I haven't taken very many full prep tests yet, but so far I'm noticing in my trends that I am overall improving in LG and RC, but my LR gets worse when I'm working in newer PT's (tests in the 60s and maybe 50s also). It's really frustrating because as I'm doing the questions, I feel ok about them. But then during BR I'm seeing how many I got wrong and it's not usually any particular question type or any one reason I'm getting it wrong. I'm a little all over the board. I don't seem to have this problem with earlier tests though (30s and 40s). Any insight to the evolution of the LR questions? Have they just gotten harder? More sneaky answers? It's so frustrating to see my score actually going down over time because I'm bombing those so hard! Argh.

Questions like these are tougher for me to find guidance when I am stuck since there are not videos or explanations for them. So can anyone please help me understand why C was the answer and not D.

Do you answer every question by the 25 minute mark? Or do you skip some?

How do you pick which questions to re-do in your extra time (obviously if you haven't skipped any questions)? How do you know which ones you made mistakes in? Do you gauge importance based on your confidence level?

So about a month out from the September test and I'm feeling....okay. There is one kind of questions that really bothers me though. Flaw. People always tell me that "in repetition you'll eventually get them" and that they repeat. Well I'm like 20 PT's in at least and they still look pretty foreign to me. It's specifically the flaw questions with abstract answer choices.

"Presents only evidence whose relevancy to the issue raised by the opponents has not been established."

Presents stuff that is not relevant?

Okay but the amount of time it takes me to translate each AC out, and then to figure out what is going on, is far to great. Even then I still choose wrong a great deal of the time.

One method that has not worked for me is the Trainer. That book is very vague. 1+2 =/=3 doesn't help me, my mind doesn't see it as such.

How do you handle flaw questions?

Hi friends,

Wondering if anyone else is having a similar problem: I was scoring -0 or -1 in RC on the older tests, but in the 60s and 70s, I'm trending towards -4 or -5. I'm sort of depending on ace-ing RC to keep my score within my target range. Does anyone have any tips for what to look for in the newer RC sections, or else how to practice not falling for the subtle differences? I'm currently planning on writing in September.

Thanks a million!

From a fun video!

See if you can summarize the content from the video, low/high res, RC style. Try to use the words "phenomenon" and "hypothesis".

Hi All,

I've made an observation regarding Main Point questions on some of the most recent RC passages (70s primarily). I was reading a post on the Manhattan Prep LSAT forum, where another poster verified my suspicion. I want to share my observation with you below in the hope that it will help someone approach Main Point questions in the future.

Historically, the LSAT writers have favored answer choices that encompass the main point of the passage and whatever subsidiary point was made in the passage. The correct answer choices have been broad, inclusive statements and certain incorrect answer choices were incorrect because they were “too narrow” or did not encompass one of the subsidiary points while another answer choice did. In recent tests, however, the LSAT writers have started to exploit our conditioning to this type of strategy. They will add a broad answer choice with unwarranted strong language (subtle strong language, like “most” or “prominent”) or with incorrect time frames (like “recently” or “historically”) that encompasses both the main point and the subsidiary point. They are trying to utilize the fact that we have been conditioned to look for “more complete” answer choices and hope that we will overlook the subtle characteristics that ultimately make the answer choice incorrect. The correct answer choice ends up being something more direct, narrow, and only concerned with the author’s overall takeaway rather than any “exceptions” or “sub-points” he/she gets into. (See PT73.S1.Q16- answer choice D & PT74.S3.Q9- answer choice E for examples)

With one month until the September test, I know keeping this in mind will help me be more aware of these types of strategies the LSAT writers have been utilizing. Has anyone else noticed this as well?

Hey, guys! I would like any advice you guys can give on splitting boards. I seem to always spend too much time trying to split and it's not really needed or I don't spend enough time trying to split and I could've saved time. I tend to always end up brute forcing too much or using previous game boards from previous questions to answer questions but I know that's not always going to work for me. LG is my best section so I've kinda dismissed it but I'm not always -0 so I'm looking for pointers. Can you guys provide any hints on when to split and what to split on (meaning a specific rule like a not both rule or something)?

