thing then

more power to you. Again, if you're in a bad spot in the tight spot, you know, then it's perfectly reasonable to make educated guesses.

In fact, that's what you want to do. You want to take in any information quickly enough that it can improve your odds of getting a right answer, right?

Obviously, it's not going to be the ideal approach. The ideal approach would be to have five minutes set aside, read the passage in full, about it in all the right ways, and then go about your business.

Okay, so I think that's not a bad strategy. I think they try to write these things in ways that make that inconsistent, but it's still worth attempting.

Probably most thesis statements do show up either at the end of the first paragraph or at the end of the passage as a whole.

Not all of them, but many of them. Yeah. Okay, do have any questions about this in general, or should we just bridge on to the next topic here?

Okay. Let's bridge. Shelly bridge. So, um, I admit, I wasn't entirely sure how to interpret the subject of this class when I first saw the prompt.

Like, what constitutes a last minute tip? I gather that the subject is not meant to be going back over the fundamentals of preaching cops.

So, I'm not going to be doing that. It's also classed as an advanced lesson. you know, silly timing tricks like the one I just showed you felt like they fit.

That's why I was happy to start there. Um, yeah. I'm still not entirely sure what counts as subject, which I'd be happy to be guided by.

My plan. Was to instead lean more heavily on this notion of this being an advanced course and try to talk through what I take to be sort of like the most significant principles about the reading comp section that you should keep in mind.

Okay. Without wasting time going over the when you read, try to read from the main point and try to pick up on the author's tone and try to make sure you can tell the difference between when the author is speaking and when than those.

So, I guess I have two somewhat significant. Another way to put this. I guess like things that I would in sort of strongly recommend that people keep in mind.

Okay, maybe that's the best way to put this. So one is something that I say to all my students at some point.

point. When they say the phrase can be inferred in questions, which of the following can it be best inferred that the author would agree with or something like that?

Do not misunderstand. It sounds to many people, myself included in the old days, like they're giving you license to stray from the text of the passage somewhat and to instead engage a little bit of creativity and sort of the kind of reading that you're probably more used to from literature courses or your college courses.

They're not. This is a bait. It's a line, okay? You are still on just as tight of a leash when it comes to remaining absolutely wedded to the text.

When they say that it can be from the text, they mean this in the strict logical sense, okay? I'm going to show you.

And a white force here, what they mean. But first that's. and make sure that you guys can see my whiteboard.

Can you guys see this? Hi. Can you see this text box? OK, thanks, Mary. That's good. OK, so fundamentally, when they're asking minor point questions, they will almost always employ one of the following two formulations.

They will either ask, whoops, I just lost my text box. Great. They'll either say, according to the passage, or the passage states, or the author states, that's one of the two ways they might phrase one of these questions.

If they put it like this, they're telling you that that. right answer is literally in the text, okay, as in almost word for word, but it's less a matter of the wording and more a matter of the claim, okay.

So in other words, the precise claim being made in the answer choice was already made in the text somewhere, okay.

On the other hand, they might use the inferred language. Or it can be inferred that, okay. We'll just stick with this for now.

In this case, not only is the right answer not going to be in the text verbatim, the specific claim that the answer choice is making is not actually found anywhere in the text.

However, there is another claim or claims made explicitly in the text that only allow you to deduce the claim made in the answer choice as a matter of logic.

In other words, if follows from what was in the text, like a must be true. Okay. So let me give you an example.

Pretend this is part of the text, okay. I got to thank you for one second. Okay. Suppose I to think it's actually little harder than I thought it would be.

Take a moment, good example. Okay. Someone give me a subject. What should be the subject of my example reading cop passage here?

Someone help me think of an example. Exploring Mars, okay. So many people have assumed that the main obstacle Basing and travel to Mars, I make

King all this up. Okay. I'm about to say a bunch of . No one learn about Mars from this right now.

