I want to ask how much do you think this "burnout" is actual burnout from studying or from feeling discouraged? If it is the former, taking a break can be very beneficial. Step away from studying completely. Give your brain a chance to rest. I think this is especially helpful for the LSAT because it's not so much information you need to memorize, but rather a way of thinking you need to adapt. That being the case, I'd also advise that quality is much more important than quantity. Burning through a ton of practice sets or tests gets you nowhere unless you understand the material. Completion for the sake of completion is meaningless and an utter waste of time and limited material. If that happens to apply to you, limit the amount you do and focus on developing a deep understanding of only a few questions at a time. This could also not apply to you, but I find that revisiting old questions on LR helps me greatly to "see" how arguments are structured and work. In essence, it's the same principle as foolproofing LG. As for a studying schedule, find one that works for you that focuses on quality over quantity.

If your "burnout" is a product of discouragement, I'm sorry I'm not the best at encouragement. All I can say is that everyone is different. Hence, they'll progress at different rates. But even then, they might simply be better than you. I'm sure somewhere out there there's somebody who can bust out a 180 without any studying. That's the unfortunate reality, but are you going to let that dissuade you from pursuing your path? Dig deep. You can do it. Don't let others bring you down.

The rule only makes it such that, in all possible situations, one of F or G must be in Y. What about the one that remains? It's free to do whatever it wants because you've satisified that rule. Let's say F is assigned to Y and there are no other rules that affect G. In that case, G effectively becomes a floater, thereby allowing G to also go into Y.

Because of the order of the conditional, "act responsibly-->must do x," you can never conclude that someone acted responsibly. When you don't know what is sufficient to conclude "act responsibly," how can you conclude that someone acted responsibly?

Those are sentiments I'm sure almost everyone would agree with. While sentiments are good, they should be tempered by reason. You're right that anything is possible. But keep in mind that getting a 180 is a different beast than attaining pretty much any other score. Your plan probably isn't something anyone would realistically recommend, but you could be that very special person who is capable of seeing it through. Good luck.

I'll say that anytime you get more than 10 wrong on LR, irrespective of whether you had a "bad day" or whatever, means you have holes in your fundamentals because that means you're getting questions that are 3 stars and under wrong. Ideally, any question 3 star and under should be a freebie, contingent on what score you're aiming for, of course. I'll also say that you shouldn't gauge your level off your best performance, since that can lead to situations where you attribute poor performances to whatever factor. In addition, it's safer to prepare yourself for your worst possible performance for test day, rather than to hope you can get lucky.

For potential solutions, I would advise working on your fundamentals more. There's really no point in attempting more difficult questions if you're not consistently getting easier questions correct. You might also benefit from working on timing strategies here. For instance, 1 minute per question for any question 3 stars and under when you're drilling. The lesser time allotted might lead to some initial score drops, but it'll help you focus in on the more relevant details in the stimulus and help hone your "instinct." When it comes to PTs, you should absolutely be aiming to finish the first 10 questions in 10 minutes or less.

Finally, you must review questions you get wrong in depth. You only have a limited number of questions available to you for your whole LSAT preparation, and you don't know how long that's going to take. Quality of study is always more important than quantity of study. Blind review your answers. Make note of questions that were particularly difficult in an excel file or something. Go review those questions again a couple days later.

You don't know if it is continuing to decrease today. You know that it has decreased, however because the stimulus says so. Thus, the situation we have is: Cheaper price of surgery-->More people getting the surgery-->Higher costs overall. How can this be? The cost of surgery must offset the savings generated by the reduction in the price of surgery.

There could be some accuracy in scores provided there's a sufficient absence of memory regarding the material on the test. However, I'd say it's almost never the case that you forget absolutely everything from a previous test. There are going to be questions that pop up that you do remember, and that'll technically provide you with an unfair "advantage." Therefore, I would be careful not to give those scores much weight and lull yourself into a delusional state of complacency and self-gratification that it is an accurate representation of your level. That being said, I do think there is some value in retaking old PT's for the sake of practice. I find the best practice I get from retaking PT's is strengthening my fundamentals. Revisiting previous material allows you to approach it with a level of enlightenment you previously didn't have, therefore, at least for myself, to be able to understand what's going on much better, to really see things the way you're supposed to.

