ALSO THANK YOU FOR ALL THE KIND WORDS!! I love this community so much.

@ebs1995601 said:

Thank you so much for the advice!

For the Loophole's basic translation drills, how long did they take you to do starting out? They're taking me an hour and a half to do a single section, which is super discouraging -- I feel like I'm never going to get faster.

Were you stopping to check your translation after each stimulus? That's what I've been doing since that's what the instructions for the basic drill say to do, so I know the timing is a little off due to that; but even w/ taking that into account, it feels like I'll never get it down to (35 mins. )_((/p)

Honestly I never got down to 35 minutes.. I am a slow writer!! I had similar timing issues so I did the timed BTD stopped the timer and checked them after. This got me to 45-50 minutes. The self-check thing (idk what the actual name of it is) on the website I found helpful. Basically it asks you to keep track of how many times you had to go back because you forgot something, how many errors you made, etc.

Using this as an indicator for growth allowed me to focus on quality of study over beating the clock and was much more encouraging as I was seeing improvements even if my timing was not improving.

I would not be discouraged by your timing. If you are seeing improvements with retention and understanding on the first read of the stimulus THAT is what translates to a better score, not how quickly you can write or check your answers.

@theresazach829 said:

This is so encouraging, thank you. I also am pretty convinced by now that I should buy the Loophole LR. My LR issues center around timing and the questions with the most difficultly (with my nemesis being Flaw-descriptive weakening). Would you say the Loophole has good strategy for these issues? Would I benefit just as much from drilling what 7sage provides? I am consistently scoring -7 on LR and hope to bring that down to -4 or -3 by the April exam. Thank you again for sharing your success, this is almost exactly the journey I hope to have. Good advice on signing up for consecutive LSATs.

"Would you say the Loophole has good strategy for these issues?"

The whole idea behind the Loophole is to train your brain to 1) have an intuitive understanding of the stimulus the first read through and 2) immediately pick out a necessary assumption in the argument. This is where anticipating the answer choices comes in. Many questions in LR are just a variation on understanding what necessary assumption has been made to connect the premise to the conclusion. If on your first read through you understand the stimulus and the gap (loophole/necessary assumption) that's been made it becomes a lot easier to know what you're looking for in the answers without being distracted by decoys.

For example with flaw-descriptive weakening questions if on your first read through your brain is trained that way it becomes a lot easier to zoom out from the specific NA you intuitively picked up on to describing what assumption was made more broadly. If your brain immediately upon reading the stimulus goes "what if Lisa's views do not represent the whole club's views?" then it's easy to jump to "assumes that one person represents the whole group" once you read the question stem. The answer will be some variation on that wording.

I cannot overstate how valuable it was to train my brain to immediately see NAs in an argument. So many questions are variations on this understanding. Training your brain comes from the translation drills and these are very very tedious drills.

This book is by no means a magic wand but a tool that really worked for me personally. But it took a lot of effort.

In regards to timing The Loophole allowed me to get easier-mid range questions right faster, which allowed my to spend more time on the tougher ones. You will not anticipate answer choices on everything but the ones that you do frees up time for tougher questions.

"Would I benefit just as much from drilling what 7sage provides?"

That is such a personal question that I am not sure if I can answer fairly. Personally 7sage did wonders getting me from 148 to my 164 - using the Loophole in tandem with 7sage pushed me to 169. The thorough BR advocated in 7sage was extremely valuable for me and I definitely recommend writing out your thought process for why one answer was right and why all others were wrong for questions that you are struggling with. That being said the retraining and "back to basics" approach that a deep read of The Loophole allowed me to do definitely made something click that got me that final score jump.

WOW I AM SORRY FOR THE LONG RESPONSE

Basically The Loophole is not a magic wand neither is 7sage but both (combined with many hours and grit) were the tools that worked wonders for me personally, and based on the amount of similar acclaim from others I am sure you will get something out of as well.

@lexxx74569 said:

Thanks for sharing! A lot of helpful tips here, especially the test taking strategy part.

Are you applying for the 2020-2021 cycle?

I am applying for a Sept 2020 start - the Ontario system works a little different than the US - all schools have an application deadline of Nov 1st with a final LSAT acceptance date of Jan 2020 so I technically applied before writing the LSAT which was definitely risky

Thank you - this is helpful!!

What stumped me on this is that the stimulus said the amino acid tends to break apart in a non-reducing atmosphere - I waffled between A and B then picked B.

If it tends to break apart it might not, and if one amino acid was sufficient to start life then it could happen despite the low chances.

HOWEVER earlier it was stated that amino acids do not readily form (read do not form) in the non-reducing atmosphere - you cannot take a 0% chance of forming and a 1% chance of not breaking apart and say there's a chance it will form and not break apart .. we started with a 0% chance.

Furthermore for A the explanation that there was a pocket of the ideal atmosphere is SO MUCH MORE SATISFYING - if the main issue was the non-ideal atmosphere, and now we have pockets of the ideal atmosphere, problem solved.

I chose C because no one uses travel agents so their lack of knowledge on the issue would be irrelevant ..

@drbrown2259 said:

D is wrong because it is inaccurate. The argument doesn’t presume all reworked music is always published on the internet.

If D was changed to say that it overlooks the possibility that reworks could be published in a non-internet medium (like a CD) it would still be wrong because the conclusion is specifically talking about music on the internet. The reason I bring up this hypothetical is because it is kind of a negation of what D is saying.

This question tests your ability to quickly identify that percentages of people doing an activity =/= volume of said activity.

THANK YOU that totally made it click.

The holy trinity of my LSAT improvement has been: 7sage, The Loophole by Ellen Cassidy & rest.

