Looking for a study buddy. Based in Canada

Let's make those marginal gains in this marginal game.

Looking for like-minded LSAT loving loonies, preferably already PTing 170+ and can BR 175-180 with a goal of achieving PT-BR convergence and planning to absolutely kill it for the August 2022, maybe beyond.

Intending to discuss and document inferences that break LGs wide open, reading strategies that illuminate the densest RC passages, authoritatively reasoning the most convoluted LR questions, identifying and dodging LSAT writers' most subtle question traps, and making the most of all 2100 precious seconds of an LSAT timed section. Also intend to analyze common patterns of LSAT sections and questions with the intent of being able to identify inferences and predict questions and anticipate answers before even attacking the questions.

Planning on regularly scheduled strategy discussion workshopping, coordinated competitive timed PT takes, and exhaustively thorough and accurate blind review. Goal of at least a few hours of productive LSAT time daily.

DM with your info and availability, maybe a list of some of your untouched PTs. Will determine a workable schedule and setup zoom sessions or a discord server. Let's gooooo.

PT43 S3 Q04. The name/type of flaw will be so helpful for my study routine. I would appreciate any guidance if any. Thank you so much and happy studying!

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question" https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-43-section-3-question-04/

Can you help me break down this question? My understanding of the argument is: the two sub-conclusions are inconsistent with each other (outside principles vs constitution only), therefore the first sentence is not true. I selected answer choice E because it seemed like the most reasonable option, but I don't understand the structure of the argument and what does the "particular premise" in answer choice E refers to? Thank you!

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question"

Hi guys- I am aware from the lessons that until/without is negate sufficient.

But is part of the sentence after until or without necessary condition? (I think this is what Powerscore said)

I am also including an explanation from this website - lsatmax.

(The strategy for an “unless” statement is simple. The part of the sentence that follows the “unless” is the necessary condition. The other part of the sentence constitutes the sufficient condition, but you must make sure to negate it!)

https://testmaxprep.com/blog/lsat/the-unless-statement

We played until it got dark.

/play > Dark (after until)

According to some of JY's explanations, this appears to be the case sometimes but sometimes not.

(or maybe I just got confused... not sure.. haha)

So I get really confused whenever I try to map out sentences including until/without.

Thank you! Much appreciated

Check out JY’s explanation breaking down the passage for PT 42, Section 3, Passage 4. He shows how crucial it is to be able to visualize. It is a great passage to hit hard for review!

Can anyone give me a rundown as to why the answer for this one is "D- A political interest group can become ineffective by expanding to include as wide a membership as possible" and not "A-political interest groups are generally less influential when their membership is expanding than when it is numerically stable?" Thanks!

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question"

I am just so confused about the answer choices provided and why A is the correct answer. Nowhere did the paragraph say that it is premature to talk about the critics' concerns.

Admin Note: Edited Title. Please use the format "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of question"

Can someone please help me understand why AC D is correct and why the 4 other answer choices are incorrect?

Admin Note: Edited Title. Please use the format "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of question"

Can someone help me with this question? I understand why AC B is correct but I'm having a hard time understanding why AC E is incorrect.

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question"

Hi! I am planning on taking the LSAT in November, and I am struggling on RC. I keep coming up short by 3 questions every time I practice RC. I've tried different alternatives; can anyone give me advice on how to get more questions right? One thing I never understood why it can be important to indicate if a question is Global, specific, or concept references.

Can someone help me with this question? I don't understand why AC C is correct and why AC D is incorrect

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question"

Hello! I hope everyone’s June LSAT went well. I am writing because I had to cancel my score for the June LSAT because the proctor bothered me so many times during the first two sections I practically had no focus and was stressed the whole exam. Did this happen to anybody else? I was interrupted many times because apparently I was “out of the camera frame” when I was using my scratch paper or when I came close to the laptop screen and my forehead was cut out. This was really frustrating because I can’t see myself on the camera during the test and I just don’t want to worry about this on the next exam. Does anyone have any advice on how to avoid this? A special camera that people used or a certain distance they kept themselves from the laptop?

Thank you!

