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General · Posting on Behalf of a 7Sage User: What am I doing wrong?

estebanb3d194

Monday, Sep 25 2023

Take a year to become an expert LSAT tester and thank me later. The CC only provides you with the foundations to tackle the exam but the bulk of the learning comes from doing blind review. I started with a 145 and eventually scored a 171 but it took me a good amount of time to realize that the gains come from doing proper blind review.

Law school isn't going anywhere. Take your time to build your skills and just apply early next year.

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LSAT · PTA.S1.Q11- Building a space station

estebanb3d194

Tuesday, Dec 20 2022

So the argument is basically saying look we need to build an awesome space station even if it doesn't result in any new knowledge that we can't get through other means. Okay.. why should we do that??

Because, according to the author of the argument the space craft will allows us to test human durability in space (i.e. do our bones hold up the same? do funky things start happening to our brains, or blood vessels, or who knows what? )

That does make some sense but what if we never plan to send humans to Mars because we have high tech robots that could not only perform better but allows us to stay safely on planet Earth? That's what A is saying. If that is true (that we will send only robots) then the whole argument falls apart like a house of cards because then there is no reason given as to why we should build the space station anymore. That's how you know its a necessary assumption.

B says that any astronaut that we pick out of a line of random astronauts will have the typical abilities of an ordinary person. Hmmmmm, do we need that to be true? So let's say your typical person can hold their breath for 30 seconds, jumps a 1 foot vertical, and can run an 8 minute mile. Why would the argument need this to be true for astronauts?

If you negate the answer, it says that astronauts do not have those typical abilities. This means they can either be below the average or above. So would it destroy the argument if astronauts were superhuman atheltes designed to withstand liftoff and life in space? No, it wouldn't because the argument doesn't hinge on astronauts abilities at all. We don't care what their typical abilities in this argument and so B is not necesary.

Hope this helps !

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General · Can you charge your laptop during the test?

estebanb3d194

Tuesday, Dec 20 2022

Yeah you can. I don't have the best battery life so i made sure it was 100% charged before starting and then unplugged cause otherwise it overheats (-__-) and then charged as much as i could during the 10 minute break. But yes, they don't mind seeing your charger on the desk.

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LSAT · .

estebanb3d194

Monday, Feb 20 2023

Interested. I’ve also been at this for over a year now while juggling work.

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LSAT · PT 80's

estebanb3d194

Friday, Nov 18 2022

If you want to maximize how much you learn from the 80s before you go through them all in a flash, you have to do very very in depth review of everything you got wrong and I would add review of every question you didn’t complete within the target time or that simply felt hard for you.

A lot of the increased difficulty in the 80s comes from much trickier answer choices. In depth review should include you articulating exactly why an answer choice is wrong and if you want to challenge yourself, think about how you would change that answer choice to be correct with the given stimulus. This will teach you how to see the nuances between answer choices which in turn makes the whole process much much easier.

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General · random thoughts

estebanb3d194

Saturday, Nov 12 2022

I watch virtually every single thing online at 1.5 to 2.0 lmao. Probably not a good thing because when I talk to people I then feel like they’re talking too slow but it’s a habit.

What do you think is most valuable about the lsat in terms of skills you applied in law school?

Same as above, How would you have prepared for law school?

Best things and worsts things about the experience so far ??

Thanks

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Lessons · Modifiers can be Modified

estebanb3d194

Wednesday, Nov 09 2022

The Exhibit meme made me laugh and snort haha. Thank you for that.

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LSAT · grammar / linguistics

estebanb3d194

Thursday, Dec 08 2022

@ Thank you for the references !

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General · Coffee or Tea?

estebanb3d194

Saturday, Oct 08 2022

I have strong coffee in the mornings, decaf in the afternoons and tea at night to pacify the mind. Otherwise, I also have trouble sleeping. Try decaf or maybe just switching over to tea.

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LSAT · PT93.S2.Q7 - Mu mesons generated cosmic rays

estebanb3d194

Monday, Nov 07 2022

Thanks JY !