Diagnostic was 153 and I scored my first 168 within 4 tests. What is important is that you truly interact with the study material not just PT/review, PT/review, etc. - do the practice/drills/extra questions that each resource suggests. Make sure you are living a balanced life so you do not burn out.

Great idea - thank you!

Will do - that definitely sounds like the safest bet!

For #4 another point about C: the issue is not that the methods for testing the safety of this technology are poor (quality control issue) it's that (according to the passage) "are likewise unassessed" - the issue is not that the methods for assessing safety are faulty it's that they are non-existent until a major disaster strikes

I got tripped up by "the reason for this is probably" - I took it as introducing a premise supporting the conclusion of the first sentence instead of introducing a hypothesis/conclusion. Because of the subject matter the structure was not intuitive so I turned it into a Boomer think-piece:

The world is bananas! The reason for this is probably because Millennials love avocado toast. To see this consider they spent $10 a week on toast when they could be putting $1000 a week into savings for a house. Thus, if Millennials do not stop eating avocado toast the housing market will crash spiralling the world into further chaos.

"The world is bananas!" is clearly the phenomenon that no one disputes.

The hypothesis/conclusion that the rest of the argument is trying to support is that Millennials loving avocado toast is the culprit of this phenomenon. Everything that follows is supporting that hypothesis/conclusion.

In other news I 100% just ate breakfast.

I 100% fell for the "most" "often" distinction trap. I tried to match grammar instead of mapping it out. Obviously not how you get questions right.

Flipping between B and E - answered B and obviously got it wrong

B:

1) you can negate this and have the argument still holds - new businesses coming in could counter the loss of the local industries even if they were primary to the region's economy

2) the use of "MOST" which means we could exclude that whole answer choice from our specific region of natural beauty

E:

you cannot negate this and have the argument still hold - if factors harmful to some older local industries discourage other businesses from relocating to that region than that region will FOR SURE experience an overall loss

Lesson: when flipping between 2 answers on an NA question negate them both and see which holds (also pay attention to use of "most")

P:

- today only a handful of different strains of crops are planted

- crops lack the diversity they had generations ago

C:

- a disease that strikes a few strains of crops would DEVASTATE food supply (as opposed to a few generations ago

A: irrelevant - does not attack the bridge from the premise to the conclusion - we are not talking about crop diseases that would wipe out food supplies of the past

B: if crops can be replaced QUICKLY from seed banks that store MANY STRAINS of those crops this directly goes against the idea that food supplies would be DEVASTATED

C: so so irrelevant - the argument and conclusion is not focused on crops of the past - this could be true and the argument could still be true this does nothing to weaken the argument

D: once again completely irrelevant - human preference never comes into the argument

E: just because today's crops are more resistant to damage from insects and weeds DOES NOT MEAN they are any less vulnerable to disease devastation - once again irrelevant

I chose E knowing it was wrong because I viewed them all as wrong - for some reason it did not click for me that B directly weakens the bridge from the premise to conclusion. However I could articulate why all the others were wrong.

Lesson: if time is ticking for the love of the LSAT pick the once answer you are unsure about not the 4 you KNOW are wrong. Woof.

premise:

B is a subgroup of A

C includes all A's except those that are also D

B is not a subgroup of D

conclusion:

C includes B

A) B (all prepackaged foods) is a subgroup of A (things that cause a risk of tooth decay)

C (the nutrition foundation) excludes all B's that are not D's??

already off the rails and gets worse - cross it out and move on

B) B (coreopsis) is a subgroup of A (perennial)

C (the garden club) includes all A's except those that are D (shrubs or not native)

B is not a subgroup of D

C includes B

delicious

C) B (the windsor coalition) is a subgroup of A (community organizing to discourage overdevelopment)

C (the neighbourhood association) includes A's except those that are D (threatening regional economic growth)

C includes B

how do we know this? we weren't told that B is not a subgroup of D!

D) B includes A

C excludes D

already strayed from our format - C needs to include A

E) B includes A

C includes B's that are D even if F

what's happening here..

I totally think that would make it a right answer. "Motivated by personal gain" and "commercially viable" are different concepts (I conflated them and got the question wrong). In reality as JY stated the commercially viable bit is a sub-premise of what it means to be motivated by personal gain and is not actually related to the main argument.

You could take the whole last bit out and it would still be a flawed argument - the commercially viable bit is not at all related to the main argument.

Substituting that for "motivated by personal gain" directly points out the flaw.

I read the question stem as "which one of the following is also true" which was my first big mistake.. second was assuming I could accurately parse through the grammar without mapping it out.

OPA: IP→FT

P: IP→FI→ID

C: not IP→FT

what I should have been looking for was a not both rule between FI and FT (answer C)

mapping it out makes everything so much clearer

Follow up! Even if genetic heritage and social behaviour were independent you would still need to make the assumption that genetic heritage was not THE factor (over social behaviour) in this instance. This appeals to our common knowledge but is still an unspoken assumption in the passage.

I too picked D because I thought it sounded right instead of B which I was fully aware destroys the argument when negated. Brutal.

When waffling between two NA answers negate them!

- B when negated destroys the argument - it literally says the pattern of behaviour IS genetically predetermined

- D when negated "the social behaviours of macaques are not completely independent of their genetic heritage" just means the two can influence each other - the two could influence each other but you need to make the assumption that the influence of genetic heritage does not necessarily have to be a factor of influence (when looking at the timeline of a few years or decades) to destroy the argument - in other words literally choice B

The strong wording of D seduced me and made me forget that it is an NA question not a SA question so strong wording isn't necessarily necessary