Give yourself a year, but understand that there's some cushion built into that. It's unlikely that you will maintain constant effort over an entire year. But if you give yourself a year, you're much more likely to get in at least 6 months of high quality prep.

What a wild ride this has been.

I also had the Japanese Bells LR/Econ LG/Brittain RC

Honestly, I'm feeling good. Like.... really good... It worries me a little. I know for a fact that I got -0 on LG as I had time to go back over the stimuli and my rule translations and all flagged questions.

RC felt ridiculously easy compared to the PTs in the 80s I've been taking. The passages were long and dense, but I felt like they took it easy on us with the actual question difficulty to compensate... My worst RC performances have all been in those sections where the questions have a sort of LR-esque quality to them, for lack of a better word. This test didn't have that. At all. It weirded me out and still does. I had 3 questions flagged at the end that I felt 75% on. I usually miss 1 or 2 in RC that I don't flag, but I had time left over this time so I'm hoping that since I never felt rushed, that I didn't make any dumb mistakes.... fingers crossed for -3.

LR felt fairly average. One question in particular threw me off in the first couple of questions, with a super "obvious" answer choice, and another answer choice that was verbose, but I believe correct... It was a really strange rendition of the typical answer choice for point at issue, and I still wonder if I was overthinking it. I think I had like 4 questions flagged at the end and almost never miss unflagged LR questions historically. So here's hoping for a -2 on LR.

Weird test. It was cool to see the slight differences in LG stimuli. I also noticed some uniquely-flavored LR answer choices that I thought were cool.

Thinking my best case scenario is 70/75. Worst case is 67/75. I reckon I'm flirting with 170 pending curve..... God I hope so.

If I've learned one thing in RC- it's to never ever ever choose "cautiously neutral." The writers use that phrase so much, and it's never correct. If you feel there's not really an opinion being state- lean towards agreement over neutrality. Neutrality will always be stated in passages that have the author treading the middle, and in those cases it isn't "cautious."

This tripped me up too, and I missed it. But I can see now that the statement "Every legitimate artwork that has this aim" implies existence of works with legitimate artistic aims of arousing anger. The argument assumes the existence of legitimate works having these aims for us.

Normally, if WE assume something like this, its catastrophic, but since the argument assumes it, we can just accept it and implement it in the diagram.

I also went with B. Here's my thinking, as JY didn't spend any time at all on it...

From all of my PTs, now that I think of it, the writers almost if not always introduce intermediate conclusions in answer choices as something like "a conclusion, that is not the main conclusion of the argument." I never thought about it until this question, but I'm really racking my brain and I can't seem to remember any time in which an intermediate conclusion was referenced simply as "a" conclusion.

The frustrating thing is that an intermediate conclusion IS "a" conclusion, not "the" conclusion. Argh.

Going beyond the semantics, I do see now that the test writers gave themselves an out on answer B: the "if." By simply phrasing the premise as a conditional, they prevent us from linking the first premise with "if T had whiskers" because the latter doesn't actually state they did have whiskers, which seems kind of silly because the first premise does state that. Pretty creative phrasing by the test makers.

Glad the authors didn't include an AC that delineated between "licensed drivers" and "capable adults." I feel like they got a little lazy in their wording, leaving open the possibility for unlicensed drivers, which don't have to be assumed to be "capable adults."

This is rated as an easy question, but for overthinkers- it's actually kind of sneaky. I almost discounted E because I thought "the "evidence" given kind of sucks and doesn't actually to anything to prove the babbling is linguistic. It only helps conclude that it may not be non-linguistic"

Lesson learned: since it's a method question- the "evidence" referenced doesn't have to be good. The author thinks it is evidence for their point, and that's enough. Author's POV.

I thought so too, and then I realized "oh, wait- a NA, in the absence of any other strengthening AC, actually strengthens the argument" cool question

damnit. I think i read 14 too fast as "fails to assure that the public will be protected." I missed the "assure the public that...."

