Regarding LG trends:

http://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/1200/recent-trend-for-logic-games

Regarding preparing for "rare" games: http://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/4776

Thought about typing up a response, but linking you to others' rather exceptional explanations seemed like a better idea.

"most schools average your score"

^^This just isn't true. Most schools openly say on their websites that they will consider only your highest score. Some (NYU, Berkeley, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and Yale) say that they average them or that "the LSAT need only be taken once", although sifting through admissions data from the past few years suggests that only Yale and Stanford really care (i.e. a 165 and 175 will do better than a 170 at Columbia).

Rankings are determined by GPA and LSAT - since schools only have to report a student's highest LSAT to the ABA, and since schools really only care about their rankings, their perfectly fine taking the highest score.

Here is a useful thread on TLS that documents most of the schools' official stances: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=79953

What's your breakdown? Any particular section that you're struggling with? What are your scores on BR? I know most people like to hit the 175+ range on PT's a few times before taking the actual test, especially because there seems to be bit of a under-performance phenomenon when it comes to the real deal.

Anyways, I would take the test when you feel ready (and that would be up to you to decide). If you feel confident heading into September, take it then; if not, push it back until December. 3 months is a long time, but it would be easy enough to coast through a month and a half before picking up the intensity on the home stretch. That should prevent any potential burnout effect.

"My concern is how much do you think the person that applies December Vs September could lose out as far getting the application in line first?"

This is nearly impossible to quantify - the general advice is that applying before thanksgiving (preferably sometime in October / early November) gives you the best chance for admission and scholarship money. Are there exceptions? Sure. I know people who applied in December and performed as expected (i.e. they got into the schools that their numbers predicted they would). That said, if you can apply early, do so, because that gives you the best chance to have a positive admissions cycle.

I would like to add, however, that I think it's always a better idea to retake and improve your score than to apply early. Like you said, law school isn't going anywhere, and considering how big of an investment this can be, it's important to be in the best situation possible. Don't let 5 multiple choice questions be the difference between $180,000 in debt and $60,000 in debt.

I realize this probably isn't the answer you were looking for (I don't think I said anything that you don't already know), but I'm not sure anyone can really know how a December-164 will do compared to a September 160. As I said earlier, I think the best strategy is to get the highest score you can get and go from there (i.e. take the test when you are fully prepared, and no sooner)

We're given a conditional statement:

"Justified public funding ---> Indicated that public will benefit"

Then we're given a second conditional statement: "if the critics were right about this, then there would be not be tremendous support..." The tricky part is remembering that the "this" refers back to our original conditional statement. In other words, the sufficient condition of our second conditional statement is its own conditional statement. The diagram looks like this:

[Justified public funding---> Indicated that public will benefit project] ---> ~Tremendous public support

But then we're told that the there actually is a tremendous amount of public support. Using this piece of information, we can make a valid inference (i.e. take the contrapositive) from the conditional statement above.

Tremendous public support ---> ~[Justified public funding---> Indicated that public will benefit project]

What does this inference say? Well, because there is a lot of tremendous public support, the critic's conditional statement is false. What does it mean when a conditional statement is false? Essentially, it means we can have the sufficient condition occur and not have the necessary condition follow. This is the inference the question wants us to make, and it is represented perfectly by answer choice E.

Hope this helps! Let me know something doesn't make sense

I'm not sure if the flaw has a formal name, but the lawyer has assumed that just because one thing has a certain quality, that another thing must also have that same quality.

