Like others said, 5 points is completely normal. LSAC gives an 8-point range; my variation was 10 points when I was taking PTs. One PT is just another data point. Adjust model weights as necessary, but no need to over emphasize a single score. As humans we tend to focus more on the negative than the positive. Know that bias and fight it when it creeps in.

This is a wild question

@danjpeach96 theyre trying to pull this off:

P1. Sawyer is negotiating

P2. If Sawyer wasn’t available, city would have deferred.

Conclusion: city is serious

It’s nonsense so we can’t make it make sense (how can we ever know the city is or is not serious?).

that’d be how I write out the structure, though. The first sentence includes a premise AND the conclusion. Were you trying to combine them into a conditional?

@danjpeach96 welcome! I think the last sentence is the hard one. I read it and also thought, “ok wtf does that mean.”

I thought something like, “well, the only universe in which profits don’t drop is one where they don’t lose sales. The only way for that to happen is for them to sell non/coffee stuff, but that’s decreased profits too. Well, looks like they’re going to have decreased profits if these prices go up.”

It was only in hindsight that I simplified it all to, “if X happens, A or B. Both A and B lead to decreased profits.” That also simplifies out the beginning chain of bean prices up > coffee prices up and replaces that relationship with X to make it easier.

Narrowing it down to 50/50 isn't as great as it may seem. Three of the answer choices are usually complete nonsense, one is correct, and one looks correct if you made a particular common mistake when you were reading. The "traps" are just answer choices that are written to look really good to someone who misread in a predictable way. For example, confusing necessary/sufficient or not noticing the difference between "most" and "all". The test writer is sitting there thinking, "What is the most common way someone will misunderstand this passage? Alright, now what is an answer choice that would look really tempting to someone who misunderstood in that way?" The AC they come up with there is the "trap". It is 100% wrong, but looked right because they were able to predict how you'd misunderstand.

If you're stuck between two, there is something you misunderstood and you have to find what it is. You could have misunderstood the passage, question, or ACs. There is no trick to resolving a 50/50 when you're there, since you could have misunderstood in many different ways.

I did this question today. I think the passage mistook sufficient for necessary if I remember right. The parallel flaw did the same thing, assumed sufficient was necessary.

This has four separate ideas, not two.

1. Sawyer negotiating

2. City takes matter seriously

3. Sawyer is available

4. City insisting negotiations deferred

???

Sawyer can be available and not negotiating. The city could be taking the matter seriously while also requesting deferral. It hasn't said those things can't happen.

The one thing you could say is that if the city did not insist, then Sawyer was available. They didn't claim that, they introduced Sawyer negotiating (I suppose he must be available then) and the city taking it seriously. I have no idea what proves the city is taking it seriously.

It may be that mapping this out is a useful tool for developing your understanding, but it is very likely not the fastest way of answering this question.

When I read it, I thought, "Alright, if prices go up, a chain of events will lead to A (Non-coffee products) or B (Lower sales). Both A and B mean profits will decrease.

What do I know from this? If prices go up, decreased profits are unavoidable."

C). Done. You don't need a quick acronym trick, you just need to notice it is setting up a situation in which decreased profits are inevitable. We are given two roads (A or B, non-coffee products or decreased sales) and both lead to decreased profits.

The question is written in a way to get you lost in the weeds, but the structure is very simple. The one tricky bit may be translating the last sentence into words you understand. "The coffee shop can avoid decreased profitability only if its sales do not drop" just means, "If sales drop, decreased profitability." Combine that with, "If non-coffee products sold, decreased profitability" then we know profitability must decrease if bean prices/coffee prices go up. We were told if that happens, those are the only two options.

It is nice to tell them, but I have seen a lot of people be honest with their bosses and get punished for it. Seems like you're aware of the risks you're taking.

I have always told people, but in the back of my head I WAS thinking, "If they were going to fire me would they give me six months warning? Probably not."

