Hey everyone,

Ever since I've been studying, I've had some trouble with parallel flaw/reasoning questions. Not really sure what it is about them that's giving me so much trouble, but out of all the question types, I've seen the least improvement with these two. How do you approach these questions? What is your strategy, and what, if anything, helped you perform consistently well on these two question types?

Thanks for the help.

I am only a 1/3 done with the CC at this point and am really concerned I won't be prepared for the June LSAT.

However, since this is the first year the July LSAT is being administered, and it is a non-disclosed test, I am also weary of taking my chances on a completely "experimental" test date. At the same time, I am unsure about the September LSAT cutting it too close to the early decision deadline for my top law school in November. This will also be my first time taking the LSAT.

I want to score really well for scholarships and I fully intend to apply this fall for SY 2019 (I went straight to my Masters after UG and graduated last spring and worked on a fellowship since. I am ready to move on in my career and go to law school so I can finally practice what I've been studying for).

Should I just go for June and retake in September if needed, or prepare longer and take my chances in July or September?

Looking forward to hearing your opinions!

Hello Everyone,

I Just finished going through all the CC. I am also taking the June 2018 Test. I haven't taken a diagnostic yet and plan to do it this weekend and then from there work on the BR method in all areas for a month till May 11 (planning to purchase all the LSAT Bibles as well and incorporate them for my month long BR session) and then do timed PT's from May 11 till the test date on June 11. I have been working full time M-F 8-5 while doing the CC and plan to do so for the rest of my studies for the LSAT. I wanted to know peoples thoughts on my current game plan and that if I score below a 150 on my diagnostic test and given my current study plan while working full time, would the June 2018 test date be worth it or should I wait till the September 2018 LSAT?

Gracias.

Is this a PSA or SA? Or is it a principle question?

"Which one of the following principles most helps to justify the mathematics teacher's argument?"

I wanted to get the community's concensus on this question.

[A] after an intense BR is wrong, i beleive, bc the proponents of papercrete dont ever claim that its promising for small scale projects. They just beleive its promising for large builidings. Thoughts?

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For some reason during the introduction videos, I kept getting these questions wrong. I am quite confused and at this point am very frustrated with myself. So if anyone has any tips or some type of guidance that helped them solve these type of questions let me know.

Hi 7Sages,

I am facing a bit difficulty in dealing with the ACs of the MSS type of questions.

I want to ask about the best way to deal with these ACs.

When you go through each of the ACs, what do you try to do just after reading it?

Do you try to find reasons as to why that AC might be wrong ie Like trying to find a flaw which might occur here? Finding a subtle flaw is bit of a problem on my part. I am lacking in that respect.

Or Do you try to support the AC and try to find possible reasons how the AC can be the conclusion supported by the premises given in the question?

Thanks and Regards :)

If the stimulus is formal logic and does not mention the word "should" and an AC is almost identical but uses the word "should" [i.e. "A" should be exercised only to "B" or to "C"] is this enough to disqualify it?

IMO it should be enough bc if the AC continues saying we have "A" and its not "B" therefore conclude = "C" this is not 100% bc maybe the person is not doing what he "should" do

Is my line of reasoning false?

I know there are so many threads on how to squash RC on here. But I really feel like I'm a rare case of someone who sucks harder than average at RC. Like oh my god. Every PT I take, I go -0-3 on each section. Then RC rolls around and even during BR, I get like -10+. Like what the hell??? Please someone lol give me a hand. Teach me your ways. How do I own RC instead of RC owning me?!?!?!?! It's literally the only thing stopping me from hitting 175+

I think this is the first question I've come across that I truly don't understand. I don't think I'm getting what the "obvious alternative" is. Not sending police officers? Dying here, plz help.

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Hi guys

After fool proofing LG some time, I found out that I tend to make some small but potential fatal mistakes during game setup under timed drilling.

For example, I will misread "A immediately before B" as " A immediately before or after B" because I was thinking some similar games associated with the later rule while I was writing down the former rules.

It's really annoying and a bit frustrating to lose points on easy games. On the contrary, I tend to have a higher accurate rate on many of harder games during timed drilling.

I am trying to find ways to get rid of this tendency. Anyone has similar experience ？

Thanks

Hi 7Sages,

I have a confusion in representing "if then must" conditions.

Suppose there is a sentence given as :

If N is not selected then T must be selected .

So, is the representation like this?

not N -> T

contrapositive is

not T -> N

If here, N is satisfied then does the rule drops away and does T becomes a floater ?

Since there is a 'must' keyword involved..I am confused.