This is all thing. Yeah. You Okay, suppose you had a passage like this. This is stupid. I regret this because I don't know.

I truly know nothing about what I'm talking about so this feels really stupid and I can not say anything interesting, but alas, I can still hopefully make my point since I spent this long writing out this worthless paragraph, okay.

So what are some, here's the question, what are some claims that were made here? Well, I mean, I say here that many people have assumed that the main obstacle is all the stuff about the human being hard to survive for humans.

Did the passage ever actually make the claim itself that these obstacles exist? Maybe not explicitly, but they seem to be endorsing this.

I mean, there was no indication that those claims were regarded as false, right? That's a different question. Do you think that this passage agrees that the main obstacle facing man travels in Mars is the stuff to do with the human body?

it's not. not. not. not. not. not. Okay, so two similar answers here, and I agree with you. It doesn't, you're right, Joseph, I don't think the passage is denying that those are problems altogether, but it does seem to me like implicitly it's denying that they are the main obstacle.

Right. But they never actually said that that claim was false explicitly. Well. So, if the right answer to the question were that the main obstacle facing man travel to Mars is not in fact, difficulties associated with enabling the human body to survive, would that be an according to the passage question or would that be an inferred question?

I guess I'm not entirely sure what to say, my instinct though is if the answer were something like that, difficulties associated with enabling the human body to survive are not the only problems currently preventing manned space travel to Mars, that statement I think is

Directly supported, but not just supported is all is in the text, right? That's a claim made in the text They say even if we solve that we would still have to solve this other problem So that would be a good according to the passage answer But if they said that the that the human by stuff isn't the main issue They never actually said that directly so I think that's more of it can be inferred that What if they gave an answer that said something like Even if hypothetically a new space suit was created that could enable humans to survive on the surface of Mars without any difficulty And then the claim is it would it would nevertheless still be impossible If all other technology existed as it does today to have successful manned space travel to Mars Would that be a good according to the passage answer or it?

and infer the answer. Okay, Mary says inferred. Why? Why isn't that already stated? I think you're right, by the way.

I'm sure we'll that straight line for you. Here, I can give a better example, Miss. I'm ready. going to give away better example.

right, I like this. I just made this up one time, like a couple months ago, but I've been giving this as an example for must be true, but it works here too.

So here's the passage, okay? Yeah. You Okay, that's the passage So if they were to ask an according to the passage on this one you would basically only be able the only right answers would be straight up Reputations of what was said

This literally would be something like, right, literally it would be answers like this, what if we asked it can be inferred that, okay, think of a good answer to this question, can I even see a good must be true?

What follows from all this? Okay, okay, I see three similar answers, let's take them one at a time, Ivan doesn't want to be sent to the good one, that's a great answer, right, wait I

Actually, hold on. Wait. Hold on. No, no, no. Is this an infertor? this an according to the passage? So this looks like it was already in there, right?

I forgot I already said it. I already said he doesn't want to be sent to the go on. So this would be maybe being according to the passage.

Not much about not a good must be true, though, not a good inference because it's it's more of a redundancy.

So that's not not a good inferred answer, but it could be a good according to the passage answer. Now, the second address, Grace says, if he speaks up, he will be sent to the go on.

Is this a proper inference from what was said above. And Mary said something very similar. he speaks out against Putin, he will be punished.

And Joseph said something. Actually, just to set something a little bit better than this. There are two things wrong with this answer.

This is not a viable inference for two reasons. Who can tell me why? Okay, Mary says, well, hold on.

It may just be a possibility, not a certainty. And admittedly... Ooh, okay, and why is actually on the second point.

But before we go there, to acknowledge now Joseph's answer. So Joseph said complaining about Putin is a regime can result in people being sent to the people.

So Joseph picked up on that point. So that's one of the two issues here. We all be is just way too strong.

It doesn't need to be a certainty. Hit. could be is better, but there's a second issue that Waterup picked up on.

