1
00:00:19,899 --> 00:00:25,399
So, Nora, I was looking at the new LSAC
percentile data for the twenty twenty-three

2
00:00:25,619 --> 00:00:30,319
to twenty twenty-six testing cycle, and,
uh, it is wild.

3
00:00:30,979 --> 00:00:34,139
For decades, if you got a one hundred and
seventy on the LSAT,

4
00:00:34,639 --> 00:00:37,059
you were in the ninety-seventh percentile.

5
00:00:37,579 --> 00:00:38,020
Period.

6
00:00:38,439 --> 00:00:41,520
It was your golden ticket to a top
fourteen law school.

7
00:00:42,180 --> 00:00:42,760
But now?

8
00:00:43,319 --> 00:00:47,799
That same one hundred and seventy has
plummeted to the ninety-four point fifth

9
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:48,479
percentile.

10
00:00:49,059 --> 00:00:52,360
It is, um, it is a completely different
landscape.

11
00:00:54,227 --> 00:00:56,107
Ninety-four point fifth?

12
00:00:56,947 --> 00:01:02,427
Wait, Adrian, that is a massive drop for
what used to be the gold standard.

13
00:01:02,987 --> 00:01:07,747
I mean, if a one seventy is down there,
what happened to a score like,

14
00:01:07,907 --> 00:01:09,267
say, a one hundred and sixty?

15
00:01:09,944 --> 00:01:12,904
Oh, a one sixty got hit even harder.

16
00:01:13,504 --> 00:01:16,064
It used to put you comfortably in the low
eighties.

17
00:01:16,664 --> 00:01:16,964
Now?

18
00:01:17,424 --> 00:01:19,604
It is down to the seventy-first
percentile.

19
00:01:20,324 --> 00:01:22,744
The, the whole curve has shifted to the
right.

20
00:01:23,284 --> 00:01:25,164
It is classic score inflation.

21
00:01:25,859 --> 00:01:27,940
Okay, so let me guess.

22
00:01:28,359 --> 00:01:32,919
This has everything to do with them
finally killing off the Analytical Reasoning

23
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:33,699
section, right?

24
00:01:34,460 --> 00:01:37,299
No more Logic Games as of August twenty
twenty-four.

25
00:01:38,024 --> 00:01:38,644
Exactly.

26
00:01:39,125 --> 00:01:41,184
The games were a mechanical barrier.

27
00:01:41,664 --> 00:01:46,684
You had to learn how to diagram, how to
do, uh, well, basically fake math.

28
00:01:47,324 --> 00:01:52,444
It weeded out a lot of humanities majors
who had great verbal skills but struggled

29
00:01:52,484 --> 00:01:54,564
with formal setup under time pressure.

30
00:01:55,324 --> 00:01:59,885
Without that bottleneck, we have seen a
massive wave of high-scoring applicants.

31
00:02:00,424 --> 00:02:05,684
In fact, in twenty twenty-five, there was
a staggering forty-two point two percent

32
00:02:05,764 --> 00:02:09,744
surge in applicants applying with scores
between one hundred and seventy-five to one

33
00:02:09,884 --> 00:02:12,184
hundred and eighty compared to just the
year before.

34
00:02:13,861 --> 00:02:15,841
Forty-two point two percent?

35
00:02:16,121 --> 00:02:17,241
That is ridiculous.

36
00:02:17,801 --> 00:02:23,081
Okay, so in plain English, it is like a
high school that suddenly decides to drop

37
00:02:23,141 --> 00:02:26,021
its notoriously brutal AP Calculus
requirement.

38
00:02:26,542 --> 00:02:29,302
Suddenly, everyone's grade point average
shoots up, right?

39
00:02:29,921 --> 00:02:34,841
But because everyone is getting an A,
having an A ceases to mean anything to

40
00:02:34,882 --> 00:02:35,341
colleges.

41
00:02:35,802 --> 00:02:40,081
The admissions officers are looking at
this giant stack of perfect GPAs and going,

42
00:02:40,641 --> 00:02:43,521
great, now how do we actually tell these
people apart?

43
00:02:44,274 --> 00:02:46,494
That is a perfect analogy.

44
00:02:47,034 --> 00:02:48,574
It is applicant compression.

45
00:02:49,194 --> 00:02:54,614
When everyone has a high score, the score
itself loses its power to differentiate

46
00:02:54,675 --> 00:02:54,795
you.

47
00:02:55,634 --> 00:02:57,554
It reminds me of my time in the courtroom.

48
00:02:58,215 --> 00:03:02,154
If you are a litigator, and the
evidentiary standard suddenly gets raised,

49
00:03:02,834 --> 00:03:06,914
you, you cannot just show up with the same
old decent pile of documents.

50
00:03:07,534 --> 00:03:12,134
If the opposition has a mountain of
evidence, your standard proof is not going to

51
00:03:12,194 --> 00:03:12,514
cut it.

52
00:03:13,174 --> 00:03:17,215
You have to find an entirely new way to
make your argument stand out.

53
00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:22,699
Right, because if you show up with a one
seventy now, the admissions committee is

54
00:03:22,759 --> 00:03:26,679
looking at you like, okay, you and half
the applicant pool.

55
00:03:27,539 --> 00:03:31,699
So, if we cannot rely on the old score
brackets to carry us,

56
00:03:31,759 --> 00:03:34,020
how do we actually survive this new world?