1. Defendant intentionally moved the snow

2. The plaintiff was harmed as a result of the intentionally moved snow

Therefore,

3. Defendant intentionally harmed the plaintiff

The defendant intentionally performed A, and, as a result of A, B occured. From this, the lawyer has concluded that the defendant intentionally performed B. Why is this an invalid argument? Well, put simply, we can't transfer the intentionally of the original action to all of the action's eventual consequences (especially because the consequences occured unbeknownst to the defendent). In other words, the lawyer has assumed that simply because the snow shoveling was intentional, that the harm was intentional as well. Unfortunately for him, there's no logical reason why this has to be true. Consider the following: I intentionally move my arm across the table, and, in doing so, knock over the salt container. Can we conclude that I intentionally knocked over the salt container? I suppose we could, but it certainly wouldn't be a valid argument. In short, just because someone intentionally performed an action does not mean that he intended all of the consequences his actions to occur as well.

Hope this helps!

Premise 1: Most people have at least some awareness of the events that are extensively covered by the media.

Premise 2: The media extensively covers the few people that win the lottery.

Conclusion: It's likely that many people over-estimate their chances of winning a major jackpot.

There's a pretty big gap between the premises and the conclusion; namely, does having at least some awareness of the few people that win the lottery make people over-estitmate their chances of winning? We can conclude from the premises the most people have some awareness of the few people that win the lottery, but we have no idea what kind of impact that knowledge has their beliefs about the lottery itself.

Answer choice D addresses the gap in the argument: at least some folks incorrectly estimate their odds when they learn about someone else winning. If we negate the answer and learn that nobody overestimates their chances because of this, the argument falls apart. This is sign of a necessary assumption, and we can be pretty confident in our answer.

Not exactly sure if I've answered your question. D addresses the gap in the argument, and certainly revolves around the stimulus, but I don't think it's restating the conclusion.

I think it comes down to availability. Some standardized test companies don't release official questions - in this situation, it's much more understandable to use made-up questions simply because that's all the student has access to. The LSAC, however, has released 72 official preptests for students to use. Assuming each test has 100 questions, that's 7200 real questions for you to practice with. To answer your question, then, there's simply no need to use made-up questions when you don't have to. I'm not sure how different Kaplan's questions are from the real questions, but, again, why risk using a flawed question when you have over 7000 real questions right at your finger tips.

Take the test when you're ready, and no sooner. At the end the day if you think you had an off cycle because you applied in December, sit out a year and apply again in September. Law school isn't going anywhere, and it doesn't make any sense to rush into a commitment you don't (or shouldn't) want to make.

As far as picking law schools, minimizing debt is an excellent idea. That said, there are certainly some schools that aren't worth going to even for free. Take a look at http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/ to find out the actual employment outcomes for your target schools. If you want to practice in the area and you can get a full ride, some of the smaller regional schools are definitely a better option than a lot of debt at a top-14. Just make sure they're sending more than 40% (made up this number, but you get my point) of the graduating class into full-time bar-passage-required jobs.

Jonathan's advice (as usual) is golden. The difficulty in these games emerge from the "shock factor" and from the unusual verbosity in the question stem. Invest time up front, parse out what the hell the stimulus is talking about, and use your intuition / prior experience to come up with the best diagram possible. Chances are if you're already good at doing the normal logic games that you'll be able to get past a misc. one without too much trouble.

It's certainly true that early admission (in before Thanksgiving) is a good idea; that withstanding, your LSAT score is the single most important part of your application. Take the test when you are ready, and no sooner. Law school isn't going anywhere (i.e. there's no shame in delaying the test, scoring super well, and applying next year. Delaying a year may sound terrible, but it's a whole lot better than under-preforming on the LSAT and going to a school you don't want to attend).

Test takers get different experimental sections. So you could have an RC experimental, but the kid next to you could have an LG experimental. The best anyone can tell you is that you have a 33% (1/3) chance to get an RC in September

I don't know much (if anything) about Canadian law schools. I know someone from Canada who is pretty familiar with the topic, however; if you would like, I can have that person get in contact with you. Searching / making a topic on TLS (top-law-schools.com) would also probably be a good idea.

For law:

1. Ignore U.S. News Rankings. You want to minimize debt while maximixing employment outcomes. Unfortunately, the rankings do very little to help students achieve either of these.