Please clarify this.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, I've been having troubles tackling a few LR questions and I'm noticing that I tend to consistently get them wrong (necessary assumption and method of reasoning). Do any of you have unique tips on how you approach these two question types? I've reviewed CC a couple of times now for both question types!

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if someone could share their understanding of this question. I was able to eliminate B, D, and E very quickly, but got tied up between A and C and ended up picking C. I can see why A is a good answer, but I'm having a harder time seeing why C is definitively wrong.

To me, the stimulus seems like it's saying that the equipment was not available during the review period. Thus adding the equipment will have no effect. I mean, I guess the stimulus doesn't explicitly say that the absence of equipment caused the result, but it seems sort of implied?

I know I’m gonna feel like an idiot when this is explained, however, right now I feel like an even bigger idiot because the correct AC (B), is really confusing me. If there is much less methane in Earth’s atmosphere today than there was 3billion years ago, then less greenhouse gas equals less heat trapped, and therefore, cooler climate today than 3billion years ago. This appears to strengthen rather than weaken the argument. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME WITH MY CONFUSION?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-59-section-2-question-25/

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So I'm posting here in part to rant, and in part in hopes that someone on the forum has had a similar situation and can offer some advice.

As you might ascertain from the title, this GoodValue™-Soduko of a section is the bane of my existence at this point. On my diagnostic, I started with a -20+. I had no clue how to solve any of the questions. After studying diagramming and using the 7sage CC, I was able to bring it down to -15 to -10, but I cannot seem to break above that plateau. I've been studying for a little longer than a year now, and I've made significant progress in both RC and LR, but LG just won't budge. This is especially frustrating because almost everyone on the forum says that LG is the easiest area to improve -- it just makes me feel stupid every time I go -15+ on a PT.

For the past month I've been foolproofing games, 6-8 hours a day, but I'm not seeing any progress. I've FP'd all the games from PTs 1-12, 35-40, and 60,61,62. When I foolproof, I do the games until I'm -0 and under time on day 1, then I do the same the next day, and then I wait a week and attempt it again. Only when I can get -0 and under time under all three scenarios do I discard the game. So far I haven't had any problems -- I'm able to remember the inferences and complete the game under timed conditions even after 1 week of not seeing the game.

The problem is, I feel that every single time I take a PT or a timed section, the test writers do something that I've never seen before, and I just don't have the intuition to handle the twist. If they give me an unfamiliar rule, I almost invariably represent it inefficiently and make false inferences, flunking the game. If it's a miscellaneous game, I'll almost invariably set the game board up incorrectly -- tanking the game. For example (Spoiler regarding PT61), on PT61 S3 G1, I didn't realize that the two groups were interchangeable (I had never seen this before) so I didn't split, tried to brute force and went way over time and flunked the game.

At this point, it seems inevitable that I'll choke when it comes to the real exam. This is especially frustrating because of how much time I've spent studying my other sections. I'm currently averaging -1.5 per LR section, -1 per RC section, and -12 per LG section. It took me hundreds of hours of study to get LR and RC to where they are, and it feels as though this damn LG section is just destroying that progress.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation and broken out of the rut? I apologize if the post sounds overly negative, but I just feel so defeated by this section. I would appreciate any advice or encouragement that ya'll could give, because I sure need it.

Totally dropped the ball on both of these. Help?

For Q4: I thought D was totally wrong and I was completely sure of it because I thought to myself, "How could we possibly know what's in the best interest for the military?" I fell for answers A, C (second choice).

For Q21: I had no idea that "some" came into the mix; totally out of left field.I picked A even though I knew it made no sense. It just made the most sense.

When doing this question I realize the gap between Wisdom of the masses and Artwork. But after becoming impatient I guess and chose E and moved on. I looked over my diagramming and did the question a second time and got D, I noticed that it was a little off and was hoping someone could walk me through this with a diagram, so I can compare it to mine and figure out how B is the right answer?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-58-section-4-question-19/

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(Warning: Spoiler aler... t?)

In an ideal world, each of us would treat each RC passage equally. No passage (type) would be preferred over another; all LSAT candidates from different backgrounds would embrace all passages with same curiosity, eagerness, and love. Reality, alas, proves otherwise. One person might hate a specific passage type because he or she finds its subject matter boring or daunting; another might not like a specific passage because the passage was just too hard; still another might dislike a specific passage because there was that one brutal question that affected his or her performance on the rest of the section, along with many others'.