To put it simply, you're attributing qualities of the whole to one individual. Just because the seven-member panel that resolved the Amlec dispute was both reasonable and fair, does that mean that every member of the panel will do the same?

The answer lies in the wording in the question. "Could be all the solos" doesn't have to mean "all." For situations where you do need all the pieces, it's very clearly stated in the question.

First of all make sure to know the common flaws and the various ways the test can present them to you. For me specifically, what really helped was to learn how to step away from the details of the argument to see what the various elements at play are doing. It's very easy to get lost in the details of an argument, especially when it is very complex. However, the core elements remain the same. Therefore, identifying the various elements and the overall structure of the argument can be quite helpful.

As Clemens_ noted above, this is a proportion vs. absolute, and it shows up from time to time. Without doing any number crunching try to understand it this way: the overall increased. A subset we don't have any idea what proportion of the overall it comprised increased. It could be that the subset made up a big proportion of the overall and its increase is what is predominantly driving the overall increase. But it could also be the case that the subset is so insignificant that even a 100% increase would drive the overall to only a 0.000005% increase. Without any indication of how much weight everything else that makes up the overall is contributing, the only thing you can really say about the proportion of the overall that the subset comprised increased.

Edit: I didn't realize this was from a 5 year old post...

Based on what I've learned tutoring SAT Reading, I've found that people who struggle with RC typically fall into two camps: you have poor comprehension, or you have poor test taking skills. "Oh, but that's the SATs and that's way easier than the LSAT," you might think. I disagree. You can apply the exact same skills to approach any reading comprehension test.

Let me preface this by saying that the camps operate on a spectrum. That means it's more like "how poor is your comprehension" or "how poor are your test taking skills" rather than a flat "yes" or "no." The higher you are on each respective spectrum, the worse off you're likely to be. Ideally, you want to be low in both areas to really do well on RC. So think of the camps mentioned above as two factors that are both required to do well on RC, and diagnose which camp you fall into by identifying which of the two you are weaker at.

I'll also say that I believe comprehension are less important than test-taking skills are. But first, what are test taking skills? Skills in this category include but aren't limited to: elimination--the most important of all skills-- skipping questions that waste time, and not forcing answers that aren't supported by the passage, i.e. making assumptions. The reason why this is the case is due to the nature of the what a "standardized test" is. Simply, tests of this nature need to have only one clearly correct answer lest people riot and complain about unfairness on the part of the testmakers. That means, you always have 4 answer choices that are wrong in one way or another. Even with a limited understanding of the passage, you can fairly reliably eliminate your way to the correct answer. So how do you even begin to eliminate answers when you don't really understand the passage? The worst thing you can do at this point is to start making wild assumptions to justify answer choices. Never force your justification upon the answer. What you're essentially doing then is changing what the passage says. The correct answer will always be fully supported by the passage alone and will never require you to make some extraneous inference. When you're analyzing answer choices to eliminate them, always refer back to what you know about the passage, even if your understanding of the passage is wrong. Consistency in your process is much better than having no basis for why you do things. You must be very critical with answer choices: even one word can make it incorrect.

The reason why comprehension matters less than test taking skills hinges on my assumption that everyone taking this test has the ability to at least identify the main ideas and the overall structure of the passage. If you can't, then I don't really know what else to prescribe than to go learn how to read. Go learn about how paragraphs are structured, what topic sentences are, how key words like "however" and "but" indicate a shift in idea, etc. Some might even suggest familiarizing yourself with various "frameworks" that certain passages in certain categories most frequently utilize. For instance, the humanities love to have passages that talk highly about how great this person is or how great their achievements are, etc. Knowing what kind of passage you're dealing with can provide you with a list of expectations that should arise within the passage. Anyways, the reason why comprehension actually matters less is that once you begin answering the questions, holes in your comprehension should slowly be filled. Maybe you were confused about the author's stance on a matter. A "what would the author most likely agree with" question might help you get a firmer grasp of what that stance could be. Anyways, unless you have supreme comprehension, you're always going to leave the passage feeling slightly confused. That's why test taking skills are more important.