0

LSAT · PT93.S2.Q16 - most children under the age of six are egocentric

estebanb3d194

Monday, Nov 07 2022

I didn't diagramm either but I think it would work as follows:

Children under age of 6 --- MOST --> egocentric & Selfish

Children understand that animals are independent creatures ---> Least age of 6 (b/c this is the earliest they even have a shot at understanding).

Conclusion: children under 6 ---- MOST --> should not have pets

We're clearly missing a connection between the premises and the normative statement that most children under 6 should not have pets.

E builds that bridge for us.

Children who should have pets -----> understand animals are independent ----> least age of 6

contrapose: NOT at least 6 years old ---> don't understand animals ---> should not have pets

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LSAT · grammar / linguistics

estebanb3d194

Wednesday, Dec 07 2022

Did any of you find any specific resource? I'm thinking about retaking my 171 to shoot for a 174 or higher next August but I feel like I'm missing something and would like to try supplementing my studies.

0

LSAT · PT93.S3.Q25 - the claim that vitamin C is effective in treating acne

estebanb3d194

Monday, Nov 07 2022

I'll give it a whirl but weaken questions are literally my kryptonite. I ended up choosing A just because it seemed like the best answer but im always somewhat unsure on these so take my reasoning with a grain of salt.

Okay so the argument is basically first describing an experiment. They are testing whether vitamin C is effective in treating acne. Great. The author then attacks the integrity of the study by saying "Hey! your study is flawed" because some of the subjects (half of each group) KNEW what kind of pill they were taking. So let's say we have 1000 people per group. 500 of the vitamin C group knew they were taking vitamin C and 500 given a placebo knew that it was just a placebo.

This does seem to throw off the study b/c knowledge of treatment is a confounding factor in experiments. This then leads the author to conclude that we can tentatively conclude that vitamin C has no real beenfit in reducing the severity of acne. But then again we would still have 500 per group that do not know what treatment they received, so perhaps the study could still hold weight? That's kind of what was going through my head.

Okay so we need to weaken and show that its not true that we can tentatively conclude that. We better fix the study or show how that flaw in the study isn't as relevant. That's how i kind of approached the question. I'm looking for an answer choice that boosts my confidence in the original study because that would then weaken the author's position.

A - In my interpretation, this basically says hey look, even though the study may seem to have a quirk/flaw (which is debatable b/c remember that we still have 50% of participants who did not know what treatment they received), you can still trust the study because the group that took the vitamin C had severe acne and during the study they showed LESS severe acne. Hmmmm, so i took this to be kind of a counterweight to the possible objection presented against the study.

The researches would say that we can still trust the study because there is actually evidence that vitamin C is helping people with acne since those who have historically suffered the worst cases of acne saw huge improvement and has less severe acne, even than those people who dont have a history of acne.

B - Okay so those in that first group didn't take additional doses of vitamin C. So this would eliminate another possible confounding factor, which is that the first group saw a reduction in acne simply because they took extra doses of vitamin C while noone was looking.

So if this didnt happen, i guess we could say that the study wasn't flawed in this respect? although the study is about vitamin C as a causal factor when treating acne, we dk if there's an upper limit on how much they're supposed to take. Plus, after a certain amount your body doesn't even use it anymore.

Either way, this doesn't weaken the author's position at all because her objection wasn't even addressed at this point.

C - the national average is irrelevant so i got rid of it.

D - Okay so the first issue i saw with D was the indeterminacy of the some statement. Was it 1 or 2 of them? or 500 - 1000 of them?

If it was just 1-2 of them, then i feel like it doesn't really do anything. Doesn't strengthen or weaken. They'll just become anomolous data points irrelevant to our general trend.

If it was 500-1000 of them (in our imaginary 1000 person study), then if anything this answer choice strengthens the author's argument because it shows that the study is absolute poop because you weren't controlling for vitamin C intake therefore you dont have a control group lol.

E- That's fine, those individuals were already "bad" test subjects anyway because they knew what they're treatment was going to be so what difference does it make?

Hope this helps a bit and if someone else has a sharper analysis, please jump in. I really need to get faster at these.

Cheers

0

LSAT · PT93.S3.Q24 - science-fiction films are commercially successful

estebanb3d194

Monday, Nov 07 2022

The stimulus says that a smaller number of doc films are commercially successful than sci-fi films. Let's make up numbers to make it easier to see.

