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E feels like such a cop-out answer, but when you have such a weak, easily defensible answer, you have to consider it seriously. “Not conclusive” is an extremely low bar to prove.
The last paragraph repeatedly uses uncertain language: the symbols were “arbitrary and pictorially derived,” longhouses “usually” meant a particular nation, council fires “possibly” indicated talks in progress, and lines between figures “seem to have indicated” the state of relations between peoples.
The passage uses such cautious language that we can safely infer E, even though it initially feels like it comes out of left field. That makes it much safer than an answer like D, which requires stronger assumptions.
@TyrinJeske Yeah, the passage says “political purposes,” but D narrows this to one specific political purpose, excluding the others mentioned in the passage, such as truce requests, talks in progress, the state of relations between peoples, safe-conduct passes, and recording the Confederacy’s constitution.
I was tempted by D, but I think there are two reasons it's wrong:
D is too specific in equating “political purposes” with “promulgating official edicts and policies.” The passage says wampum was used primarily for “political purposes,” but those purposes included:
Truce requests
Talks in progress
State of relations between peoples
Safe-conduct passes
Recording the Confederacy's constitution
These all fall under the broader umbrella of political purposes, but they aren't all “official edicts and policies.” D therefore takes a broad primary purpose and unjustifiably narrows it to one specific type of political function.
D's timeline is too broad. “Prior to Haudenosaune contact with Europeans” encompasses wampum's ENTIRE pre-contact history, including its earlier religious uses. The passage suggests that political communication became primary only later in wampum's development, so we can't apply that primary purpose to the entire pre-contact period.
Why B works: I got caught up on “complex,” but the passage explicitly calls loose beads the “simplest” form and says string wampum conveyed “simple political messages.” The final paragraph then describes a more elaborate symbolic system with many political functions. By using the word “simple,” the passage allows us to infer that wampum became more complex as it developed. Plus, B only says “more complex,” which is relative (not absolute) and therefore a safe inference.
@SharitahNakiganga I’m taking it on Saturday too!! Wishing you the absolute calmest nerves on test day.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve found that I default to three things when I’m dealing with a lot of self-doubt or anxiety:
Movies. I’ve been watching old, feel-good movies from the 1980s, like Overboard with Goldie Hawn (if you’re a girl who loves rom-coms, this one is great). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty also always makes me feel more adventurous and hopeful about the world. I also love Silver Linings Playbook - it reminds me that the characters we relate to and gravitate toward are often messy and imperfect. There’s something comforting about that, and it takes some of the pressure off wanting a perfect score or a perfect career. Finally, the scene in Bridesmaids where Melissa McCarthy's character gives Kristen Wiig's character a pep talk is always a motivational tearjerker for me.
Comedy. I’ve been binge-watching Jimmy Carr lately. His humor can be pretty crude, but he’s also incredibly smart and often gives surprisingly insightful and genuine advice. I’ve especially been enjoying his YouTube Shorts.
Reading stories about successful people who have failed. Some of my recent favorites:
Vera Wang: Failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team and was later reportedly passed over for the editor-in-chief position at Vogue. She pivoted and launched her bridal business around age 40, becoming one of the world’s most famous designers.
Toni Morrison: Her first book was rejected by multiple publishers and initially sold poorly when it was finally published at age 39. She later won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Steven Spielberg: Was reportedly rejected from both USC and UCLA’s film programs because of his grades, but kept making films and eventually became one of the most successful directors in history.
Surprisingly, ChatGPT also gave me some advice that really helped calm me down:
1. Hard questions are supposed to feel hard. Even people who score 175+ encounter questions and passages that feel difficult. I’ve had plenty of passages and drills where I thought something was incredibly hard, reasoned my way through it, and ended up getting -0.
2. How you feel isn’t necessarily how you did. I got a 2380/2400 on the SAT in high school (yes, I’m a little older, if you can tell from the scale lol), but I nearly canceled my score because I was convinced I had tanked it after comparing answers with a girl I thought was way smarter than me. My mom convinced me that, after all the time I’d spent studying, I owed it to myself to see my score. It ended up being the highest I had ever gotten - even higher than my practice tests.
