Hated this one, it didn't click until I actual rephrased the argument to myself to cut the extra fluff.

Essentially it says:

This weather pattern (WP) has a 7 day cycle. It must be caused by humans, because no natural 7-day cycles can significantly impact the WP.

Now our gap is between no natural 7-day cycles -> must be human.

E essentially closes that gap: If there is a natural cause for the WP with a 7-day cycle, that natural cause has a 7-day cycle.

Now we don't have any feasible alternatives. We can only say it must be because of humans.

Rather than focusing just on what you did wrong, are you also including why the correct answer is right?

I've started also noting questions I initially got right in test, but got wrong in BR in addition to questions I flagged bc I was unsure, but ended up getting right. Its been very helpful for me to articulate the "why" of something I got correct perhaps instinctually or due to luck.

Knowing and understanding what makes something right and being able to explain it is often more helpful to me than knowing what I did wrong once I got past things unrelated to the actual logic. (Like getting a question wrong because I rushed or because I misread a word).

The second part is to step back and review your wrong answer journal as a whole. It is a great collection of data.

For example, if you notice you routinely mess up flaw questions, then it is more helpful for you to re-study the flaw section of the 7Sage course and drill flaw questions specifically vs. spending loads of time drilling sections or tests which may have only a few flaw questions.

Got this wrong by choosing A in both test and BR. However, I realize A is wrong because the stimulus doesn't actually equate complexity with intelligence. For example, the stimulus doesn't say more complex = more intelligent.

The stimulus acknowledges that that although the internet is complex, it is not yet intelligent.

Rather, the stimulus is arguing that if something brain-like grows complex enough, it will eventually gain intelligence. What the stimulus is missing is what D says:

We have no support for the idea that increasing brain-like complexity of the internet is sufficient for gaining human intelligence.

This one was frustrating. I elimated down to A and C and chose A both in test and BR because I thought that there was an unsupported assumption that kindness and social harmony are beneficial for society. (Hence why E was wrong)

Looking at it now, I realize that A is fundamentally incompatible with the stimulus.

To have a contradictory view about etiquette, someone has to have two opinions about etiquette. The critic has one opinion about etiquette and one opinion about kindness and social harmony.

Kindness and social harmony aren't inherently etiquette. So its not a contradictory view.

So we have something in the stimulus that directly stops us from relying on A. (Not 2 opinions)

C isn't a great answer, but it is the "most strongly supported" of the bunch. We can say at the very least that the stimulus most strongly supports the idea that the critics are mistaken.

@lsattaker264 No, and that is a big trap that I see repeated in LSAT, especially with principles questions.

If you equate morally wrong to not morally right, you are creating the false dichotomy fallacy by reducing something to two binary outcomes.

In the case of this question, something could be morally neutral/morally acceptable/amoral which is both not morally wrong and not morally right.

I realized that the tricky part of this conclusion is "more likely to survive after their release". I made the mistake of treating this like a general statement, when the argument is comparing the two groups.

When I reframed it as "experimental fish are more likely to survive [THAN traditional fish] after their release" C clearly became the best way to fill the logical gap.

It becomes: some traditional fish die because they are too timid when foraging, expiremental fish are bolder when foraging, therefore expiremental are more likely to survive [than the traditional fish].

Unfortunately balancing study with a full time job comes with knowing and accepting that your time is limited, so something(s) you do will have to be sacrificed to the LSAT gods.

And that SUCKS.

I study about 6-10 hours a week.

For me to find that time, I've had to cut out all weeknight television/couch rot time. I've simplified all my at home routines. I've said no to or put time boundaries on social engagements.

I highly recommend you look at your routine and your screen time and see where your time actually goes.

It helps for me to frame it as a temporary stage of suck. You could spend another 3 years studying off and on for the LSAT, or you can get brutally honest with yourself, embrace that your life will be pretty boring and repetitive for a while, and buckle down for the next 6 months.

The other element here is your mental health.

If your mental health is seriously preventing you from achieving your goals, please seek professional help.

Otherwise get good sleep, eat good food, and try to get some type of regular movement even if it's just a walk around the block.

@Swaggymia I agree with you but will add: a general scientific principle would exist even if no human being ever studied or wrote about it.

So perhaps a better example would be:

Gravity exists. Its a law of nature and does not care if we puny humans "discover" it. This is our underlying general scientific principle.

An author could want to explain how gravity works to children, so they write a children's book. That book is our expression of ideas in a form of specific texts. Whoever wants to publish it would need permission, not because it is about gravity, but because it is something that the author created.

The book is copyrightable. But the underlying principle of "gravity exists" is not.

Another one of those questions where the "right" answer comes down to just a few particulars in the question itself.

Ugh, I think I misread the question as a main point of the entire passage instead of just paragraph 2.

I definitely fell into the trap with C. But the argument is ultimately that the snowpack will probably melt more rapidly and that specifically will be the cause of more flooding and less storable water. The fact that other areas of the Rocky Mountains have less storable water doesn't actually impact the argument either way because we don't know if that is because of the snowpack rapidly melting or from other issues.

B is the only answer that directly supports the argument that there will be more rapid melting that causes flooding and less storable water.

The way I picked B and then remembered that sulfur is really stinky and would make smelling things harder in the blind review...

I elimated down to B and D and ultimately chose D. However, looking back I was mistakenly confusing the quality of teaching with the effectiveness of teaching as interchangeable.

To be specific, can we say teaching well = teaching effectively? If we assume there are no other necessary requirements for teaching well, then yes.

But we can't say that not teaching well = teaching ineffectively. Because what if someone just teaches adequently? They're not great at it, but they're not bad at it. They teach just good enough to be effective.

So therefore D is better as it simply identifies research as a quality indicator.