I think, I think intentionally, although I'm not 100% sure, he thinks that would be true. But we don't know if it would be true for sure.

Yeah, all we know is that he this this has no implications for the actual fact of the matter. It only has implications for Ivan's belief.

So we should this should say Ivan thinks that if he speaks up, he could be sent to the door.

Okay, we don't actually know if that's true or not, just that he believes it to be true. Do you guys see that distinction?

If you want an example that makes it a little clearer, what if I told you a story I said, okay, there's this guy, Jimmy.

he has severe OCD. He flips the light switch in his bedroom three times before bed every night because he doesn't want his mom to die in a fire.

I asked you what can be inferred from that. You would not say, if he doesn't flip the light switch three times, his mom would die in the fire.

You wouldn't even say if he flips the light switch doesn't his mom could die in the fire. He would say he thinks that if he doesn't flip the light switch, right?

So in this case, I mean, in my example of the OCD person, he obviously is, it's not a rational thought process.

In the case of Ivan, we're, I guess, all inclined to assume that there's some legitimacy here and we're probably not wrong about that given Putin's track record assassinating political dissidents.

But whether not happens to turn out to be right is irrelevant that this claim doesn't support any inference about the truth of the matter.

only supports There's an interest about his belief. So this would be a good, it can be inferred that answer.

This claim about Ivan's belief was never directly made in the passage, but this separate claim was made, and based on these two claims, really, combined, we can deduce this.

Can anyone see any other answers? There are a couple other trick answers that they like to do in reading comps and an OR, that you might be able to construct here.

It's gonna be hard to guess that, and I don't want to waste too much time. So I'll give you a hint.

There are a lot of similar answers that can be built along the lines of one out of that to show you.

Oh, sorry, Joseph said maybe Ivan's believes that Putin is regime of some control. I don't think that follows. I mean, I don't even know why he's upset with Putin as a regime.

I don't know if it's because of the war. I made it seem that way, but I never actually said there was a connection there.

He might be upset with Putin for other reasons. Actually, I don't even say whether not Ivan's son was drafted on the Russian side.

Ivan's son might be Ukrainian and had been drafted in Ukraine. It's possible. There's a lot of debate here. I tried to preload as much bait as I could, but so look at my stupid answer, B.

There are very questions about this. Surely someone does. This feels like a trick, right? Why is this a reasonable inferred answer?

Why is this not a according to? Oh, I'm sorry. Is there an answer yet? Yeah, okay, so what exactly right this follows because all it takes is a single example to establish sum claim That's true on the outside, this is true of logic in general.

That's just what it actually means. That's just correct, but Okay, good Mary and Joe also similar answers you guys are all on the point precisely that's you're you're all exactly right about This

So the important thing to note is this claim is technically a distinct claim from this claim. In fact, the original claim is more specific.

contains more information. It's not just at least one. This is saying more than just there is at least one.

It's naming him. That's Ivan in particular. telling you a fact about a person. This is a different claim. This doesn't even mention either.

It is in fact a less informative claim, but it's still a distinct claim. So technically speaking, it's an inference.

It isn't a claim that it was already made by the passage. It's a separate claim that follows from a claim that was made in the passage.

Okay, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse on this one, so I'm going to stop. Are there any questions about this or anything else at this point?

The really pragmatic takeaway from all this is that when you're doing the reading comp, section on any question like this either way, whether it be according to or infer that your job is to find the line in the passage that answers the question.

Okay, that's your assignment. Can you find the line in the passage that answers the question? Do not go picking an answer because it's doing a good job of tracking what you think is significant from your holistic reading of the passage as a whole.

it know. Find the line in the passage that contains the relevant claim, either the specific claim or a claim that justifies that.

Right? All right, any questions? Surely someone has a question. Can you give me about anything? I'm bored of talking about RC.

Should we talk about law school admissions in general? Ah, welcome back. Just I owe you an email too, sorry.

