Being in a score plateau can be super frustrating! But it's totally normal for your progress to not be reflected in your timed PTs immediately. If you're very fatigued/frustrated with the test, I would recommend taking a break (even just 2-3 days can help). After that, try to identify any patterns in your wrong answers -- the "priorities by tag" page in the analytics can be very helpful for this! Start by targeting the highest priority question types and moving down the list.

If your untimed drill accuracy is good, but you struggle on timed PTs, the issue could be speed. To improve timing, focus on the two halves of a section separately. Start with the first 15 questions (untimed) and do them at a comfortable pace, but keep track of time. If your accuracy at this pace is consistent with your goal, then slowly move back the time (in 1 minute increments) until you can do the first 15 questions in 15 minutes. Repeat this with the last 10 questions, but with a 20-minute goal instead of 15 minutes.

These are the recommendations I can give without knowing your specific situation/analytics! But I hope they're helpful, and happy studying!

You're on the right track! Starting with question types is definitely the way to go. Start with practicing individual question types in the 1-3 star difficulty range, and once you're comfortable with those, move on to mixing question types (still in the 1-3 star range). At this point, you can also incorporate timing practice from the first half of a section, aiming to get the first 15 questions of a section done in 15 minutes (this can be tough, so start slow!). You can then move on to 4-5 star questions (untimed), and eventually timed. If you feel like taking PTs hasn't been helpful so far, you can try focusing only on drills for 1-2 weeks and only incorporating drills/full sections once you're more comfortable with 1-3 star questions! Make sure you have your 7Sage study plan set up with your intended test date, so you can get a more structured study plan.

Good luck and happy studying!

Don't be discouraged! Foundations is like a necessary condition -- you have to learn it, but it's not going to give you a score boost by itself. I would recommend going through the rest of the curriculum before taking another PT (at least the entire LR section, but preferably RC as well). Drilling and practicing after the curriculum is how you're going to make the majority of your improvement. It may be counter productive to take PTs or do a ton of drilling before you're done the whole curriculum, since you want to make sure you actually learn the techniques first before putting them to action.

Hope this helps, and happy studying!

It's great that you're already keeping a WAJ! Here are the questions I would recommending answering in your journal, on top of the general "why is the right answer right/why is the wrong answer wrong":

1. Why did I pick the wrong answer?

2. Why did I not pick the right answer?

3. What can I do to avoid this mistake next time?

To review, you can do a read-through to see if you spot any common patterns (i.e. commonly missing words on MBT questions). You can also do the following drill:

1. Make a drill set of a number of questions from your WAJ (5-15, depending on how much time you have)

   1. Try to pick questions that are at least 1-2 weeks old

2. Redo the questions timed

3. Assess your accuracy -- did you get the question right? If so, then was it because of the recommendation from your WAJ? If you got the question wrong, was it a different mistake, or the same mistake? Should you think of a new WAJ recommendation, or should you just work on actually implementing the old one?

It's normal to remember the correct/incorrect answers for some of these questions as you're redoing them. The important thing is picking the right answer through the right process. So even if you know the right answer, try to remember why that one is correct and why the other ones are not.

Hope this helps, and happy studying!

@WaystarRoyco The stimulus does tell us that shame is one tactic of overall socialization, but we can infer that moral socialization (a subset of overall socialization) is the same as shaming children for immoral acts.

Student Question: How does the correct AC explain why?

Tutor Response: If it is true that people are willing to purchase the program only after they’ve already used it, then the illegal copies could actually be helping the company by giving people the chance to use the software before committing to buying the paid version of it. If the company prosecutes those who have illegal copies, then they may get lower sales because some people wouldn’t be willing to purchase a program that they haven’t used already.

Student Question: Having trouble figuring out why C is the right AC. What I have so far:

A. We don't speak of any other species. It is the "first identified," but that doesn't have to mean "only."

B. This is anti-supported.

C. We know egg-hatched broods are larger. So overall, more are hatched via egg...

• My qualm with this is, what if the females use the live-born method significantly more?

D. We don't know if there is an equal number of the two hatching methods.

E. We don't know how many times they reproduce, this could be true if it was only once, but we can't make any estimates about the distribution.

Tutor Response: Your reasoning for eliminating the wrong answer choices is solid! Now let’s look at why C is correct: 

We know that the females don’t use the live-born method significantly more, because the final split between adult thrips is equal males and females. The stimulus tells us that a much higher proportion of males survive to adulthood, and all of the males are live-born. If the females were choosing live birth significantly more often than egg hatching, then there would be more adult males than females, because more of them survive. The reason that the number evens out between males and females is that although more females are born via egg, they are also more likely to die before reaching adulthood. For this equilibrium to hold, there would need to be more females born (so more egg-hatched offspring in total compared to live-born).

