@tristandesinor505 said:

Congratulations!! I remember seeing your post about your June writing sample--shame you won't be applying with that one :wink: Do you have any takeaways on how you mentally approached the second test day?

Haha -- if you showed someone my first and second writing samples and told them one went with a 174 and one with a 165, you'd never guess correctly which went with which.

My second day, I went in with a much calmer attitude. I had personally accepted that if a 165 was my peak, then that was my peak. It is a good score to begin with, and a solid worst-case scenario. In September, it felt like just another practice test, whereas in June I felt on edge the entire time. I went in knowing that no matter what happened, I would not take the test again. Somehow that relaxed me. Wish I had a golden bullet on this -- but I definitely empathize with anyone who has anxiety issues during the day of.

Winterfell

JK Furman

I've gotta go with:

LG

LG

LG

LG

Experimental LG

Writing prompt

...

jk

but really,

LR (most flexibility with time -- not as crunched as with RC, and even with major time mistakes, the consequence isn't failing to even attempt multiple questions at the end as is the case for LG, so LR at the beginning gives a nice buffer to warm up a little)

RC (just get it over with, now that we're warmed up)

LG (fun -- when it starts, the break has essentially already started)

~break~

LR (same reason as before)

Experimental LG (also the harder of the two ideally)

Writing

Walking around is a particularly ridiculous proctor strategy for the LSAT because the order of the sections varies from desk to desk. Even if test-takers were going to attempt cheating by glancing at another student's answers -- and was successful in doing so without being noticed -- they would have about an 80% chance of bubbling in the wrong answers entirely.

This question absolutely destroyed me on test day. Was paralyzed by it on the first read. Then skipped. Came back and wasted all my leftover time (about 5 minutes) going over it again and again. The meaning of the word "dissolved" is what threw me. Thanks for this explanation.

Praise be.

May the Lord open.

Winter is coming.

I've got to call out C here. There are two stipulations, any one of which certainly failing would warrant a correct answer:

1) the government must ENSURE its citizens will have majority ownership for a year

2) highest bid possible

C is definitely iffy about #2, not enough for it to be the right answer, but it unequivocally denies the first condition. "so complex that the government cannot determine whether citizens have majority ownership." How does this not explicitly reject the requirement that the government ENSURES its citizens will have majority ownership?

As I read it, only part of the condition is that its citizens actually do have majority ownership. The more direct read is that the government has to ensure this before going into an agreement. There are tons of situations in which citizens might end up with majority ownership without the government ensuring so beforehand. The condition is meant to prevent cases of government's ignorance leading to a bad outcome.

I chose C and still have trouble considering E to be a better answer.

@vtm14207 said:

So, I can't catch a break with this test.

I was finally really starting to make progress and then a hurricane decided to blow in to town. If anyone hasn't gathered yet, I live in Florida. While it's not suppose to land until next week (Monday) the whole state is in chaos. I saw two women get in to a full out fight over a case of gatorade. Moral of the story here is - i'm not going to get any studying done between now and the exam. I genuinely did not want to have to wait till December. Any Harvey people have some input? I would really appreciate it. Should I postpone? What do you think LSAC will do?

Much love, send water.

Victoria

Edit: I'm located in Northern Florida for the most part, but if this thing bounces in to the gulf I will be a direct hit. If this thing bounces up the coast, then my family will be a direct hit and I will be rushing to the coast to help evacuate starting Thursday. I'm assuming my testing center won't be majorly effected though.

Hello Sansa, hope you are doing well! Send a raven from time to time.

Make safety your #1 priority. I am not sure LSAC has finalized plans for Houston test-takers, but they have made it clear that they plan to accommodate them. I am sure they will do the same for Florida test-takers. If you feel you are ready to take the exam (which you should 1.5 weeks out), then I would advise going ahead and taking it in September (or whenever LSAC reschedules it for you). While the chaos will probably keep you from taking full practice tests, you will probably have time to do individual sets to keep you sharp. If you do not feel ready at this point, perhaps you should push to December.

I would imagine the added stress of the hurricane (if it hits) could also merit a brief addendum if your score comes back a few points lower than expected.

Stay safe!!

WATCH OUT FOR 81 IT'S A KILLER

Wow. Petition to start a petition to get JY to do another AMA. Five years later, I bet that AMA would blow up.

It helps me to assume that the questions / sections I abnormally struggled with will be questions / sections most other testtakers struggle with as well. And I hope beyond hope that this difficulty will be represented in a better curve.

