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I cannot find fault with A or E. Both seem to fit the pattern of reasoning. E seems to be more applicable, but that doesn't make A wrong. Any help appreciated!!
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9498
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9498
Saturday, Apr 25 2020
I disliked every answer here.
B is the closest, but I can't help thinking it's not correct.
P1 does not indicate that they believe this. From reading their position and having passing knowledge of the subject, I think this would be something they'd support, but we do not have the evidence to assume they would believe this. What if they oppose biotechnological advances for whatever reason?
I find it very frustrating that we are expected to make this logical leap. It's too much of an assumption.
Please forgive my frustration. I just want to do well on this test fair and square. Am I missing something? #help
9498
Thursday, Sep 24 2020
I had trouble with this question exclusively because of C's wording. I knew all the other answers were unsupported, but "grounds for selecting...more narrow" really confused me. Like c'mon, LSAC. I deduced the answer now let me have it.
9498
Wednesday, Jun 24 2020
So the time crunch was already an issue for me with this question. I was rushing AKA mistake #1.
As seems to be common, "on the contrary" totally threw me off. I correctly guessed that the opening sentence was the conclusion, but "on the contrary" made me think it was background information. I then spent almost a full minute trying to understand how "on the contrary" made any sense given that the first two sentences don't contradict one another. Time sink = mistake #2.
This felt more like an RRE question, especially since I didn't see an argument being made because I thought the first sentence was background. So I moved on to the questions, hoping to understand better there AKA mistake #3.
This question killed me, but makes all the sense in the world in BR.
God, the LSAT is such a beast.
9498
Sunday, Dec 22 2019
#help
This seems to be a very flawed question. I chose D, having erroneously ignored the six-month time gap just as JY described. E, however, I cannot justify choosing under any circumstances. "More likely to describe the election as important" does not equate to "more likely to vote" nor does "less likely to describe the election as important" equate to "less likely to vote". Even if these were equatable, it does not address (for example) a smaller voting base for Muratori than Kenner. What if there're only 500 Muratori voters and 2000 Kenner voters. Their likeliness to describe the election as important is irrelevant. It's wrong in the same way C is wrong. "Political scandals" do not equate to "losing the election".
In fact, this is the kind of assumption the LSAT has proven very effective at combatting, not supporting. This stuck out like a sore thumb to me. I elimated immediately and, even after watching the explanation, I still would contend that E is absolutely wrong. The only difference now is I don't have an answer to choose because the others are wrong as well.
Can anyone explain? This is very frustrating.
9498
Thursday, Feb 20 2020
These are the kinds of questions I take issue with. If I'm studying for a difficult test like the LSAT, I don't want to have to worry about technicalities.
I was between C and D, and mistakenly chose D. I didn't particularly like any of the AC's, but I knew there was something weird about C that needed special attention. I arrived at the necessary connection that makes C the correct answer, but as JY discusses, it seemed that there were just too many assumptions required for it to be a safe choice. The mental gymnastics needed for this question (and other similar questions) feels very inappropriate.
9498
Sunday, Sep 20 2020
JY brushed this off as easy when it's not. This is a VERY tricky question, and it's because of the stimulus, not the answer choices.
Upon first glance, the stimulus looks like a textbook "Causation from Correlation" Flaw (or a "Coincidence" Flaw, as I call it), but it's not! It's a "Numbers vs Percentages" Flaw (or "# vs %" Flaw)!
B and C are very obviously wrong. B makes a "Third Party" Flaw (it assumes no other factor is relevant to the situation) and C seems to make a "Extreme Conclusion from Moderate Evidence" Flaw, though I could be wrong about that. Regardless, it's wrong.
D makes the same "Third Party" Flaw as B. It blatantly assumes that no other factor is involved.
A makes that "Causation from Correlation" Flaw I mentioned in the beginning, and it's very tricky for the test-taker because if you didn't make the correct judgement of the stimulus's flaw, you probably saw this and went "THAT'S DEFINITELY IT!"
E is the actual answer because it conflates proportion (or percentage) with quantity (or numbers).
