I just finished the 12/5 test. I don't know whether I should cancel my score.

I have two major concerns that persuade me to cancel my score:

1. I did not do well on this test at all. This is my first time taking LSAT, except for pretests. But I am sure I could do way better than this if give me more time to practice.

2. The proctors told me they had to report me because I was rewriting my name on the bubble sheet after the first 5 sections were done. I explained to them that my name was slightly erased by my hand when I filled out the bubbles, so I had to rewrite them just to be safe. They said they would send a note to LSAC and let them know I was rewriting my name instead of making marks on questions. So, they let me sign my name on the surface of the booklet, and I did. I don't know how much negative influence will this cause. I felt very upset about it.

Also, I am struggling not cancel the score, because this is the last chance for me to apply 2016 fall admission. I don't really want to take a gap year. But I do want to attend a really good law school.

So, right now, I am struggling! Really confused.

Please give me some suggestions. Also please let me know if you have any similar experiences and how you handled it! If you have any ideas about what to do during the gap year, let me know!!!!

P.S: I am an international student. I don't know how much difference will this make. So let me know if you have any ideas.

Let's do this! Knock those questions dead and best of luck in all your guesses. :]

Should you?

and if so, What would you do?

to everyone tomorrow... We have been busting our butts off studying for this. Blood, sweat, and beers (i mean, tears) have gone into this exam (13 months now, for me).

Release the inner monster in you.

I got my game-face, war-gear, shotgun loaded with Flaw exposers, ammunition full of conditionals transitions, A full-body armour composed of 27 Layers of confused-passage blockers, 4 dynamite sticks packed with Game-destroyers,

and most importantly...

A #2 PENCIL WITH THE NUMBERS 170 WRITTEN ALL OVER THAT MOTHER******.

LETS GO. LETS GET IT. YOU ARE READY.

Necessary Assumption question. "An article claims that many medical patients have an instinctual ability..." Can anyone explain why the answer's B?

http://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-76-section-2-question-18/

This question is taken from the Group 1 Group 2 Translation exercise but I'm finding recurring instances of odd translations into conditional lawgic. For example, how come for sentences like “Bravery is essential to overcome adversity” (Translated in the video explanation as: If Overcome Adversity then Brave) “is essential” points back to “bravery” as the necessary condition but for sentences like “Beauty is always in the eyes of the beholder” (Translated as: If Beauty then In Eyes of the Beholder) “is always” doesn’t point back to “beauty” as the necessary condition?

I would think that translating any statement that says "X is necessary for Y" would be "If Y then X" because it plainly says that so I don't understand why there's an exception for "is always."

I'm having trouble seeing how C undermines the argument over D. Can someone help? Thanks

Hello,

I am having trouble with diagramming this

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-58-section-1-question-25/

The question is a "which of the following propositions is best illustrated by the situation described in the passage?"/ a principle one.

I'm not sure as to why (D) is not the correct choice, and why it's (C).

I am having a pretty hard time explicitly ruling out C on this one. I correctly chose E during the exam, but on a second viewing of this question, C seems attractive. Here is my breakdown:

This is a strengthen question.

Biopsies taken on people who have had throat surgery show that people who snored had a higher probability of having abnormalities in their throat muscles relative to those who didn’t snore. Thus, snoring damages the abnormalities.

What I am looking for: This is a typical causal flaw: what if the throat abnormalities cause snoring? In other words, what if the causation were reversed? What if something else caused snoring and the abnormalities? What if it is a coincidence? We need to deny these cases.

Answer A: Does this do anything? This might actually weaken the argument because you need to assume that people were being truthful. Is someone going to lean towards honesty when talking about snoring? Maybe not.

Answer B: Who cares what the surgery was for? We want to strengthen the idea that the snoring causes the abnormalities.

Answer C: Doesn't this rule out the possibility that age, weight, and health are a potential alternate cause? Wouldn't this strengthen the argument? It obviously doesn't since it isn't the correct answer, but I don't see how it does not.

Answer D: We don’t care about people who haven’t undergone surgery. Our biopsies deal only with people who have undergone surgery. Plus, this is sort of similar to B. We don’t care about either the intent of the surgery (answer B) nor the effect of the surgery (this answer choice).

Answer E: This is exactly what I anticipated, so I chose this and moved on.

Link to the video: http://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-62-section-2-question-16/

Hi All,

I'm interested in how other people feel about this topic, especially from LG vets.

I'm practicing LG with the assumption that, as I do more of these, I'll eventually begin to recognize patterns (similar keyboards, rules, conditionals, etc.). Is this true? I was talking to my roommate (who killed the October LSAT with 170+), and he told me that after 100 LG games, "I have never seen one that's similar."

Anybody know why the correct Answer choice B weakens the argument??I just can't seem to see how communal objects being passed down from one generation to the next weakens the argument.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-73-section-2-question-19/

Just making sure "sufficient" follows "the only" below and is "true wisdom"? How you diagram this with contrapositive?