3. You don’t know which section is experimental. If I think I bombed one section, my instinct is to think, “Well, I’ve fucked up the whole test.” But that section might not even count.
4. Remember you’re surrounded by your people. Taking the LSAT at a testing center actually brings me some comfort because everyone in that room understands what I’ve been going through - we’re all going through it together at that exact moment. It makes me feel a little less alone.
5. Shrink the timeline. Don’t think about how much the LSAT matters, what score you’ll get, or where you’ll get into law school. Think about the single question in front of you. That’s all you need to solve right now.
6. Give yourself a safety net if it helps. I purchased Score Preview - not because I plan to cancel my score, but because knowing I have an absolute last resort gives me some breathing room and takes some pressure off test day.
I’d love to hear any other tips or thoughts people have for calming themselves down!
@46298 Thank you for pointing out the word “opposed” in B - I completely filled in that gap in the stimulus. We don’t know that influential people oppose this bill.
I had a hard time finding the conclusion at first - the first sentence is the conclusion. So “canceled” is a key word: we need to support the claim that the programs will be canceled. I also probably want something that mentions police dramas, since we know all their new shows are police dramas. So an answer that connects cancellation + police dramas is best.
Only C and D talk about shows being canceled.
C: Talks about shows that weren’t canceled. But we want something about shows that were canceled.
D: Bingo.
A: We don’t care about other scents; the argument is specifically about lavender.
C: Introduces a specific motive for using lavender (“TO induce relaxation and reduce stress”) - we don’t know anything about these people. Also C doesn’t show that lavender reduced people's illness susceptibility. “Lavender users are as healthy as or healthier than average” ≠ “Lavender made them healthier.”
D: “Primarily” is unnecessary. We don’t care whether stress reduction is the main mechanism.
E: Suspicious “only if” restriction. Why must reduced stress diminish susceptibility only for this particular group? I’m usually suspicious of “only if” claims in Necessary Assumption questions.
This was an important lesson: when the conclusion introduces a new concept, look for a bridge involving that concept—but don’t assume the correct answer has to repeat the exact wording.
I correctly identified “freedom of expression” as a suspicious new term, but because I didn’t see that exact phrase anywhere except (A), I let go of that intuition. I should have trusted it and looked for an answer that captures the same idea in different words.
(A) is too strong because of “complete.” But (C) addresses the same concept through “discuss issues freely.”
I then chose (D), but “more often” is unsupported. We only know the public square provided a forum for discussing important issues, not that important issues made up most of what was discussed.
I've gotten this question wrong three times over the course of three years. You really need to be open to what "one" means and who it's referring to.
Takeaway: If an AC says "one," "someone," "a person," etc., don't lock in who that person is. Test each major actor in the stimulus.
None of the answers felt right.
I chose (E), but I felt unconfident because it enlarged the scope to businesses, whereas the stimulus stays at the individual level. I should have trusted that scope concern and gone back to see whether I could make (C) fit by testing a different actor.
Ok, the LSAT has truly hurt me many times, and I've lost faith in my abilities on other questions, but I'm surprised I understood this one quite easily/quickly.
I eliminated D very quickly because of the line, "If any medieval epistemologists believed the OPPOSITE, then that opposite claim is part of medieval epistemology."
I thought D was describing this exact scenario: some medieval epistemologists held contradictory beliefs, but we're explicitly told that BOTH beliefs would still count as part of medieval epistemology. So I thought D actually fit perfectly with what the stimulus tells us?
I'm very curious why so many people were drawn to this answer. It makes me feel like I've missed something.
This was weirdly hard for me even though it’s Level 1. I think something that helped me feel okay about picking B is that the stimulus says “essential to A culture’s identity,” which is a general principle.
All of the wrong answers (other than D) talk about only a subset of cultures.
D is just wrong because you can tell the author is trying to critique this strategy, so it goes in the wrong direction.
I am usually scoring in the 160s–170s, but this question was weirdly hard for me. I kept missing the ALL claim in the second sentence.
Once you notice that, then yes, you know that this sage nectar honey must be high in antioxidants because we are told that “the most healthful strains of honey are ALL unusually high in antioxidants,” AND this honey produced from sage nectar is among this most-healthful-strains group.