Hi,

Amongst all sections, LG is probably my weakest. It takes me way too much time.

Which is a better way to go through the CC ( I started with LG about a week ago)

Doing the questions and PS's of each question type and fool proofing until you get everything before moving on the next question type. ( I find, my inferences are usually correct but i take up too much time and end up getting questions wrong once i realise how much time has gone by- Watching Jy's explanations help, but my techniques are mostly the same)

Doing the Questions and PS's of all question types in the CC, watching the explanations simultaneously and fool proofing everything together in the end.

I'd love as much advise as i can get on how to go about LR since some questions are taking me upto 20 min and it's really stressing me out.

I know these seem fairly straight forward. But its my weakest question type. Any tips, or approaches?

Hey guys!

So I have been struggling with RC, however I was wondering if you guys read the passage first or make notes while reading? I don't know why but I find a hard time trying to read and write at the same time. I would say I am a pretty fast reader and always have been.. but I find it hard to understand the passages when I stop to make notes. Should I make notes after reading the entire passage first or after every paragraph? What has worked for you guys?

RC I would say is my worst section, but I believe I can improve the most on this section since I can usually understand the material pretty well regardless of what the passage is discussing.

Hi All,

I've seen many explanations regarding this infamous Han purple question--none of which have addressed my specific confusion:

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-74-section-1-question-17/

I chose the correct answer A during my timed take, but hesitantly changed it to E during BR. I'm still confused and I'd love for someone to read my reasoning and give me some guidance as to where I am going wrong.

CTX: How the ancient Chinese of the Qin and Han dynasties synthesized Han purple has confused scientists.

P1: A common type of white glass and Han purple were produced with the same chemical ingredients.

P2: Both were produced by similar processes involving high heat and lead.

C: Han purple was probably discovered by accident during glass production.

One thing I noticed was the how the premises give us similarities regarding how white glass and Han purple were produced, but then the conclusion randomly brings up how Han purple was discovered. My thoughts were that the correct answer will probably have something to do with this. Either that, or the wrong answers would exploit this subtle distinction.

Another thing I noticed was that, except for the contextual information about Han purple confusing scientists, every piece of information that was given in the stimulus equally applies to both the white glass and Han purple. All we know is that they both have the same properties--we don't know if one was better than the other or that one was more prevalent. So the conclusion could also very well be that "White glass was probably discovered by accident during Han purple production." We have the same exact support for that conclusion as we do the conclusion we are given. So I figured the correct answer choice could assist with this by creating some sort of supporting distinction.

A- I originally chose this because I did not initially notice the produced/discovered distinction in the stimulus. Upon BR, I noticed it and figured that A was wrong because where Han purple was produced does not seem play into how it was discovered. Something can be discovered intentionally in the middle of a forest (anywhere really), but then the following production of that thing can be in a factory once it had been improved and commercialized. To me, production and discovery are two clearly distinctive events. Also, this just contributes to the similarities between white glass and Han purple. There is no distinguishing effects of this answer choice, so, like I pointed above, the conclusion could still just as reasonable be: "White glass was probably discovered by accident during Han purple production."

(B, C, and D were easy for me to eliminate. For anyone interested in seeing my reasoning for these answer choices, feel free to ask!).

E- I never loved E, especially since it ambiguously used the term "more" without telling us how much more (1% more or 80% more?). I also didn't love that E qualifies the artifacts as "surviving artifacts." I initially figured that, the fact that white glass was more prevalent in surviving artifacts could be because 1) it was more easily preserved or 2) it was more commonly used. Then I realized that if it was more commonly used, this answer choice could be introducing the possibility that white glass was used longer than Han purple was. I thought that that was what they were trying to get us to see? That white glass was produced and discovered first and that is why there is more of it than Han purple? If that was the case, then I guess it supports the conclusion. It weakly supports it, but it presents us with a new possibility that would render the conclusion more likely. Also, this does point out the supporting distinction between white glass and Han purple that would lead us to the conclusion we are given rather than the alternative conclusion: "White glass was probably discovered by accident during Han purple production."