"The only true wisdom is in knowning you know nothing "--Socrates

17.4.2 #15 The author is primarily concerned with…

So this is what I got from the passage.

Paragraph 1 presents as intro about the law’s completeness or its lack thereof when it comes to had cases.

Paragraph 2 details Hart’s model.

Paragraph 3 is about Dworkin’s view that’s contrary to Hart’s.

Paragraph 4 refutes Dworkin’s views and reiterates why hart’s theory of hard cases is still the most persuasive.

After hearing JY’s explanation, it’s become quite clear why the answer is E; my guess is the point of the whole passage is to convince the reader that Hart’s model is still worthy of respect and refute an argument(dworkin’s) that attacks it; “It would be a mistake, though, to dispute Hart’s

theory of hard cases on this basis alone.”

So, where I went wrong it seems was with the way I understood the question stem. How do you tend to interpret :”The author is primarily concerned with?” For the sake of simplicity, could we rephrase it and understand it as “what is the purpose of the author writing this passage? Why did he/she write it?” “what is his/her objective or goal?” “what is he/she trying to convince us of?”

For this question, I chose D. When I looked at E- I did want to choose it because I got the author’s position; siding with Hart and not Dworkin. I went with D because, the amount of “real estate” -if you will- occupying the passage is bigger for Hart. (silly reason, I know. It reflects my difficulty in distinguishing the way I go about doing main point/idea questions from this kind of question) I also figured “ critiquing” means to evaluate objectively in this context and not necessarily to take a critical stance on a view. By mentioning Dworkin’s views, could we say the author technically does (D) but it’s not what he’s primarily concerned with? That is, he does (D) in order to do (E)? Also, does he in fact do (D) ?

Thanks.

Hey guys,

I was going through Advanced Logic: Quiz on Mixed Conditionals and got mixed up on #20. Hopefully someone could help me out here.

Except for the days where there is a zombie apocalypse, every day is a good day to study for the LSAT.

JY diagrammed it as

GSLSAT ↔ /ZA

Contrapositive: (/GSLSAT ↔ ZA)

However, I thought that "every day is a good day to study for the LSAT" is a conditional statement (embedded conditional), so you would instead diagram it as

(D→GDS) ↔ /ZA

Contrapositive: /(D→GDS) ↔ ZA = (D←s→/GDS) ↔ ZA

When I translated my diagram back to English it still makes sense to me.

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks!

I don’t get this problem. Please tell me where my logic flawed.

JY's explanation is here FYI, http://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-20-section-1-question-24/ and yet I still don't get this.

So according to the explanation,

X—Y= Z

X= the amount that’s been mined.

Y= the amount consumed

Z= the remainder , that is what was mined but not consumed

I plugged in some random numbers and I couldn’t get the logic to follow satisfactorily.

So if we say the Z is 1990 is 50 and the Z in 1991 is 30, then couldn’t the following scenario be possible?

X in ’90= 70

Y in ’90= 20

Z in ’90= 50

Let’s say

X in ‘91= 200

Y in ’91= 170

Z in ‘91= 30

It doesn’t seem 170 is greater than 200. My set up must be wrong.

What I am missing here? Is there something in the "Furthermore, Country Q has not imported or exported coal since 1970" that I am not picking up on? Thanks in advance.

Hi all,

I guess I'm looking for some encouragement, but I'll gladly take advice too :)

I've gone through the LG curriculum on Sage, and proofed ~70 games (mostly the ones in the curriculum and problem sets plus some extras from the first 35 PT's). I can do the games I proofed and new "normal" games with very good speed and accuracy. I've now started going through the rest of the games sections in PT's 1-35, by section, and while I do OK on games similar to what I have done before, I freeze badly on games that have an unexpected twist. It's like my mind goes into panic mode and everything just jumbles in my head. I usually end up -4/5 for the section because the freeze up and subsequent brute forcing causes me to run over time. The thing is, once I'm finished, before looking up anything, I go back and redo the whole section, timed, and get -0/-1 with time to spare. It's like a veil lifts from my brain when I look at the game a second time, and the setup and inferences become clear. Anyone else feel like this, and do you think it's curable with practice? Any tips on achieving the "clarity" at first sight?

http://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-59-section-1-game-3/

I don't understand what is the difference between the biconditional used in the video G(-) /W and when you write the conditional G-> /W? If the biconditional means never together and always apart why can't we use the conditional. The conditional is going from positive to negative, which means you can't have both, and can only have one or the other.

Alright ladies and fellas, we have 6 days until game day. Just wondering what people think of the study regimen for the last few days.

Crunch hard? Rest hard? Day-On/Day-Off?

I'm thinking of going way hard until Thursday, and a very light day Friday, but I have also been advised not to.

Opinions? Your plans?

For example:

if N or M is selected, S is out.

Since or is in the sufficient condition, N and M are INDEPENDENTLY sufficient for S. So does that mean we can have just N selected, just M selected or both selected?

