LSAT’s New Reality: RC Strategy and the Writing Section Shakeup

Adrian Calloway

So, Nora, the- the- the reality we are in now... it's- it's kind of wild. Since August 2024, the Logic Games are... well, they're dead. Gone. LSAC completely retired them, which means we now have two scored Logical Reasoning sections and one scored Reading Comp. And what's fascinating is... Susan Krinsky, the Chief of Staff at LSAC, she- she released this data showing that across... I think it was two hundred thousand test sessions... removing games shifted the mean score by just... one one-hundredth of a point.

Nora Ashford

One one-hundredth? That's... I mean, statistically, that is absolute noise. But, Adrian, for- for anyone aiming for those top-tier scores... like 170-plus... losing games is a massive, massive deal. Games were the one section where you could consistently guarantee a- a minus-zero if you just put in the hours and mastered the setups. Now? Reading Comp has become the ultimate gatekeeper.

Adrian Calloway

Exactly. Because RC is... it's slippery. You can't just diagram your way to a perfect score anymore. And what I see students doing... they- they get into these dense, terrifying science passages... you know, articles about porphyrins, or tectonic plate displacement... and they fall right into what I call the... the "Nouns versus Verbs" trap. They- they try to speed-read for content.

Nora Ashford

Oh, I- I was the poster child for this when I started studying. I remember this one passage about... I don't even know... some cellular biology thing. I highlighted literally half the page in blue ink. I knew every complex noun by heart... "porphyrins," "ligands"... but if you asked me what the author actually believed? I- I had absolutely no idea. I was blind-reading.

Adrian Calloway

Right, because the nouns are just... they're just window dressing. They're noise. The test-makers want you to get bogged down in the vocabulary. The secret... the- the actual way to decode these passages... is to strip those nouns away and focus entirely on the active relation verbs. Is the author... are they *refuting* a theory? Are they *extending* a model? Or are they *qualifying* someone else's finding? Those verbs give you the logical blueprint. The nouns don't matter; the structural relationship between the ideas does.

Nora Ashford

Yes! It's like... instead of trying to understand the chemistry of a porphyrin, you just treat it as... "Thing X." And then you look at what the author is *doing* with Thing X. Are they saying Thing X *causes* Thing Y, or are they saying Thing X is just *correlated* with it? Once you make that shift from what the words *mean* to what the words are *doing*... everything clicks. But to do that under time pressure? That's a whole other beast.

Adrian Calloway

It is. And that's why we need a strict pacing strategy. I tell my students to run the fifteen-twenty rule. You have thirty-five minutes total. You- you have to target fifteen minutes total for the first two passages... that's seven-thirty each... and bank twenty minutes for the final two, which are almost always the more complex, denser passages. Ten minutes each. If you're spending nine minutes on passage one, you are... you're setting yourself up for a train wreck on passage four.

Nora Ashford

Absolutely. And to build that pacing muscle, you have to pair it with... what I call... dual-color blind review. This- this changed everything for me. When you do a timed section, you highlight your text support in one color... say, yellow. Then, when you do your untimed blind review... before you check the answers... you go back and highlight your support in a different color... like pink. If those colors don't overlap... if your pink highlights are in totally different places than your yellow ones... it forces you to face the brutal reality of how poorly you're reading when the clock is ticking.

Adrian Calloway

It's a very honest mirror, isn't it? It- it stops you from hand-waving and saying, "Oh, I just made a careless mistake." No, you- you literally looked at the wrong part of the text under pressure.

Nora Ashford

Speaking of brutal realities... we- we have to talk about the writing section. Because, uh... well, the old "Option A versus Option B" prompt... that's completely dead. You know, the one where you had to choose whether a town should build a library or a gym... it's gone.

Adrian Calloway

Yes, the- the classic, low-stakes choice. Now, LSAC has rolled out this revamped, fifty-minute task. It is a fifteen-minute mandatory digital prewriting analysis, followed by thirty-five minutes of drafting. And instead of a binary choice, they hand you a complex, debatable issue with three or four competing, value-driven perspectives. You can't just pick a side and write a simple persuasive essay. You have to synthesize these viewpoints, construct an original thesis, and... and this is key... systematically address the structural weaknesses of the alternative perspectives.

Nora Ashford

It sounds like... honestly, it sounds like writing a brief for a senior partner at a law firm. You can't just pretend the other side's arguments don't exist. You have to engage with them. But, Adrian, the actual test-taking environment for this now... it's- it's kind of a nightmare. There is... get this... no physical scratch paper allowed. None.

Adrian Calloway

Yeah. That's a massive shift. You have to draft and brainstorm entirely within a built-in digital LawHub notepad. And you're doing this under intense remote proctoring. We're talking a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree webcam room scan, active microphone monitoring... they even have strict operating system requirements now. If you're on Mac, you have to be running Sequoia fifteen point zero or higher. It is incredibly high-stakes, security-wise, for a section that... currently... is unscored.

Nora Ashford

Right! Students always ask me, "Nora, if it's unscored, why should I care? Why not just write three paragraphs of lorem ipsum and call it a day?" And I- I tell them... do not do that. First of all, admissions committees... they actually read these. Especially now, with the rise of ChatGPT. They are using these raw, proctored writing samples to- to check if your personal statement... which might be super polished... matches your actual, spontaneous writing ability. They're looking for what's called "integrative complexity." Can you actually think on your feet?

Adrian Calloway

Exactly. They want to see the human analytical mind at work, not a- a polished AI draft. And there's a bigger storm on the horizon. LSAC is openly collecting data on this new format with the- the explicit plan to roll out scored writing assessments as early as the 2025–2026 testing cycle. So if you're- if you're planning to apply in a year or two, this is not a section you can afford to blow off. It is going to count.

Nora Ashford

So... basically, don't slack off. The- the era of coasting through the writing sample is officially over. Alright, Adrian, good chatting as always. Let's do this again soon.

Adrian Calloway

Sounds good, Nora. Talk soon.