@AmyKothari The contrapositive is equivalent to "if there is not a duty to fulfill, then there was overwhelming evidence". We would need actual confirmation that there was no duty to fulfill, and then we could move on to conclude the necessary condition (which would be that there was overwhelming evidence). We can't conclude that there was no duty to fulfill because that is the sufficient condition.

Student Question: Why is answer choice B wrong?

Tutor Response: Answer choice B is wrong because the stimulus never claims that its solution will deal with the possible adverse effects of the problem – it only claims that its solution will prevent the problem. The stimulus actually doesn’t talk about adverse effects at all. Let’s map answer choice B onto the context of the stimulus:

fails to distinguish between prevention of a problem…

Okay, what problem are we preventing? By encouraging people to date their wills and note down their order, we are preventing the problem of executors not knowing which will is the most recent. 

…and successful containment of the adverse effects that the problem might cause

Okay, what are some of the adverse effects that the problem may cause? What are some possible negative consequences of executors not knowing which will is the most recent? We could think of a couple possible issues, but we can’t know for sure because the stimulus never discusses it. 

Answer choice B is acting as if the conclusion of the argument was that all negative effects of executors not knowing the most recent will will be avoided by this solution. But that is not the conclusion of the argument – the conclusion is that the problem would not exist to begin with. In other words, the argument’s conclusion is simply that taking this measure would prevent the problem. Answer choice B goes a step further and acts as if the argument was claiming that preventing the problem would solve all possible negative effects of that problem, which isn’t the case.

Student Question: I get why B is right but I don’t understand what’s wrong with D. Here’s my read of it:

D says that "All actions instrumental in achieving ends that are permissible are also permissible." I thought this worked too.

• Premises: "if an action is instrumental in achieving an end that's permissible." I guess it seems like banning whaling of all other species is instrumental in achieving a permissible end (banning whaling of end species). Without a ban on whaling of all other species, it’s not possible to enforce a ban on endangered species (aka it’s instrumental in achieving a permissible end)

• Concl: "[then that act] is permissible as well." So a ban on whaling of all other species is permissible

I’m not sure if I’m misreading the start in interpreting a ban on whaling of all other species as being instrumental. Not sure how to wrap my head around this

Tutor Response: Your interpretation of the ban on whaling of all other species being instrumental is correct. However, the important distinction here is the difference between concluding that an action is permissible and concluding that an action should be taken. The stimulus reaches the conclusion that the ban on whaling other species should occur, so we need the correct answer choice to also lead to that conclusion. Answer choice B successfully does this, concluding that an action “ought to be prohibited”. However, answer choice D only lets us conclude that the ban on other species would be permissible (i.e. okay to do). This is not a strong enough bridge from the premises to the conclusion. Even if we plug answer choice D into the stimulus, we would still have a big gap between “banning whaling of other species is permissible” and “we should ban whaling of other species”. 

A helpful guideline to keep in mind is that if a conclusion is prescriptive (i.e. uses “should” or “ought”), there must be a matching prescriptive premise. If there is no premise that bridges the “should” gap, then the correct answer choice for a sufficient or pseudo-sufficient assumption question needs to bridge to a prescriptive conclusion.

Student Question: I felt like D was too weak when describing the authors primary purpose. I felt like it did more than just explain the basis of a revisionary approach, but also demonstrated research to disprove Darwin’s theory. Is the idea then to just pick the best answer even if there are some objections, as long as there are less objections than the other answers?

Tutor Response: Generally on the LSAT we need to pick the best answer choice out of the options that we are given, even if that answer choice isn’t “perfect”. You’re right that answer choice D doesn’t fully encompass the author’s primary purpose, but it is the only one that correctly identifies the general idea.

Answer choice A is descriptively inaccurate, since there is no comparison between different research methods. Answer choice B is too narrow and only focuses on the main purpose of passage 1, missing the information about the new methodology and perspective. Answer choice C is also descriptively inaccurate, since there is no story or narrative. Answer choice E is unsupported since the new theory has not replaced the traditional theory yet. This leaves us with answer choice D, which is not perfect, but is descriptively accurate and broad enough to encompass the passage as whole. 