Between A and E, I do not like either of them. I really struggled between both of these answers, but I finally concluded that A requires us to assume that discovery and the following production process are the same event. To me, that's equivalent to saying that the birth of a child and the child's following life events are the same event. They just are not. E also wasn't a great answer. I recognize the steps and assumptions needed to choose E. But given the remaining 4, I figured (and still consider) it to be the best option because it at least slightly introduced a possibility for the conclusion to be true.

Help! Thanks in advance!

I find myself struggling with Disagree questions. It's difficult to keep the moving parts together and find the overlap. Especially when there are embedded clauses which obfuscate the domain of discourse or in particularly loooong questions such as this one.

I think my recent focus on Disagree questions is starting to cause me to get worse at them lol. If anyone has a question analysis or feedback for this question or Disagree questions in general, I would love to hear it.

Thanks

For those of us 7sagers that have done countless PT's and drilling packets, I think it would be safe to say that we all can round about guess what difficulty a question would be---from 1-5 (how it is shown in the analytics). Because of this, I recently started guessing, on each blind review question I did, what the question difficulty might be. I have really found this to be a valuable tool to see what exactly my confidence is in a particular question compared to the community's results in the analytics. At least for myself, I found that my own perception and biases of how difficult the question was tends to skew the 1-5 difficulty guess. Where the questions I got right and I am confident in are usually lower then the actual analytic difficulty. On the other hand, on the questions I got wrong, my guess tends to be even or of a higher difficulty then the actual analytic difficulty. The most helpful part of this process is finding out the questions I got right both in timed and in BR, but I still rated the question higher then the analytics. These questions are ones that would slip though the cracks as the analytics are unable to capture this.

Using the 1-5 metric difficulty guess has started exposing question types that, although I got it right both times, I need to work on more to drop my perceived difficulty. It shows were I am quick and confident, but it also shows where I am lacking this.

I am not sure if this would be useful at all for anyone, but I wanted to share a little something to the community that I learn a lot from. Thank you!

P.S. - I do know there is a 'circle the question' confidence method, but I redo every question in blind review over again so this didn't work for me.

So i see why AC (B) demolishes the argument and is clearly the correct AC. But does AC (A) weaken it as well?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-44-section-2-question-20/

This is a MMS question that just doesn't make sense to me.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-71-section-1-question-15/

In the stimulus you are presented with this;

Vitamins A and D can be toxic if you exceed the daily recommended intake.

Some foods, as stated by the manufacturer, have 100% daily recommend value per serving.

Many people over estimate what counts as a serving, sometimes eating 2-3 times more.

I follow it so far.

Here is the issue;

Correct Answer says;

B.) Some people who consume vitamin-fortified foods, exceed the daily intake of Vitamins A and D.

What? How is this supported? Vitamin A and D were never said to be in those foods. It could be Vitamin B and E that are in the foods that people over eat. How do I know some of those foods contain vitamin A and D. It never says anything about that.

The answer choice I picked;

D.) Most people who eat vitamin fortified foods should not take any vitamin supplements.

Isn't this more supported. If many people eat more than they should of vitamin fortified foods, then they need to avoid even more of those vitamins because it's unhealthy. This could be ANY vitamin, A/B/D/E. This seems logically way more supported than AC B. Even with J.Y.'s explanation I still don't understand how B is more supported than D.

