Discussions

LSAT

New post

343 posts in the last 30 days

When the president of the company responds that the number of salespeople passed over has declined, does that mean the total number of salespeople must have declined over the last fifteen years as well? Is that an additional assumption along with C?

0

I don't really know what's wrong with me, but after finishing my final exam for my summer class today, I decided to do a section of RC, lol. Yesterday, I took a section of LR from PT 55, so I figured it made sense that if I were to do another section, it should also be from PT 55 (I've decided to sacrificed this one long ago).

Here are some thoughts and reflection from multiple attempts at RC to get a perfect score from an English major ... (take it with a grain of salt, maybe the terrible heat finally triggered something in me, IDK.)

0) it might be possible

TRUST YOURSELF!! This is something I so deeply struggle with on the LSAT. But if there are any fellow English majors out there, or any avid/good readers, trust yourself! I can't tell you how many times I've second-guessed myself and went with a very attractive and popular wrong answer instead. This has happened to me on BR, too (overthinking is definitely a thing on the LSAT), and on the real thing, where I change an originally correct answer to a wrong one. If you're a good reader (and you know if you are, so keep telling yourself that), I want to say your intuition is likely going to be correct. For me, like the metaphor JY uses, there was a "little spark" in my understanding that was correct, and that led me to choose the right answer, but my self-doubt and extraneous (to passage) anxious thoughts extinguishes those little blooming sparks under timed conditions.

Sometimes, you don't even have to waste time thinking through a lot of the answer choices to get to the right one. I think this especially applies to method and purpose questions (but definitely NOT parallel/analogy questions). This kind of goes with #1 and especially applies if you have a prephrase. This saves a LOT of time. You can always go through the wrong answer choices on BR and critique them and find what's wrong with them, but you probably won't have time on the real thing to do this for some questions.

When I first started using JY's methods of low to high res/memory method, I struggled a bit and saw my score drop, mostly because a lot of the times I was thinking, "are you kidding? I can read. I'm an English major!" But I kept doing it (per some redditor's advice I think), started with writing out the low-reses during testing, and then eventually not having to write things down, just reviewing in my head what I read/what the author is saying after each paragraph. Another thing I found really helpful for me was to highlight the transition words, instead of sentences/things that are more related to substance. I had trouble with keeping up with both a substance- and structure-low-reses at the same time, so I found this method (highlighting transition words) to be very helpful. It eases up the amount of things you have to keep in your head, giving you visual cues just like the diagrams you draw in LG do.

Overall, the most important thing is to keep a positive mindset and keep affirming yourself with all that you are and all that you've accomplished in your LSAT journey so far! Don't let a stupid LSAT writer trick you into thinking you were wrong. I think it's a very delicate thing to know/figure out where you actually have no idea what the right answer is, versus where you do know or have an inkling. When it's the latter, go with your "intuition." (I put scare quotes around intuition because it's not really all intuition--you've read and understood the passage.)

If there are any scorers who do extremely well on RC, please give your two cents, too! I would love to hear what you think.

0

Sitting for the October exam this weekend but will be retaking in December. Looking for a few people to study and blind review together in person or via Skype. A little about where I'm at, drilled all LR and LG from1-38. Took PT 39-45 and 55-60 averaging around 167-172.

0

I have been doing really well on the first 60-65 questions of my practice tests, getting very few wrong, but it is in the last dozen or so questions on the final LR section of the tests where I am getting a majority of my questions wrong. I am aware that the test gradually gets harder throughout the section, but I am unsure why I am struggling so much with this part because I get most of the harder ones right when I drill. Should I be practicing harder drills? If anyone has advice on this problem, let me know.

0

Pretty much what the title says. My main issue is with LR. I used to be able to score 18/25. Then I hit a couple highs of 20/25 and was very, very happy. A week before, I started getting 16/15/14 out of 25, a pretty big dip. Took the Sept test, then about a week break. Did a section drill yesterday, got a 13/25. Is my brain broken? Was it too much to hope for a linear increase? For reference, I work full time, so MTWRF I study 4 hours daily: I wake up an hour before work to study, the hour of my lunch break, and 2 hours when I get home. The weekends are about 8-10 hour days for me. Is it too much to hope for a 160 by Oct?

Send Help.

0

Looking for an accountability partner to do 1 RC passage daily. We’ll do it separately and then check answers together. Please message me if you’re seriously interested!

0

I'm trying to work now to get my RC score down to the -5 range, and I'm drilling a lot on the passage types im bad at, and most of the hard or hardest passages I'll get 2 or 3 wrong, and on the easier ones, 1 or 2 maybe, if I get a good selection of passages its likely I;ll be in that -6 range. EXCEPT for spotlight passages; something about spotlight passages just doesn't click for me, there's a majority 1 star or 2 star passages where I'll get straight up 4 out of 6 or 7 ACs wrong, and I don't understand why, does anyone have any tips? I'm confident my LR will be at -4/5 for August/Sept LSAT, but if I can't get my RC out of the -7/8 zone I won't be able to get a 165

0

Okay I had a lot of trouble with these two strengthening questions lol so to see that they are only 2/3 star difficulty is slightly concerning. I ended up getting them both right under timed and BR without understanding fully why they correct. It did throw me off during the section but I'm trying to build confidence in eliminating to get AC's right.