VERY hard question, nearly impossible if you missed the correct flaw in the stimulus!
(P.S. it's very possible that I mischaracterized the flaws in B, C, and D, but I was able to deduce them as incorrect so it doesn't matter quite as much)
9498
Tuesday, Feb 18 2020
This would require the test-taker to have some understanding that more surface area → more nutrients captured.
I actually stopped when I saw A and said to myself "I know this is the correct answer" because "wrinkled surfaces" leading to more surface area was just way too specific.
I think this is an unfair question. There is no information in the stimulus or answer choice that would allow the test-taker to make this connection.
9498
Wednesday, Mar 18 2020
My issue with this question is that getting it correct requires some background knowledge because the correct answer demands a logical leap.
Nowhere are we able to gather that heat in the atmosphere equates to hotter surface temperatures. Having general knowledge of climate science from undergrad, I knew that A was correct, but it certainly isn’t descriptive enough.
I find this to be another instance of artificial difficulty that’s common to older tests and really isn’t fair to the test-taker, though this isn’t one of that list of questions’ more egregious entries.
9498
Sunday, May 17 2020
This is a very aggravating question, especially when seeing how many people are dismissing it as easy.
Upon relfection, I'd loosely agree that (B) is more specifically representative of what is being said in the stimulus than (A) is, but a correct answer choice should really be more clear. (A) is a much safer and more easily supported answer by nature of being more general.
9498
Tuesday, Sep 15 2020
What the LSAT test-makers consider to weaken or strengthen an argument just baffles me.
That SOME people send flowers for reasons other than pleasure doesn't weaken anything because...well... great, but why would we expect that to be the case?
That THERE'S A POSSIBILITY people send flowers for reasons other than pleasure absolutely weakens the argument.
It's a roadblock I'll just never overcome.
9498
Thursday, Feb 13 2020
This is another case of bad wording that is particularly difficult to develop an awareness of. "Less mobile" is way too vague to reasonably be interpreted as "less likely to leave the building". I don't think thats a reasonable thing to expect a test-taker to infer.
9498
Saturday, Sep 12 2020
"Primarily" in D was the real killer for me. I was also really thrown off by the fact that no answer choice addressed both the environmental and safety components of the argument. Yet another bitter pill to swallow from LSAC.
9498
Saturday, Jul 11 2020
#help
How can I stop making these mistakes? When I try to be as scrutinous as the LSAT seems to always need me to be, it always seems to backfire.
I picked B because I thought the wording of the conclusion was obviously a trap. I was really proud to have caught it and I'm blown away to see that it's wrong.
The conclusion very clearly seems to be assessing someone's likelihood of injury depending on the size of their vehicle. It also does not specify that the vehicle at-hand is what is being driven at the time of the accident.
I see that B does essentially nothing in regard to the argument, but D was an easy elimation for me. I can't believe it's correct!
D seemed like an obvious trap answer because the conclusion refers to chance of injury, not chance of an accident. Why would it matter if your chance of accidents are higher in a large car if your chance of injury is lower? Not great logic for daily life, but this was a no brainer to me.
9498
Friday, Jul 10 2020
This passage absolutely destroyed me. Good lord. I got 2/7, and one was a blind guess because I ran out of time.
9498
Thursday, Feb 06 2020
I begrudgingly but wholly accept that D is correct, but I can't help but feel these kinds of questions are an unfair requirement of the test-taker. They feel cheap and don't seem learnable. I see why C is wrong, but too many assumptions are involved in D being safely correct.
9498
Tuesday, May 05 2020
#help
I correctly chose (C) because it obviously does not contribute an explanation.
But I found (B) really bothersome because of the word "antisocial". Has this ever been officially addressed?
I'm trying to get better at tackling LSAT content without emotion or attachment, and, while I've certainly faultered there before, I feel very comfortable that that word choice is an error.
In the context of a social behavior in children, "antisocial" is not "antagonistic" or "unruly" as the question requires. Quite the opposite, an "antisocial" child will be reserved and won't be the one disciplined for acting up.