Can someone explain why C isn't right

We know that she had to work hard on finding these docs because of how exceptional it is. So why can't we say it's scant

Admin Note: Edited title. Please user the format "PT#.S#.Q# (P#) - brief description of stimulus"

Hey everyone!

I noticed that I have been scoring around 18-19 marks out of each LR section I do.

I usually get around 18/24 on each LR section that is untimed.

But when it is timed I always get less than 18 questions right.

Is there any suggestions anyone can give me? How would I improve myself under timed conditions

Thank you!

I have been studying for the LSAT for nearly a year now, and I have managed to get to the point where I am consistently scoring -0/-1 on LR and LG. However, for RC I am still scoring between -3/-5 consistently (this has never improved from when I started to study). Is there anything I can do to score more consistently? I really want to be in the -2/-3 range before the august LSAT. What have you mid to high 170's scorers done to raise your RC?

Thanks

hi all! Happy Friday!!

Ellen Cassidy (EC) from Loophole is a strong proponent of the former but some disagree.

I have been studying for about 11 months and during the first few months, I liked reading question types first but decided to try stim-first approach after reading Loophole which I found to be helpful. At 10th month I got a much better handle on LR, scoring -3 to -5 untimed and I'm kind of tempted to switch back to see if it improves my timing.

EC argues that if you read questions first it will distract you when reading the stimulus.

Has anyone experienced anything similar??

Thanks for sharing!

Honestly, more power to those who routinely got -0 on LG but it seems that I just can't stop making careless mistakes like misreading or even forgetting about rules! Sometime, I got stuck on a question only to find that I had misread a rule, which is a significant time sink. This leads me to not finishing the last game on my take in June and I'm quite disappointed since I was in fairly good shape for LR and RC. Anyone had the similar issue? And if so, how did you eventually overcome this?

What are the best academic journal websites? Specifically, science journals and science news websites.

After going through all of the core curriculum, I'm still scoring -12 or -13 on LR. Does anyone have any recommendations?

hi looking to start a study group to weekly or biweekly go over and discuss practice tests. i plan to take august lsat and aiming for high 160s / low 170s! let me know so we can make a groupme!

I believe this should be a weaken question not flaw. Manhattan says its weaken too. Besides, the right answer choice E is giving a new cause- that of not being extroverted as a person OVER astrology affecting them.

PT #5, S1, Q#2 wrongfully labeled. Should be a Flaw Q.

I am planning on taking the August 12th exam, how many more tests should I take?

I was posting this as a comment to a thread in which someone asked for a "trick" to identifying assumptions. But I thought it'd be more useful as its own thread.

Unfortunately, there is no trick for answering assumption questions, and a full treatment of how to approach them isn't reasonable to fit in a forum post.

However, many, many students would benefit from adding another step in their process to NA questions (and SA, flaw, strengthen/weaken): ask whether there is a "new" concept in the conclusion.

This is because one of the most important aspects of identifying assumptions is noticing concepts in the conclusion that are not mentioned or logically covered in the reasoning. If there is a "new" concept in the conclusion, then the argument must be making some kind of assumption related to it. There may be other assumptions, too, related to gaps between premises, but you can be sure that at least one of the assumptions must be about that new concept in the conclusion.

As good LSAT students, you probably are already familiar with the idea described above. But a lot of people seem to rely mainly on passively noticing new concepts rather than actively thinking about this as a step in solving questions.

Let's work through some example that increase in difficulty.

Example 1:

Rooney graduated with the highest GPA in the history of our law school.

Thus, she must be good at writing law school exams.

Is there a new concept in the conclusion? Yes - do you see that "good at writing law school exams" is not mentioned in the premise? That means the author is making an assumption about the relationship between having the highest GPA and what that tells us about being good at writing law school exams. The author is assuming that having the highest GPA is an indicator of ability at law school exams.

Oftentimes students just fail to notice the difference between two concepts - they make the assumption that the argument itself is making, which is why it's hard to spot that assumption.

Example 2:

Our new neighbor, Xander, was convicted of over fifty murders and has been referred to by local historians as one of the worst serial killers in the United States.

So, we were living next to a murderer this whole time and never knew it!