2. Focus on LST's employment scores. Law school is expensive, and paying anything close to sticker for a 20% chance of biglaw (the only way to pay off those loans) and a 50% chance of employment is a bad decision.

3. It depends on how debt-averse you are, but personally I'm in favor of attending a Top-14 with at least 60% tuition, or a strong regional (in a region where you want to practice) with at least 75% tution. Obviously I'm pretty debt averse, but there's no sense in making a bad investment when there are other options available (get work experience, retake the LSAT, etc).

Edit: those numbers assume the student is paying for law school solely through loans. Savings / parental donations / ability to get a job through family definitely change things. Overall, I'm just against taking over 150,000 in loans for a school (Yale / Stanford excluded).

Do you feel like you have solid fundamentals? If so, and I imagine you do since you've already done the 7sage course and scored reasonably well on the actual test, then you should probably be drilling LR, RC and LG sections as much as possible. Drill, review, repeat. Over and over again. Helps with speed, accuracy, and confidence. Throw in a full fledged PT every once and a while you'll be all set.

1. Remain calm.

2. Go over your mistakes.

3. Remind yourself that you've been kicking the LSAT's butt up until this one section.

4. Do your favorite section untimed to restablish confidence.

5. Do another LR section, score well, and forget this ever happened.

6. Stop worrying and remember that people would kill (literally) to be in your shoes. All test takers (regardless of score) can feel anxiety, but a post like this is a tad bit insensitive.

Edit: Looks like Zach beat me to the punch. Feel free to ignore my explanation haha. The flaw is subtle, and it's a different flaw than most proportion questions, but it's definitely there.

Just took a look - definitely one of the harder LR questions. To get this right, you either need to catch the assumption while you're reading the stimulus, or be really adept at eliminating wrong answer choices that are out of scope.

Premise:

The average price paid for a new car has increased in relation (proportionally) to the average individual income over the past 25 years. This premise is simply a ratio, and we can represent it as a fraction: "avg. price paid for a new car / avg. individual income." When you divided this fraction in 1970, the decimal was 0.05 (avg. price for a new car was $1, and the avg. income was $20). According to the premise, the ratio has gotten bigger over the past 25 years - this means when you divided the fraction in 1995, you got 0.4 (avg. price for new car was $20, and the avg. income was $50). Nothing overly complicated here, just a simple proportion.

Conclusion: Individuals who buy new cars spend, on average, a larger proportion of their incomes than did individuals 25 years ago. Great, another proportion. This one can be represented as the following: avg. price paid for a new car by individuals / avg. individual income.

Write out these two ratios on a piece of paper (or see them in your head), and it's pretty obvious where the author goes wrong. The top half of the ratio in the premise isn't the same as the top half of the ratio in the conclusion. He's assuming that average price paid for a new car in 1970 is the same as the average price paid for a new car by individuals in 1995. This is by no means a valid assumption. It is certainly possible the premise (the average price paid for a new car) is based on data from companies, business, families, governments, etc who were buying cars. With this in mind, we have no logical right to draw a conclusion about individuals who buy cars.

A. Out of scope. Who cares about households? Our argument certainly doesn't.

B. Out of scope. Who cares about used cars? Our argument certainly doesn't (is there in echo in here?)

C. Strengthens the argument. Shows that the bottom of the proportion is getting smaller, which would provide evidence that the ratio is getting bigger.

(D) Out of scope. Not interested in the entire population, I'm interested in a specific part of the population (i.e. individuals who are buying cars)

(E) Bingo! If individuals now make up a smaller proportion of new-car sales than they did 25 years ago, then the notion of "average price paid" is no longer comparable between individuals from the two different time periods.

A method's usefullness is determined solely by its value to the user. If your own method allows you to score well on RC sections, then, yes, you should definitely use it in place of the memory method. I don't annotate at all, so I might not be the best person to answer this, but it seems like your strategy should work fine. Do you remember the structure and main points of the argument? Can you find information quickly when you need to refer back to the passage? If the answer is yes to both of these questions, then I'd say your in pretty good shape.

