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HannahMerritt

Joined: Jun 2025
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Thursday, Sep 25

HannahMerritt

😊 Happy

September LSAT/Encouragement

Just wanted to drop some encouragement here before cancelling my subscription because I finally achieved my goal score! If studying has ever (or chronically) made you feel hopeless, stressed, incapable, sad, etc. I promise you that I have been there. I went from a 152 diagnostic (my lowest PT ever was a 145) to a 164, 161, and 166 official score(s). Choosing to recommit after a decrease is mentally tough, but I promise you that I wouldn’t trade my 164 and my 161 for anything—they got me to my 166! Only you know what you are capable of. My score is the perfect score for me, but it may be considered “low” for someone else or “high” for the person next to them. This is your path and your experience—my biggest piece of advice is to do you, if you have faith in anything or something lean on that, and please work hard. This test will teach you how to better trust yourself, become mentally stronger, block out what others are saying (good and bad), and how to have some heart, discipline, and commitment. I’m cheering for you and I hope you can remember to take some time to cheer for yourself. 💖

PrepTests ·

PT158.S2.Q10

HannahMerritt

Wednesday, Aug 13

Ok, during live testing, I knew that E was the correct answer, but I also could not see how D was wrong. I let the scenario play out in my head, and now I see why D is wrong.

So, first, D is wrong because the stimulus tells us that "such structures are unknown among any other people with whom the Swahili civilization had contact." Now, in today's modern age, contact probably has a lot more abstract concepts that can be applied to it than during the 14th and 15th centuries, as the stimulus says we need to orient ourselves in. Taking this time period into account, influence would have to have come from word-of mouth from travelers, people visiting one place and bringing info back from another, perhaps drawings or paintings, etc.

So, even giving "contact" a charitable reading in this stimulus, even if we were to say that "contact" was by info spread from word-of-mouth and not direct physical contact with another civilization, it is STILL TRUE that the people with whom the Swahili had contact with (people they may have been exchanging info with via word of mouth/travel), DID NOT have knowledge of these structures. This seems to lend credence to the assumption that a third source was not bringing info to the Swahili in this specific context of these tombs/structures.

Ok, but I know what you are thinking: just because some third civilization that the Swahili had contact with did not know about these structures, isn't it possible that some third civilization who was in contact with the Oromo BUT NOT the Swahili influenced the Oromo, who in turn influenced the Swahili? The causal chain would go something like this:

Civilization C who is on contact with the Oromo but not the Swahili influences the Oromo---> Oromo is influenced --> Oromo influences the Swahili. Sure, I think that that is possible, and answer choice D does not even exclude this possibility with its wording. All it says is that the argument "takes for granted that there was no third civilization responsible for creating the first tombs of the kind FOUND in both the Oromo and Swahili cultures."

However, remember what our task is: find where the argument is vulnerable. Our conclusion is that the Swahili culture was to some extent influenced by Oromo culture. In the thought experiment I just laid out, the Swahili WOULD STILL BE INFLUENCED BY THE OROMO CULTURE, even if the Oromo culture was influenced by that imaginary third civilization that had contact with the Oromo but not the Swahili. So, yes, even though there could be that third civilization that indirectly influenced the Swahili, they still would have to go through the Oromo in the scenario that I laid out, and that does not make the argument vulnerable to criticism. If anything, it is consistent with what the stimulus says. The Swahili culture, could in fact, "to some extent, [be] influenced by Oromo culture."

On the other hand, E gets it right because it reverses the causal arrow, thus pointing to a fallacy in the argument. If the Swahili began constructing the tombs first, then maybe they influenced the Oromo. The stimulus even says that the structures "ARE widespread among the Oromo people..." indicating present tense usage. It seems logical that a present-day practice was influenced by one from centuries ago. While this particular fact may not necessarily strengthen my reasoning in any way, I point it out because it seems consistent with my argument, which makes me feel more secure in my answer.

Let me know if this makes sense!

PrepTests ·

PT112.S1.Q11

HannahMerritt

Wednesday, Jul 09

I picked AC D and understand that it’s correct, but did anyone else pick up on the subtlety of the difference between a “refund of the purchase price” as its stated in the stimulus vs. just “refund” in AC D? Isn’t is possible to receive a refund that is less or more than the purchase price, in which case D doesn’t necessarily HAVE to be true? Isn’t only a MBT if AC D says “for the refund of the purchase price”?

PrepTests ·

PT128.S4.P2.Q9

HannahMerritt

Monday, Aug 04

To qualify something means to modify, limit, or make it more specific. This can involve adding details to a statement to make it less broad or to make it more accurate by adding conditions or restrictions. It can also mean meeting specific requirements to be eligible for something, like a competition or a job.