Wow, I totally misread the percentages. It is NOT saying that the overall percentage of patients who improved was 31%. It’s saying that, among patients treated for under six weeks:
GP → ~31% showed major improvement
Specialist → ~31% showed major improvement
The key phrase is “regardless of whether.” It tells us that the 31% (or 50%) result holds for each group separately, not for the two groups combined.
That’s why I was so drawn to D, even though I noticed that “equal” seemed strong.
I interpreted the stimulus as allowing something like: 100 total patients, 99 saw a GP and 1 saw a specialist, with 31% improving overall. But that’s not what the sentence says. The relative sizes of the two groups therefore don’t matter.
Takeaway: “Regardless of whether X or Y” = the result holds for both X and Y separately, not merely for X + Y combined.
I've noticed that for Strengthen questions, answers that talk about "some X" or "several X" are usually not correct because they're often too weak to strengthen the argument - unless, for example, the argument claims that something is always the case and the "some" answer provides an exception.
Planet → NOT generate light
Some NOT planets
Conclusion: NOT planet → generate light
Flaw: Planet → NOT generate light does not mean NOT planet → generate light. The argument assumes non-planets must generate light.
“Besides stars” already establishes we’re dealing with objects that aren’t stars. So the suspicious part of the conclusion is “generate light,” not “not stars.”
Ask: We know they’re not planets, but why must they generate light?
E: Other non-planet objects (e.g., moons and asteroids) could also NOT generate light.
Two years ago, I chose D, and now I can’t even remember why I did. This time, I looked at D and saw that it didn’t touch on the “accurate beliefs” piece at all. You’re using your own assumption that statistics are ACCURATE, but are we actually told that? No.
Keep your head up! I previously got -6 on this section two years ago, and today I got -1 (and I don’t remember the questions at all anymore).
Wells: NOT sell out → poorly promoted
Fact: NOT sell out
Conclusion: poorly promoted (aka “not properly promoted”)
For C, I got tripped up by the ordering of the conclusion + premise (so dumb) — pay attention to the “since” indicator. The premise is that the damage is still noticeable.
Neighbor: properly repaired → NOT noticeable
Noticeable
∴ NOT properly repaired (aka “not properly done”)
And for A, it should have said “probably not performed by a highly skilled surgeon.” I noticed that the language switched up in the conclusion, and I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it.
I picked E (“as it ages” just sounded very problematic to me when the stimulus only talked about older people), but I was very, very tempted by D. The simple reason D is wrong: the conclusion doesn’t even talk about insomnia.
For D to work, I thought the “phenomenon” could be older people having insomnia and that the argument was making some kind of cause-and-effect reversal. But look at what the conclusion actually says. Is it claiming that reduced melatonin production causes insomnia? No. It literally doesn’t even mention insomnia, which is the only reasonable “phenomenon” in the stimulus.
I was stuck between B, D, and E.
Pre-phrase: Several problems with cooperating-witness testimony (prosecutor incentives + cooperating witnesses wanting to game the system + inadequate safeguards + juror biases) allow false testimony to lead to convictions.
Structure clues for MP:
P1 = context/background - defines cooperating witnesses + explains how their testimony works.
P2/P3 = main stance emerges - key phrases: “highly conducive to evidence fabrication,” “unreliable nature of evidence,” “safeguards do not always provide protection.”
Basically: relying on cooperating-witness testimony can be dangerous → false testimony/convictions.
P4 starts “in addition” → adding another problem/reason to support a broader point already introduced. So look earlier for the MP.
P5: “may account for jurors’ superficial examination” → explaining the problem from P4, not introducing a new MP.
E - too narrow: I chose this in Blind Review, but on second read, notice what E focuses on: the incentives. Incentives are only one part of the broader problem. E ignores the role of the court system + juror biases (which P3-P5 spend a lot of time on). So E captures one reason cooperating-witness testimony is dangerous, not the overall point.
B vs. D: I was still pretty stuck here, but B is better in scope/focus. I originally thought B was too narrow, but it’s actually getting at the ultimate problem (I hadn’t identified that the MP is somewhere in P2/P3): false testimony → FALSE CONVICTIONS. That’s why we care about cooperating witnesses in the first place.
