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I would start to tumble if I got a question like this on the test... :')
but just to add a comment about this one...even though we never talked about harmful substances, I felt E was the only one that talked about a mechanism we actually know happens when the bacteria interacts with a substance...
I felt B was the most attractive trap since we were talking about attractants this whole passage, but the whole passage only covers tumbling/no tumbling and swimming straight mechanisms when interacting with substances...we never got any info about swimming towards other substances/choosing between two types of substances.
Answer choice B could happen in real life! But we never were told any info about this in the passage so we cannot infer this...kinda like MBT LR questions...some traps include stuff that "could" happen in real life, but are wrong based on the limited story we got in front of us...
@RinHan
Aha! I found it! But yeah 😭 if something like this happens to me, I'm definitely reporting it...we all only got a few chances for this exam...but I also felt my RC tanked because of these things. Good luck! 🙇
https://www.lsac.org/lsat/lsat-test-day-complaints-and-feedback
I'm sorry this happened ): especially RC really having concentration being key to doing well...
Thanks for sharing the tips to folks in case this happens to them.
In case you want to give it another chance to take it, please report the incident to LSAC. They only give you like 24-48 hours or something to report things like this (which this window of time really sucks)...I had the lights turn off on me at the testing center and proctors kept walking in to turn it on but I was burnt out I didn't report it on time...I forgot where but there's an official place to report these things. 🥲
Hey all, I know I’ve been sharing my Discord here a few times, but since I’m getting close to taking my LSAT, it would be great to have folks from the 120s to the 160s range to join in or create their own study group/sessions here. I’m trying to break into the 170s and find that breaking things down not only helps me and others talk through reasoning but also gives the insight that helped me break into the 160s (and hopefully soon the 170s)…
As always, I’ve been grateful to everyone who has been part of the Discord and has voluntarily supported other learners ❤️
I took a break and will be back in August but I still hold daily sessions at 5PM PST!
If you like open discussions and taking the time to do 5-10 questions in 1.5 hours, then feel free to join us!
To keep it open and accessible/prevent scams, I never allow tutor advertisements
Thank you!!! :D
I know there's a lot of comments here 🌻😊but in short for A: Unique Pollen clings on to the surface of the relic (good for relic itself)...but it unfortunately can also go onto humans or is moved by the wind, adding more factors/moving parts that complicate the real story of where the relic and its unique pollen moved/came from.
My takeaway: focus on the topic at hand/what we arguing for. We are arguing for the process of pollen for the relic, but the process on humans/wind is also a separate factor to consider, weakening the idea that the pollen, despite being unique to a region, can be unreliable. 👍
@AreeshaSaif ah I see! I don't know if I got any much groundbreaking tips since timing is also a struggle for me :')
My current coping is just practicing for consistency/pattern recognition and also breezing through the first 10 so I can have like extra time to tackle these harder ones...going under the average time to be allowed to go over the average time for these!
Thanks for the update, 🥀 I sent my own message when you first encouraged us to do so in the other post…I hope they at least change it for the next test (September+). Dang it chat…
@AreeshaSaif
Idk if this helps (sorry if it didn't 😖) but I did switched to grabbing some general takeaways and writing down habits that could help me find the answer, even if it's from POE. I find that my mistakes apply to any question difficulty. 🙇✨ On the positive side, building habits/general takeaways from 4-5 level questions will make the easier ones a breeze.
But some things I took away was:
Learning the LSAT language is super helpful! Any claim/statement that is supported by something else is a conclusion or a sub-conclusion. Which is what E is saying but in a weird way.
the first sign of majorly suspicious/inaccurate word(s), feel free to move on from it (A ["problem"] and B ["premise"]).
Habit: It's ok to break answers into pieces to see if it's accurate. The right answer felt much better when I broke it in half.
For harder questions with causal reasoning, identify how the author describes the causal relationship...just because it has causal language, doesn't mean "A causes B" type of language is needed in the answer choice (I picked C my first time seeing this one).
Be confident of your skills 💙, don't let wrong answers put self-doubt on your abilities, sometimes it was that the question added something on top of what you currently know to make it sneaky.
4-5 star Habit: treat it like you are reading a MBT/MSS, gotta read the whole thing and know that the story was saying to its core. It's ok to quickly reread the story again to make sure you got it right.
For 4-5 level questions, I have to note that they require us to have a deeper understanding of the story in front of us...It's not about just identifying if it's a premise or conclusion anymore. I remembered my first time picking C because I saw it mentioned "general hypothesis" (conclusion type of answer), "political and environmental conditions" and the causal language I noticed...and was like Oh perfect! like I was trying to cheat my way to shortcutting this but now I see that for these harder questions I can't cheat 🥲...I had to realize what the entire stimulus is actually saying and that like MBT/MSS, they will try to trap me with answers that sound nice, but aren't reflective of the actual story.
same here 🤝, we got this though, the next one will be better. Trust your process too!
