I realized that E has a significant flaw - it's comparing persoanl stories to ALL other forms of discourse.

B makes a comparison traditional forms of legal discourse.

I elminated B because I read "background" to mean cultural background. I should have realized it was referring to legal training.

I thought I understood the passage well and then got absolutely wrecked on the questions.

3/8 timed :(

@Epicness Agreed. I've been studying for 5 months and this is one of the passages I've understood the least

Feeling really silly because I read "conception" initially like "creating" domestic fiction (definition of conception like birth instead of the way something is perceived)

Using the wrong definition through me off for almost all of the questions

@MayorOfWhoville agreed. I still will use the video explanations for questions I am really stumped on. I often use written explanations for questions I got right - and just want to make sure my line of thinking was correct

I wasted so much time trying to find an answer that said that the Magno-Blanket would work on humans but not dogs, that it took me forever to see the correct answer was a reason that the Magno-Blanket doesn't actually work on humans at all

Takeaway: for resolve/reconcile/explain - what answer helps protect the principle?

Principle: advetising has greater influence on brands of yogurt than milk.

D protects this principle, because it gives another reason for yogurt sales being low outside of advertising not working.

I read b as meaning that more shoppers go to Largeco to buy milk than yogurt - but this is not what B says. B says the shopppers that are going to Largeco to buy milk don't buy yogurt. What if this is 2 shoppers out of 200? This wouldn't really resolve the discrepency

@CassandraSoares I thought this was incredibly difficult. Far harder than three star difficulty

I thought A was a trap answer. But "cost of speaking in borrowed voices" was a clue - Landes and Badiner thought women should have used their own voices

I went to the answer choices looking for an answer choice similar to C, but I thought C was a trap answer.

I thought C was a trap answer because the company could still save money overall with lower electricity bills if the savings outweighed initial generator costs.

So I chose B. But B is not correct because of the conditional in the conclusion: "IF steel-manufacturing plants could feed the heat..."

The conclusion doesn't require this to be true. The conclusion states that IF this is true, then the plant can implement this to save money.

Takeway: notice a conditional in the conclusion!

Flaw to recognize: saying there is no causation with good evidence just because there are some outliers

I chose answer B because I thought it was pointing out that there could be multiple combined factors that cause schizophrenia (like genetics + environmental factors). But that's not what B says. B says that the author is concluding that schizophrenia is only caused by chromosal damage - and that's not what the author is concluding

The journalist assumes:

Because small studies are reported more often AND newspapers report dramatic studies → Small studies must be more dramatic.

But that conclusion only follows if both types of studies exist in roughly equal numbers.

The argument ignores this crucial possibility:

What if small observational studies are simply far more common?

If there are many more small observational studies overall, then even if they are less likely to be dramatic, they could still appear in newspapers more often simply because there are so many of them.

I brought in a lot of outside knowlege/intuition here. Concepts of justice in the real world are so nuanced, that "partly" made more sense to me. But the author says these rationales are clearly distinct.

I was looking for a "snowball" analogy

Elite wanted monument construction -> war/raids for workers -> ultimately led to Mayan downfall

A fit this analogy to me: poor weather conditions -> bad crops -> no food on the shelves

To me, this fits far better fit for Lowe's hypothesis

The Loophole taught me to be suspicious of "ladder" answers (if A goes up, B goes up).

But it is an acceptable answer choice if the stimulus is very specific about the correlation: "and the antitumor activity of beta-glucans increases as the degree of branching increases"

I immediately understood the argument flaw, but I really misunderstood the grammar.

B can be rewritten as, "The argument provides no justification for preference to one view versus a second competing view"

The key to this question is spotting the columnist’s core assumption.

The conclusion:

The number of species on Earth is probably not dwindling.

Why does the columnist think that?

Because:

1. Extinction is natural.

2. About as many species will go extinct this year as in 1970.

3. New species are emerging at about the same rate as they have for centuries.

🚨 The Hidden Assumption

The argument quietly assumes:

The number of new species emerging is at least equal to the number going extinct.

If that’s true, then the total number of species stays stable.

If it’s false, then the number of species could absolutely be declining.

Why the Correct Answer Weakens

In 1970 fewer new species emerged than went extinct.

Let’s plug that into the argument.

The columnist says:

• About as many species will go extinct this year as in 1970.

• New species are emerging at about the same rate as for centuries.

But if in 1970 more species went extinct than emerged, then:

• The total number of species decreased in 1970.

• And if extinction rates now are similar to 1970…

• And emergence rates are similar to historical norms…

• Then species numbers are likely still decreasing.

That directly undercuts the conclusion that species numbers are “probably not dwindling.”

The Logical Structure

The columnist needs:

Emergence rate ≥ Extinction rate

The correct answer shows:

Emergence rate < Extinction rate (at least in 1970)

That creates a net loss.

That’s fatal to the argument.

LSAT Pattern Tip

This is a classic rate comparison flaw.

Whenever you see:

• “Process A happens at X rate”

• “Process B happens at historical rate”

• Conclusion: “No net change”

Ask yourself:

👉 Do we actually know the two rates are equal?

Here, we don’t — and the correct answer proves they weren’t.

I understood the "too trendy" part of answer choice B being correct, but I struggled with the link between being incompetent and "unsuccessful"

I think the answer clicked when I separated "how well recordings sell" into two parts:

recordings sell well -> might be unsuccessful (no mark on success)

recordings sell poorly -> might be unsuccessful (no mark on success)

Support: weak sales -> might be incompetence

Pseudo Sufficent Assumption (answer B): incompetence -> unsuccessful

Conclusion: weak sales -> might be unsuccessful (no mark on success)

I'm still struggling with "might" in the stimulus vs. the "is" in the answer choices

I read "risks to life" as "risks to own life"

Take away: don't put words in the author's mouth!!

I misunderstood most of this passage but I was really thrown off by thinking the "50-year-old woman" and "Nisa" were two different people. That is how it is presented :(

For some reason on the first read my brain did not recognize that "only one star" would mean not "several stars"

This really tripped me up for some reason. I thought A could not be right because animal excrement would not necessarily be there because animals are pulling carts - it could be from free roaming animals.

But I missed "relatively" in the answer choice, which makes it more significant

I read the question stem to quickly and assumed it would be asking about proof of language NOT having essential correspondence to thing it describes. ugh