These questions can be really tough because often times we eliminate the correct answer choice and then get stuck picking one that is even worse. When you encounter a question where all answer choices seem “bad”, I would recommend un-eliminating everything and looking at everything with the mindset of picking the “least bad” answer. If timing allows, it’s also a good idea to just flag the question after your first run through and come back later with a fresh eye.

Student Question: Im confused about all of this. I chose C but am having a really hard time doing the negation test and having it make sense. I did the negation on everything but I don’t know how to do it well on these necessary assumption questions. Are there any tips on what I could do in general or what I could've done for this question. I dont get why the speed of the chip decreasing isn't important.

Tutor Response: Negation on necessary assumption questions can be really tough. One way to practice is to do a set of necessary assumption questions untimed and take as long as you need to form a negation that makes sense to you. You can write down these negations and revisit them after finishing the drill to evaluate if you negated correctly. You can change up the wording of the negations to make sure it makes sense to you – you don’t have to stick to the exact wording of the answer choice! The most important thing with necessary assumptions is that the negated version of the answer choice needs to make the conclusion impossible to work. 

Let’s negate answer choices A and C: 

A: Computers can currently be made faster even if their CPU chips are not made smaller.

This would totally ruin the conclusion. The argument is trying to convince us that computers can’t be faster because CPU chips can’t be made smaller. However, the negation of answer choice A makes it possible for computers to be faster using some way other than the CPU being made smaller. This makes the conclusion impossible, which means that answer choice A is necessary.

C: if both the size and the sophistication of a CPU chip are decreased, the speed of that chip will not necessarily decrease.

This does not ruin the argument, because it is possible that the speed of the chip will just stay the same. This negation could co-exist with our conclusion, because if the speed of the chip stays the same, then the conclusion would still work – the computers wouldn’t be getting any faster.

Student Question: The explanation under C says that it cannot strengthen the argument. Is this not too extreme of a statement? Since the author says that printed books will not go obsolete, does obsolete not mean that she thinks they won’t reach 0 or go extinct? Or does obsolete simply mean that books won’t be significantly diminished to a serious minority of written materials? Thank you!

Tutor Response: You’re right that “obsolete” means that books will not be produced anymore or go out of date. However, that definition is not actually the reason that C is wrong. C just doesn’t have a strong enough link to books going obsolete. All it tells us is that some people get impaired vision from reading on a computer for a long time. It does not establish that this will cause them to read physical books instead. It’s entirely possible that those people would just take breaks while reading for long periods of time on a computer. Also, this issue only applies to “some” people – which we know on the LSAT just means “at least 1”. So not only is the issue brought up by C lacking a link to printed materials, it also doesn’t necessarily apply to a significant group of people.

Student Question: I understand the logic of ‘if you understand someone completely, then you can forgive them entirely.’ U→F. However, I interpreted “it follows that complete self-forgiveness is beyond our reach, for complete self-understanding, however desirable, is unattainable.” as ‘if you cannot forgive entirely (because it is unattainable), then you cannot understand completely (for it is also unattainable)’ which matched as the contrapositive /F→/U. I am confused on how not to interpret this in this way and the video explanation breezes over it.

Tutor Response: The contrapositive, /F → /U, implies that a lack of forgiveness depends on a lack of self-understanding. For that to work, we would need the stimulus to say “if you lack self-forgiveness, then you also lack self-understanding”. That is not what the argument says. The argument says that  because we don’t have self-understanding, we can’t have self-forgiveness either. This means that not having self-forgiveness is dependent on not having self-understanding, which would translate into lawgic as /U → /F. 

You can also think about it this way. The argument says that without self-understanding, we can’t have self-forgiveness. “Without” is a group 3 indicator – so we can take the concept of self-understanding, negate it, and make it the sufficient condition. We would then arrow over to the remaining condition, which is lack of self-forgiveness. This would also result in /U → /F. 

Student Question: The promoter is saying that the concert series do not lack popular appeal. So in concluding that because the sales of memorabilia is equal to or greater than that for other comparable series, the concerts don’t lack popular appeal, isn’t the promoter assuming the income from the sales is the sole indicator of popular appeal? Because if they didn’t assume it was the sole indicator, then they would consider other factors and have a chance of not making a conclusion about the popular appeal?

Tutor Response: That’s not necessarily true. It could be the case that the promoter thinks that merchandise sales are the most important indicator of popular appeal, even if it is not the sole indicator. It could be the case that the promoter did look at other indicators but thought that they were insignificant and did not factor into her conclusion.

All we know is that the manager thinks that they are an important indicator – we have no clue about other indicators and whether or not the promoter gives them any consideration. 

