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Star Trek LSAT Scores

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The LSAT is an insanely hard test. Star Trek: The Next Generation is the greatest show of all time. So I started to think about what would happen if these two titanic worlds collided. This actually isn’t that implausible. By the 24th century, most of our standardized tests will have been rendered obsolete. Half the stuff on the MCAT will be irrelevant once we’ve got our hands on some of them sweet dermal regenerators and medical tricorders, and the GMAT will be useless upon society’s inevitable realization that business school is a scam and business students are hacks. But the logic of the LSAT is eternal. If you translated an LSAT into Greek and gave it to Socrates, he’d make it his bitch. So in a mere 350 years it will be just as efficacious as it is today, methinks.

So what would happen if the crew of the good old NCC-1701-D had to sit for the LSAT? First of all, on average their scores would be somewhat higher. Most of them went to Starfleet Academy (which is like the Yale of the future, but with better landscaping) and they all landed a job on the flagship of the Federation, so they’re not exactly a representative cross section of society. So I don’t want to hear a bunch of complaining about how there aren’t enough low scores. Not everyone can be Troi.

And so, without further ado…

Wesley Crusher – 177

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Wesley is the son of Beverly Crusher, the ship’s doctor. Wesley is supposedly a boy genius, excelling at literally everything he does. This seems to defy all reason, as his main talents resolve primarily around whining and being grating. His dad died when he was a young boy, which is too bad, because he could use a father figure to beat him once in a while for being such a little pansy. He eventually gets written off the show, leaving to go to Starfleet Academy, and is one of the only characters in the Star Trek universe to have actually taken a standardized test. But, having realized just how bad a character he was, the writers came to the conclusion that Wesley even being in the same universe is a bit too close for comfort, and he eventually leaves for another dimension.

LSAT Performance – We’re led to believe that he’s basically a Mozart in terms of him being a boy genius, so I guess he’d have to do extremely well for the sake of plot consistency. Even though he’s smart, he doesn’t have a lot of common sense. Remember in season 3 when he managed to make nanobots, but then fell asleep and they flew away? He’d probably leave his ID at home or accidentally light his answer sheet on fire or find a marble and choke on it.

Beverly Crusher – 169

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She’s the ship’s doctor, and the mother of Wesley Crusher. She can be forgiven for the latter offense, as she’s constantly saving the crew from space cancer and stuff.

LSAT Performance – Crusher clearly has brains and would do really well on the test. Sure, she’s a doctor, and the LSAT isn’t much like the MCAT, but she was the head of Starfleet Medical. You don’t get that position unless you’re smart as hell. She’s also really good at problem solving, and is constantly figuring stuff out for the senior staff, even though her actual responsibilities involve waving wands over people and telling them to get rest. She’d manage to miss very few on games and logical reasoning. If she did miss more than a few points, it would probably be in reading comp.

Worf – 159

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Worf, the Enterprise’s security chief, is the only Klingon in Starfleet. He’s a member of an angry race that has a penchant for hitting things they don’t understand. In spite of this, he manages to keep his Klingonness in check for the most part. Still, most of his problems he likes to solve with brute force, as witnessed by the fact that he’s so trigger-happy with the photon torpedoes. In spite of this, the guy loves to read and also listens to opera.

LSAT Performance – Worf would crush reading comprehension, probably getting all of them right. He’d also do well on the more conceptual LR problems, but the ones that involve heavy diagramming and formal logic might frustrate him. Games would be where he would the big points. He’d grumble his way through the first easy ordering one, but once he saw any sort of challenging game he would get angry and say that the test is for weaklings and females. He also might put his fist through the desk. And the test proctor.

Deanna Troi – Cancelled Score

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Troi, the ship’s counselor, is one of the less gifted senior officers of the USS Enterprise. I mean, have you heard her talk? She sounds like a Welshman with a speech impediment. It also looks like she makes her own clothes. While in a dark room. While drunk. And yet, for some unknown reason, they let her hang out on the bridge.

Troi’s one skill is she’s half Betazoid, which means she’s sort of telepathic. But not even fully telepathic. While other Betazoids can hear people’s thoughts as contrived voice-overs, all she can do is sense general emotions. This rarely seems to solve any real problems, but rather just lets Picard know when they’re about to be attacked:

Alien ship approaches.
Troi: I’m sensing great anger and fear.
Picard: What?
Troi: It’s as though they’re all screaming at once!
Picard: What did she say?
Riker: I can never tell.
Enterprise is fired upon.