Are there new concepts in the conclusion? You might see that the idea of "not knowing" our neighbor is a murderer is new - the evidence never provides anything related to what we knew about Xander. So the argument is assuming something about our lack of knowledge. What if we actually knew he was a killer before he was found out? Then the argument doesn't work.

Do you also see that the concept of "being a murderer" is also new? The evidence just refers to being "convicted" of murders and "being referred to by historians" as a serial killer. None of those is the same as being a murderer - what if he's an innocent person who was wrongly convicted and falsely thought of as a serial killer?

Another issue is that sometimes students don't realize something is a new concept because they think that the fact that it was mentioned elsewhere in the stimulus means that it's not new. But in reality, the concept can still be "new" if it's not mentioned in the reasoning that supports the conclusion.

In addition, you might have to translate the conclusion if it uses referential language. You can't identify new concepts in the conclusion unless you've spelled out exactly what the substance of the conclusion is.

Example 3:

Some social theorists claim that San Francisco's large homeless population could be reduced by implementing policies that condition the provision of free food and medical services to the homeless on their staying off drugs and actively looking for a job. However, most of the homeless do not react to incentives in the same way that the average non-homeless member of society would react.

Thus, the social theorists' claim is false.

If you break down the argument to premise and conclusion, here's what we get:

Premise: Most of the homeless do not react to incentives in the same way that the average non-homeless member of society would react.

Conclusion: SF's large homeless population cannot be reduced by conditioning the provision of free food/medical services to homeless on the requirement that they stay off drugs and actively look for a job.

Notice that the first sentence about the social theorists' claim is not a premise - it's simply referred to by the conclusion as being wrong. So in my understanding of the argument, the first sentence just disappears - we've translated that into the substance of the conclusion, and that first sentence has nothing to do with the reasoning of the argument. Now we can properly think about new concepts in the conclusion.

Do you see anything new? There are quite a few, so there are a lot of assumptions. But here are three that stand out to me.

San Francisco's homeless? They weren't mentioned in the reasoning. Maybe they are different from the "most of the homeless" in the premise. The argument is assuming that San Francisco's homeless do not react to incentives in a significantly different way from "most" homeless. What if SF's homeless actually react more like the average non-homeless? That would undermine the argument by making the premise irrelevant. (Notice that if the premise said "All homeless..." then SF's homeless wouldn't technically be a "new concept" because they would be logically covered by the premise, even if the words "San Francisco" are new.)

The whole idea of policies that condition food/medical services on requiring them to stay off drugs or look for a job --- where is that coming from? The premise doesn't say anything about them. The argument never explicitly identified these things as the kind of thing the premise was calling an "incentive". So the argument must be assuming that these kinds of policies relate to incentives and how people would react to them. It's assuming that having the conditions of staying drug free or getting a job would be things the average non-homeless would react to differently from most homeless. If this weren't true -- if the homeless and non-homeless reacted the same way to these conditions, then the premise would have nothing to do with the conclusion because they'd be talking about two different things.

Reducing homeless populations? Does the premise say anything at all about reducing homeless populations or what is required for that? No. So the argument is making some kind of connection between the different reactions that homeless people have to incentives and the reduction of homeless populations. It's assuming that the policies in question - conditioning food/medical services on drug-free/look for job - can reduce homeless populations only if they work through incentivizing the homeless in some way. If there were some way that the policies could reduce homeless populations in a way that didn't relate to incentivizing them, then the premise (which was only about incentives), would have nothing to do with proving the conclusion. What if, for example, the policies could reduce homeless populations by stirring the moral fiber of SF's private citizens, who find the policies draconian and cruel and as a result band together to build thousands of free housing units for SF's homeless? The argument is assuming that this isn't a possibility.

I hope this helps if you're having trouble with assumptions and always find yourself thinking "there's no way I would have noticed that..." Maybe one reason you're not noticing it is because you're not explicitly identifying key concepts in the conclusion and asking whether they were mentioned or logically covered by the premises?

If you're reading quickly and uncritically, the difference between QOQOOQOQ and QOQOQOOQ might not stand out. But if you actually examine each set of letters and explicitly ask "Are these the same?" Then it's a lot easier to see where the difference is.