OMG! It's happening to me too! Idk I think it's a Safari thing only because back then the site was on beta, it was happening to me all the time before they fixed it. I hope they fix it cause I like using my default browser. 🥲
I tried it on DuckDuckGo downloaded browser and it works fine on there.
Something that helped me soooo much make it to the 150s was correctly identifying the question types. I would always misidentify and get them wrong for it...I still do here and there but it got a lot better!
Despite what some people say, there is a method to doing every question type, but how you should read the stimulus and be suspect of answer choices in how they relate to the conclusion and such should stay the same. Try highlighting every trigger words that may be important to build up your skill on paying attention ("should, could, must, if, a study shows, therefore, this argument is wrong! this argument is great! on the contrary, etc.).
Try doing untimed and reading the stimulus first, and identify the support and conclusion. Remember that some info is just fluff or context but may not be needed for an answer.
A lot of times an answer is wrong because it just ignores the main point of the author.
my favorite go-to: strong language, new terms! they make an argument very sus! A lot of answers touch upon these things!
for RC, something that saved me lots of points in highlighting/identifying author tone and main point...even some answers won't be main point, but their answer choices are on topic for the main purpose/point...for some reason just knowing author POV comes in clutch for main point, author most likely would agree, structure, etc.
Chat, I think I got it...I hope. 😭 I picked C my first time seeing this one, now I understand why B is the better answer.
I wrote my takeaways at the very bottom...because we can know an explanation but not know what to really takeaway from getting it wrong...MATH WON'T DEFEAT AHHH! ⚔️🤺🔥
There's a lot of moving parts here 😖:
use of safety seats by children aged 4 and under doubled! (2x)
children 4 and under that are killed while riding car rose 10%
serious accidents overall rose 20%
conclusion: increase of safety seats prevented children dying in accidents.
What we want: "increase has prevented child fatalities that otherwise would have occurred." Meaning it's ok if they don't show crazy changes, just not children being killed because of the seats!
---
A) Some of the automobile safety seats purchased for children under 4 continue to be used after the child reaches the age of 5.
we are mostly focused on children 4 and under
"some" = At least seat purchased...
but even if we extended it to a larger group of children who continue to use it after the age of 5, the number of children who use the seats remain the same, they are just older.
It's like if a prison claims that crime is decreasing with the increase of prisoners because and...oh, by the way, they are staying longer in prison...
I wished to know if the population increased/decreased to compare with the prisoners...but longer stays can indicate that they are the same people being used for the numbers
B) The proportion of serious automobile accidents involving child passengers has remained constant over the past 8 years.
proportion is another word for a percentage (ex: a proportion of 2/10 is 20%)
I think for this one we needed to...
treat the "total number of serious automobile accidents" as the big/total group. Meaning that the big/total group should be considered the whole pie of 100%. Even if it increased by 80% instead of 20%, the pie will always represent the 100% total.
Treat answer B as a subset (children involved in serious accidents) of that big/total group (total serious accidents). Answer B is a slice of that pie.
Answer B also includes the death toll! 😳 because the death of children is actually a subset of B itself (B is all children: those that got into an accident and lived, and those that sadly died...basically any child that got into a serious accident)
Let's put it all together!
----
serious automobile accidents involving child passengers out of/vs total number of serious automobile accidents (100% of the pie):
year 1: 4% children serious accidents / 100% serious accidents
year 2: 4% children serious accidents / 100% Serious accidents
...
year 8: 4% (includes the 10% increase that were killed) children serious accidents / 100% serious accidents
This downplays the possibility that the proportion of children in accidents increased, which would have made the argument look really bad...imagine year one being 4%/100%, but then by year 8, its 50% (+10% of children who make up that 50% that died 💀😭! that's a large percent!) /100%). Remember, we want to make it look like the seats prevented deaths, not caused them!
------
C) Children are taking more trips in cars today than they were 8 years ago, but the average total time they spend in cars has remained constant.
Outliers! 🚩
I had a hard time ruling this one out but I suspect it could maybe be labeled under illusory answer...
Also how many more trips? just one more?
if I got 5 apples, but then added 1 more, I still can say I have more apples. ✨🌻
Average in LSAT means "at least one person above the mentioned number" meaning meaning it could be 9 children who don't go out much, and that 1 child from a wealthy family that takes road trips frequently 🚗🏕️...forcing the average time to appear to remain constant (could be that the actual general population of children don't go out, weakening the idea of increased frequency).
D) The sharpest increase in the use of automobile safety seats over the past 8 years has been for children over the age of 2.
Even if the usage increased specifically for a subgroup of the children from 4 years old and under, I'm still asking how this made children safer?
I would want to look for an answer that addresses the safety rather than the trigger of supposed safety (seats).
I would prioritize the aftermath of using the seats, like the accident rates for children. We know the usage doubled...but having another premise about the increased usage doesn't directly address how it makes children more safe.
E) The number of fatalities among adults involved in automobile accidents rose by 10 percent over the past 8 years.
E introduces an extra group we aren't arguing for and need extra assumptions for.
