@SydneyPatterson Good luck to you! Luck definitely plays a part in the 17lows vs 17highs, but staying calm and "running your race" as people say in distance running makes sure you don't flop into the 16mids. I'm taking my test next Friday and just got my highest PT (175 on PT154). Hope we all get our goal scores.
I went from a 158-168 just by better understanding questions. Now (1ish month after that time) i consistently score 170-174 (last 6 or so tests). The biggest thing for me was getting better at judging which questions I know that if I spend more time on I will work out the right answer and which questions its better just to go with my gut. I usually have enough time to go back to a few LR questions so making sure I prioritize ones with conditional reasoning is important for me. That helped me get the 2-3 more right questions that brings me up to the low 170s.
I have been working on getting up to the high 170s but that might be a little too much for me unless I get my ideal test order (LR, RC, LR, Experimental) and have my types of questions be the hardest (Flaw, Parallel, or SA, not NA). I think people down play the role of luck in the difference between a 174 and a 177, that is truly 2 correct guesses vs a 164 and a 167 is 4 or more questions. I ALWAYS have some level 2 causal reasoning question that throws me for a loop because I overthink it so on those I just trust my gut and I know now not to change my first answer unless I have a REALLY good reason.
In short, work on test strategy. You are going to have unique quirks about your testing at this level that won't be because you don't know Unless is a group 3 indicator, or you don't understand the difference between SA and NA. Figure out when to trust your gut and when to know it is a dirty little liar .
@spoon I think it is because we know one way that you "should receive the award" but we don't know ALL the ways or if this is the only way. So it could be that if you had the most traffic tickets in police history you should get the award. In your situation we would say that we know Franklin should receive the award, but we don't know if Penn should also receive the award.
Also you're messing up sufficiency and necessity. lawgic:
an act saves someones life AND exceeded what is reasonable -> should receive the award;
contra positive: Should not receive the award -> act doesn't save someones life OR does not exceed.
Just cause I know someone did save someones life or exceeded, I don't know that they should not receive the award. I know someone who should not receive the award either did not exceed expectations or saved someones life.
@elw327 Yeah, like I said, I got it right. It is just a very 'LSAT-y' way of reading/writing. This was more an expression of the annoyance I have with reading comprehension. The excerpts are drawn from articles that are much longer and much more detailed then they cut down and rearrange those articles to purposefully obfuscate the points made. No one writes this way intentionally. Yes, people often use vague language or highly technical language, but that is usually to serve a purpose. The former's purpose is often to leave room for interpenetration by the reader (not something you can test for in a multiple choice test) and the latter is used to condense massive amounts of information into a shortened form for an audience that you assume is familiar with the topic (for example, I reference " Transit tariffs" but don't define it because I am writing a paper on international economic policy and I assume anyone who read it has a working understanding).
Often a working understanding of the topics before going into the article does more for your score than anything else which is why people love the power score crystal ball. In the science passages if you have heard of the topic before you will do better because you understand the jargon they spend a sentence on (point in case, this passage). If you have listened to the musician in a musical article you will do better in those (I did this with the Wynton Marsalis article, didn't even read it and got the questions right because I like his music and I'm familiar with his life). Same story with the art ones, if you have seen the persons artwork (especially the piece they are referring to) you are at a huge advantage to someone who only has to go off the words. Also, pretty much any article you read about art will have a picture of the artwork, science papers have graphs, and who reads a critic of a musician without listening to the music first or shortly there after?
TLDR: RC tests a method of reading that is not practical to the real world. Standardized testing of 5 paragraph excerpts with MC tests are destroying the way we should engage with the written word.
@shadimeraji61 I had a similar problem, I think it comes down to the fact that C is just a way better except answer. C deepens the confusion because if the dish is popular, ALL demographics are eating it, and that should lower rates across ALL demographics. D leaves open the possibility that the increased demand for carrots has made carrots only go to those who don't have a propensity towards low vitamin A. D only really keeps the possibility of a reconciliation open, because you could say that the demand from the group that doesn't need more vitamin A has outstripped production.
@atlaspoocd This was exactly why I counted out D, but, after a trip to the dictionary, it has to do with the difference between effective and efficient. The amount of resources you have to apply to a task to get a result is measured by efficiency. The ability of something to achieve the desired outcome is effectiveness. So me going out my back door to walk all the way around my house to get to my front yard is just as effective as me going out the front door to get to my front yard, BUT it is far less efficient. The scientists claim that they measure it by the output of energy (effectiveness), we have no idea if that measure of output takes into account the energy lost (efficiency) to produce that output.
Could the second sentence be translated as: "Some people who dislike each other treat each other with respect". This is how I translated it and it didn't seem to be punished. B was obviously MBF if you translated the rest correctly, so I just stopped reading ACs after that one. I am just wondering if "may nevertheless" could be translated as some because it is saying there is a non-zero chance.