Definitely a tricky question. Stimulus isn't overly complicated, but the answers choices are wordy and somewhat convoluted. Process of elimination is probably your best bet to get the right answer in a timely manner.

Stimulus:

1. If voters blame a scandal on all parties equally, then all of the incumbents, regardless of what party they are affiliated with, will be reelected.

2. If voters blame one party in particular for the scandal, then the incumbents from that particular party will be defeated.

3. We need a principle that explains these two phenomenon.

Answers:

D. Not sure how this helps to explain / justify / resolve our two phenomenon. Seems out of scope and a little irrelevant. That withstanding, we can eliminate this one right off the bat because of the subordinate clause: "but whether those incumbents should be voted out of office depends on who their challengers are." The passage doesn't suggest that the identity of the challenger is important, nor does it talk about what "should" happen (as opposed to what "does" happen. Subtle is/ought distinction here).

E. Tricky wording here. Rephrasing the answer should help:

"When major political scandals are less the responsibility of individual incumbents than of the parties to which they belong, whatever party was responsibile must be penalized when possible"

is translated to:

"when major political scandals are blamed on a particular party instead of on individual incumbents from multiple parties, the party in question must be penalized (in other words, its incumbents must lose their elections). This explains the voter behavior talked about in the stimulus. I admit its not the greatest of answers, but, given the fact that A-D are all out of scope, E is the best we have. Some of the early LR questions are weird like this - definitely prefer the newer sections as composed to the older ones.

Very little, if anything. According to US News, the number 1 ranked health care law program is the University of Maryland...well, for the class of 2013, only 50% of Maryland's law graduates are employed in full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required jobs. So yea, they may be "ranked" number 1, but I'm not going to school (and paying an absurd tuition) for a 50-50 chance of becoming an attorney.

The top schools have the best (and really the only decent) employment outcomes. It's a little "matter of fact," but like it or not, that's the truth.

Sources:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/clinical-healthcare-law-rankings

http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/maryland/2013/

@

Haha, well I'm glad what I said makes sense. No need to stress yourself out over logic games - you're scoring in the 95th percentile, so you're clearly extremely smart and extremely well-equipped to take on (and beat!) the LSAT. Not sure if this is relevant for your situation, but I remember struggling to trust myself when working on a logic game. My mistakes early on haunted me way longer than they should have - essentially, because I struggled with logic games so much on my diagnostic, I always worried I was making a mistake even though I had taken plenty of lessons and had a solid grip on what was going on. This became kind of a big problem because my lack of confidence slowed me down and made me more susceptible to stupid mistakes. I struggled with this for a while, but I was eventually able to improve and now I'm reasonably upset if I get -1 on a LG section. Two things helped: first, I started to do untimed logic games. This took the pressure off and helped reduce my test-day anxiety. Second, and probably more importantly, I would read a stimulus, diagram the rules / make any inferences, and then stop to watch the 7sage video. Getting that immediate positive reinforcement of "hey, look, I was worried I did this wrong, but I actually did it right" over and over again is a great way to boost your confidence.

@-1

Awesome! Glad it worked! It's a useful tool, especially when you're working with a game without a lot of up-front inferences. I used to panic if I couldn't split the board, but now I'm just like "oh, okay, this game is about using the rules to make hypo's. No biggie, I can do that."

@.simonds77

There is a worksheet on the "Logic Game Explanations" page that groups all of the games from prep tests 35-70. The Cambridge "Miscellaneous" packet from PT's 1-39 contains the games listed below. Honestly, though, the best practice for rare games (and for games in general) is to practice, practice, practice. Do every game that's ever been released, and then go back and do them all again. The more experience you have reading different stimuli (and deducing the relevant inferences / working their respective questions) the better prepared you'll be for test day.