The author is pretty clear that the public are basically plebes who can form their opinions on a judge's objective nature based on nothing, ergo- the public's opinion on what looks like bias is irrelevant.

well played, lsac.

I agree that JY's example there is still sort of "strong" which in general isn't great for NAs. Zoom out a little though, and just realize he's speaking conceptually. I think what he's really getting at in using that example is more along the lines of "You know the rules of basketball."

With this NA, being one of the best and not knowing the rules are mutually exclusive. Let's say you can't and don't even have to dribble- you still need to understand where to put the ball (in the hoop) to score. You still have to understand defensive rules (after all we're talking about being one of the GOATS, so you can't just be a scorer).

YES YES YES. If our premises → Then our conclusions are always NA and SA combined.

i also struggle with NAs that are SAs as well. I'm just thinking outloud to maybe contribute to my own and others' understanding, but it seems to me that the contrapositive of the stimulus' Premise→Conclusion conditional is always a NA.

Negating the premise would obviously weaken the argument. And so if an answer choice- negated- leads to the sufficient of the contrapositive being negated- that is the exact same negation as if we simply negated the premise in the argument in a way.

I think the reason he decided to write it as the contrapositive (person doesn't hold clear moral beliefs → they are unlikely to....) instead of negating the sufficient (person is likely to..... → they hold clear moral beliefs) is because of the qualitative nature of the word "likely."

Likely/unlikely is a spectrum, but we're using it in a conditional relationship. To me, since we can illustrate the relationship as either the negated suff or as the contrapositive- choosing the one that doesn't require manipulation of the language of the sufficient (since it contains a floating term- "likely") seems to make sense.

I didn't do this on the exam, and instead wrote it like I always do for unless conditionals. But now I can see that this could have added confusion for me, whereas writing it like JY did would have preserved the sufficient's language by instead using the contrapositive, and moving the sufficient over to the necessary slot.

This is a phenomenal question. I recall seeing the knowledge/fact flaw in an earlier PT and the explanation from that question popped into my head immediately when I saw this one. Unfortunately, I did still miss this one (-2), mostly b/c I didn't understand how to properly write the formal logic expression of premise-conclusion. But I learned a ton from this explanation and it really made both of the flaws sink in even deeper. Thx JY.

damn.... i was really struggling in understanding how E isn't the contrapositive of A. I thought it was wrong perhaps because A directly uses language from the stim or some ambiguity in the relationship between oppose and support. I read your comment and it's like a pile of bricks fell on my head. Thank you.

my discord buddies keep asking me to jump into Valheim. I'm like- that sounds incredible, but it's the goddamned devil and will destroy my motivation for prep.

My most guilty pleasure has been Rust. I had to retire a few months ago because it will literally eat your life if you play it. Incompatible with real life goals lol.

The assumption that restorations mean risk of losing evidence makes absolutely zero sense to me. The stim doesn't mention anything about the locations of the restorations or existing undiscovered evidence or any overlap of the two.

I'm so infuriated by this question that I'm necrobumping a 4 year old comment to say I agree 100% lol.

Fellow nurse here (traveler). I'm taking June having been studying since November, and that's only because I just cancelled my current contract to take the next 4 months off to solely focus on this. It's so difficult to maintain focus and momentum when we work the way we do. I would recommend August regardless of your goals, because you deserve to do the best you can. If you do have to work the whole time- pace yourself.

Euro trash earthworms. Kek

Another reason E is wrong (I chose E as well): the anthropologist does mention that a certain sequence could have occurred, but the researchers never actually claim anything about the sequence of events the anthropologists is positing.

All they claim is that "taboo is due to this." They literally never mention symbolism or ritual, much less if it preceded the taboo or came later.

Now that I look at E with this in mind, it would be possible to eliminate it even if you didn't realize that the anthropologist isn't actually arguing anything at all.

Do you feel you’ve developed the skill of knowing when to cut costs and just move on to the questions? I also have noticed my misses come on easier games. What I have realized about myself is that in games with fewer rules, I need to just jump in and trust my intuition. Much in the way we usually “flow” through 1-10 on LR.