Some "frameworks" I'm seeing as I'm going through the lesson:
Just like the LSAT, identifying major assumptions that each perspectives makes about the topic question can help develop a more nuanced perspective. For example, the perspectives that seem to favor colleges not emphasizing career preparation generally assume that the question is asking if emphasizing career preparation over the liberal arts is beneficial for university students. Multiple OTHER ways to think about the question could be:
What conditions does this emphasis of career preparation entail? In addition, what are some different ways of thinking about career preparation, and are they any methods that has the least 'negative' tradeoffs? Or are these tradeoffs unavoidable?
Logical analysis: Given that we know the traditional goals of college, does the accomplishment of those goals prevent the simultaneous emphasis of this new career-focused goal?
So how do we build an essay off of a set of different conditional situations? If we provide multiple different situations in which the proposed action is good or bad for students, are we not flip flopping between sides? In reality, I think this provides room for simple rebuttals based on what is more likely:
Example Rebuttal of one conditional (after thesis): Obviously, if colleges decided to emphasize career preparation over delivering a high quality, inquisitive liberal arts education, I think that would be an overall detriment to students. The university should not be mainly focused on training students in skills or areas that maximize the likelihood of being hired, as this would likely leave a gap in critical thinking and intellectual skills that college uniquely provides young adults.
Continued (Pushing argument through different conditional): Instead, I think it would be more useful to consider the group of solutions that could best balance these two seemingly 'conflicted' interests. First, to evaluate the current balance of these two factors in the current system of higher education, I think that an increased emphasis on career preparation is warranted, especially given the economic context of the world we live in today. The idea that college should be a space for self discovery, exploration, and social development definitely holds validity given the lack of anything remotely similar to it in every other part of modern society. The idea that college should provide that opportunity without sufficient emphasis on how to translate that growth into a career or at least an accurate understanding of one's post-collegiate can be problematic, and is demonstrated by trends we see today.
Continued: [Define sufficient emphasis] [Define the specific trends] So what does sufficient emphasis without sacrificing the core values of liberals arts education look like? I don't think career preparation necessarily needs to be oriented towards the goal of receiving a well-paying job right after graduation, and it is understandable as to why opponents of emphasized career preparation believe that it would be harmful for students in this context. Instead, if we think about career preparation as a widely varying process that could include exploration of the careers available to students depending on their self-determined interests, identification of potential career or academic goals, and long-term planning to determine different pathways for achieving those goals - it is easier to see an emphasis on career preparation not as universities 'molding' their graduates into over-specialized uniform identities, but as universities leveraging their resources to help students define a clearer picture of their futures, whether long or short term in scope.
Now, with your 'meat and bones' determined by just crossing of an aggressive / assumptive conditional of some counterarguments, and then exploring a more 'balanced' version of the discussion, you can then build further support by:
[Historical Context] There are two major reasons why increasing emphasis on career preparation through the aforementioned methods is highly likely to benefit students. First, there has been a dramatic increase in the average difficulty of obtaining a well-paying job after college, even for those in highly technical majors such as engineering or computer science. Long gone are the days of showing up unannounced at the office, handing in your resume, and being highly likely to receive a job offer. Today, companies have a far higher skill floor for expected candidates, and hiring processes have become much more efficient for sorting for talent. Every industry - even academia - has a certain set of requirements that every student needs to be aware of before they attempt to break in. Whether it's a design portfolio for a corporate marketing position, a set of refined writing samples for an English major looking to become a columnist, or the classic summer internship in anything from engineering to public policy, there are checkboxes that every aspiring student needs to be aware of. As someone whose parents always emphasized the importance of career stability, I naturally tended towards finding these prerequisites once I had found an industry that I was interested in, and further benefitted from being an engineering major. However, a lot of my peers with majors that had less clear career paths seemed to avoid career preparation as this daunting, ambiguous, and overwhelming task - and I believe this to be a result of poor career support by universities. I had friends who were incredibly talented creative writers, but had no idea in the slightest how to kickstart their career, and no one from the university to speak about that type of thing with.
Ran out of energy but just some ways of going about it.
Are we supposed to turn off any grammar check feature we have on before taking the argumentative writing section? I saw that Grammarly was on, and I wonder if the proctor will somehow ask us to disable it or if it will be disabled automatically.
I wonder if the argumentative writing test includes a grammar-checking feature to help identify misspelled words. In the video, I noticed Grammarly was running. Could you confirm if we’ll be able to use it during the actual test? Thank you!
Would it be beneficial to avoid 1st person language in the LSAT writing? I noticed that he used "I" and "We"-- I learned that using these words makes the writing less formal. Is that something that is universally implied, or is it specific to how I was taught?
when writing the LSAT writing section, do we have to un-download Grammarly or something because it's AI? I only ask because I've heard that some Canadian institutions have stated that using Grammarly counts as an academic integrity violation.
is it better to write our outline on our allotted amount of scratch paper or the online scratch paper
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41 comments
Some "frameworks" I'm seeing as I'm going through the lesson:
Just like the LSAT, identifying major assumptions that each perspectives makes about the topic question can help develop a more nuanced perspective. For example, the perspectives that seem to favor colleges not emphasizing career preparation generally assume that the question is asking if emphasizing career preparation over the liberal arts is beneficial for university students. Multiple OTHER ways to think about the question could be:
What conditions does this emphasis of career preparation entail? In addition, what are some different ways of thinking about career preparation, and are they any methods that has the least 'negative' tradeoffs? Or are these tradeoffs unavoidable?