LSAT Performance: Her already-limited cognitive facilities would be rendered irrelevant by her telepathy. There’s nothing more stressful in life than taking the LSAT, and imagine if you were sitting in a room feeling the emotions of 50 different test takers. It would probably feel something like this:

She would have to run to sickbay within the first five minutes, canceling her score. Law schools across the federation would collectively sigh in relief. Unfortunately for Troi, the LSAT doesn’t test emotional intelligence.

Geordi La Forge – 165

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Geordi is the Enterprise’s blind chief engineer, which is ironic given that in real life LaVar Burton was a prolific rainbow dealer. Geordi is a mechanical genius, and can fix just about anything, which has saved the ship on numerous occasions. He is also best friends with Data, largely because he’s such an antisocial nerd. He is also very poor with women, leading him to fall in love with a hologram. (Holodecks are the blow-up dolls of the 24th century. Remember that episode where Barclay actually had sex with holo-Troi? Good for Barclay, I say.)

LSAT Performance – Geordi would finish games in about 12 minutes, of course, and do perfectly. He’s never seen reading books a whole lot, so there’s no reason to think he’d be insanely good at the other two sections, but then again he’s pretty damn smart, so there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t. His VISOR would make cheating easy, but the guy’s too ethical to actually follow through. All in all he’d do quite well, unless he was sitting next to an attractive woman, in which case he’d start sweating and have a panic attack.

Data – 180

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Data is the one and only android in all of Starfleet. (Autocorrect just capitalized “Starfleet.” Thank you, Bill Gates.) His strength and cognitive abilities are constantly saving the entire crew, whether he’s pressing buttons in fast-motion or lifting paper mache rocks that have fallen on fellow crewmembers. While he has physical and mental capacities that we could only dream of, he longs to be a human. He also has a poor understanding of human interrelationships and social norms, leading to comedy gold.

LSAT performance – Data getting a 180 pretty much goes without saying. Nothing is subjective on the LSAT. Every question has an answer that is inarguably correct, and he’d of course get them all (he would finish each section in about 90 seconds, much to the chagrin of the people sitting next to him). The writing sample’d probably screw him, as he couldn’t definitively argue for one course of action over another without sufficient evidence for either, but that wouldn’t matter for his score.

He’d also likely run into some administrative problems, though. You can’t bring electronic devices, but what if you are one? Doesn’t Data count as a calculator? Should he even be allowed to take the test? Does he count as a person? Truly, what is The Measure of a Man?

William T Riker – 122

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Riker is the first officer of the enterprise, and likes to yell and posture about things. He’s not very smart, and tries to make up for this by being smug and overconfident. The only indication of any sort of intelligence on his part is the fact that he’s good at three-dimensional chess, but I’m pretty sure everyone lets him win so that he can feel good about himself. Actually, his one real skill is his ability to fornicate with things. These have included a sexless-humanoid, a hologram, and a cyborg.

LSAT Performance – Riker is a moron, and he’d do terribly. When he first saw games he’d get very confused. Resorting to his natural instincts, he’d somehow try to put his penis in the test. When this didn’t work, he’d get fussy. Once he calmed himself down a bit, he’d start bubbling things in randomly, and might try to put his penis in it again. When he got his score it would go something like this:

Computer: Your score is a 122.
Riker: That’s a lot of points.
Computer: You scored in the 2nd percentile.
Riker: Second place. Not bad.
Riker looks for a hole to celebrate with.

Jean-Luc Picard – 179

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Jean-Luc Picard is the most badass motherfucker ever. I hope I one day go bald just so I can look more like Patrick Stewart. In his native England, the guy is legally allowed to go around shooting people in the face for fun just because he’s so awesome.

Picard has saved more civilizations that you’ve taken dumps. He’s literally been stabbed through the heart. He was offered a promotion to admiral, but turned it down just so he could keep fucking shit up with the Enterprise. He probably eats bullets for breakfast (washed down with some Earl Grey, hot).

LSAT Performance – There’s no way he’d get anything less than a 179, and that’s without studying. The guy’s a renaissance man – athlete, scholar, military genius. He’s constantly quoting Shakespeare, and he speaks Latin. He’d see reading comprehension and laugh. Logical reasoning is his bread and butter. He’d utterly own it. Games would be his weakness, as it would take him a whole 29 minutes to complete. He’d wind up with a 179 or 180. Not that it would matter, because he would never go to law school. The only legal system Picard needs is the Prime Directive.

And now, for the greatest thing ever done by anyone:

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