Okay, I'm a little sad that no one has questions. I was kind of hoping we could have like a these sessions are always boring when I just have to talk about the topic at hand.

Unless it's like solving interesting like LR questions, those can be fun. Or even a good passage, but these generic advice, I don't know, I get some sort of hearing my own voice, but okay.

What else is there to say? What are some other good reading comp tips? Well, okay, following up on the theme of what we've just been discussing, but technically we're going make a slightly different, a subtly different point.

You know how there are some questions where they will literally give you like a line citation, like a quote, they'll say in line 46 when they use this word, it's

it most nearly means or the purpose of using it is, you need the first thing I'm going to say should be obvious.

The first thing you do before you even look at an answer choice is you go to the line that they cited and you reread that sentence and maybe the sentence before it or after it has needed, okay, before you even try to answer the button.

Second, when you're answering the question, you have to give an answer that is incredibly local to that sentence, okay?

Do not get baited into picking an answer that is a good fit for the overall thesis of the passage as a whole.

That is not what they're asking you to do. You need to be hyper-local when you answer those questions, okay?

Oh, and so now great, thank you, Joseph. appreciate it. My you have helped save me from my own ramble.

Okay, so Joseph asks, are there any common traps in RC questions that you can think of? Yeah, well, I I guess I'm sort of a weekly address to one trap on those

hyper-specific line citation questions is to give a sort of an answer that aligns better with the overall thesis of the passage but doesn't track the meaning of that sentence.

That's a classic form of bait. Another classic form of bait that we've already touched on a little bit indirectly is on the it can be inferred that questions.

They'll give you answer choices that a good faith reader would in the non-stripped logical sense would infer that the author probably agrees with because it seems to fit the kind of argument they've been making but is not actually addressing anything that was squarely addressed in the passage.

That's total bait. It's a misunderstanding of what they mean by They don't mean well he's made a really passionate argument here in this particular policy context for like a utilitarian take.

So probably he would endorse another famous utilitarian take in some other context. No no no. That's not the kind of inference

we're looking for. has to be much more specific than that. Another classic form of RC-8 has to do with main point questions.

They'll almost always have an answer that's like, so unlike harder main point questions, this is what they'll do. The right answer will technically be accurate in every respect, although it won't be worded in a very compelling way, and it may even seem kind of a little vague, but it will technically address the important concept of the thesis.

So if like the key thesis is like that this particular policy should be pursued, it will say that. It'll be like the author advocates in favor of this policy, but instead of like giving a good three-dimensional and specific statement of the reasons why, it'll like very vaguely allude to them and it'll feel kind of bad, and then they're going to give you a wrong answer that gives a way,

way better, way more rhetorically sound, way more specific statement of exactly like the key considerations that the author cared about, but then it'll just have like one clause that just makes an inaccurate claim.

So it's like a way better answer until it makes a mistake. On reading comp, accuracy is everything. Any inaccuracy in an answer choice destroys that answer.

That is a wrong answer. You cannot make up for an inaccurate, but an answer cannot make up for its own inaccuracy by being really good.

Otherwise, okay, that's the wrong answer. It can be tempting to not want to let go of that answer because you liked it so much better than the one you're otherwise forced to pick up until it screwed up.

Don't indulge in that thought process, okay? Reject that. Medium. without hesitation or second guessing. I don't know if anything else stands out to me as trap answers or trap questions off the top of my head.

If anyone else can think of anything, go ahead and speak up. Thank you though for the question. Okay, what else?

Anything else guys? Anything in comments? It can be RC related. I know I keep trash talking topic, it's actually been pretty good.

I think it's been pretty productive. Ah, another one from Joseph. Thank you, my hero. Along the same line of logic as skipping passage 4 of time is your issue.

If one certain type of RC passage is your kill with heal. Yeah, okay. Yeah, this is, uh, do you have?

