As a former smart person who decided that actual productive work was undervalued, so therefore I might as well become a lawyer, this line made me chuckle:
“Normally I would be against dumbing down our testing, but keeping smart people from becoming lawyers is not the worst idea.”
Unfortunately, given what’s on the LSAT, even removing the logic puzzle part of it probably doesn’t help that much in dumbing it down. I think it only ends up mattering in the broadest categories. (That is, while folks’ percentiles might change without the Logic Fun section, I suspect that most folks’ deciles won’t change by more than one, and most won’t even change at all.)
In my experience, there are enough “Top 10” law schools (there are about 20 by my count) that anyone smart enough to be in the top 10-15% of LSAT who sends enough applications will get into at least one of those “top” schools. So even at the limit, maybe someone who previously would have be admitted won’t get into Stanford law with their “new” LSAT score. But they’d still get into at least one of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, NYU, Columbia, Berkeley, or Gerogetown.
So I guess my comment is: this wouldn’t keep smart people from becoming lawyers—but it might discourage those that are smart, but either (1) aren’t all THAT smart, or (2) aren’t all that willing to think it through, from becoming lawyers.
As a former smart person who decided that actual productive work was undervalued, so therefore I might as well become a lawyer, this line made me chuckle:
“Normally I would be against dumbing down our testing, but keeping smart people from becoming lawyers is not the worst idea.”
Unfortunately, given what’s on the LSAT, even removing the logic puzzle part of it probably doesn’t help that much in dumbing it down. I think it only ends up mattering in the broadest categories. (That is, while folks’ percentiles might change without the Logic Fun section, I suspect that most folks’ deciles won’t change by more than one, and most won’t even change at all.)
In my experience, there are enough “Top 10” law schools (there are about 20 by my count) that anyone smart enough to be in the top 10-15% of LSAT who sends enough applications will get into at least one of those “top” schools. So even at the limit, maybe someone who previously would have be admitted won’t get into Stanford law with their “new” LSAT score. But they’d still get into at least one of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, NYU, Columbia, Berkeley, or Gerogetown.
So I guess my comment is: this wouldn’t keep smart people from becoming lawyers—but it might discourage those that are smart, but either (1) aren’t all THAT smart, or (2) aren’t all that willing to think it through, from becoming lawyers.
But I agree that it’s not the worst idea.