How would the increase number of adults being killed in accidents help support that safety seats help children avoid being killed in car accidents?
Maybe E assumes the group of children who got into accidents is smaller than the adults? but however I try to connect E, I'm bringing in assumptions on how this affects the children who got into accidents or those that died from the accidents.
----
Takeaways:
Be suspicious of averages when coming between answers. They can have crazy outliers!
Proportion, Percentage, Fraction, Rate, Share fall under the "Relative family", we will never know the actual number...
%/Proportions with %/proportion answers are ok! Don't rule out an answer because we are trying to find an absolute answer choice to solidify our answer).
As always, don't bring in extra assumptions for weaken/strengthen, and don't assume the best possible outcome for answers that can also go the other way.
🌻 Quick note that helped me on this one...because yes there is a way to get these, and it took me a while to really get the hang of them. These questions won't fool us anymore chat!
I got my list of things I keep in mind when doing these certain EXCEPT questions (not all of them might show/come in handy but its a good thing to think about in my opinion):
1) is it factors that would affect the same timeline?
Notice how the 4 other right answers talked about factors or actions that needed to be accounted for before the experiment, while the wrong one is an action that would impact during or after the experiment.
Like I'm not sure how picking up the phone would impact the action of the person who needed to trigger the event first on calling the phone. 🤔☎️
2) Is it addressing the groups we are focusing on?
notice the wrong answer isn't directly addressing a factor regarding Group A or B? Its more of a factor of the group of researchers that are holding the experiment who are interacting with Group A and B...
3) Extra assumptions = bad 😖
If I got an easier time knowing how the right answers would impact the experiment but am thinking too hard about a certain answer in how it impacts, I wouldn't select it...
I have a hard time thinking how B impacts the experiment without me making up a story/assumptions for it...
When I start to say "maybe if", that's a bad sign...
@mmatherne Wait I thought those settings were gonna be given during test day (seems like it on LawHub), are they not? 😭 I like having large letters and violet background. 🥲
chat! I took a PT today, it wasn't too bad actually, I actually was mad when I woke up to this, but give it a chance before you panic (if you hate it still...I'm so sorry, I also hate the unnecessary changes since it was good enough!)...I still have to get used to it more...
they even gave me a blue highlighter!!! Which is great for RC since I used to underline examples and was hard to see...so now I can use blue for those!
Downsides I hate:
The slight delay (maybe it's because I'm using Safari?) is a little scary...I keep thinking...will it highlight what I selected or not? 😭
I love the violet/lavender accessibility settings for my eyes but LSAC got really bad colors imo...I think I have to either switch to white setting or learn the new highlight colors (WHY IS THERE PURPLE AND MAGENTA ON TOP OF PURPLE?!) 🫠
@rayaniiic No problem! Glad it helped (I struggle with these ones so much 🥲)
But we shall persevere! Onward! ⚔️🔥
@alexfbaird adding to the list: don't drill while sleepy (I picked D this time around)
I've seen this question 3 times before and got them right, but today I got it wrong noooo! >_< Because I am being picky with how it matches up my diagrams, but this time I didn't diagram it out right.
My first three times I did this I thought its ok to always infer that if we got most having something, there are a few people who are the opposite. Which is fine if that's what got us this, but question goes deeper than that and other questions might take advantage of me thinking so...
My 3 mistakes this time:
not trusting myself to know that Most people in modern society was not a conditional quantifier (did not make a most arrow) and I needed to treat it as the domain/overarching group we are talking about...I knew we couldn't contrapose "most" statements...so I ruled out E!
not knowing that "Fewer than a majority" means "most are not" (not "some are not").
not knowing we can contrapose "some" and "most" statements if there is strong conditional words within the statement (if, all, any).
I won't chain the entire stimulus here but you can chain the first sentence to make it more complete and clear why E is right.
If we diagram the second sentence:
Most people in modern society, however, can achieve a feeling of indispensability only within the sphere of family and friendship
it's "kick-it-up to the domain" version:
Most people in modern society: IndispensabilityNeeded --> family and friendship
or the long way...
Most people in modern society can achieve feeling of IndispensabilityNeeded --> family and friendship
WE CANNOT CONTRAPOSE A SIMPLE MOST ARROW STATEMENT 😭 We can only do it this time because it's a nested conditional (included strong conditional within the same sentence)/kick-it-up conditional. Some comments confused me.
If we contrapose this statement, we keep the domain in the front of the sentence:
Most people in modern society: /family and friends --> /IndispensableNeeded --> /Happy (first sentence)
(family and friends doesn't become an or because "sphere" was the actual subject we negate)
Meaning: If you don't have a sphere of family and friends, you are not happy...
Because Fewer than majority means "Most are not", we got Most people in modern society that do not have family and friends --> /IndispendableNeeded --> /Happy. Which is the same as E but rephrased: Most of the majority of people in a modern society that don't have family and friends (interpersonal relationships) can find happiness.
Hope this helps someone who is into conditionals like me ^-^
wat