Student Question: Can you further explain why C is wrong in the terms of sufficiency versus necessity? I feel like this answer choice does satisfy one of the conditions that are needed to use a “LRCWA”.

Tutor Response: The LRCWA provides two necessary conditions that must be met if the contingency arrangement is to be used:

Contingency fee → last resort AND lawyer thinks client can’t pay

However, answer choice C provides a sufficient condition for using the arrangement:

Lawyer thinks client can’t pay → contingency fee 

This flips the sufficient and necessary conditions for using the arrangement, so it is not the correct answer. Additionally, this answer choice changes the “certainty level” required by the lawyer. The passage says that the lawyer must be certain that the client can’t pay. However, answer choice C just says that the lawyer is not sure if the client could pay. Answer choice C lowers the certainty requirement.

Student Question: In the explanation video JY says E is consistent with the premise in the same way that answer A was. I understand why D is correct but I’m still a bit confused on how E/A are wrong. Could you help me better parse through how those two answers are still “consistent” with the premise in the argument so I can get better at spotting those kind of cookie cutter wrong answers in the future?

Tutor Response: Those two answer choices are similarly consistent in that the stimulus never gave us any reason to believe that those scenarios were incompatible with the argument. 

Let’s start with answer choice A: Some people who have pets are happier than most people who do not. On the LSAT, “some” just means “at least one”. So, this answer choice is saying that at least one person who has a pet is happier than most people who do not have pets. The stimulus says that most people with pets are less happy than those without pets – not all. Thus, saying that at least one person doesn’t fit into the “most” claim is not inconsistent with the argument. Even if there is at least one person who doesn’t fit into this correlation, it’s totally plausible that the correlation still applies to most other people. This answer choice makes the cookie cutter mistake of trying to disprove a “most” relationship with a “some” claim. This isn’t possible, because a “most” claim already doesn’t apply to everyone, so it’s okay if there are some people that don’t fit in. 

Now onto answer choice E. The stimulus never said that people without pets are happy all the time. It just said that most of them are happier than people who have pets. So it’s still entirely possible that they feel unhappy sometimes, but in general, they are happier than people who have pets. This answer choice makes the mistake of confusing an absolute claim with a relative claim. The stimulus makes a comparative claim (no pets: happier compared to pets), but the answer choice makes an absolute claim (no pets: sometimes unhappy). The answer choice doesn’t consider the possibility that people with pets are unhappy even more often than the ones without pets.

Student Question: I have absolutely no idea about how answer choice E is correct. I watched the video, read the explanations, even looked at the comments. Can you explain this thoroughly and dumb it down a lot? Thank you.

Tutor Response: We’re looking for an answer choice that will be 100% supported by the stimulus, so we need to figure out what the stimulus is establishing: 

 Most of the books of fiction we have published were submitted by literary agents for writers they represented; the rest were received directly from fiction writers from whom we requested submissions.

So, out of the fiction books that were received by this editor, most of them were submitted by agents and the rest were submitted by writers who were requested to submit. We can diagram this as such: 

Fiction → agent OR request 

No nonfiction manuscript has been given serious attention, let alone been published, unless it was from a renowned figure…

If a book was a nonfiction, it wouldn’t be given attention (definitely not published) unless it was from a renowned figure. Let’s diagram the first part of this claim before we read on: 

Nonfiction: /renowned figure → /published

…or we had requested the manuscript after careful review of the writer's book proposal.

This is giving us another way (other than the book being from a renowned figure) that a nonfiction book could be given attention by the editor. So now we know that if nonfiction books don’t have either of these characteristics, they will be ignored. Let’s make our diagram in the domain of nonfiction books:

/renowned figure AND /request after proposal → /published 

Contrapositive: 

Published → renowned figure OR requested

Now let’s look at how answer choice E follows from these claims:

Any unrequested manuscripts not submitted by literary agents that the publishing house has published…

This part of the answer choice rules out all of our fiction manuscripts. Remember in the first premise we established that the fiction books that were published were either submitted by agents or requested. If a manuscript is not requested and not submitted by an agent, then it can’t be a part of the fiction manuscripts that they published. 

Since this manuscript could not have been fiction, it had to have been nonfiction. Remember the 2 things we know about nonfiction books that were published: either they were written by a renowned figure or they were requested. Except the answer choice already told us that this manuscript was not requested, which leaves only one option: it had to have been written by a renowned figure.

…were written by renowned figures.