-14 is a lot of questions to get wrong. I suggest you take a minute to diagnose your actual weaknesses before applying a bandaid solution to your problems. Also, have you tried solving the passages with unlimited time? See how you fare then. Ideally, you want to be able to get everything correct with unlimited time. If you can't, you definitely have holes somewhere.

Oh my goodness. LMAO I’m actually so shook right now. I can’t believe I missed that. My brain is doing weird things lately…thanks a lot for your help!

#help

Holy shit this question is actually so brutal. I'm still not sure how C is a better answer than A. I can see how C would work, but I have a problem with what is needed to make it work. I read logicalwheezoning's explanation below but it's still not clear to me.The main problem I have with what logicalwheezoning says is that A "leaves open the possibility that species with black and white coloration and few or no other adaptations are not more populous than their predators." The stimulus is completely in line with that possibilty though because it only talks about "some" species. So it should be fine that some more populous prey species are getting demolished by predators.

The stimulus only mentions prey species with few or no other adaptations enduring despite their black and white coloration that seems unlikely to provide effective camouflage. If that's the case, shouldn't an explanation that disregards adaptations altogether prove a sufficient explanation? Like, "yeah some species with black and white coloration don't even need other adaptations because there's just so many of them." I believe it's reasonable to assume that to have a populous population in the first place, the birth rate and the number of offspring produced at one time needs to be sufficiently high enough to counteract the damage done by predators. If the prey are able to replace the lost members at a sufficient rate, then surely they can be expected to endure despite suffering losses in their population. Also, the word "endure" is too vague to warrant any real conclusions. The prey species could be on an extremely slow decline for centuries, but since they haven't been eliminated, wouldn't that also qualify as "enduring?"

The problem I have with JY's explanation is that he assumes that the "seems unlikely" is referring to how it seems to humans. But based off what information? That assumption isn't supported at all because it's just as likely to have been based on data regarding how animals react to black and white coloration. Yes, even then, it would be how it "seems" to humans. But, it should be different because it's our perception of how animals perceive the colors. Therefore, it would be a much more supportable claim, wouldn't it? So why does it matter how humans perceive coloration? We could not be talking about how we see animals in the wild that are black and white and think, "oh boy that sure looks like it'd be shit for camouflage," but rather, "oh that predator species has little difficulty spotting a black and white colored prey vs. a brown and green colored one."

The biggest issue here is that we're dealing with probabilities. Just because one thing is likely to happen because of something doesn't mean you can run the contrapositive back on that. For example:

If you kill someone, it's likely you're going to jail.

You're not going to jail.

Therefore, it's likely you didn't kill someone.

However, "likely" introduces a myriad of other possibilities like the possibility of killing someone and not going to jail. As such, to reiterate: you can't run the contrapositive when you're dealing with probabilities.

What "satisfied" means is irrelevant. You can replace it with any other word, for example "rejoicing" or "giddy," and the problem with the argument doesn't change. Imagine this: somebody just told you that we have to abandon a certain proposal. To support their position they tell you that the people who support the proposal will never be (insert whatever adjective). They then proceed to tell you about specific people. What's your reaction?

Your reaction should be: Ok...? Great...? Who cares that the people who support it will never be (insert literally whatever adjective)? How does that serve as evidence to abandon a proposal? There hasn't been a single point of actual evidence to suggest why the proposal should be abandonded.

What I've heard from others is that if you can afford to, spending more time preparing for the LSAT to achieve a higher score will more than offset the inevitable delay you're going to face. And the more common advice I've heard is to take the test when you're ready instead of setting a deadline for yourself. Of course, the second piece of advice also assumes that you can afford to spend more time studying. But what @ said above is the most important; everything depends on your goals.

