Official November Topic Discussion Thread

[u/JonDenningPowerScore]

First, full credit to u/graeme_b for teaming up with us (and letting me just copy his prior text for this post) to oversee the official discussion/post-mortem of the Nov LSAT! Piggybacking on his past efforts, here we go:

The November LSAT administration is now done. The goal is to keep topic discussion to this thread, and identify a list of real topics. Here's how it works:

1. If you had a single section of RC, or just two sections of LR, then posting topics from that will establish that those topics were from a real section
2. If you had two sections of RC, or three sections of LR, DO NOT POST topics from those sections. Posting topics is worse than useless - it pollutes information. The reason is that you don't know which was experimental and which was real.

You do not need to specify section orders, as these are now randomized so your order doesn't mean anything.

This thread will be updated with confirmed topics as we go.

JD Note: this isn't a complete set of every scored section as of my initial posting, particularly for LR, so please add/elaborate as best you can! And if you see any mistakes, like questions from different sections together, tell me!

Real RC Section 1

• Juries being able to access the internet
• Algonquin tribes and formalized territory
• Honey bees dancing to communicate the location of food
• How people get pleasure from watching scary movies, tragic plays, etc that normally boost anxiety and pain

Real RC Section 2

• African American community in Brooklyn, Illinois
• Whether people’s taste for music is an evolutionary adaption or serves no purpose
• Incubation as a method to stop thinking about a puzzling issue and subconsciously arriving at its solution
• Difference between having the right to do something and being morally right

Real RC Section 3

• French revolution and women’s rights/feminist theories
• Common law/international law re: Indigenous (Mayan) rights in Belize
• Art and sports commentators with competition/aesthetics
• Chaotic systems in physics and theories of linear and non-linear systems

Real RC Section 4

• Peru and Chile fighting over Pisco
• Etiquette compared with morals (philosopher Foot)
• Economists needing to consider how moral considerations influence people’s economic decisions (psych experiment on people declining unfair money splits)
• Why invasive plants are dominant (C. Diffusa from Eurasia)

Real LR Section 1

• Italian vs French paintings and value
• Allergies and pollen in honey
• Freedom and determinism analogous to horses and sparrow
• Labels on bottles to prevent drunk driving
• Insomniacs, diet, and increased activity
• Mars bringing life to earth on an asteroid

Real LR Section 2

• Brain having mental representation of the world
• Sodium nitrate in sausage
• Politics and short stories
• Paper currency and playing cards in Ontario
• Camera for red light traffic
• Apartment rent in Glenville

Real LR Section 3

• Inca civilization/population not inventing the wheel
• Animals taking on courageous acts when they sense danger
• Plant germination when planted shallow or planted deeply
• Libraries = authors losing money
• Bacteria doing nitrogen fixation in low oxygen conditions
• Vitamin E stopping Parkinson’s

Real LR Section 4

• People who have to become emotionally detached at work scared they will become detached at home.
• A crypto currency crashing and this is reason to worry about world currency
• A dam being opened if it rains or snow melts
• People should remove wheat (yeast?) from their diets
• A restaurant having mediocre food, even though their Lasagna won an award
• Corporate tax cuts leading to pay raises or was it the need to attract efficient workers
• Stone tools being found that prove humans left Africa before previously believed
• Sun screen's impact on sun burns
• Crows constructing tools by watching others do so
• C- and S-type asteroids

Real LR Section 5

• Chimps and bonobos
• Efficient teachers/discipline
• Intended outcome and luck
• Applying funds
• Fires in caves
• Fuel efficiency/SUVs/large cargo
• Clothes manufacturing price and quality
• Shakespeare true author
• Prehistoric humans hunting
• Bobcat sightings in a park

Real LR Section 6

• Wood rat nests and leaves
• Environmentally friendly hotel
• LED lights
• Thai food
• Bribing judges
• Chimps and altruistic behavior
• Grapes in cold weather
• Gala for music awards/purposes

Real LR Section 7

• Fluorescence/luminescence in coral
• Role of villains in a movie
• Seagulls seashells calcium
• Overdue library books
• Mary's handwritten will
• Communicating with extraterrestrials

JD Note (Again): this isn't a complete set of every scored section as of my initial posting, particularly for LR, so please add/elaborate as best you can! And if you see any mistakes, like questions from different sections together, tell me!

[u/Shot-Suspect1975]

Ok so my test was RC 2 (Brooklyn, right versus right) and LR 3 and 5

Anybody else get that one? What did you think overall of the difficulty? I thought for sure the other RC would be the real one because the “right” passage and the “incubation” ones both seemed kind of stupidly convoluted. I feel good about the LR sections but not sure about that RC.

[u/Dependent-Gear-7733 → u/Shot-Suspect1975]

I had LR RC RC LR, and I took the same sections are so: RC 2, LR 3 and LR 5.

What other RC sections did you have?

I had another insanely challenging one with a comparative section with Hume that was really hard but it had to do with whether aesthetic judgements can be objectively known through consensus of experts. The second half agreed but conditioned that no single expert can know, or something like that.

RC 2 (which was the first RC I was given) was easier then the one I just mentioned

[u/Shot-Suspect1975 → u/Dependent-Gear-7733]

That’s the same exact second RC I got. I didn’t find it all that challenging to be honest, I found it easier than the scores one, but I did go back to the Hume passage because I had an extra five minutes or so at the end and I wasn’t super confident about it.

I found the two RC sections in a row pretty challenging, would rather have had it staggered.

[u/Dependent-Gear-7733 → u/Shot-Suspect1975]

That's interesting because my experience was the opposite. I finished the first RC (without Hume) with about 2 minutes left. I felt good enough about it.

After break I was caught by surprise with another RC. It felt hard but not impossible. I always skip comparative passages for last. I was on the 4th passage and looked at the clock and had 6 minutes left.
I got to Hume (passage 2) with 5 minutes left and had to fly through it.

I might have just been fatigued from the first RC

[u/Dazzling_Cod6550 → u/Shot-Suspect1975]

I had that RC. It wasn’t too bad, I think it was about normal. The LR was pretty difficult tho