That’s exactly what we need! The answer choice rules out 3 out of the 4 possible characteristics of a published book:

For fiction: requested or submitted by agent (both ruled out)

For nonfiction: requested or renowned figure (requested was ruled out)

So, the book has to have been written by a renowned figure, making this answer choice 100% supported.

Student Question: is the difference between C and D the fact that C presents a necessary assumption and D tries to make it seem like the target phrase is a sufficient assumption? please help me understand this question!

Tutor Response: Answer choice C is saying that the target claim has 2 traits:

1. It receives support from another claim in the argument

2. It is a necessary assumption (it is required to establish the conclusion)

Both of these traits do apply to the target claim. The claim is supported by the statement that Mars escaped asteroid bombardment. The target claim is also a necessary assumption: if we negated it, then the conclusion would fall apart: if there could not have been microbial life on Mars before it was on Earth, then it would not be possible that a Martian meteor carried this life to Earth.

Answer choice D is also saying that the target claim receives support, but instead of calling it a necessary assumption, answer choice D calls it a sufficient assumption. Answer choice D thinks that the target claim would 100% guarantee the validity of the conclusion if it was true (which is the description of a sufficient assumption). This doesn’t apply to the target claim – it does not fully establish the conclusion. There are still loopholes that could weaken the author’s conclusion – there could be other factors that disprove or cast doubt on the claim that life on Earth originated in Mars.

If answer choice D was correct, this argument would be a 100% valid argument with no gaps, because that is what happens when we place a sufficient assumption in an argument. However, the argument is not 100% valid, because we can think of possible ways that life on Earth did not originate on Mars. Thus, the claim in question can’t be a sufficient assumption.

Student Question: I really don’t understand this question. I broke it down as follows: P1: some breeds of dogs are much more closely related to wolves than other breeds of dogs (i.e husky closer to wolves than golden retriever). Conclusion: Huskies were domesticated b/f golden retriever, why? b/c husky are more closely related to wolves, golden retrievers are domesticated from a different set. But when watching the video, I didn't realize that the timeline was contingent on huskies in this case being domesticated before “golden retrievers”. I think the video made me more confused about the timeline. I chose D) and then A) During blind review, but also don’t understand how either is incorrect and how B) is correct

Tutor Response: I think your confusion here is stemming from an incomplete understanding of the conclusion and the structure of the argument, which is totally valid – this is a difficult question!

The first premise is that dogs are the descendants of domesticated wolves – so the wolves themselves were also domesticated. The second premise is that some dog breeds (let’s say huskies) are more closely related to wolves than they are to golden retrievers. This premise is not necessarily saying that golden retrievers are further from wolves than huskies are. Rather, it is saying that huskies have a greater similarity to wolves than they have with golden retrievers. This is an important point to remember. We’re not comparing the distance between huskies and golden retrievers to wolves. We’re comparing the distance between huskies and wolves to the distance between huskies and golden retrievers.

The conclusion is that some dog breeds (huskies) are descended from wolves that were domesticated later than other wolves. So maybe huskies were descended from wolves that were domesticated 1000 years ago, but golden retrievers are descended from wolves that were domesticated 3000 years ago. As you can see, the timeline is actually about when the wolves were domesticated, not necessarily when the dogs were domesticated. The conclusion is just saying that the ancestors of huskies were domesticated more recently than the ancestors of golden retrievers. It’s not necessarily saying that huskies themselves were domesticated before or after golden retrievers. 

Answer choice B works because it builds a direct bridge between the first premise and the conclusion. It establishes this: 

Husky closer to wolf than golden retriever to wolf → husky’s wolf ancestor domesticated more recently than golden retriever’s ancestor

This is a direct link between our premises and the conclusion, which makes this answer choice correct!

Answer choice A doesn’t work because it is reversing that same link that we just diagrammed. Answer choice A goes from the conclusion to the premises, instead of linking the premises to the conclusion. (A) also incorrectly describes the premise about the relationship between the dog breeds and wolves. It is acting as if huskies are closer to wolves than golden retrievers are to wolves. However, as we established in the stimulus, the premise is actually that huskies are closer to wolves than they (huskies) are to golden retrievers. 

Answer choice D also makes this same mistake. The stimulus never mentions any breed of dog that is closer to a wolf compared to another breed of dog. Instead of connecting the premises to the conclusion, this answer choice connects an incorrect premise (the one we just discussed) to another premise (the actual first premise of the argument is the necessary condition in answer choice D). For these reasons, neither A or D work for this question.