Perhaps "antisocial" was meant in a more literal/formal sense (i.e. "challenging rules or social expectations"), but this context would serve this version extremely poorly. It'd go beyond the LSAT's understandable attempts to use cryptic language to make things more challenging to read. If that were the case, then the test-taker would have to routinely pause to explore the potential definitions of a word that isn't the focus of the answer choice. I think that's unreasonable to the point that it could turn any sentence on the LSAT into a slippery slope of ambiguous definitions.
With that in mind, I find it much more comfortable to believe that the culprit is unintentionally poor word choice by the test-makers.
Apologies for the ranty essay of a comment, but I want to understand. Am I missing anything? Can anyone clear this up?
#help
9498
Sunday, Oct 04 2020
Did anyone else have an extremely hard time with this passage? 4/7 and struggled for time. How was this an "easier" passage?
9498
Wednesday, Nov 04 2020
I'm revisiting this question after 9 months of studying and I still take some issue with it.
Just as I did 9 months ago, I deduced that A, B, D, and E were incorrect, but I could not bring myself to accept C's required assumptions.
As a more experienced test taker, I attribute this to the test makers. As written, it's too much to assume that Caligula's enemies plagiarized. C's wording just isn't strong enough for us to conclude that it couldn't have been a coincidence. Even just adding the word "unusual" between "specific" and "outrageous" would help.
On a test specifically designed to build argumentative ability by way of focusing on weak logic, it isn't appropriate to have the test taker move away from the correct answer because it's too weak.
9498
Friday, Jul 03 2020
I understand this question, but it took me a solid 5 minutes to grasp the stimulus.
The language and terminology in this question are so unnecessarily complex that the question jumps in difficulty from 3/5 to 5/5.
I'm very thankful that recent LSAT's have had nothing like this. I think this is evil.
9498
Monday, Nov 02 2020
I REALLY don't understand why so many people are confused about Passage A. It's very general and it's hard to verbalize its main point into one sentence, but it's very easy (for me, at least) to understand.
P1) 1990's scholarly shift from "women" as a subject toward "gender relations" as a subject (i.e. going from studying women's lives to studying how the female and male genders interact in traditional social settings).
P2) The above transition reveals that "gender relations" has potentially more value than the topic of "women" in analyzing historical social structures.
P3) The author wonders what academic drawbacks may result from a focus shifting away from the topic of "women".
With the amount of backlash this passage gets, I'm almost worried that I misread it, but I can't come up with another way to interpret the passage.
9498
Wednesday, Jul 01 2020
On Q4, I really struggle with D. I understand why C (my original answer) isn't correct, since we don't know that the critics are from/in Senegal or that their criticisms are widespread.
But the second paragraph only seriously mentions the social status of a single character. The passage seems to illustrate the diversity of his stories' character symbolisms, not that the characters come from different "social strata", much less a "broad range of social strata".
I find this really unsatisfying. Can anyone explain? #help
9498
Wednesday, Apr 01 2020
#help
Okay, so I take a bit of issue with this question. I didn’t love it, but I choose E.
A and D were both too weak to impact the argument (“Some” at the beginning of an answer choice is often a dead giveaway), plus A involves a bias/ad hominem attack. D additionally contradicted a premise.
B contradicted the premises just as JY said. My reasoning was identical to his.
This left C and E.
I grasped the appeal of C, but decided against it because currents carrying dioxin downstream did not mention dioxin exiting the “immediately downstream” area as it went downstream. I was admittedly proud to have caught this seemingly obvious trap.
E didn’t seem like a great answer choice seeing as our understanding of the relationship between the hormone imbalances and reproductive abnormalities does not affect the relationship itself, but I selected it because it seemed hard to believe that the dioxin could be ruled out as the culprit if we didn’t understand the impact it could be having.
I’ve read that people have had many issues with this question. Can anyone help me here?
This question is an instance of underestimated difficulty. I got it correct, but if I'd had even a month less practice with LR, I could easily have gotten this wrong. I think the wording is trickier than it's being given credit for.