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LSAT science passages require no science knowledge at all, by design, because every passage is answerable from its own text. Replace unfamiliar nouns with letters, read the verbs and hedges that carry the argument, and mark which explanation the author actually endorses.
None. Not a course, not a background, not a refresher. Every LSAT passage is written to be answerable from its own text, and a question whose answer depended on outside scientific knowledge would be defective.
That is not reassurance, it is a structural fact you can act on. It means that when a science passage introduces a term you have never seen, the passage will define it or the questions will not need it. Both outcomes let you keep reading.
The people who struggle with these passages are rarely the ones who lack the science. They are the ones who stop at unfamiliar words, which is a reading habit rather than a knowledge problem.
Bracket the jargon and read the connective tissue. A science passage is an argument with technical nouns in it, and the argument is carried by the same words that carry every other argument: however, therefore, although, which suggests, but this cannot account for.
MoveWhat it meansReplace unfamiliar nouns with a letterThermohaline circulation becomes X. The passage's logic is unchanged and your working memory is freedRead the verbs between the nounsX causes Y, Y was thought to explain Z, but Z occurs where X is absent. That is the passageNote which claim is contestedScience passages almost always stage a dispute between two explanations, and the questions live thereMark the author's verdictEndorses one explanation, withholds judgment, or says the evidence is not yet in. One of the three, always
Here is a compressed passage written for this example. Researchers long attributed the seasonal die-off of eelgrass in the bay to rising water temperature.
Warming, however, accelerated in the northern reaches while the die-off remained concentrated in the south. Sediment cores now suggest that nitrogen runoff, which peaks in the south, promotes an algal layer that blocks light from reaching the eelgrass beds.
Bracketed version: researchers thought X caused Y. But X increased where Y did not. Now evidence suggests Z, which is concentrated where Y is, causes Y through mechanism M.
You now know the passage's structure, its dispute, and where the author stands, and you have not needed to know what eelgrass or thermohaline anything is. The nouns can be looked up on the page if a detail question wants them.
Not vocabulary. Causal precision. Science passages distinguish carefully between correlates with, contributes to, is sufficient for, and is the primary driver of, and the questions turn on exactly those distinctions.
So while you can bracket the nouns, you cannot bracket the verbs or the hedges. Suggests is not shows.
Consistent with is not evidence for. May contribute is not causes.
Underline the hedge, not the term. That is the whole adjustment, and it is the opposite of what anxious readers do.
Check whether they actually score worse for you or merely feel worse. In our experience most people report science passages as their weakest and the score data does not agree, because discomfort during reading and accuracy on questions are different things.
That gap between felt difficulty and performance is well documented in the learning literature. Kornell and Bjork (2008), Psychological Science (https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2008-kornell.pdf) found 78 percent of students judged massed study as good as or better than spaced study while 78 percent actually performed better spaced. Feeling is a poor instrument.
So before you build a study plan around a science weakness, check the marked-up sets. If the accuracy is there, the problem is confidence and pacing, and those are fixed differently.
Every LSAC figure on this page was taken from LSAC's own pages and last checked on July 26, 2026. Prices, dates and policies move without notice, so the source link sits next to each number rather than in a bibliography at the bottom.
Where LSAC has not published something, this page says so in those words rather than filling the hole with a plausible number. That is the difference between a gap and a guess, and only one of them is safe to plan around.
No. Every passage is self-contained by design, and a question requiring outside scientific knowledge would be defective. Unfamiliar terms are either defined or not needed.
Replace unfamiliar nouns with letters, read the verbs and connectives that carry the argument, identify the contested explanation, and mark the author's verdict.
Not for its own sake. If reviewing a passage teaches you that you skipped a hedge or missed which explanation the author preferred, that is the lesson; the subject matter will not recur.
Keep the letter. You rarely need to understand the definition, only to know that the term has one and where it sits in the causal chain the passage describes.
LSAC does not publish a subject breakdown for Reading Comprehension, so any claimed proportion is an informal count. Passages span the sciences, humanities, social sciences and law.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
August 5, 2026
August 5, 2026