Student Question: could you help me understand what is the best way to read a stimulus like this? I read the premises about the long term and short term as describing dire conditions which warrant repealing the laws. Also is it fair to read the period of immunity being a short term? Appreciate the guidance! :))

Tutor Response: Let’s take a look at how we could break down this stimulus as we’re reading it:

Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity during which they can be repealed only if circumstances are dire.

Okay, so the theorist thinks that newly enacted laws should be protected for a period of time. She thinks there should be a limit on how these laws can be repealed in that period: they can only be repealed if the circumstances are dire. In non-dire circumstances during this immunity period, they should not be repealed. Why does the theorist think this? We’re about to find out:

This is because the short-term consequences of any statutory change are likely to be painful, since people are not accustomed to it, while its long-term benefits are initially obscure, because people require time to learn how to take advantage of it.

The theorist thinks that people are likely to suffer from a statute when it is first enacted, because they aren’t used to the consequences of it and the change is painful. However, the theorist thinks the statutes can actually be beneficial in the long term, but people are just not seeing that benefit at first.

Based on this, the theorist thinks that we should have that protected period where the painful, short-term consequences won’t make politicians repeal laws that would actually be beneficial in the long term.  The premises about the short and long term are not actually examples of a dire circumstance, rather they are helping to explain why the author thinks that short-term repeals of the law should only be done in dire circumstances. 

It is reasonable to assume that the immunity period is within the short term, since the author discusses the short-term painful consequences – we can assume that the immunity period would last until these painful consequences are over. 

@Mina.G Answer choice A starts the diagram with "polls inaccurate" as the sufficient condition, while the correct diagram's sufficient condition is the negated version of that: "/polls inaccurate". Answer choice A makes the sufficiency-necessity mistake -- we do not know what will happen if the polls are grossly inaccurate.

@lydia.wormy4 While the physical painting would belong to you, it would not be an original painting, meaning you would not have ownership of the idea. In this passage, they're bringing up a case where the painter actually did come up with the idea, but the painting counted as a forgery because they placed a fraudulent signature on the work.

Student Question: I am still a little confused why E is a better answer choice than B. Doesn’t E require us to assume that the employees at the managers company are similar enough to the employees at the other companies? That feels like an unfair assumption to make.

Tutor Response: It’s important to keep in mind that this is a most strongly supported question, so our correct answer choice doesn’t need to be perfect – it just needs more support than the other answer choices. The manager herself actually makes the assumption required in answer choice E, meaning it’s not something that we’re adding on. The manager’s entire argument rests on the assumption that the employees at other companies are analogous to her own, and that they would also not prefer the new technology. Keep in mind that “many” just means “some”, so we don’t need the outcome in other companies to happen to all of this manager’s employees – just some of them. Answer choice E almost acts as a sub-conclusion to the manager’s arguments, since all of her premises lead to the fact that she believes her employees will not like the new software and that is why the company should reject it. 

However, B draws a comparison that just isn’t drawn in the stimulus. We have no reason to believe that familiarity is the reason that the manager made this recommendation, or that the manager thinks familiarity is more important than the other factors. It’s entirely possible that the manager actually fully disagrees with answer choice B, and believes that those 3 factors are equally matched in making a consideration. She could think that the current software is better on some other aspect, or that it is actually more flexible and easier to use than the new one (which is simply advertised to be those things). Since the manager gives no comparison or weighting of different factors, we have no support for B. 

Student Question: According to the stimulus, “if we appeal to them alone, our station risks going out of business, we should not take that risk.” Going out of business is just a risk. So I can’t understand D’s explanation, saying “that doesn’t establish that this difficulty is so great that the option is undesirable.” Failure to buy fabric that matches what we already have is also a risk.

Tutor Response: You’re right that this would be a risk. However, not all risks are unacceptable. We frequently do things that carry risks but aren’t so risky that they should not be attempted. Answer choice D doesn’t establish that the failure to get matching fabric is such a great risk that the option should be ruled out. It could be a possibility that it is difficult to match the fabric, but we should still try to do so because it is not impossible. It’s also possible that maybe we can try to purchase the fabric and if we fail, we can then try the other option. Ultimately, the answer choice doesn’t give us enough reason to believe that the difficulty/risk of failure is so great that the option should not be attempted.

On the other hand, in the stimulus, we know that risking the station going out of business is unacceptable. The stimulus explicitly tells us that we should not take that risk. If answer choice D established that it would be unacceptable to try the fabric option, it could be more analogous to the argument. Compare this to answer choice B, which establishes that the blinds option is unacceptable because they do not have enough time for it.