@ Yup! I'm done with the LSAT now and I STILL wear it! ;)

I bought the one that JY recommended from Amazon and it works great. It's not an LSAT specific watch, but it has a bezel that's easy to set. That's all you need. It's a CASIO and costs like $20.

Thanks @. Congrats on your acceptance ;)

OPA/ctxt: Don't take X action, for Y reason.

Author (Premise): Y reason is not well supported.

--

Conclusion: Thus, take X action.

Flaw:

Proper conclusion: Thus, OPA's argument is not well supported.

Disproving or weakening someone's argument does not warrant drawing the opposite conclusion.

I think this question is an excellent learning opportunity in regards to domains and precision when tackling arguments. Below I offer my explanation and a link to another question with a similar layout of argument and trap answer choices.

I've noticed PSA questions that are "curvebreaker" level difficulty often have a very tempting trap answer that almost PRECISELY mimics what you would formulate as your pre-phrase, and the right answer uses more veiled or sideways language that requires you to stop and think for a second. An analogous PSA question is PT 67 S4Q08, regarding burden of policy changes and salt on roads.

For this question, a general pre-phrase would go something along the lines of,

"If you have two varieties (V) of a cooking ingredient, and one is LESS GOOD on two particular qualities (T and H), NEVER use the worse variety."

Note that the reasoning never tells us what variety we SHOULD use, only what we should not; and that it's a comparative statement, not absolute.

But here's where the curvebreaker feature of a PSA question comes in: PRECISION. Especially, precision in relation to which domain of item the argument is referring to. The trap answer will use all the keywords that sound appealing to you, so if you aren't reading carefully you might just think you lucked out on prephrasing the answer exactly, and move on. But WAIT: the trap answer, D, is out of the PROPER domain of the argument, so it's useless for our argument. D tells us that we shouldn't use V that have no T and H. But that doesn't apply to dried parsley: all we know is that it has LESS T and H than fresh parsley. It's an unwarranted assumption to say that it has no T and H at all.

B, on the other hand, seems at first to not be substantial enough to justify the argument; but remember, we're laying out a sufficient condition (Pseudo SUFFICIENT assumption), so if an AC points the precise premise to the precise conclusion in a pretty much airtight way, then we have a winner. And B definitely does this, because it correctly references the COMPARATIVE quality of the argument, and tells us to not use the lesser T & H Variety.

Here is the link to related question:

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-67-section-4-question-08/

Hi @, were you offered a group interview first or just the individual? I have a group interview and am curious about how one functions versus the other.

Any idea when this will be available online? I couldn't make it to the webinar...but I really want to see it! Thanks

What makes A wrong on q. 18, in my opinion, is the word "salient." Both passages express the idea that Cather's work avoids superfluous detail and formal structures, in favor of sketching a "truer" or more direct reality ("the thing not named" in passage A, "bold and stylized" in passage B.) Therefore, both authors would expect Cather to focus ONLY on things that are salient and nothing else.

@ said:

I completely agree with what @ says about taking the rest of your app seriously!

But 175+ or bust just for T6 admission? Come on... I doubt we'll see a median score increase of over 1 point anywhere. Even pre-recession when law school competition was at its peak, the median LSAT was still like 174 for HY, 172 for CS, and 171 for CN.

Sure, 75ths might have been at 175ish, but even then, 75% of matriculating students at T6 schools had sub-175 scores.

But if you're HYS/Ruby/Hamilton/Vanderbilt/RTK or bust, then yeah, I guess 175 would be the golden mark.

It's a tradeoff though, since 175+ could get you YPed at lower T14s.

I don't think things will go back to the same level though, because LSAC has removed the number of max attempts. There is a new impetus to just keep retaking till you get the best score.

I wasn't able to attend. Did you record it?

@ said: I think that was experimental--people are referring to that as the country/cities game. Is that right? Someone else please confirm!

@ said:

I think I may have found where they got the awful candor passage from..

http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1181&context=facpub I found the other one!! It's by someone named Schwartzmann and was published by UVA press around 2007. Don't have the link at the moment, but I googled judicial candor utopian and it came up. It's made from the introduction to his book

Who is in Brooklyn and wants to meet out tonight? I need to talk about this test with someone who understands my pain...

I'm torn about cancelling because I knew that I bombed the judges portion, but the Logic Games section with shakespeare villains was the easiest one I've ever encountered. What do you think the curve will be?

@ Was there a personal statement webinar recorded as well, or is this it? If 7Sage has ever done an official webinar on personal statements, could you please point me in the direction of those with links? I'm an ultimate member but don't have the upgraded admissions package. thanks!

@ said:

Also, I read an article/ blog that talked about how given the LSAT curve...

Do you have a link or source for this?

How is E for #8 wrong? There is no explanation.

@ thanks! Amended my question to reflect that.

So, I answered my own question, and I will put it here in case it benefits anyone else.

PT 55 S3 Q24 is a similar argument structure that requires you to make a "common sense" inference before reaching the necessary assumption. That argument is built like this:

P: Objective Evaluation of poetry is possible ----> Readers do NOT assign meaning

C: Aesthetic evaluation -------> At least two readers must agree on meaning

So, in order to reach the correct answer (Obj eval possible -----> Aesthetic evaluation), you need to first need to have an AHA moment and realize that the necssary conditions of both statements mean the same thing: in plain terms, readers don't each assign meaning because they all have to agree on the poem's meaning. (It has a meaning that is not reader-dependent.) Once you make this connection, it's very easy to see that we just need to make the sufficient condition of the statement in the premise point to the sufficient condition in the conclusion in order to bridge the gap in the argument! (Obj eval possible -----> Aesthetic evaluation)

My TAKEAWAY from this is to not be too mechanistic in my approach to the argument and to actually think about what it's saying for a second. This won't usually be necessary (pun intended) on easier NA questions, but these tricky ones require (pun also intended) you to approach the argument with a common-sense understanding of what its terms mean, and to be able to manipulate these terms enough to see that they are rewordings of a similar idea. Hope someone finds this helpful!