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, Okay, great. Thank you. I now see a little slew of questions we can try to address all of them.

So let's, I'm going to start with Joe's second question just because I've already read it and then we'll go down the line.

This, I can give a quick answer to this. Absolutely. In fact, I don't, if you are someone who wants to, who, for timing reasons, wants to attempt three out of four passages, I would not recommend that you always skip passage four.

You may often end up skipping passage four, but there are, there are multiple factors that you should consider when selecting which passage to skip.

In fact, we can categorize these relevant considerations pretty quickly. So one is expected difficulty. And on that point, I don't know that passage four is always the hardest, but passages three and four tend to be significantly harder than one and two.

So that counts as a strong, of assumption in favor of skipping either either of passage three or four, although I wouldn't I wouldn't be passage four is a better skip than passage three necessarily.

I think that passage three is often just as hard as passage four if not worse. That's one consideration but another consideration that you already raised here is well what if you tend to have strengths and weaknesses and passage types if you tend to hate science or you tend to perform your worst on humanities passages then that gives you a pretty strong reason to think about skipping the science passage.

I wouldn't skip science every time though if passage one is the science passage I wouldn't skip it because even if it's not your favorite it's supposed to be a much easier passage.

Difficult individual passage difficulty for almost everyone should probably matter more than your relative preference for one type of passage over another.

In general, That's usually true. So, you know, but if the star is aligned, then passage 4 is also a science passage.

Well, that's now two reasons to skip it. However, there's a third consideration that really matters, and that's how many questions are there per passage?

Okay, because as we all know, some passages have only five questions, but others have eight questions. I don't want you skipping a passage with eight questions on it.

I would be reluctant to skip a passage with seven questions on it. In general, if you can, I would try to find that one passage with five and skip that one.

Or at least skip one with six. Again, you're going to have to trade these considerations off of each other.

If passage, if the only passage with five questions is passage one, you probably shouldn't skip that. If passage three has six questions and passage four has eight, you should probably skip passage three.

A passage three has six questions, but it's a science passage, and that's your strongest. And then passage four is like humanities, and that's

through weakest and it's got seven. Now you're in a really tough spot. Which one are you going to skip, right?

There's a fourth consideration or a fifth, it's a little less significant. Maybe if you either love or hate comparative passages, that might matter.

Comparative passages can be a little slower too. You see the point though. I think if you're selecting a passage to skip, you want to try to factor in as many of these considerations as you can to pick the one.

Now you can even invest 30 seconds to a minute to start reading something and if you really feel confused.

You can't even get through the first paragraph with good understanding. Choose to skip that. That's valuable too. Okay, the other thing though, implicit in your question was, is it ever appropriate to leave a passage to the end and then plan to go back to it?

That's similar to skipping a passage, but a little bit more subtle. Again, the answer is yes. Let's say you're someone who can get through at least three and a half passages.

Well, you're... not fully skipping and guessing, but you're essentially reserving the passage that you expect, you'll have the least chance of doing well, right?

In which case, all of those considerations still matter. So yeah, I think basically reapply the same answer. Okay. Now moving on to Sierra's question, can you discuss your opinion on the, okay, actually, I'm going to hold that to the very end, let's address what Moira said.

So Moira said, I feel like timing myself, her passage is hurting my performance. Well, I'm not 100% sure I'm picturing what you actually mean by this.

Like, are you artificially cutting yourself off at like the nine minute mark or something? Can you elaborate? Maybe want you meant?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think I would recommend doing that. I don't think it's terrible.

Like, it is good to try to force yourself to get used to what it would feel like to restrict your time appropriately, but you also don't want to be too rigid.

I honestly, if you looked at my RC's sections, If I, it's been a while, it's not done this obviously, but if I were to sit down and do like six RC sections of the course of a week timed as part of a real test, my guess is it wouldn't look like I'm spending nine minutes per passage, it would probably be way more like the graph is noisier.