I think “convictions based on false testimony” is the key phrase. Think about this like a conversation: after hearing all of this, if someone asked the author, “Well, why did you tell me all this?” the author would say, “Because relying on cooperating-witness testimony could lead to false convictions!”
There’s also an important PERMIT vs. RELY distinction:
D: Should courts permit this testimony at all?
B/passage: What are the dangers of courts relying on this testimony?
B even uses the word “reliance,” which directly mirrors the very first sentence: “Criminal courts frequently rely on accomplice witnesses...” The passage never really debates whether this testimony should be permitted in court; it focuses on the dangers of courts relying on it. D therefore slightly misframes the issue. “Traditional” is also weird/unsupported - the passage never characterizes these legal arguments as traditional.
Finally, B better matches the author’s tone. The author is clearly skeptical of relying on cooperating witnesses, not merely saying that the arguments supporting their testimony may not be that strong. B captures the author’s stronger concern about false testimony leading to false convictions.
I got this Q right without fully understanding the flaw, but I noticed something weird happening with “every” story and “important” story.
There seemed to be some weird movement from every story → important story, so I looked for an answer that talked about these two terms, with A being the only one.
You should automatically be suspicious of an answer that mentions all four animals and connects both animals to the other separate chain.
All of the wrong answers only mention three animals, and then there's D, which mentions all four and connects the two separate chains at both ends.
A - “cannot be true” → The historian never says whether the claim itself is true or not.
B - “purely” → Logically, this doesn't make sense as a criticism. Yeah, if you're purely motivated by snobbery, then by definition you're not also motivated by other things.
C - The stimulus never talks about the other side: the people who BELIEVE Shakespeare is the author.
E - Not circular reasoning. New, independent evidence is actually introduced in the premises; if the premises say NEW STUFF that isn't mentioned in the conclusion, it's probably not circular.
Waterways = bodies or channels of water, such as rivers, streams, canals, and lakes.
The easiest way to see why D is irrelevant is to think about the TIMELINE:
Residents use detergent
↓
Phosphate shows up in wastewater
↓
Wastewater goes to the treatment plant
↓
Wastewater is treated
↓
Treated water may then be discharged into waterways like rivers or lakes
D is talking about that LAST STEP, which occurs later in the timeline than what the stimulus is concerned with: Is the treated wastewater causing the pollution in our rivers? That's an entirely different issue from why phosphate pollution from the treatment plant decreased.
C = What else could explain the decrease we're actually talking about?
??? → lower phosphate in treated wastewater
D = How much does this plant contribute to a bigger pollution problem we're NOT talking about?
Treated wastewater → ??? → phosphate pollution in our rivers and lakes
So treated wastewater is the ENDPOINT for C/the stimulus, but the STARTING POINT for D.
Like, plug in “river” for “waterways” in D:
Does most of the phosphate pollution in the municipality's RIVERS come from treated wastewater from the municipal treatment plant?
Now it's much clearer—like, why are we talking about the city's rivers?? D is asking whether treated wastewater from the plant is a major cause of phosphate pollution in the rivers. But that's a later, entirely different issue.
The stimulus is concerned with an EARLIER part of the timeline:
Phosphate pollution from the treatment plant DROPPED → therefore, residents are using more phosphate-free detergent.
So the mystery is what's happening inside the treatment plant and why the phosphate pollution coming from it dropped. Maybe it's because residents are using more phosphate-free detergent, OR, as C suggests, maybe the plant changed the way it treats phosphates.
You need to remember that the drinking water is ABOVE the deep-well injection site: “puts the injected waste at a safe distance below any aquifer, in this case a rock stratum containing drinkable water” (middle of P1). This is KEY and why I got this wrong.
From top to bottom:
Drinking water / aquifer
↓
Impermeable layer - prevents the waste from traveling upward into the drinking water
↓
Permeable layer - where the waste is injected: “wells are drilled into porous and permeable rock strata that are already saturated with salt water” (middle of P1)
Takeaway: Use simple drawings that show vertical position whenever a passage or LR question involves concepts like depth, height, temperature ranges, or layers. I’ve seen other LR questions involving depth or temperature ranges where a quick visual would make the relationships much easier to track.