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?
@ji330 - Yes, great idea!! Count me in! :)
Thanks for sharing! For those in Phase 2, what is a confidence drill and how do you drill for that? Could someone please elaborate on the types of drilling (in general) for Phase 2? 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 @calftemp964!
Thanks, that's great to know! That's definitely something I'll try to take into account during review. What do you mean by get back to the basics? And what kind of LR drills do you do?
Also - regarding postponing, I feel like I'm sooo close and I just want to get the test over with. And worst case scenario, if I don't hit my target, I'd be taking in September anyways...
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!
Congrats Zach - so encouraging for the rest of us to hear! Woohoo Friday-nighters, let's go crazy with the lsat! haha :)
Hi @jhaldy10325 + other 7sagers,
Bumping this thread because I reviewed this question recently, and still find the answer choices pretty tricky. I'd appreciate any help. During BR, I drew out hypothetical scenarios with numbers and did the math, and I can see why TCR is what it is. That being said, I don't think I could ever have gotten there in ~ 1.5 minutes.
When I read the stimulus, I almost immediately recognized that the increase in absolute number, but decrease in % meant that the denominator (total population of Ditrama) grew more/faster than the population of K. Thus, the populations of M + G must've grown more than K!
However, I really hesitated to pick an answer that relied on % (eg: C & E), thinking that we don't know anything about the relative sizes of K, M, & G - so we can't really say anything about relative % growth for the different regions. Down to answer choices only about numbers, I ended up picking D, because it was about the numerical CHANGE, not the absolute total number.
Any tips/advice on how to solve this question in 1:25 or so, without doing math during the test? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like LSAC doesn't want us to do actual math during the test...
Thanks in advance!
Count me in! Thanks for doing this - great idea!
Hi, can you please add me to this study group? Thanks!
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!
Count me in!
Hi! Thanks for your reply. I'm not at the beginning of my prep, and I always BR the entire LR section, not just the ones I'm unsure of or missed. My BR scores are all significantly higher than my timed/actual scores. So, I'm really not quite sure why my scores are so inconsistent...
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!
Please add me to this BR group! Thanks!! :)
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!
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!
Also interested in using the 50's!