@YehudaNissani It's a conditional reasoning rule! Either A or B translates to /A → B.

Of 5000 individuals in the study:

• seniors (over 65): malnourish % > poverty %

• /seniors (65 and under): poverty % > malnourish %

A. Doctors are less likely to correctly diagnose and treat malnutrition in their patients who are over 65 than in their younger patients.

• Seniors are more likely to have malnutrition than /seniors.

B. People over 65 are more likely to take medications that increase their need for certain nutrients than are people 65 or younger.

• Because of meds, seniors require extra nutrition. This can increase likelihood of malnutrition.

C. People over 65 are more likely to suffer from loss of appetite due to medication than are people 65 or younger.

• Because of meds, seniors lose appetite. This can potentially increase likelihood of malnutrition.

D. People 65 or younger are no more likely to fall below government poverty standards than are people over 65.

• /Seniors are equally likely to be in poverty as seniors. This doesn't explain why there is a discrepancy of malnutrition % between seniors and /seniors.

• Let's say, using the example in the stimulus, 12% of seniors are in poverty, and 12% of /seniors are in poverty. This still leaves a question about why the malnutrition % is lower for /seniors than seniors.

E. People 65 or younger are less likely to have medical conditions that interfere with their digestion than are people over 65.

• /Seniors have less digestions issues than seniors. Digestion issues may cause malnutrition in seniors.

I was stuck in 158 for months! I got to 160+ by going through the curriculum and seeing where I had any content gaps. I memorized indicators, valid/invalid conditionals, diagrammed obsessively, etc. I also started paying closer attention to when the question stem says "except," "not," or "disagree/agree," which is a couple extra questions that I was getting wrong. Wishing you luck!

@KeeganB I was confused about this too, but I think it's still talking about the 100 first-graders. The stimulus is only applying the correlation between those who improved the MOST. Whereas (C) applies the correlation to all of those who had greater improvement, which can include both those who improved the most and those who improved relatively more than the others in the group. If there were ten students who improved the most, then the number of students in (C) must be more than ten.

This is such a good question!

Before the war:

• regular oil production, more contamination

During the war:

• /regular oil production, but more smoky oil fires and deliberate oil spills

• PAHs spewed from oil wells

Shortly after the war:

• less oil contamination, less PAHs than Baltic Sea.

There's a lot going on here, and it's asking you to compare a bunch of different things. My prephrase had something to do with maybe oil spills somehow counteracted the effects of the oil production from before the war. But (A), (B), (C) bring in this comparison of desert vs. temperate regions that only complicated things!

I first chose (C), but it doesn't explain why oil contamination is lower after the war when we would expect more contamination.

(D) does this perfectly (side note, I thought peacetime was referring specifically to the time after a war ends, but it just means any period when the country was not in war).

In the Persian Gulf, oil production and transport produced high levels of PAHs and massive oil dumping. This implies that oil production itself contributes to the massive contamination that occurred before the war, when oil production was active. Because oil production slowed during the war, there were less PAHs and massive oil dumps. So, even though there were smoky oil fires and deliberate oil spills, it does not leak as much contamination as it does with oil production. The Baltic Sea area also produces oil, so we can assume that the greater amounts of PAHs in comparison to the Persian Gulf is from the fact that Persian Gulf stopped oil production when the Baltic Sea continued.

(D) addresses both discrepancies in the stimulus, whereas (C) addresses only one.

For medical science, I'd recommend watching medical dramas for the fastest and low-maintenance way to absorb unfamiliar vocabulary! I personally love House :-)

And I second the advice to research certain passage topics because they do definitely repeat topics. You can also write down every unfamiliar word you come across and then memorize it. Even if it's something like pulmonary fibrosis, you can just remember "oh, this is some sort of disease in the lungs" without having to remember specific details about it.

Our conclusion is that it is a paradox that desirable items actually need the most protection from token bids. We expect desirable items not needing protection because bidders expect that there will be other bids and therefore won't try to low-ball. But why is it the case that desirable items need protection? It surely cannot be because they think that there are no other bids, because high desirability implies competitive bids.