What the title says. Which RC passage(s) haunts you to this date? I do not like the passages on Roy Lichtenstein (the pop artist who used elements from comic books) and Eileen Gray (the architect who used lacquer). I just don't get art except music, but art passages can be quite interesting - passages on Noguchi (the Japanese American sculptor who created the "negative light" sculpture), Cameron (cheesy photography), Schoenberg (and his three-stage musical development), and perfume ("Perfumes are art too!"), for instance. I did not like those two, however. Especially Eileen Gray.

Is there a PDF or print out with all of the valid argument types togther on one page? Am I just not looking hard enough? Thanks!

Hey all,

This may be a stupid question because I haven't started on practice tests yet (except for my diagnostic) but I'm currently going through logic games in the CC and I was wondering if there's some sort of consistent ratio of hard to easy logic games in the 4 games on the actual test. Is it possible that you'd sit down on test day and get 4 easy games, 4 really hard games, 4 medium games, etc. or do they strive for some sort of even breakdown? Thank you!

I used to never really struggle too hard with PSA/SA. Pretty easy to identify the P --> C gap in the ACs. As I've moved onto the newer exams, I'm finding myself missing points on the harder 4/5-level PSA/SA questions. JY has referenced in the videos that the newer exams do require more mental massaging with SA qs especially. I spent some time drilling SA q's from PT 36-58, but still ended up struggling with difficult PSA/SA qs on PT 60.

I'm going for the choices that somewhat match my predetermined P-->C gap. But the issue here, is under time pressure, I go for the AC that has some of the buzzwords aka is only partially right, and unfortunately end up inviting parts of the answer choice that make it completely wrong. In the process, I end up eliminating AC's that are subtle/don't match my prephase, aka are not the formulaic AC's I typically expect.

I'm wondering now if I need to adopt a new PSA/SA methodology... aka be less dependent on the typical identify the P-->C gap. Asking if anyone has noticed this trend as well and how they dealt with it? Did you change your approach to these questions? Do you still depend on the diagram? How do you prephase?

Thanks!

Parallel method of reasoning question.

I crossed off (c) because of the word 'periodically'. Now I see the structure of elements was more important to find the right answer.

Stimulus:

Gov intend guaranteed production

Gsub -> More Farm -> S Exhaust and RY (opposite of intention)

(c)

Gov intend out off conflict

Armed Forces -> Need Discipline and morale -> periodic combat (opposite of intention)

Also the word 'and' is super tricky. In the stimulus it's used in the third piece and in (c) the second piece.

I think the LSAT moral here is that similarities in argument structure trump differences in content structure.

Ok so I feel as though I am interchanging methods of finding the answer for each of these questions. They're so similar to me and its starting to give me a headache. Can someone lay out in layman's terms how to approach these question types? These are the types I'm having trouble with and MBT are supposed to be freebies. Also is there a chart somewhere that outlines how often each question type appears on the LSAT?

"Although bacteria are unicellular."

I earned a 3/6 on BR on this one. I usually go -1 or -2 on entire RC section while BRing, let alone -3 for one passage.

I had issues with number 16 (after looking it over, I understand why/how I got this one wrong). I originally chose the correct answer when I did it cold, which is frustrating. But, I at the very least get what happened.

However, numbers 17 and 20 are really throwing me for a loop.

Number 17's correct AC is E. My BR was C. I can see as to why E would be sufficient for the bacteria to navigate away from the harmful substance. But, the Q-stem asks for what would "increase the likelihood" of it getting away from the area that is concentrated with the bad stuff. I'm having a hard time seeing why B would not be a better means of the bacteria leaving the bad concentration. The passage seems to imply that bacteria moving towards something it wants in a straight line is a viable means of moving, and it seems reasonable to assume that moving in a straight line is better than just tumbling away from the bad concentration, which is what E states. I guess what is really confusing me is that the passage never says anything about harmful concentration and what bacteria does when it encounters it, and that E ultimately requires us to assume that a bacteria's means of leaving the bad stuff is analogous to how it would leave an attractant, such as food and light. Is it fair to assume such a thing?

When I was BRing I was wrestling between these two ACs.

Number 20

Another question where I was battling between two ACs - I BR'd C and the correct AC is B. The two answer choices seem very close when I consider them. Upon review the only thing that I can find that disproves C is that it uses the word "flaws" when there is only one flaw, or one thing wrong with one of the proposed theories; that there is evidence proving it wrong. I feel like there is more to it than just that, though.

Honestly, any extra insight will help. This was one of those passages where, after finishing it, I felt like I knew it pretty well, but realized that was not the case upon taking on the questions.

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