@jennacolwilliams245 What a great method, drop the adjective and compare the nouns.
I read "fit" as "fix"
A makes no sense if you read it that way.
C is making just as many assumptions as A. 1st is the issue of control. He says that the "industrial development" was outside their control. Why? Native people can do industrial development. For example, many Native Americans build casinos, no one made them do it. The leaving of the herds could have been 100% within their control because it took place on tribal ground (which is not the property of the USG). A assumes the tradition was unknown until the archeologist found it, it was lost to time. How is something that was once common to Native Americans but was lost to time (to the point that it took archeologists to rediscover the common practice) inside of the plaintiff's control? I have no control over the burning of the Library of Alexandria, but according to the 1991 ruling, if, hypothetically Egypt was in Alaska, and it was discovered that they use to bind all of the books out of polar bear skin, why could I not claim that the loss tradition was outside of my control? It was forgotten to time, I don't control time.
Second is time scale and how that relates to the 1991 interpretation of "living memory". Millennia is a long time I will grant, but it analogizes better onto the "living memory" requirement that the courts found "strained". No one remembers what happened a millennia ago so I would need the court case that found "living memory" to be inapplicable for me to make the case that I should be allowed to do the practice in question again. C tells me nothing about how long ago the "industrial development" took place. They are building a new strip mall across the street and I no longer see deer like I used to. If I had a tradition of making Deer jackets, would it now be outside of living memory?
AC A requires you to make the assumption that the practice involved relates to a protected animal species, I will grant. That might be enough on its face to disqualify it as an answer choice, but C is not a perfect answer by any means. This seems like one where LSAT decided that their assumption was more reasonable than yours for no perceivable reason.
@wrongsaint Yeah this is what I thought too. If i have one part of my brain that baseline uses 100 "units" of oxygen and another that uses 1 unit, then when I look at dogs the second section goes up to 3 units and the first goes up to 101. I would wrongly conclude that the second was more metabolically active than the first based on the fMRI subtractive method because it would look more active. This would directly contradict C. I really don't understand how C could ever be considered correct.
I don't think my brain lets me see the word "against" during tests.
I didn't find B to be necessary but most likely it is sufficient. I still don't get why after the explanation. Why I think this is because the doctors could be no more likely to remember cases where their patients' predictions were wrong, but much more likely to remember cases where their patients were right. I believe it could have been written: "patients' predictions of sudden changes in their medical status are more likely to be remembered by medical staff if such a change actually occurs". This better mirrors the last sentence of the analogy about the full moon, and highlights the importance of positive recall in messing with our memories.
For example. Lets say I have 200 patients that predicted their diagnosis. 50% got it right and 50% got it wrong (100 right, 100 wrong). And lets say that, as a doctor, I remember exactly 50% of the times my patent got it wrong (in other words, I am no more likely to remember my patients predicting their diagnosis's incorrectly than I am to forget about their occurrence). Then lets say I remember every time their predictions came true. that would leave me with 100 correct predictions remembered, 50 incorrect predictions remembered, and 50 predictions forgotten. I would still get to the analogous wrong conclusion but would be able to say that IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT "patients' predictions of sudden changes in their medical status are less likely to be remembered by medical staff if no such change actually occurs". I could negate B and the analogy would still hold, I am mistaken about reality because my perception of positive events is skewed, not my perception of negative events.
You can further prove it by taking this example: 100 patients guessed correctly, 100 patients guessed incorrectly. I remember only 25% of the times they get it wrong and only 30% of the times they get it right. I end up remembering 25 patients that got it wrong and 30 who got it right. I am still wrong, but not because of what B says, but because of the percentage of "remembered right" is higher that the percentage of "remembered wrong". I think that is the true necessary statement, that Doctors remember more right predictions than wrong predictions, just like the nursing staff at remember more busy nights on full moons than on non-full moons.
This is why I discounted B and ended up guessing because everything else seemed like it sucked too, but for more obvious reasoning. Please point out my error.
This seems wrong, not because any of the other answers are better, but because this feels like it is supported by vibes rather than logic. Predators could just as easily be killing baby birds or malnourished birds, or one specific species of extra tasty bird, which would, on average of the category of "birds", have smaller spleens. The trait of smallness of spleen could have many other causes separate from sickness (such as age, nutrition level, or species of bird) and sense we don't have enough information to know. D is, at most, .00001% supported. Maybe I've just been doing too many difficult questions, D feels like it would be a trap answer choice on a harder difficulty MSS question.
I'm still not sure what the main point of this passage is, and I got the MP question right. I would honestly say the MP of this passage is the author hasn't finished writing it yet, and the author needs to learn how to communicate. This honestly sounds like someone who copy pasted from 12 different scientific articles without connecting any of the ideas.