Unless you're hitting 180 on both you shouldn't be closing the gap. Say you're scoring 150 now and BR is 160. By the time your score timed is 160, your BR will have gone to 170 or something. You should always do better with infinite time, it isn't the symptom of a problem. Just gotta get better overall. Find out why you're getting questions wrong, then try your best not to make those mistakes again. Keep practicing, timed and untimed, and let the patterns sink in. Keep engaging critically with the passages/questions/answers.

Normal variation, nothing is wrong. I understand it is normal to see something "bad" and try to optimize to fix it. Buuuut, keep in mind you can also optimize in a way that hurts you. You can over index on a particular data point. You're crashing out (you might not actually be crashing out, exaggeration for fun) over two sections. Sometimes you just screw up more than other times and there isn't a lot to take away from that.

As an example, imagine you get cheated on. Sucks, right? So you decide you're going to optimize to never make that mistake again. Next partner you're going to demand their phone password, location, list of all of their friends, control over who they can talk to, and you're going to interrogate them 5x a day to make sure they haven't even looked at someone else. One problem left behind, many more created.

It is a question of what lessons you want to or should learn. It is easy to see that something isn't what you want (getting cheated on, -4) but it is harder to learn the right lesson from it. The wrong lesson can hurt you (I think we call that trauma?)

Sure, you got -4, but the same brain and study methods got you -1, -2. You have a range and perhaps hit the low end of that range recently. No big deal. Now you know -2 isn't guaranteed; you're smarter and more knowledgeable for knowing that. From what you said, you clearly see the value in process; you diagnosed your issue as poor execution. You also know what works for getting better, so keep doing that. If you bomb April, well, there is always June and August. Relax!

Before my first test I scored 170 and then 180 on the exact same day. I was so mad I scored 170 that I sat quietly for 5 minutes, used the restroom, then opened up another PT and scored 180. Variance is normal, especially when you are stressed and focused more on outcomes than implementing productive processes.

The "US News Range" is nice to see.

@alessandragianino7245 I agree. What am I missing? My sense is that this is an incredibly poor question. How do we know the colonies with phenazines do not form wrinkled surfaces? What if every bacteria forms wrinkled surfaces? What if the wrinkled surfaces do not have anything to do with nutrients?

My core objection is that telling us no-phen bacteria are wrinkled doesn't tell us anything about the ones that are wrinkled. Every AC requires us to make major assumptions.

I'm sure people have tried and done fine, but I don't think it is because they did this. Conceptually I can't find a benefit for bashing your head against hard problems first only to leave yourself with little time to solve the easy ones. The harder questions won't take less time just because you do them first. The easy questions are worth exactly 1 point like the hard ones, so why not guarantee you get them first and then move on?

I don't think you can find a trick that makes questions faster without getting better at the LSAT. Reordering doesn't make you any faster.

The only way you could ever close the gap is if you can reliably score 180 (desirable), or you don't improve your accuracy at all with infinite time (undesirable).

I understand it is normal to see your blind review score and think, "if only I could get this score timed." The question is, how are you going to do it? Well, you need to get better at the LSAT. If you went faster without getting any better, you'd miss more questions... which is exactly what is happening when you take a timed test. You go faster and miss questions you would have solved given more time. If you were better, you wouldn't have needed the extra time to solve them.

All you can do is get better and your timed score will follow from that. Keep practicing both timed, to gauge your progress, and untimed to get better. Solve the problems and learn from them. Once you internalize the patterns, doing them again in the future becomes much quicker.

@Keh1965 You're welcome!

Ah, a classic problem no amount of thinking/reasoning about will solve! Maybe you won't improve, but you won't know that until months/years from now when you're done studying. Don't worry about it, keep practicing. Four hours per day is a lot, but if you can manage it, go forth.

Keep in mind the point of formalism is to gain intuitive understanding. You can also pull it out when you are stuck. It is a tool! Mechanics use tools, but they don't immediately jump to a wrench when they see any problem.