Let's say 10 doc films are successful and 20 sci-fi films are successful.

However, we know that overall there are more doc films than sci-fi films. So let's say there are 50 doc films total and only 40 sci-fi films total.

The conclusion says that therefore there is a higher proportion or percentage of sci fi films that are successful. and yes that's a good argument because if we have 10/50 doc films that means that 20% are successful and if we have 20/40 sci-fi films being successful,that's 50%.

So in the original argument, we went from a statement about numbers to percentages. It's like me saying I have 10/100 collectable cards, that means i have 10% of them.

C is backwards. The first thing i noticed is that C is drawing a conclusion about absolute numbers from a premise about percentages. That's not what our original argument is doing and so i eliminated it immediately.

In terms of the substance of C, it's saying that even though we have more small modern apartments, say 100, versus idk 90 victorian apartments, a larger percentage of victorian apartments have bathtubs (let's say 50% versus 45%), therefore, MORE large victorian apartments have freestanding bathtubs.

If we follow through with out example with the random percentages i chose, we would get that we have 45 victorian apartments with bathtubs and also 45 modern apts. with bathtubs. So the argument is flawed because it doesn't always work. Depends on the percentages and numbers. But either way, this is not the same as the stimulus.

B is going from numbers to percentages just like our argument.

So 20 large victorian apts have bathtubs versus 10 modern apts with bathtubs.

Even though there are 50 small modern apts total and 40 victorian apts total.

Therefore, a larger percentage of victorian apts have bathtubs. YES, it works. because 20/40 victorian apts have bathtubs aka 50% and only 20% (10/50) of modern apts have bathtubs.

Perfect match! B is also harder to see because they kind of scramble the order of the ideas around to confuse you. C also starts with a similar phrase as the stimulus (smaller number of...) but that doesn't matter. If X is smaller than Y, you can also say that Y is greater than X, so that change in language is actually irrelevant because the meaning is the same.

0

LSAT · PT93.S3.Q17 - Anarchist: People can either fight for anarchy

estebanb3d194

Sunday, Nov 06 2022

So the conclusion is that people should fight for anarchy, which allows each individual the freedom to pursue happiness.

That's in contraposition to totalitarian governments which control all facets of our life and destroy our spirit. If we knew that these were the only two options available, then the argument makes some sense because why not fight for anarchy if the other option is basically spiritual death.

The problem is that the argument fails to rule out that there aren't better options available for us. Why not fight for democracy? for republicanism? for a constitutional monarchy? etc... I think another reason its a clear flaw is because we dk if anarchy also entails certain negative consequences that would outweigh the "good."

The argument doesn't say that people's ONLY options are to fight for anarchy or tolerate totalitarianism. It says that we CAN do either of these things. That doesn't rule out other options, therefore the conclusion is flawed. I think this is the crux of the distinction but I'm happy to hear what others think. Because if it had said that these were the only 2 options available, then the argument would make sense. It would be like saying, you can only vote for either X or else Y, but voting for Y leads to death while voting for X gives you a chance, therefore you should vote for X. That would make sense.

So in a simplified version, I think of the argument as someone saying "people can either lie down or stand up, but standing up is exhausting, so people should lie down." BUT, what about sitting down? The author didn't think of that.

A - descriptively inaccurate. The argument did give us a reason why anarchy is a desirable alternative ( it allows us to pursue a personal course of happiness).

B - The argument doesn't do this at all.

C - Nope, this is saying that the premise was people should fight for anarchy and that the argument concluded that therefore totalitarianism is objectionable. This is descriptively inaccurate.

D - This is contradicted because the argument does indicate that there is evidence for the claim. It says that history shows it. It may not give us the specific examples but it is point out the fact that there is evidence.

So I think we could get to E by process of elimination even if we didn't catch the false dichotomy.

1

LSAT · PT93.S2.Q21 - Essayist: Commitment to relationships or careers is commonly held to be virtuous.

estebanb3d194

Saturday, Nov 05 2022

Hi, me again haha. I just did the PT today so im eager to discuss it.