I still hate that D is worded as strongly as it is, but I think the key thing that it turns on is the second paragraph Gilliam's PARTICIPATION in the color field movement. If it wasn't for that word participation we would have no idea that he even knew what the color field style was. It could have been made up well after his death. I still think it could have been and I still think this is kinda a "best of bad" answer choice.
@LevinKin7sageLSATDESTROYER I have been going through this too here is what I got. B's conclusion is Donna has at least 10 years of experience as a computer program. That right there should be enough for us to count it out, as our argument to match it was a probable/most likely in the conclusion and B has an A ->B sort of conclusion.
Beyond that the two premises are: Programmer at CS -M-> 10+years Exp; Donna -Most likely/probably-> hired as a programmer. Which are both most claims, but the stimulus has a most claim and a A->B claim. That's the reason why its wrong.
I missed the "AND" before "Donna will be hired as a programmer by Coderight" and t. Now that I can see it I can't unsee it like the E and the X making an arrow in the FEDEX logo.though that was the conclusion.
@pranay.mamileti The "would" in that sentence does not make it refer to the animals back thousands of years ago. There are two reasons I see for this being the case. First, and most important, they (zoologist) specifically say they are talking about "most wild large mammal species IN EXISTENCE TODAY". This clearly puts it talking about the ones around right now.
Second, "Would" is a terribly confusing tense indicator in English. "Would be" which is what is used here, is usually used to introduce a conditional action related to a past event or a condition that isn't currently true. So, in this, the author is concluding: "Wild Large Mammal Species in existence today -M-> Difficult to domesticate OR not worth domesticating."
"Would have" can refer to a past action, or a past hypothetical future (i.e. If I knew you were coming, I would have showered). But that is not the way "would" is used here. "Would Be" can also be used to refer to a future action from a past perspective. "I knew on my first day, I would be king of the planet of the apes"
@snoopy530 No, If you are in Boston you are not in NYC. the logic was If NYC then not Boston so contrapose, if Boston then not NYC. If all you know is Not Boston that doesn't tell you anything about if you are in NYC or not because not being in Boston is necessary for being in NYC but it is not sufficient.
This is one where vibes is better than close reading. The vibe gets you B, close reading makes it way more confusing. The article specifically says that the dirt that was transferred was missing a fungi. Which means it is lacking fungi. J.Y. does a bad job explaining this. No where in the article does it say that this soil was "robust" with fungi or anything else productive. It says "... soil from nearby land that had been taken out of production 20 years earlier was scattered to see what effect introducing nematodes, fungi, and other beneficial microorganisms associated with later stages of natural soil development might have on the process of native plant repopulation." Introducing something that has more of a thing to an area that lacks that thing does not mean that the thing being introduced is "robust" in the area it is being introduced from. Or in other words, just because the soil being introduced has more fungi, nematodes, and other beneficial microorganisms, does not mean it has enough, it could still lack them.
D is wrong not because of Fungi, we know it was missing fungi it is specifically stated: "... while, for example, beneficial mycorrhiza—fungi that live symbiotically on plant roots and strengthen them against the effects of disease organisms—are lacking." missing a fungi means it lacks fungi. D is wrong because of the 'beneficial organisms' part, we have no evidence to support that claim, we only have evidence to support it was missing a fungi.
Is this the proper way to translate this conditional?
Paul must enroll in Econ 101 or Poly Sci 101, but not both.
Translation:
Econ 101 <-> /Poly Sci 101
Poly Sci 101 <-> /Econ 101
My understanding is that this is a bi conditional because it combines group 3 (or) and group 4 (not both), so we would know what Paul does in regards to both classes based on his enrollment or non-enrollment in either class.
My tried and true method of identifying the gap and then looking for the two words that bridge that gap in the answer choices failed me on this one. I identified the gap between a political system aiming to do something and a political system doing something. A free market political system might aim for limited government but not produce it, but an authoritarian system might aim for limited government but create a large bureaucracy out of a need to maintain power. This question was one of the ones where we actually needed to plug in the words to see if it fit. None of the other answers had those words which made me way to confident. C is right because we are trying to prove Gandalf wrong. If one totalitarian system aims at ending violence and all totalitarian systems are illegitimate, than his claim doesn't work. The middle section confused me and I forgot what the author was arguing for.
Thank you for coming to my wrong answer journal
I hate the way he breaks this down. Starting with being like, "yeah.. this was confusing when I read it, but if you know that this is the conclusion, this is the premise, and this is the sub conclusion, isn't it easy? Just use common reading comp processes and you two will know that it starts with the conclusion. Just know to read the thing out of order." Thanks guy
@AnnaKuryla This was a huge difference maker for me. Sometimes the logic just doesn't logic or the conditions won't conditionalize. always better to call it after 15 seconds and come back than to beat my head against the wall trying to figure it out.