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brendanj312

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brendanj312

Tuesday, Oct 27 2015

I don't think I'll retake unless it's in the next application cycle. I live pretty close to a top 20 regional school for which my score should be good enough and I have in state tuition. So that's my backup.

General

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Tuesday, Oct 27 2015

brendanj312

Should I apply?

So I took the October LSAT and came in at a 169. My dream school is Stanford, which puts me on the 25th percentile in terms of LSAT score. My undergrad LSDAS GPA was calculated to be 3.68 which is a little below 25th percentile. The real GPA was a tenth of a point higher, but I suppose that is irrelevant for my purpose. I would call myself something of a non-traditional law student. I have a Master's in Music, as well as some post grad studies, and was a professional classical guitarist/instructor for five or so years and have traveled much of the world. I only list these last things out of hope that they might somehow set me apart on my application, though that may be wishful thinking. I'm looking for a little advice here. Should I apply? or would that be tantamount to lighting a $100 bill on fire?

General · I'm not sure if I should retake in December

brendanj312

Friday, Oct 23 2015

I'm with you. I was consistently hitting 172 on my PT's and even felt like I dominated after writing the real LSAT. I thought there was a real possibility that I had a 173-175. Enter stage left, like 5 ridiculously stupid answer choices and I came in at 169. I dropped my worst LR section since maybe April (-6 on the section with the chameleon question) and then made roughly three absolute bonehead mistakes on the LG. Dropped two questions on the first game. Looking at that game, I'm sure I could ace it if I was drunk but that's adrenaline for you. I guess as an added bonus the LSAT writers threw in a lesson in humility for free. How decent of them. Back to the drawing board.

PrepTests ·

PT139.S4.Q9

brendanj312

Monday, Sep 28 2015

I totally agree and chose not to select that answer choice for exactly the reason you mentioned. My guess is that they have decided to hide behind the word "most" in most strongly supported. There is zero evidence given that suggests eating a wide variety of wild plants entails using them in any previously unattempted way. I guess their position is that the other answer choices were even less supported. Dick move, LSAC.

PrepTests ·

PT136.S4.Q10

brendanj312

Sunday, Sep 13 2015

I'm with you folks on that one. Although I chose B, my confusion on this question was exacerbated by the video using the same logic to rule out answer choice D as that which seemingly gives credence to answer choice B- that is, we are assuming that some single supposedly unlikely event was sufficient to start the chain of events that lead to life. It seems to me that on a time scale of billions of years something that does not occur readily and tends to break up has a fairly decent chance of having occurred one single time, given that both of those conditions are most statements. I was stuck between A and B but ultimately chose B because I don't know anything about how conducive reducing atmospheres or atmospheres that have recently been disrupted by meteor impacts are to lightning strikes. Furthermore, I don't know if the temporary atmospheric changes will last long enough for said amino acids not to dissolve anyway upon the atmosphere returning to normal.

PrepTests ·

PT129.S4.P2.Q8

brendanj312

Wednesday, Aug 26 2015

I'm also a little hung up between A and D on this question. I realize that I'm almost certainly wrong because my answer was wrong, but the fact that I wasn't guessing means that there is a problem with my line of reasoning that could easily be turned into a few missed questions on test day.

D doesn't seem to be supported in the passage because the author writes, "In achieving this understanding, science in fact does not depend exclusively on measurable data and the humanities in fact profit from attempts at controlled evaluation." My assumption is that "this understanding" refers to the reconciliation of scientific views and the humanities that the passage is centered around. The author seems to be saying that this reconciliation has yet to be realized in the first paragraph when he writes, "An effort should be made to dispel the misunderstandings that still prevent the much needed synthesis and mutual supplementation of science and the humanities."

A on the other hand seems like the correct answer to me. It seems, to reference logic games, like an accurate yet incomplete list of applicable characteristics. If I add a few words to the end of the answer choice we get "Scientific humanism is characterized by the extension of description and explanation from sciences to the humanities (and from the humanities to science)." The best I can do to rule this out is to notice that it is not characterized by the extension of description and explanation between the two, but rather the extension of their uniquely preferred methods of description and explanation, but that feels like a level of scrutiny that D does not pass muster on either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Has the LSAT turned me into a neurotic grammar hermit? Yep.

PrepTests ·

PT111.S3.Q15

brendanj312

Wednesday, Jul 29 2015

This seems to be an instance of when the normally accurate negation test fails. I'm thinking downturn could've caused a significant reduction of the amount of money on deposit and the banks could still increase the amount of money loaned. Maybe before the recession the banks loaned out 50% of the deposited money (let's pretend there are $100 total in the banks for simplicity's sake). They are loaning out $50. Boom, recession. The total amount on deposit drops to $80. The bankers go rogue and decide to be a little riskier with people's money (in a way that might not conflict with the tightening of standards, since those standards were never stated). Now they loan out 75% of the total deposited money or $60. The total amount of money loaned out went up by $10 (a 20% increase over the original amount). I feel like this question forces the assumption that the banks use all of their available money for loans to be made in addition to answer choice A, otherwise A isn't really necessary. Can anyone tell me if I'm nuts or not? and if so where am I going wrong here?

General · Problem Sets Not Found?

brendanj312

Friday, Jun 12 2015

I'm having the same problem. I'm aware that the PDF's are gone, but the page the follows each problem set, where the answers and the video links are to be found, seems to have disappeared.