57
00:03:34,674 --> 00:03:36,514
Well, that is the real kicker.

58
00:03:37,214 --> 00:03:42,414
Under the old format, you could
brute-force your way to a perfect minus zero on

59
00:03:42,474 --> 00:03:43,114
Logic Games.

60
00:03:43,574 --> 00:03:44,734
It was highly learnable.

61
00:03:45,234 --> 00:03:48,974
You drill it, you get perfect at it, and
that became your safety net.

62
00:03:49,654 --> 00:03:53,875
If you missed a few on Logical Reasoning
or Reading Comprehension because of some

63
00:03:53,914 --> 00:03:57,394
subjective, tricky phrasing, the games
saved you.

64
00:03:58,194 --> 00:03:58,654
But now?

65
00:03:59,375 --> 00:04:03,954
Logical Reasoning makes up sixty-six
percent of your scored exam.

66
00:04:04,014 --> 00:04:05,434
That cushion is gone.

67
00:04:06,254 --> 00:04:09,334
Your margin of error on LR is virtually
zero.

68
00:04:10,654 --> 00:04:15,974
Which is terrifying because Logical
Reasoning feels like natural language.

69
00:04:16,494 --> 00:04:20,774
You read a short paragraph, you think you
understand it, and you go to the answer

70
00:04:20,814 --> 00:04:21,854
choices.

71
00:04:21,914 --> 00:04:26,895
It is so easy to fall into this trap of
just doing thousands of questions on a

72
00:04:26,975 --> 00:04:30,934
spreadsheet, thinking you are studying,
when you are really just...

73
00:04:31,574 --> 00:04:32,914
pattern matching.

74
00:04:32,975 --> 00:04:34,114
It is passive.

75
00:04:34,859 --> 00:04:35,299
Yes!

76
00:04:35,740 --> 00:04:37,639
The, the spreadsheet approach.

77
00:04:38,339 --> 00:04:43,179
People list the question subtype, they
make a checklist, and they think they are

78
00:04:43,239 --> 00:04:44,099
doing the work.

79
00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:50,000
But near-perfect LR accuracy requires deep
semantic analysis.

80
00:04:50,719 --> 00:04:53,479
You have to do what we call a Socratic
review.

81
00:04:54,299 --> 00:04:59,760
Before you even look at those five answer
choices, you need to reconstruct the exact

82
00:04:59,939 --> 00:05:04,779
logical gap between the premises and the
conclusion in your own words.

83
00:05:05,559 --> 00:05:09,959
If you cannot explain the flaw to a
ten-year-old, you do not understand the

84
00:05:10,040 --> 00:05:10,439
question.

85
00:05:11,252 --> 00:05:17,012
So, basically, stop looking for quick
tricks and actually do the hard work of

86
00:05:17,112 --> 00:05:18,452
translating the argument.

87
00:05:19,093 --> 00:05:23,432
It is like, uh, instead of just memorizing
what a bad argument looks like,

88
00:05:23,952 --> 00:05:27,353
you have to actively dissect why it is
broken.

89
00:05:28,273 --> 00:05:31,412
But, Adrian, do you think this makes the
test, I don't know,

90
00:05:31,753 --> 00:05:33,312
fundamentally unfair?

91
00:05:33,912 --> 00:05:35,432
There is this weird tension.

92
00:05:35,972 --> 00:05:40,933
On one hand, dropping the games makes the
LSAT more accessible because you do not

93
00:05:41,032 --> 00:05:44,152
have to learn this bizarre, proprietary
game system.

94
00:05:44,752 --> 00:05:49,452
But on the other hand, that accessibility
has made actually getting a competitive

95
00:05:49,513 --> 00:05:52,513
percentile score harder than it has ever
been.

96
00:05:53,277 --> 00:05:55,438
It is a massive paradox.

97
00:05:55,958 --> 00:05:58,997
It is more accessible, yet far more
brutal.

98
00:05:59,737 --> 00:06:02,298
And let us not forget the actual testing
environment.

99
00:06:02,918 --> 00:06:07,937
If your margin of error is this thin, even
a minor hiccup can ruin your score.

100
00:06:08,897 --> 00:06:12,737
I tell all my students now, you have to
practice under simulated,

101
00:06:13,037 --> 00:06:14,917
high-stress Prometric conditions.

102
00:06:15,597 --> 00:06:20,997
A laggy user interface, a slow proctor
checking your room, a three-second delay when

103
00:06:21,017 --> 00:06:24,697
you click next, those tiny things eat away
at your time.

104
00:06:25,318 --> 00:06:29,978
And when you cannot afford to lose a
single point, those seconds are everything.

105
00:06:30,694 --> 00:06:33,434
Ugh, that UI lag is real.

106
00:06:33,814 --> 00:06:35,795
It is a completely different game now.

107
00:06:36,514 --> 00:06:38,474
Well, I guess the takeaway is clear.

108
00:06:38,994 --> 00:06:42,514
If you are aiming for the top, the old
rules are dead.

109
00:06:43,054 --> 00:06:45,454
You cannot just coast on a one seventy
anymore.

110
00:06:46,194 --> 00:06:46,875
Exactly.

111
00:06:47,394 --> 00:06:49,335
Get ready to sweat the details.

112
00:06:49,954 --> 00:06:52,314
Alright, good chatting, Nora, talk soon.

113
00:06:53,024 --> 00:06:53,884
Yep, see ya.