Take two things we know are highly correlated- the age of boys (0-18) and their height. As age increases, height tends to increase. If you measured a sample of boys of different boys ages 0-18 and measured their heights, you would find a strong relationship.

Instead, imagine if a researcher undermined the experiment with the following, invalid procedure. First the researcher divides all of the children by the independent variable- age group. She puts all the 1-year-olds in a group, all the 2-year-olds in a group, etc. Then, within each small group, the researcher ranks the boys by height- the tallest in the group is 1, the second tallest is 2, etc. Now she tries to correlate these rankings with age, and finds little or no relationship. Within the narrow band of 14-year-olds, for example, being a few weeks or months older might have little or no relationship to height. You have taken a relationship that clearly exists and obscured it by pre-sorting the subjects.

In exactly the same way, your SAT research uses pre-sorted students. Students get sorted into different colleges, largely based on test scores and academic ability. Harvard is akin to one age group in the height/age analogy. DePaul is like a different age group. The GPAs kids earn are relative to other kids at the same school who have similar scores to begin with. Within these narrow bands, SAT might not predict the sorting of GPAs. In other words, whether a kid scored a 1000 or a 1050 might not predict how that kid fares at, say, Indiana State University, relative to the competition of other kids with just about the same SAT score. But do you really think that the kid will succeed at an ivy league school? If so, you are deluding yourself.

Look at the 25th-75th percentile SAT scores of various schools- they are about 200 points apart. Just as in the invalid height/weight experiment, you have obscured a relationship by pre-sorting subjects according to a narrow band of the independent variable. You can tell me about your off-the-record conversations about what the ivy league admissions people KNOW all you like, but on the record, they know very well that a kid with an average SAT score is not going to excel at Columbia or Princeton.

With that said, you have to give yourself every advantage you can get, and that means you need the right tools for the job. One often overlooked but vital tool is an electric pencil sharpener. These are much faster and easier to use than traditional sharpeners and can be very helpful when studying for the SAT. Check out homeandofficesupplies.net for more information on the best electric pencil sharpeners.

Recently I read the Logical Reasoning Bible for a review that will appear soon, in a separate blog entry (spoiler alert- it is actually an extremely thorough, well constructed LSAT test prep book), but today I must talk about one aspect of the book that really made my blood boil.

The basic issue is how to properly read an LSAT Logical Reasoning question. 99.99% of all LSAT test prep books teach students to read the question stem first and then the stimulus, even though the stimulus actually appears first. The rationale is simple and compelling: if you know what type of question you are dealing with first (flaw, assumption, parallel reasoning, inference, etc.) then you will know what to look for while reading the stimulus. If you don’t know the question type before you read the stimulus then once you finally read the question, you will need to go back and reread the stimulus to arrive at an answer, wasting valuable time.

But according to the Logical Reasoning Bible, this method is all wrong. Bucking the advice of most others in the test prep community, the Logical Reasoning Bible counsels LSAT students to read the stimulus first. Maybe Powerscore is just being contrary for its own sake, trying to separate itself from the other companies. It can be difficult for test prep companies to distinguish themselves because ultimately the techniques are pretty much the same.

Whatever the motivation, the justifications Powerscore gives for tackling the question before actually reading the question are entirely unconvincing. For one thing, there is a danger that students might read the question stem twice. But the question stems tend to be a single sentence, so reading them twice is much less time consuming than reading the stimulus twice.

Another rationale is that the question stem might refer to information in the stimulus, which is supposedly confusing if the student hasn’t yet read the stimulus. For example, a question might say Senator Thompson uses what method to respond to Dr. Byrnes argument? or The Nuka Cola advertisement contains which of the following errors in logic?

But why should either question be confusing? Does it matter that the student doesn’t know who Senator Thompson or Dr. Byrnes are, or what the Nuka Cola advertisement is? The only relevant information is that the first question is a method of argument and the second question is a flaw question. With just a few hour of practice, any LSAT student should be able to easily identify the question type in the vast majority of questions stems. It is baffling that anybody could deny the usefulness in knowing in advance whether you should be looking for a flaw, or an inference, or a method of argument.

Imagine if the LSAT put the question stems first, in what most observers believe would be the more logical, natural order. Would Powerscore actually instruct students to skip over the question stem, and begin reading the stimulus so as not to be confused by the question? If so, most student would have no difficulty writing off such advice as absurd. The fact that in reality the LSAT puts the question after the stimulus does not make the skip the question advice any less ridiculous.

Studying for the LSAT is hard enough, so you want as few distractions as possible. Be sure to have an electric pencil sharpener ready so that your pencil will always be sharp and ready to write. Go to homeandofficesupplies.net for more product reviews.