LSAT RC Application Questions: Extending the Passage to New Situations

Application (or extension) questions present a scenario, example, or situation not discussed in the passage and ask you to apply the passage's ideas to it. Common stems: "Which of the following is most consistent with the author's view?" or "The author would most likely agree that which of the following is an example of [concept]?" or "Which of the following situations is most analogous to the one described in the passage?"

These questions test a different skill than comprehension or inference questions. Instead of retrieving what the passage says, you are applying a principle, argument, or framework from the passage to a novel case. The answer is not in the text — you have to derive it from the text.

Step 1: Identify the principle, framework, or argument the question is asking you to apply. This is almost always the passage's main claim or a sub-claim from the relevant section. State it in general terms: "The author argues that [general rule]."

Step 2: Apply that general rule to each answer choice. Which answer choice is a case that satisfies the conditions of the author's argument? The correct answer is the scenario that matches the structure of the author's rule, not the scenario that is topically similar.

The mistake most students make is matching by topic rather than by structure. If the passage is about legal precedent and one answer choice involves a courtroom, it will be tempting — but the correct answer is the one whose logical structure matches the author's argument, regardless of whether it involves law.

Suppose the passage argues: "A city government overreaches its authority when it regulates private behavior that causes no direct harm to others, because self-determination is a fundamental right that governments must preserve."

The general principle: government regulation of private behavior is illegitimate when (1) the behavior is private and (2) it causes no direct harm to others.

Application question: "Which of the following is most consistent with the author's position?"

Correct answer: "A municipality that bans residents from decorating their homes in certain colors without affecting neighboring properties." This is private behavior (home decoration) with no demonstrated harm to others — so the author's principle says it is an overreach.

Trap answer: "A court ruling that prevents a company from dumping chemicals in a shared waterway." This involves harm to others, so the author's principle does not apply — the regulation is legitimate under the author's own framework.

The trap answer is topically related to government authority but does not satisfy the principle the author articulates.

Application question wrong answers are designed to share the topic or subject matter of the passage. If the passage is about environmental regulation, wrong answers will involve environmental scenarios. The correct answer applies the author's specific principle — and that principle may be better illustrated by a non-environmental case that matches its logical structure.

The safest approach: translate the author's principle into an if-then structure, then find the answer choice whose facts satisfy the "if" condition.

Verbloom's RC practice trains the habit of extracting the author's principle before reading the answer choices, which makes the structural match visible.