Logical analysis: Given that we know the traditional goals of college, does the accomplishment of those goals prevent the simultaneous emphasis of this new career-focused goal?
So how do we build an essay off of a set of different conditional situations? If we provide multiple different situations in which the proposed action is good or bad for students, are we not flip flopping between sides? In reality, I think this provides room for simple rebuttals based on what is more likely:
Example Rebuttal of one conditional (after thesis): Obviously, if colleges decided to emphasize career preparation over delivering a high quality, inquisitive liberal arts education, I think that would be an overall detriment to students. The university should not be mainly focused on training students in skills or areas that maximize the likelihood of being hired, as this would likely leave a gap in critical thinking and intellectual skills that college uniquely provides young adults.
Continued (Pushing argument through different conditional): Instead, I think it would be more useful to consider the group of solutions that could best balance these two seemingly 'conflicted' interests. First, to evaluate the current balance of these two factors in the current system of higher education, I think that an increased emphasis on career preparation is warranted, especially given the economic context of the world we live in today. The idea that college should be a space for self discovery, exploration, and social development definitely holds validity given the lack of anything remotely similar to it in every other part of modern society. The idea that college should provide that opportunity without sufficient emphasis on how to translate that growth into a career or at least an accurate understanding of one's post-collegiate can be problematic, and is demonstrated by trends we see today.
Continued: [Define sufficient emphasis] [Define the specific trends] So what does sufficient emphasis without sacrificing the core values of liberals arts education look like? I don't think career preparation necessarily needs to be oriented towards the goal of receiving a well-paying job right after graduation, and it is understandable as to why opponents of emphasized career preparation believe that it would be harmful for students in this context. Instead, if we think about career preparation as a widely varying process that could include exploration of the careers available to students depending on their self-determined interests, identification of potential career or academic goals, and long-term planning to determine different pathways for achieving those goals - it is easier to see an emphasis on career preparation not as universities 'molding' their graduates into over-specialized uniform identities, but as universities leveraging their resources to help students define a clearer picture of their futures, whether long or short term in scope.
Now, with your 'meat and bones' determined by just crossing of an aggressive / assumptive conditional of some counterarguments, and then exploring a more 'balanced' version of the discussion, you can then build further support by:
[Historical Context] There are two major reasons why increasing emphasis on career preparation through the aforementioned methods is highly likely to benefit students. First, there has been a dramatic increase in the average difficulty of obtaining a well-paying job after college, even for those in highly technical majors such as engineering or computer science. Long gone are the days of showing up unannounced at the office, handing in your resume, and being highly likely to receive a job offer. Today, companies have a far higher skill floor for expected candidates, and hiring processes have become much more efficient for sorting for talent. Every industry - even academia - has a certain set of requirements that every student needs to be aware of before they attempt to break in. Whether it's a design portfolio for a corporate marketing position, a set of refined writing samples for an English major looking to become a columnist, or the classic summer internship in anything from engineering to public policy, there are checkboxes that every aspiring student needs to be aware of. As someone whose parents always emphasized the importance of career stability, I naturally tended towards finding these prerequisites once I had found an industry that I was interested in, and further benefitted from being an engineering major. However, a lot of my peers with majors that had less clear career paths seemed to avoid career preparation as this daunting, ambiguous, and overwhelming task - and I believe this to be a result of poor career support by universities. I had friends who were incredibly talented creative writers, but had no idea in the slightest how to kickstart their career, and no one from the university to speak about that type of thing with.
Ran out of energy but just some ways of going about it.
their use of "groping" was very odd...
"So I give myself this opening question here... as if I'm writing an article for the New Yorker or something..."
Are we supposed to turn off any grammar check feature we have on before taking the argumentative writing section? I saw that Grammarly was on, and I wonder if the proctor will somehow ask us to disable it or if it will be disabled automatically.
“Resaons”
For the argumentative writing section is it better to use first-person, third person, or try to avoid the author entirely if able?
I wonder if the argumentative writing test includes a grammar-checking feature to help identify misspelled words. In the video, I noticed Grammarly was running. Could you confirm if we’ll be able to use it during the actual test? Thank you!
So are we choosing one of the perspectives and going off of which we agree on?
#feedback there are a couple of minutes of black screen / no audio towards the end of the video
Thank you for this video- I feel a lot less nervous about my writing prompt- seeing as how u flubbed it- and still made a killer comeback!
I think anyone who took IB English or History (maybe AP English too) would be well prepared by going back to that formulaic writing outline:
I. Intro Paragraph:
A. Hook
B. Thesis
II. Argument 1
A. Point
B. Evidence
C. Analysis
D. Repeat as needed
III. Argument 2
A. PEA (Point - Evidence - Analysis)
IV. Argument 3
A. PEA
V. Conclusion
A. Lead-in/Summary
B. Concluding statement that ties back to the thesis (without restating) with some new insight
Can you use grammerly during the real thing?
Would it be beneficial to avoid 1st person language in the LSAT writing? I noticed that he used "I" and "We"-- I learned that using these words makes the writing less formal. Is that something that is universally implied, or is it specific to how I was taught?
I thought this was really well written!
Can we outline on paper?
when writing the LSAT writing section, do we have to un-download Grammarly or something because it's AI? I only ask because I've heard that some Canadian institutions have stated that using Grammarly counts as an academic integrity violation.
is it better to write our outline on our allotted amount of scratch paper or the online scratch paper