I'm going to include my thoughts on each AC as I'm trying to build a habit of articulating what each answer choice actually does when it interacts with the argument to build my reasoning skills (ie: strengthens, weakens, does nothing). I will include this in my rationale below and would appreciate if someone could take a once over and let me know 1) if the way I am interpreting an AC to interact with an argument is wrong (ie: if I think it does nothing but it actually strengthens) and also 2) if there is anything else you notice in my reasoning. I am really trying to hone in on reasoning skills so don't be shy to critique mine if there is something I am missing or assuming!

PTA S4 Q3

A) Neither strengthens nor weakens; so what if both F and M pit vipers have these sensors while also exhibiting aggressive and defensive behaviour? The hypothesis we are trying to supports that the sensors serve to assist in judging the SIZE and DISTANCE of predators.

B) Strengthens; okay so if pit vipers do not differ in their predatory behaviour from the way non-pit vipers behave (ie: they both act the same way towards prey) but they do differ markedly from non-pit vipers in their strategies of defence against predators; then this would strengthen the claim that the pits assist the viper. Ie: sort of like an experiment, take one with pits and one without pits and see how they act in terms of defending themselves from predators.

C) Neither strengthens nor weakens; this seems totally irrelevant, distinguishing pit vipers based on their pits and other chemical features in no way strengthens the hypothesis about how the pit vipers use pits primarily defend themselves in specific ways.

D) Neither strengthens nor weakens; okay but this still doesn't indicate how they use the pits and if the hypothesis is correct? How can anything supplementary help us when aren't sure about the hypothesis.

E) Neither strengthens nor weakens; at first glance I thought that since this indicates they do have predators it could help, but it's just about another defence mechanism and it still doesn't strengthen, in any way, the hypothesis that the infrared sensors serve a specific purpose (which is to judge the size and distance of predators).

I thought this one was a little tricky because if you don't stay clear on what the hypothesis is, it's a little easy to get lost.

PTA S4 Q5

A) Strengthens; Okay so if official persecutions were preceded by propaganda campaigns in order to vilify the groups being persecuted - this seems to indicate that they were not taken on reluctantly and that it was not their only goal to soothe popular unrest? Because why would they have this propaganda with a distinct purpose if otherwise?

B) Does nothing; The opposing view is geared towards being reluctantly persecuted AND a single purpose of persecution for various minority groups, this seems to miss the point there in terms of the direction for the purpose of persecution and how it reluctantly/not it was carried out. I think it is trying to dispute the fact that various groups were persecuted by telling us that 'they were protected', but either way I don't know anything about protection of official institutions and it doesnt seem fair to assume that because they 'often' existed under direct protection that they couldn't still be persecuted - how strong was this protection? did it stop them from physical harm?

C) Does nothing but if anything weakens (?); okay so this says that SOME groups of people accused of witch craft were victims of mob violence (indicating the hostility) and that they were also occasionally officially persecuted (this seems to cover the soothing popular unrest). But either way I don't know how strong SOME is in terms of this group in order to strengthen the opposing claim, the conclusion is about 'various minority groups' not some or one. Either way, it definitely does not strengthen the argument that the scholar's belief is questionable, I just wanted to analyze what it was doing in terms of the whole stimulus.

D) Does nothing; this seems irrelevant, many leaders didn't authorize spread of information that misrepresented religious practices? So what? How does that tell us anything about why the first belief is questionable.

E) Does nothing; this is about convicted felons being excluded and that being a form of persecution. I don't know what kind of society this is but assuming that convicted felons count as a minority group, the conclusion we are trying to dispute is about VARIOUS minority groups, not solely being persecuted, but how the persecutions were taken on reluctantly and with only one goal in mind.

Thank you for anyone who took the time to read my analysis and I hope there are some valuable points in there! Please don't hesitate to correct me on anything if you see any errors.

0

#help# For this question, I eliminated all 5 answers, because I think none of them are right. The right answer is E, but I doubted it. Since E only said the period of Bruno's tenure is just matching exactly to the period when the spy was transmitting information. There could be many people or clergies working in the French embassy at that time, how can this choice exclude this possible alternative and support the argument???

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"

0

#help#

Can anyone explain how B is justified in supporting this hypothesis? I didn't see any relevance between strategies of defence and the two functions of infrared sensor.

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description]"

0

Hi,

When I was looking at the answer choices for this question, I noticed that answer choice B states something about "actual legal dilemmas". As a result, I rejected answer choice B because, while I noticed the mention of legal dilemmas in general throughout the passage, I did not see any mention of a single "actual" legal dilemma example. However, when looking at other answer explanations, no one seems to mention this as a reason for rejecting answer choice B. Is my perception of what "_actual_legal dilemma" means correct here or am I just fantasizing? I understand why E is right and why A,C,D are wrong. #help

Thanks!

Admin note: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-30-section-3-passage-3-questions/

0

I'm a little unclear on a few things. Perhaps you can help me out.

1. Is the idea to do one passage again and again for practice like the LG method? I ask this because it seems like the marginal returns will begin to diminish quite quickly. I suppose I'll be able to answer my question here empirically once I start doing this in earnest myself; but hey, what are these forums for if not to free ride a little bit?

2. If the answer to my first question is no, then why only 6-8 passages? Why not, time permitting, do this with literally every single passage that one doesn't plan take in a PT?

0

Confirm action

Are you sure?