Do you think you have any gaps in how you understand necessity and sufficiency in daily conversation? For example, if I told you a car cannot move unless it has wheels, would you understand that wheels are necessary, but not sufficient for a car to move?

In other words, a car can't move without wheels. Wheels are necessary for a car to move. If moving car, then wheels. No wheels, no moving car (contrapositive). Lacking wheels, a car cannot move. For a car to move it needs wheels. The fact that the car was moving indicates that it has wheels. Wheels are an integral part of every moving car.

However, at no point does having wheels mean that a car can move. Maybe cars also need engines and transmissions. That is fine. What we know is that without wheels, she ain't moving. We can never prove the car moves based on wheels being necessary.

Those transformations in your head have to be automatic.

If you wanted to be formal, you could start with thinking about it positively:

If moves, then wheels. If A, then B.

Contrapositive:

Not wheels, not move. Not B, Not A.

Really sit with this and think about it. Why does this make sense? Why can we say no wheels means no moving? If all we know is that if something moves it has wheels, how do we get a contrapositive?

Let's go through the scenario. All moving things have wheels. So if something DOESN'T have wheels, can it move? Uhh... No, because if it moves, it would have wheels. But this thing doesn't have wheels. So... it must not move.

Better yet, imagine there is a closed box in front of you. I tell you, "If Sam is brain dead, there will be a squirrel in the box." If A, then B.

So now what do you do? You open the box, of course. When you look in, there is NO SQUIRREL. NOT B is reality. What can you conclude from that?

Well, Sam must not be brain dead. If he WAS brain dead, there would have been a squirrel, but I looked in the box and the reality is there is no squirrel. We do not live in that universe where Sam is braindead; there was no squirrel.

Which question types do you struggle with? Example question perhaps?

Work on it for an hour every day. Answer questions. Don't stress about or overcomplicate it.

I rarely did more than an hour a day, but I made that hour count as best I could. Like others have said, if you think it has to be an 8-hour slog, you probably wont do it.

It's hard! All I can say is that if you've got it at 50/50, you've missed something. It takes me a long time staring at questions before I can eliminate some 50/50s. I think today one took me 10+ minutes.

Hot take incoming: timing issues don't exist. You just don't understand what you're doing so it takes longer than you'd like. If I tried to put on makeup, I'd be slow. I don't have a makeup timing issue; I do not know how to put on makeup. If I knew how to put on makeup, I would not be slow. Speed is downstream of skill.

Yes, perhaps there are edge cases where someone is skilled but extremely anxious or something and knows they have the right answer but keeps re-reading anyway. If you're blind reviewing 180s we can consider that possibility, but almost nobody is doing that.

When you're drilling, disregard how much time it takes. Solve the question. For PTs, they aren't there to make you better, they are there to measure your progress and make you familiar with the time limit. On the actual test, yeah, you can't spend 10 minutes on a single question. I don't think there is any formula for knowing what to do on a real test.

To put this in perspective, if you're scoring in the 150s, you're rushing through and missing 20-30+ questions per test. Why rush through easy questions and get them wrong just so you can also get the hard questions wrong?

I have never considered how much time it took me to answer a question beyond roughly using it to indicate I was missing something and need to refine that skill.

@sol_chan Dis is great. Getting questions wrong simply doesn't matter much and doesn't make you a failure. You can always get better if you devote yourself to it.

Putting what sol_chan said in different words, do not overvalue individual data points. Getting a question wrong is just a data point that shows you have something to learn. Don't allow yourself to make major pronouncements on the back of bad, temporary data.

Just because you miss a question, or you're currently stressed or sad or anxious, does not mean you will always be that way. Remember that what you think and feel changes over time and what is going on in your head right now isn't that important at the end of the day. Make little bits of progress every time and you'll get there.

Maybe. Make them count, take your time answering.

Do you have any examples? If you can strengthen you should be able to weaken without much trouble. If you're being asked to weaken there is a flaw in the argument, and you're being asked to poke at that flaw and expose it or make it worse.