I flagged this question as well because on my first pass, i wasn't 100% sure but okay let's tackle it.

It's a most justify question aka a PSA question meaning that we want our answer to strengthen our conclusion a whole bunch. The key is to identify the conclusion because that'll make it easier to see in which direction you have to strengthen the argument.

So the structure of this argument is:

1st sentence: Context/background info.They're just telling us that a common held view is that commitment to relationsihips or careers is considered virtuous. (This makes sense right? in life we usually see people who are committed as good apples. Okay let's see what we get next.

2nd sentence: This ends up being the main conclusion. It's important to notice the BUT which marks the pivot in the argument and introduces us to our author's position. So the author is concluding that ALL committments should be seen as morally neutral! (WOW, what a strong conclusion, they better give us great evidence to support this sweeping generalization). and also whichever answer we choose, it better strengthen this conclusion. This is our guide.

3rd sentence until the semicolon: Premise. The sentence starts with "after all" which is dead giveaway that this is a premise. So remember that this premise is in support of the main conclusion in our 2nd sentence. In simple words and connecting it back with the conclusion, this is just saying hey i believe that all commitments should be seen as morally neutral because we may be committed to things that are good or bad. (so the assumption here is that whether something is good or bad is relevant to the question of seeing something as morally good or morally neutral).

3rd sentence from the semicolon to the end: Just an illustration of our premise which allows us to more deeply understand the argument because it exemplifies the premise.

4th sentence: More support for the argument, the author is saying look there are at least some cases where committment is just defined by inertia. Meaning that sometimes we stay "committed" to things simply because we've been doing it for some time although the initial justification or reason why we did it, is no longer there. ( I think that's what they meant by this 4th sentence but overall we already know our main conclusion and so we can jump into the answer choices and look for something that strengthens it).

A - This is saying: Any commitment that is morally neutral ---> blah blah blah. Do you see why its wrong already? because the conclusion is on the wrong side. So this is immediately wrong. We need an answer thats going to say since X ----> any commitment is morally neutral.

B This establishes a biconditional relationship between committment being virtuous (---) relationship or career is good. But this wouldn't strengthen our argument about neutrality. Because if we plug this in, it doesn't make us believe with greater force that all commitmments should be seen as morally neutral. If anything, it makes me think that not all of them should be neutral.

C - This seems too narrow b/c its limited to determining whether each commitment deserves no praise, only then would the conclusion trigger that such specific committment is morally neutral. But the argument is making a much broader sweeping conclusion which is that ALL commitments should be seen as morally neutral. For this to be the right answer, we would have to know that all commitments are undeserving of praise because then it would follow that all are morally neutral. But we dont know that. There may be other reasons why this is wrong but that's what i noticed and immediately got rid of it.

D - so this is playing on that last sentence but just based on the second part of the sentence you can tell this is wrong because this answer choice would be strengthening an argument that is trying to conclude that certain commitments cannot be virtous. But our argument is trying to claim that they are all morally neutral. That's just based on a mechanical analysis. But even on the substance, this doesn't help because if we apply this to the argument then it just leads to a random implication that sometimes there are committments that have outlasted their original justification and therefore those are not virtous. But that doesn't move the needle towards the direction we need it to.

E - IF there are any (read as at least 1) commitments that are undeserving of praise ---> all commitments are morally neutral.

Okay E seems promising because the conclusion is in the correct place but now we need to make sure that we can pull the trigger on this conditional based on the information provided in the passage. If we can pull the trigger, meaning that the facts after IF are included in the passage, then we will strengthen our conclusion.

The passage specifically gives us an example of a commitment undeserving of praise (a relationship that benefits none of the parties involved). This means that we can pull the trigger and support our conclusion.

I was a little confused with E at first because I thought, well they gave us this example but does this actually mean that there ARE such examples in the real world lol. But after analyzing the answer choices, i went with E.

For these questions, sometimes the mechanical approach can be beneficial although its always MORE important to understand the argument. but just on the mechanics, once I find the conclusion, i look to see if any answer choices lead me directly to the answer choice and if the sufficient condition aka the trigger is activated.