Thank you for your response. That makes a lot of sense. It seems I was too in my head about how if the simplification of tax filing eased compliance led to increased compliance it would somehow be a factor in determining the rank because that would be a criteria. But, as you said, since we know nothing about the criteria, we can't say anything about what impact the simplification of taxes will have on the rankings. Also, now that you've explained answer choice D so succinctly like that, it's almost comically funny how obvious that should be. I can't believe that it was just a simple matter of whether what the finance minister says will even apply to the rankings.

@ @.stephen Yoooo I didn't know you could reschedule so I just checked ProctorU and there were so many time slots available. I managed to reschedule to 7pm. Thank you so much!

#help

This question still doesn't sit right with me, and I find the explanations to be less than sufficient even after perusing the comments. The stimulus provides us with this condition: to produce the rankings of how easy it is to do business within a country, the World Bank assesses how difficult it is for a hypothetical business to comply with regulations and pay taxes. However, we don't know what factors are in play when assessing the difficulty of compliance. The premise that follows provides a semblance of an answer to that by saying that the government has dramatically simplified tax filing for small and even midsized businesses, leading us to the assumption that simplifying tax filing lessens the difficulty of regulation compliance, therefore leading to another assumption that businesses will comply with regulations more if the simplification of tax filing reduces the difficulty of complying with regulations. I believe that's reasonable. The conclusion then says that the country's ranking will improve, further supporting that second assumption. With this line of thought, here is how I approached the questions.

A) Completely useless. Who cares about the rate at which new businesses are formed?

B) This directly plays off the assumption I made while reading the stimulus. If the simplification of tax filing decreased the difficulty of regulation compliance, then more businesses would comply with regulations. If the answer to the question B poses is no, then the minister's conclusion doesn't stand because the simplification didn't make it easier to comply with regulations. If the answer is yes, then the conclusion works.

C) We see this type of answer choice all the time. Who cares about other regulations? We're looking specifically at one type of effort that can be made to decrease the difficulty of regulation compliance. Even if tax filing was the most trivial of tasks, it would still lessen the difficulty of complying with regulations. Useless answer.

D) I don't understand why we need to care about the size of the business mentioned in the stimulus. Are small and midsized businesses not businesses? The conditions for assessment deal with hypothetical businesses. Small and midsized businesses are businesses so they should be included when considering businesses in general. I feel like you can use much of the same reasoning for answer choice C to get rid of D. Even if the midsized business was smaller than the hypothetical business, given that it still is a business, why can it not be used as a comparative point? Why does size matter at all in this scenario?

E) Useless.

You're looking for something along the lines of "Permission-->/Plagiarism." A gets the relationship reversed by saying "/Permission-->/Rights," where "rights" is the equivalent of "/plagiarism."

When you take your test on 7sage, look at the top just below "Take PrepTest." Select the book looking thing third from the left and click on "standard." That should simulate what the actual LSAT looks like. All the options available for notation are available on the actual test. As for notes, that's really up to individual preference. Personally, I find it wastes too much time, both on LR and RC. The only times I do take notes is when I'm really stuck on a SA question. But, even then, I do it very rarely.

Ayo big congrats fam. You're crushing it.

The skeptic essentially says that odd behaviors in dogs are constantly happening and thus there is bound to be a case where that odd behavior occurs just before an earthquake. What needs to be clarified is what it means to behave oddly. If there is a specific odd behavior all dogs exhibit before an earthquake, then that would weaken the skeptics' claim. If there isn't a certain odd behavior and that behavior is simply any behavior that falls within the category of "odd," then that supports the skeptics' claim. That's exactly what E addresses. An evaluate answer choice should both weaken and strengthen the claim depending on which way you answer it. Also, this question does you a favor by making all the other answer choices so obviously irrelevant you can just eliminate your way down to E.

I don't know how it'll be like in August once the digital centers open, but as of now with ProctorU once you log in on the day of the test you'll see a countdown on your session. When it becomes your time to begin the exam, you'll see the "start session" option become available. Everything after should be self-explanatory. After you click that, you'll be prompted to do your security check. I believe the whole check in process takes around 10 minutes or so. You're allowed 5 pieces of blank paper. All this information and more is also available on the ProctorU site.