I'm probably spending like significantly more time on trickier passages than on easier ones. I mean admittedly, it's probably less stilted than art and then ours and now are I'm like breezing through the early questions and then spending most of my time on the hard questions.

RC is probably a little more even but it's still probably closer to like seven to eight minutes on a passage I can go fast at and then like 11 to 12 on the hard ones.

Yeah, yeah, Grace is picking up on exactly. Yeah, thanks Grace. That's exactly the point I wanted to make. Yeah, thank you.

more efficient to mind. What we, shouldn't cut itself off, but what you should do is you should record not just the overall timing for the section, but also do record your per passage timing so you can see.

I would be interested in saying, go do four or five full sections and just literally write down how long everything's taking you.

And then you can reflect on that to see how consistent is your timing, how much does it vary, what are the predictable trends, when are you typically needing to spend more time, when are you able to spend less time.

I have found for me that it's partly a matter of warming up. If my first thing of the day, it's 9am, I wake up and I go right into an RC passage, I'm going to be so slow on passages one and two, even if they're not hard, because I'm just like getting into the getting the gears going.

But once I've been going and I'm focused and I'm in the zone, then I can speed up. So yeah, there are a lot of factors to consider here.

Yeah. Okay, let's go back to Sarah's question here before we end. Yeah, I think Harry's Right here is pointing out what number of questions in a passage is going to matter too, and that's true.

And one of the nastiest things about RC is you do need to allocate a good amount of time to just reading these passages, which means realistically if you want to get better at timing, you have to learn how to go really fast through the questions.

It's usually a pretty bad idea to rush yourself on the reading itself. That being said, you know, it's all relative.

If you're spending eight minutes on a read, that's a disaster and you have to fix that. But I mean, if you're spending five minutes on a read, I don't even think that's crazy.

The worst thing you can do for timing is be sitting there on the questions, having already read the answers, just not sure what to pick, just thinking about it for a full minute, just reading the same asterisks.

You need to be decisive. Even if you're not sure what to do, you need to be decisive. You can't to dilly dally and hem and haul.

Okay. Okay, now doubling back to Sarah, Sarah says, can I discuss my opinion on the optional essays when it comes to the application process.

that is so far off topic and it's already 1 p.m. let me just first say thanks to everybody for coming and anyone who maybe is wants to call it here this is a good stopping point but for anyone who's interested I will stay on for a couple more minutes to address this question and if anyone has any other one on one question they want to ask me or something feel free to stay but thanks everyone for your participation and your questions I really appreciate it okay okay so I actually don't have much of a good answer to give to this question I don't know too much about it my understanding is the option as it's also very school by school is that not true maybe we need to be a little bit more specific here what what optional I say in particular are you considering right now oh are you still here Sarah thank you right

My feeling is the answer to this question is going to depend a lot on on like super specific context, but Okay, here So Okay, so I'll Right, okay, so i'm just going to use the old law school as the example because it's the thing I know best, okay?

So the old law school has an optional essay here. This is the literal wording on their website Optional essay we encourage applicants to submit an essay in response to one of the four questions below That's how long to tell you that I would be shocked if there's anyone applying to your law school who isn't who is

getting at least who isn't writing this. They're telling you they encourage you to do it. They're telling you to do it.

You should be doing this, right? And then if we look at the subjects, it cues you in to what it is they want from you and what they're trying to figure out.

Okay, so the four topics for Yale are option one. The law school has a strong tradition of public service and encourages its students to contribute to the community in a wide variety of ways.

Describe a community that has been particularly meaningful to you. Discuss what you have gained from being a part of this community and what you have contributed to this community.

Okay, option two, the law school encourages its students and alumni to be leaders, innovators, and changemakers across many different sectors.