Hope this helps. I'm happy to chat more about other questions. You can message me if you want. I'm prepping for next weekend so this is helpful for me as well.

1

LSAT · PT93.S2.Q7 - Mu mesons generated cosmic rays

estebanb3d194

Saturday, Nov 05 2022

My pleasure !

0

LSAT · PT93.S2.Q7 - Mu mesons generated cosmic rays

estebanb3d194

Saturday, Nov 05 2022

Okay so for this question its important to keep track of all the comparative language. I'm going to use a lot of paraphrasing into simple language which is what I did during my timed run.

They first introduce the little buggers called Mu Mesons (let's just call them Mesons from here on out). So we know that the Mesons generated by cosmic rays which are just outside of Earth's atmosphere are travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light. Great, let's see what else they have for us...

We then get a contrast with the Mesons generated in the laboratory (as opposed to generated by cosmic rays). They tell us that these Lab Mesons decay in much less time than it takes for Mesons to travel from our atmosphere to our detection apparatus (literally just picture a radio telescope or some other device that we have on ground to measure the Mesons that are hitting our planet).

Let's make up an example using easy numbers to understand this comparison. Let's say that the cosmic ray mesons usually take 10 seconds to travel through our atmosphere to then be detected by our devices. Accoring to the stimulus, the Lab Mesons decay in MUCH LESS time than these 10 seconds, so let's just say 2 seconds. (can you see where this is going?? if not, its okay, let's keep reading).

It then says that If the Mesons traveling through our atmosphere were decaying as fast as our Lab Mesons (aka 2 seconds instead of 10 seconds), then we would only be able to measure 1/100 of the number we actually do. So basically, we wouldn't get as many readings as we do now because they would be decaying too quickly and not reaching our device.

Now, they ask you to logically complete the stimulus.

So they told us that IF (key word IF) the Cosmic Ray Mesons we are measuring were decaying as fast as our Lab Mesons then we would only measure a tiny tiny portion of what we actually measure, what does that mean??? Well, it has to mean that the Cosmic Ray Mesons ARE NOT decaying at that rate. They must be decaying much slower, otherwise how are we still detecting so many of them.

D says just that. It says those Mesons moving at the speed of light (which are our cosmic ray mesons) decay more slowly than our Lab Mesons (aka the Mesons almost at rest).

Hope that helps. That's kind of the intuitive way of getting there.

Using conditional logic, you could use the last two sentences in the following manner:

IF those Mesons travelling at the speed of light decay as fast as they do in a lab -----> we would only detect 1/100 of them.

But since we are not just detecting 1/100 of them, you can contrapose to conclude that they must not decay as fast as they do in a lab which means that they decay more slowly which again is what D says.

I think a simplified version of the argument would be something like.

If I was a slow runner, then i wouldnt have won the race. But i did win the race. so i must not be a slow runner.

I actually didn't notice it was this simple until now lol, I just translated every bit slowly as I went on and then intuitively got there during my timed run.

1

General · PT93 Explanation videos

estebanb3d194

Friday, Nov 04 2022

Awesome, thanks !

0

General · Thanks, y'all

estebanb3d194

Thursday, Nov 03 2022

well done !!!

1

LSAT · Scored a 176 in October, thanks 7sage!

estebanb3d194

Thursday, Nov 03 2022

Congrats! You're goals.

0

General · PT93 Explanation videos

estebanb3d194

Thursday, Nov 03 2022

Same question and when will be able to take in on 7sage so we can have our analytics for said test? I'd love to take it before my exam in ten days

0

LSAT · 137 to 171

estebanb3d194

Thursday, Nov 03 2022

Congrats!!

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Admissions · Letters of Recommendations updates

estebanb3d194

Wednesday, Nov 02 2022

Following.

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Admissions · Affirmative Action Supreme Court

estebanb3d194

Tuesday, Nov 01 2022

@ I was thinking about this as well. I think that the schools would probably continue "unofficially" weighing URM status from what they glean from someone's personal and/or diversity statements. That could be one way to still inform the school that you are an URM even if the official channel (the app) is removed.

By teh way, I'm just spitballing here. I have no idea. But i am interested in knowing how this would affect the admissions process.

1

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