Hi 7sagers!

What kinds of patterns have you seen emerge in MBT/MSS questions? For example, I personally have seen that for conditional - heavy stimuli, LSAC loves to use mistaken reversals & mistaken negations as wrong answer choices.

Are there any other patterns that you have noticed -- perhaps other patterns in the answer choices, in the stimulus structure, or in the way the answer choices relate to the stimulus?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-b-section-2-game-2/

I have some questions about the proper diagram and meaning of a rule in this in/out game.

Rule 3: "If Yews are not in the park, then either L or O, but not both, are in the park."

- Could someone explain about how to properly diagram this rule (ideally in notation that does NOT involve biconditionals)? I diagrammed it as 2 separate rules (shown below), but I think it only confused me more...

/Y --> L or O (representing 'either/or')

/Y --> /L and /O (representing 'not both')

- If I'm understanding the meaning of this rule correctly, does the contrapositive of this rule basically mean/state that "if both L & O are in the park, then Y is in the park." ? Does the contrapositive of this rule also include "if both L & O are OUT, then Y is IN"?

TIA!

Hi Everyone,

These questions are some of the most time consuming in LR, and there are many people in the LSAT community who advocate using certain techniques for eliminating answer choices on these questions quickly. These techniques include strategies like: matching the strength of the conclusion (qualifier words), the type of reasoning (conditional, causation, etc.), and other qualifier words such as most, some, all, etc.

However, I've noticed that in recent exams (70's), LSAC has made these questions (even!) more difficult and time consuming by including all of these features in most of the answer choices. (For example, if the stimulus uses "probably" in the conclusion, 4 out of 5 answer choices will all include the word "probably" too.) As a result, they've eliminated some of the 'quick and easy' tells that we had at our disposal to move through these questions faster.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? If so, what other techniques/shortcuts do you use in order to cut through the problem and eliminate wrong answers quickly?

Thanks!

Hi 7sagers,

I just recently solved the question referenced above, a MBT question with heavy conditional reasoning. I understand why TCR is what it is, but it took me WAY too long to solve this question. Even in hindsight/BR, I don't know how I could get through a question like this in 1:25.

I ordinarily feel comfortable with conditional reasoning - I can picture contrapositives mentally, can twist around unless statements without diagramming, solve some conditional stimuli without diagramming (though generally they don't have a ton of sufficient conditions), etc. Even some of conditional-heavy stimuli that have several statements/premises tend to link up in a linear fashion and can be pictured without diagramming.

I think that what threw me off in this question is that between the two conditionals in the stimulus, there are just a million sufficient conditions to keep track of!

Do you guys have any tips/shortcuts for cutting through a question like this relatively quickly?

TIA!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-2-question-09/

Hey 7sagers!

My BR scores are in the mid-high 170s (woohoo!), but my actual scores have been stuck in the mid-160s for a while now. I know the BR gap is a common problem, and I've seen a lot of people advocating to drill and BR, especially for LR. As the June test approaches, I'm wondering what kind of drilling would be best to raise my score at this point. For example, should I be drilling individual question types (untimed)? Timed sections to work on speed? Something else entirely?

For those of you who have successfully made the leap from the 160s to the 170s - what types of things/aspects of LR questions did you specifically focus on learning during your review? For example, were you focused on argument structures? Your skills that led you astray? Specific vocab? Characteristics of wrong answers? Perhaps I've been focusing on the wrong things during my review and not improving as a result.

A few strange things I've noticed about my scores-

TIA for all your help! Happy studying!

Hi Everyone,

Need some advice/help on LR and RC! Over PTs and on individual sections, I'm scoring pretty inconsistently. On LR, I've been anywhere and everywhere between -1 to -6/section (big spread, I know), and on RC, the best I've ever scored is -3, but recently I scored -9 (oooff)! I'm not really sure why my scores are all over the place, but definitely can't take that risk on test day.

Any advice on how to score more consistently on these sections (and ideally, not consistently -9!)?

TIA!

Hi all,

I've been reviewing my PT performance, and I seem to be missing the hardest problems in LR (across a variety of Q types). Any recommendations for how to improve on the hardest problems in LR?

Thanks!

Hi,

Quick question about the above referenced problem. Why is (C) correct, and (B) wrong? I personally disliked (C) because of the word "remain". Stimulus is talking about "being" free (and "becoming" free), not about "remaining".

TIA!