PT 1 - Game 1

PT 2 - Game 3

PT 4 - Game 4

PT 6 - Game 3

PT 6 - Game 4

PT 8 - Game 2

PT 9 - Game 4

PT 10 - Game 3

PT 11 - Game 4

PT 12 - Game 4

PT 13 - Game 4

PT 15 - Game 2

PT 16 - Game 4

PT 18 - Game 3

PT 18 - Game 4

PT 20 - Game 3

PT 21 - Game 2

PT 30 - Game 1

1. Don't get discouraged! Most people study for well over 3 months (probably closer to 6-8 months in most cases) for the LSAT. This is a monster of a test, and it takes a lot of time and committment to master.

2. Are you using the 7sage course (or Manhattan or Powerscore) to help establish solid fundamentals? Taking prep tests without a firm base isn't really the best way to attack the LSAT. You'll most likely keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and it will seem like you're stuck at a certain score.

3. You can do this! I know plenty of people who improved 10-20 points from their initial diagnostic. It definitely requires a lot of hard work, but that's why we're all on this site in the first place. By yourself the LSAT is extremely difficult - with 7sage and a whole bunch of other test takers, it's easily doable!

@

Intuition comes with practice. LG is by far the most learnable section on the LSAT - with enough practice, I'm willing to say that pretty much anyone (and certainly a high scorer like yourself) can consistently get -1 or -2 wrong on each section. How long have you been working on logic games? Do you drill untimed games / redo games you struggle with?

I gave game 4 on prep test 16 a look - this was an unusual game, for sure, but honestly I thought it was pretty easy compared to some of the other games out there. What gave you trouble specifically? There are only 3 rules, all of which are pretty straightforward. The setup itself is easy - just a simple 5-slot ordering game, where the order changes depending on how many and which kind (either odd or even) of rounds have occurred. I think the big mistake people make on this game is to hesitate before looking at the questions - they spend too much time looking for a huge inference when they really should just be using the rules to rule out wrong answers / find the right answer.

For the questions you struggled with, I recommend using the question stem to create a hypothetical and then using the hypothetical to cross off wrong answer choices. When doing an open-ended game with only a couple rules (i.e. a game with a lot of possibilities), it's important not to spend too much just "thinking" about the answer. Your time is much better spent writing out possible solutions (literally, just write out a solution. Any solution, so long that it works. You'll be surprised how much this helps for the question you're on as well as questions down the line).

Hope this helps! Let me know if I something I said didn't make any sense.

1. No need for ad hominem's - you asked a question, I gave an answer. I get it - you're angry at the LSAC - no need to direct that anger at anyone else.

2. "If you answer a question then you are most certainly concerned with answering it. Period." This seems like a non-sequitur. What part of answering a question necessarily entails that the individual who answered the question must be concerned with answering it? When making an argument, I am concerned with proving my thesis. Although I may certainly answer / mention / refer to other questions, I am only "concerned with" one particular question (i.e. my thesis).

3. On TLS you mentioned you have issues with 2 other questions as well. By all means send in a complaint and let everyone know what the LSAC says. They've redacted some questions before, maybe they'll do so again.

4. JY just released his own explanations for PT 72 - maybe you'll find his reasoning more suitable than Jeffort's (I haven't watched the video myself, just figured it might be helpful).

You're misreading the question stem. We are not being asked to identify something that both passages "mentioned," but rather to identify something that both passages are "concerned with." The differene is subtle, but, as you can imagine, incredibly important.

Jeffort gives a really nice explanation (and it will certainly be better than any I can give) on TLS, so I'll defer to him to explain the rest. Link: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=232719 His explanation is in the second post of the thread.

You may want to try and figure out why C is correct (and why D is incorrect) before reading his explanation. There is a good chance the LSAC uses that subtlety again, and you'll have a leg-up on a lot of test takers if you really understand the distinction.