Describe one of your most important accomplishments and explain why it is important to you. Discuss how you demonstrated leadership, helped innovate and or drove change as part of Okay, option three, the law school values determination and resilience and recognizes that these traits are

critical success at the law school and in the legal profession describe a significant challenge disappointment or setback you have faced discuss how you approach this experience of what you learned from it okay I promise you I'm going somewhere with this option four in order to succeed at the law school and in the legal profession you must be able to have discussions across difference and be open to changing your mind okay describe a time when you blah blah blah so every one of these is coded language for asking about something that if you're an insider is very very obvious but they're asking about if you don't understand what you're reading you read these and think these all sound like clients can anyone who's still here translate each of these four essays to me what is each of these four essays actually asking because they're asking something very specific there there are like key work these are like dog whistles for lost insides not dog whistles that implies it's like

a little bit wider, but it's way more specific than this. Option one is a chance for you to say this is very Yale Law School specific.

Most schools who aren't Yale Stanford may be NYU, Columbia, Michigan, Berkeley probably aren't going ask this question. But a small subset, but not a trivial subset of Yale law, students end up going to public service work.

Public service work pays terribly in the law, but it can be very high status. But it's an incredibly small world.

It's arguably harder than academia to get jobs at the very best law firms. I actually know all about this because I was hardcore on a public service track.

I worked at the ACLU and then at the NRDC doing environmental law. So, I mean, these are, these are some lawyers who are, you know, up there in terms of their pedigree with senior partners at, you know, the very best firms in the country, except instead of making millions of dollars a year, they're making like 150 K here.

The people who do this, these careers are very, very committed to the political cause, and that's the idea. The first essay is just asking you, if you have a record oriented towards public service and that's the direction you're heading in, show us that now.

That's what it's asking. What do you think option two is ask? I'll read it again. The law school encourages its students and alumni to be leaders, innovators, and changemakers across many different sectors.

Again, this is a Yale-specific question, actually. What are they actually asking there? Does anyone know? Okay, I'll tell you, Yale Law School doesn't just want people who want to be lawyers.

Most law schools closer to the middle of the pact. Everyone going is going to be a lawyer. But Yale has a significant number of students every year, and Samford will too, who are actually on their way to a career.

career in tech, or in finance. That's what they're asking for. That's literally what they're asking. Oh, is that you?

Are you like a tech guy, a startup guy? Are you a business school person? Are you a finance person?

Are you like a consultant? And you're planning to stay that way? Let us know here, because we're happy with that, but we want to hear about that career path.

Okay? How about option three? What do you think this is asking? The law school values determination and resilience and recognizes that these traits are critical to success.

This is very specific what they're asking for here. Can anyone see through this? They're asking you about race in a way that they're hoping the Supreme Court won't get them for it.

That's all. Race, gender, background. That's they're asking. That's all, that's it. This is your chance to, if you haven't already, way out every.

possible diversity plus trait you've got that you think might help lgbt doesn't matter what load them all right now that's what they're saying that's what that's what option three is saying okay what's option four asking you must be able to have discussions across difference and be open to changing your mind that's just an excuse to say i'm actually a right winner which by the way is a good thing these schools need more right-wing students they're desperate for that especially a law school but they're trying to place as many people as they can in Supreme Court court chips two-thirds of the Supreme Court courtships only want right-wing students now and there are almost no right-wing students that are in these law schools so they would want to take a right-wing student actually you want to know the real affirmative action just be a right-winger in law school truly that is that is affirmative action your life is easy if you're right-winger in law school you're competing with nobody especially you know there are like ten of you in the year okay and you're all good

They're all going get quite a chips. Like, there's all we can of you. OK, that's what they're asking, though.

This is your chance to say, I'm a loud and proud writer. OK, yep, that's all. That's the real answer to that question.

Depending on the school and the way they word these questions, there's something that they're trying to ask you indirectly.

And the question is, can you understand what it is they're asking you? And can you tell them what they want to know?

OK, that's it. All right, guys, I've got to go. It's later than I realize. Thanks for coming. Cheers.