Also another example:

If S is out, N or M is selected.

Since or is in the necessary condition, N and M and JOINTLY necessary for S. What does that mean? Does that mean we need N and M BOTH to be selected? We can't have just N or just M selected? I'm so confused about this concept when applying to logic games... Please help, thanks!

From the stimulus, I got two conditional statements:

1) knowingly brings about misfortune --> should be blamed

2) not knowingly brings about misfortune --> should not be blamed

But because of the "for example" part, am I supposed to add "could not have reasonably have foreseen it" to the sufficient part of the 2nd cond'l statement I wrote above?

Also, Can anyone please explain why (A) is wrong?

Can I interpret "it did not occur to Riley" in (A) as "not knowingly brings about misfortune?"

Hi all,

I hope someone may be able to clue me in as to what I'm doing wrong with this problem. This is a MBT.

Special kinds of cotton that grow fibers of green or brown have been around since the 1930s but only recently became commercially feasible when a long-fibered variety that can be spun by machine was finally bred. Since the cotton need not be dyed, processing plants avoid the expense of dyeing and the ecological hazards of getting rid of leftover dye and by-products.

So I understood how to diagram the stimulus. "Spun by machine --> commercially viable"

When I looked at answer choice (B): Green and brown cottons that can be spun only by hand are not commercially viable" I diagrammed it as "Spun by hand --> /commercially viable". In order to get to answer choice (B), you would need to negate the sufficient and necessary which gives "/Spun by machine --> /commercially viable" which is an invalid argument form (mistake in negation).

What am I doing wrong? I am having a hard time seeing how answer choice (B) can be diagrammed as "/commercially viable -->spun by hand" Thanks!

Pretty clueless on this one. I narrowed the answer to B or C during the exam, and I couldn't do any better during BR. Turns out, the answer is E :/ Can someone break down all of the answer choices? Even though I got rid of A and D, I'm not convinced that I got rid of them with good reasoning.

Stranger is same age- MOST feel comfortable approaching that stranger. Long term friendship start MOST someone felt comfortable approaching a stranger. Therefore, long term friends probably the same age.

What I am looking for: No clue. I don't really understand the argument with this one. Can any of the diagrams link up (not that it really matters)? JY does it in the videos, but I don't see how the approaching the stranger ideas are the same thing. Here is the video: http://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-61-section-4-question-24/

Changed my answer during the exam from D to A, but only because of POE. I still don't really understand how D is a sufficient assumption.

This is a PSA question.

Although we have learned a lot, we are ignorant of a lot of things dealing with organisms. Allowing species that we are indifferent about to die would hurt the viability of other species. Therefore, if we have an interest in preserving any species, we should try to preserve the maximum number of species.

What I am looking for: If allowing a species that we are indifferent about to perish might undermine the viability of other species→we should preserve the max number of species.

Answer A: I fell for this bullshit answer. This just affirms the sufficient condition in the conclusion. It does nothing to address the relationship between the premise and conclusion.

Answer B: I think the passage implies the opposite. If we held action to this high of a standard, then how would prevent the death of a species that we are indifferent about?

Answer C: Human populations? Totally irrelevant.

Answer D: I was pretty iffy with this one, even when I changed it during BR. This states Allow change→Change won't jeopardize anything important to us. I am really having a tough time seeing how this paraphrases what I was looking for, though. How are these ideas relevant to the stimulus? Where is the idea of something being important mentioned in the stimulus?

Answer E: Best consequence for immediate future? Irrelevant idea.

Hi,

I've looked at lot of explanations (I have starter so I don't have access to 7Sage explanation) and I'm still not able to understand this one. I figured out the conditionals during the test, but I still don't fully understand how to approach/figure out this problem

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-59-section-3-question-19/

I need a word of encouragement and/or advice. This is embarrassing to me. I passed reading comprehension in elementary school and I took a course in Humanities at both the high school and college levels whereby I passed both classes with ease. However, for both Humanities classes high school and college, reading comprehension was not tested like test questions on the LSAT. I talked to a librarian who informed me that reading comprehension is can be highly opinionated. Furthermore, for inference questions, the answer is usually something that I would have never thought of - way out there in left field. I've tried GRE reading comprehension study guides and have been able to go through the questions with ease all answers correct. However, on a different day in a different mood, I've tried other non-LSAT practice test from other sources whose name I will not mention by means of embarrassment and was not able to get a single answer right. What's happening and what needs to change besides my attitude toward LSAT reading comprehension. I feel totally embarrassed by this, but I am encouraged to know that in reading the discussions that I am not the only person totally upset, frustrated and having problems or issues with reading comprehension. Please help. In my opinion, the basic concept or idea of RC comes from the basic elementary school theory of RC, how well did you understand the material of what you read, "Reading for understanding". For a person who has been speaking and reading the English language for quite some time, several, many years; elementary, high school and college and has passed elementary school, high school and college; how can this be; difficult with wrong answers...??? !!! Again PLEASE HELP or explain.