For me, the thing that really started to speed up my time and pushed me into 170s was pre-phrasing and going into "hunt mode." Please note that I am not advocating getting tunnel vision and having an inflexible conception of what could or could not be the right answer; but I found that predicting a rough idea of what the answer is BEFORE approaching answer choices helps to avoid paralysis and wasting time. REMEMBER: the answer choices are not your friends, so if you go into the answers with no idea what you're looking for, in general you will fall into a cleverly placed rabbit hole of distraction and three minutes will go by as you compare answers to each other. Conversely, if you have a prediction of the right answer choice, you can quickly skim ALL the answers and go looking for that answer. When you find it, double check that it makes sense, pick it, and move on.

Another key part of going up in scores for me was quickly paraphrasing things back to myself as I was reading them. This applied to both RC and LR. A danger of the test is having information come in one ear and immediately out the other, and not being able to sort out the VITAL info on each question: namely, the premises and conclusion. So as you read the question stimuli, look first for the conclusion and then the premises, and before you start to prephrase and go hunting, sum it up quickly, back to yourself, in your own words. Paraphrasing is a useful leaning tool because it FORCES your mind to actually engage with the material, and you're much more likely to remember something in your own words than just rotely memorizing what the stimulus says. When you paraphrase to yourself, it doesn't have to be complicated or wordy; on most questions, the challenge is simply to hold in your mind what the author's conclusion is, what the support is, and what your task is in regards to that info. (Strengthen, weaken, na, psa, sa, etc.) For example, a good paraphrase might be: "Conclusion: The factory is responsible for the pollution. Premises: all the birds near the factory have been dying."

After you've developed your paraphrase of the stimulus, it's easy to attach that to a prediction of the answer. Continuing the above example, this may be a good flexible prephrase: Strengthen: We need something that shows that it is the factory pollution causing the bird's deaths, and not some other cause."

FURTHERMORE, you can take this active mindset into Reading Comprehension and see improvements. Just focus on quickly paraphrasing each paragraph to yourself after you read it, and you will see your mind retaining more information and finding it easier to form a mental map of the passage. Basically, anything you can do to take your mind out of passive/receptive mode and into the critical attitude/driver's seat during the test will help your scores to improve.

Did anyone else think this is a bit of an uncommon NA question? It requires you to make an extra assumption before arriving at the correct answer choice. Perhaps this first assumption is under the umbrella of "common sense assumptions" that the LSAT considers negligible.

But still, if anyone could point me to similar questions that require a tiny quantum leap in order to understand the argument and arrive at the right answer, I would love to see them so I could pay closer attention to these types of arguments!

Don't overthink it--it's the exact same thing as a Parallel Flawed Method of Reasoning! They're just adding the extra fluff to make it look alien and confuse you.

#help I have a hard time understanding 24. What is going on?

@ said:

So I am curious how you know the real sections from experimental. I personally had 3 LR, 1 LG, 1RC. I couldn't tell you specifics if I wanted because I don't remember, it was such a huge blur. Anyone's head still spinning when they think about it to much?

You can tell the real from the experimental by Step 1) counting how many sections you had and figuring out which one must be extra (which you already figured out, it's one of your LR sections) and then Step 2) looking at what others who did NOT have an extra LR reported for the topics on THEIR LR questions. You should recognize all the question topics that that set of people describes, and your experimental section will be the one that they didn't have.

I think the term "experimental" is a misnomer though. I also had three LR sections, and I was sure during the test administration that the one with the Greek tablet was the experimental one, due to the strange nature of the stimuli and the "most AC's seem wrong" vibe of the answer choices. The LR section I had that WAS experimental was very run-of-the-mill and routine imo.

I think this argument is hard because we probably agree with its reasoning, making it harder to be critical. Here is an analogous argument and answers that also require us to put aside our implicit agreement with the argument:

The more sugar that one eats, the worse one's dental health tends to become. Artificial foods contains more sugar than natural foods. Thus, the greater the proportion of one's diet that is made of artificial foods, the worse, on average, one's dental health is likely to become.

A) Certain conditions are required for the formation of plaque that leads to poor dental health.

(this answer invites us into a cycle of circular reasoning and extra assumptions, so it's gone)

B) Other factors besides sugar intake affect one's dental health.

(How wonderful. Now can we please return to the argument we're supposed to be strengthening?)

C) Eating natural foods improves one's dental health.

(This answer strengthens the argument's reasoning by showing that when we remove the POTENTIAL cause of poor dental health, one's dental health actually goes in the OPPOSITE direction! This strengthens the causal relationship that is currently just a correlational one.)

D) One's mouth derives most of its health in relation to one's diet.

(Still tempting in analog, but actually doesn't do much. We're trying to prove the relationship between one SPECIFIC dietary factor and the health of the mouth, just like the original argument is trying to link one SPECIFIC atmospheric factor (increased reflection) to the temperature of the atmosphere; simply telling us that these mechanisms are indeed somehow connected, doesn't really bring us anywhere. If this answer choice said, "The primary source by which the atmosphere could become cooler is by reflecting sunlight that passes through it, " then this would be the correct answer.)

E) A piece of candy is worse for one's dental health than a carrot.

(Tempting, but actually not really one topic. We're trying to talk about sugar in artificial versus natural foods, and you've zeroed in on a very specific example without talking about the larger structural relationship that we are trying to address.)