PrepTests ·

PT157.S1.P3.Q14

HannahMerritt

Monday, Aug 04

After getting this right under timed conditions, I decided to come back and figure out why B was so attractive to so many people when I never even considered it. I realized that I kind of just got lucky because I misread the prepositional phrase that I think was meant to trick me. I read the sentence as "Governments have a legal obligation to ensure efforts to salvage or explore old shipwrecks instead of reading the sentence as it is intended, which describes a necessary component of how governments are supposed to handle recoveries when they happen. So, considering that I got lucky and did not struggle, I decided it is only right that I try to explain how I would have eliminated B in the event that I was not being luckily dyslexic for once when I read this. I now understand why B is a tricky answer choice. I have constructed a loose analogy below describing how I would get rid of it, and I hope it helps someone! Emphasis on the word loose--this is DEFINITELY not fullproof/100% MBT.

I feel like you can kind of like at answer choice B as a sufficient/necessary flaw (in a kind of analogous way) to get rid of it. We know that this is a specific agreement between a government and a private company. We know that with this such agreement, it calls for archaeological integrity. So if we affirm that this agreement calls for that, we can't assume anything else is true. Yes, this specific agreement leads us to something else that needs to happen/be true (archaeological integrity needs to be preserved), but it does not tell us something that guarantees that this would happen. There could be multiple reasons (sufficient triggers) that result in us needing to preserve archaeological integrity. Maybe it is government responsibility, or maybe it is good PR, or maybe it is to start establishing a pattern as a country that cares about the safe recovery of its artifacts from the passed. Maybe it is not triggered by mere international law that requires such preservation take place. Also, this is just one instance of where an agreement calls for archaeological integrity. How can we say that this applies to governments universally when we are not told that this is true? In the real world, there are something like 193 nations. Maybe in fake LSAT world, there are 500. Maybe there are 3. Regardless, I think it is unwarranted to assume that just because this one agreement between one government and one private contractor calls for archaeological integrity, that that means that every other national government in the real world and more importantly, in fake LSAT world call for this. As such, I think we can eliminate AC B.

PrepTests ·

PT124.S4.P4.Q26

HannahMerritt

Wednesday, Jul 02

Ok, so for this one, I think that reason that I liked AC B so much is that I think I saw it as a "ruling out an alternative explanation" or a "blocking" kind of strengthener. Ok, so let's follow that path and see where it gets us. If we say that the "insecticides that are typically used for mite control on strawberry plants kill both predatory and nonpredatory species of mites," then we are saying that insecticides kill the T and the C mites. At first, I thought that this scenario sounded like a bad thing, because one of the main takeaways that I have from the passage is essentially, "don't kill the t mites, whatever you do!"

However, that only leaves me with half of the equation. The other half of this AC, if we are to assume that it is true, like the stimulus tells us, means that the C mites are also killed as well. Initially, I kind of let this other half of the equation leave my brain and immediately thought, "oh no, the t mites will be dead, and we can't have that!" Essentially, I liked this AC because I thought it made the natural predator method more practical if the alternative was to do something that will kill the T mites, which is what we don't want.

However, because if AC B is true that means that both sets of mites will be killed, then the C mites will be contained as well. If anything this is a weakener, because there is reason to believe that the insecticides may be practical as well.

I think with these sorts of questions it is really important to remember the truth of the statement in its entirety. If both sets of mites will be killed by the insecticides, then the whole purpose of allowing the natural predators to remain is thrown out the window. Further, it is beyond the means of this question to assume one way or the other is keeping the T mites around are beneficial without the intended purpose of killing the C mites.

I was finally able to understand this one when I realized that I do not need to assess if T mites are beneficial or not for the plant/situation outside of their intended purpose of controlling the C mite population. The question is simply to strengthen the practicability of keeping them around for the purpose of protecting the strawberry plants by preying on a mite that harms the plants. A solution that takes care of the initial problem and is a solution THAT IS DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE WE ARE ASKED TO STRENGTHEN does definitely not help us. At the end of the day, the question is is what makes the author's intended method more practical, not defending the need to keep T mites alive outside the context of protecting the strawberry plants through pest control.

PrepTests ·

PT157.S3.Q13

HannahMerritt

Saturday, Aug 02

I did not see any discussion on this question, which I found surprisingly challenging as someone scoring in the mid 160s to low 170s range. I think there may be a point in studying where the "harder" questions are easier to see through while the "easier" ones can be like..wtf?! Anyway, my scores indicate that I still have some work to do, but I thought I would post my analysis for anyone who is in that similar score range/studying point where this issue may also be happening for you:

I think negating AC B does not wreck the argument because I guess it does not matter if the government has to diminsh people's ability to promote their own welfare when they prevent those people from hurting others in the pursuit of that welfare. If that happens, then it means that it is harder for people to promote their OWN welfare. I think that in my reasoning I thought that this AC must be necessary because if you diminsh someone's ability to promote their own welfare, doesn't that harm them? However, I do not know if that is true or not, and more importantly, the government is not concerned with protecting peoples' ability to promote their own welfare--and if that harms THEM or not. Rather, the purpose of the government is to protect individuals A, B, C, and D who may be harmed by individual E pursuing their own welfare. In other words, the government is concerned with preventing harm to A,B, C, and D as a result of E pursuing their own welfare--they are not concerned with protecting individual E's ability to pursue their own welfare. These are two separate ideas.