I have been studying since May rigorously and have gone through the whole LG Bible as well as done PTs and have been working through 7Sage's curriculum as well. LG is just not clicking. I keep trying, but it seems every game besides a simple sequencing game (which I still may have -1or -2) I am simply not making the inferences either correctly or quickly enough. Let's just say I never get LG, though I'll keep trying, what's the worst case scenario here? Pick one game on the LSAT, hope I get them all, then just...what...guess on the rest? Do as many inferences as possible and...what...guess on the rest? Pulling my hair out over here. JY's videos make so much sense and I'll think, hey, it's finally happening for me. Then I'll look at a game, work through it, think - that wasn't too bad, bu then I'll get -4 and it took me 15 minutes. Any advice??

I eliminated answer choice D because it says, "fails to exclude...." As I see it, answer choice D would perfectly address the flaw in the argument if it said something like, "excludes the possibility..." or "fails to consider the possibility...." Am I missing something?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-77-section-2-question-18/

I know this is usually said to be a huge no-no, but in my studies (poli sci and sociology student) i skim read all the time and find it super helpful to save time.

When it comes to RC, I find I struggle the most with the wordings of the questions as opposed to the passage itself, so when I take 3-4mins to read the passage, I don't have enough time to answer all the questions properly and usually range anywhere from -7 to -10 on an RC section in the 60+ PTs.

Any ideas on how to overcome this? Even when I use the Memory Method, I still feel like I don't have enough time to answer the questions. Would skimming over specific details be beneficial or detrimental?

I'm looking for a timing/accuracy strategy for my timed LR sections. I've noticed that I'm a notoriously slow starter; that is, it takes me some questions to fully focus on what I'm reading and to fully analyze what I'm reading. Since the LR questions don't get particularly difficult for me until question 12 or so, I only then notice that I'm not fully engaged in what I'm reading. This leads me to get questions wrong that I don't think I should be getting wrong; I believe this because during BR I'm surprised that I wasn't able to get the correct answer. This has hurt me specifically with Weakening, Argument Flaw, and Necessary Assumption question types from about question 12 through question 20, more or less.

Also, I do realize that I'm not getting these questions correct because my conceptual understanding of them isn't strong enough. In an effort to address this, I'm going back to the curriculum and reviewing these specific question types. Additionally, I believe that I’ll just need to spend more time on these question types. That means I’ll likely need to exceed the average 1 minute and 24 seconds on the questions. So, what I'm considering trying is circling these questions and skipping them during my first round through LR thereby allowing myself to get fully engaged and making sure I have enough time to complete them.

If anyone has any thoughts on this approach, then I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

For some reason, regardless of the rest of the test, my first LR section is always worse than my last.

The past 3 tests have been

LR (sec 1) -5 LR (sec 3) -2

LR (sec 2) -4 LR (sec 4) -1

LR (sec 1) -6 LR (sec 3) -2

The difficulty of each section doesn't seem to matter. LG and RC stay fairly consistent.

What could this be? Fluke?

Reading comprehension is my worst section. Relatively speaking. But on the situations where my timing is a little off and i don't have much time on the last passage or even the last two passages, i'll just speed read through the passages and quickly answer the questions. I'm talking doing a passage and the questions in 6 minutes. As crazy as this sounds i get most of the questions right when i do this. Maybe missing one per passage. And i always check to see if that passage was an easier or harder passage and regardless of the difficulty, i always always always do well when I'm in a rush and just trust my gut and answer. When i do this i don't really even eliminate, i just look for the right answer. But when i have time I'm not as accurate on harder passages.

Does this happen to anyone else? I'm always shocked at how many i get right when i didn't even fully grasp the passage and just ran with what i could gather quickly.

I'm a little confused about why the video explanation shows the first sentence as PISM --most--> /DOR. I thought that the "without" would negate the first part of the sentence and it would look like /PISM --most--> DOR. If someone could explain that to me, I would appreciate it! Thanks!

I was wondering whether you guys read the question stimulus or question stem first? Powerscore says stimulus first, but the Trainer says the stem first, and I'm trying to figure out which would be better to improve my LR score

In approaching those "most vulnerable to criticism" question, do you guys think I can treat it as a weakening question and if the AC is correct, it will weaken the argument? Any other suggestion to solve this type?