Some great pointers here. I suffer from the same whenever I have a rough section (happened to me with RC when I sat in June). I also struggle when I come across a few tough questions in the first 10 on any of the sections. 90% of the time the first 10 questions are a breeze in LG and LR, so when I come across those sections where I have to circle 2-3 of those 10, I feel my performance slipping.

I am flat-out shocked #1 has the "Easiest" difficulty rating :O

Went -1 in this section, and spent a solid 3 minutes with time left over at the end reading over C and E again and again. It just seems to me that the focus is much more on Native Americans in particular than the generic "cultures with different systems of discourse can have issues." The latter is mentioned exclusively in P1 as far as I can remember.

E seems to me to better nail it, though I grant it lists only "precedent" and not "evaluations of evidence" when the passage listed both distinctly. I rationalized this in my head because the way courts process evidence is itself an example of following precedent.

@taylorbarlow09697 said:

That happens - I've received a few that way. More often though, I emailed the schools directly. I gave them my LSAT score + GPA and just asked for a fee waiver based on those scores. Some said "sure," some said "you don't qualify." Most said "ask us again in September, once we start accepting applications for 18-19"

Who do you email? A law school admissions officer from each school, or is there some central admissions-related email address for each?

Also, you've made me as paranoid about that LG section as I am about the army of the Dead North of the Wall...

@btm15767 said:

I do not think they come with the 7Sage Ultimate+. I actually believe Feb97 is the hardest test to get ahold of: because (those who know more can correct me here) I do not think it was released by LSAC in the form of a "10 actual" set or individually. I got Feb 1997 test from a friend who passed it down to me as a donation when he was done studying. It was in the form of textbook from another test prep company.

As an aside, I find it odd that that exam is so hard to get ahold of, there is a game in that set that is not only very challenging, but is precisely something that would appear as an odd game on the newer exams. Furthermore, Feb 1997 also contains in my estimation an early prototype of the rule substitution questions that we all know from the new sets. Feb 1997 is an excellent exam if you can get ahold of it to tell you precisely where you would be on modern day set containing an odd game.

Preptests A,B,C were released as a set by LSAC with answers to each question: well worth the $20 or so on Amazon. PT C is the single hardest LG set of all time in my estimation: a true test of one's abilities.

Thank you -- that is incredibly helpful! Found the SuperPrep book that has A, B, and C, along with explanations for all of them. Coming in the mail in two days.

Just to clarify -- all of those questions (LR, RC, & LG) are untouched by the Core Curriculum? This is like hitting a goldmine!

SN: Are questions from these tests included in the Core Curriculum?

This is a lot, but since you asked (others feel free to correct me, this is me spitballing from a Stats class I took a few years back):

When A and B are positively (or negatively, but let's stick with positively) correlated, there are four possibilities:

A causes B

B causes A

Outside force C causes A or B or both (or multiple outside forces do)

Random occurrence

The crux of the common fallacy occurs because people are prone to inferring a cause from a correlation alone, without outside information. To correctly infer a cause from a correlation between two things A and B necessitates identifying the following:

A and B are correlated to a statistically significant degree

This relationship between A and B recurs throughout nature (which would indicate that an outside force C doesn't cause one or the other, or the relationship between the two)

A precedes B (or B precedes A) -- on a deeper level, typically this temporal distance should be predictable based on other factors in the environment if there is actual causation

It is only possible to infer the above through repeated interactions with a phenomenon in nature or through extensive experimentation. Obviously, the bar is pretty high, and rightfully so. For the sake of the LSAT, I don't think I've come across a question in which an arguer has correctly assumed causation, which is why the flaw is so cookie-cutter.

With 27, I think B is very strongly supported. The intro paragraph lists courtroom examination as one of a sequence of situations in which leading questions are asked, and it explicitly lists the others (police investigators, reporters) as people with whom the witness "has already interacted."

In paragraph 3, the author contends that the further removed from the event temporally, the more prone he is to making errors with leading questions.

Together, there is strong support for answer choice B. I understand why D is right, but don't see how B is wrong.

So do you suggest I go with present tense even if that doesn't make the resume "consistent"?

Thanks!

100 percent. Consistency is hugely important, but not at the expense of correctness. Think of the dates you put next to each of your job experiences. All of them use months, except for (probably) your current position, with which you replace the end month's name with the word "Present" (i.e. March - Present). That is not, strictly speaking, consistent, but it is both commonly understood by résumé readers and more correct than the alternative.