I know this is a PhenLR/CausR type, but it helped me to diagram it like a conditional argument:

If protection → desirable

If an item needs protection, it implies that there will be many unreasonably low bids to prevent token bids.

If protection → unreasonably low bids

Our expectation would be a chain that is something like unreasonably low bids → desirable.

At this point, this chain sounds really weird. If someone is low-bidding, then the item is extremely desirable? Wouldn't it make more sense that extremely desirable items have high-bidders? There's more competition for bidders!

This is the paradox. Our expectation is that extremely desirable items have high-bidders. This is what (E) tells us, that buyers tend to believe that extremely desirable items need to be bid so high that it's absurd. So if we assume (E), we can conclude that it is indeed a paradox.

@CarolineKaplan My pleasure! Wishing us both luck :-)

@CarolineKaplan Ooh okay yeah, so it might be less of a familiarity thing since you've been studying for a while. I also have an issue with reading to understand, so I started logging definitions after my tutor suggested it to me. Her first language is not English, so she had to rely on recognizing patterns instead of understanding the material itself. I think it doesn't work all the time because the LSAT loves to throw curveball exceptions to every rule, but it's really helpful to keep track of the assumptions that I'm allowed to make and not allowed to make. I also realized that there were a lot of questions where I wouldn't pick an answer choice because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to conflate a concept/word so those are the ones that I try to target. For example:

1. Does not necessarily endorse

   • I got an RC question wrong that asked about the approaches between Passage A and Passage B. I didn't like any of the answer choices, and I eliminated the answer choice that stated that Passage B 'does not necessarily endorse' land restitution because the author was explicitly sympathetic to the indigenous populations fighting for land ownership. My non-LSAT understanding was that 'Oh, but he DOES endorse the position, so it can't be that answer choice' and moved on. But in the LSAT world, "does not necessarily endorse" is a very weak statement that is NOT incompatible with his sympathy. He can explicitly state that "ideally, the land should be restored to its rightful owners" AND not necessarily endorse this argument.

2. Abstract shape = nonrepresentational, replaceable, non-specific

   • This is another RC question I got wrong about Sumerian clay tokens with abstract shapes on it to represent things like sheep or metal. The correct AC stated that the shapes could have been "replaced without loss of significance". I didn't think that something being abstract means that it can be replaceable, so I didn't choose this AC. This doesn't mean that from now on, I'm immediately thinking if something is abstract, then it's definitely replaceable, but it's an additional consideration that I try to keep in my back pocket.

   There are also just a bunch of vocab words that the LSAT likes to use the less popular definitions of:

   1. Interfere:

      • I thought it was only being used to mean mean 'to prevent or block an action,' but it can also just mean 'to involve yourself.'

   2. Qualify:

      • This is one that I just noticed under a lot of the discussion posts because the LSAT loves to use all of its definitions (the 3rd definition is the one people are the least familiar with).

      • (1) To have the skill/standard necessary for something; (2) to have the legal right to do something; (3) to limit the strength or meaning of a sentence.

These are just a couple of patterns that I found! A lot of my mistakes come from eliminating the correct AC because of one or two words and humoring the wrong AC because of underlying conceptual gaps. If these are the kinds of mistakes you make, I recommend logging! That way you can also read through them and review them every once in a while as a form of light studying.

Also back to the red admiral question, whenever there are two relevantly similar entities/groups/samples being compared to form some sort of hypothesis (a lot of PhenLR, CausR, ST/WE stims have this), I would ask yourself immediately: what are the implied differences between the two entities being compared? If the hypothesis is that they're different, we need to assume things between the two entities that will allow us to conclude that they are different. Same thing with hypotheses that the two entities are similar. It may not always help you get the answer, but it helps to have a methodical approach to lean back on if you're stuck!

@Kevin_Lin It's been really helpful assessing my stats and recommending what I should focus on!

Can I ask how long you've been studying? I had a similar frustration for a while (and occasionally still do), but you eventually can grasp what kind of assumptions that the LSAT wants you to make. I've also been keeping a log of certain kinds of definitions that LSAT likes to use for a word (i.e. the word 'qualify' has multiple definitions and its second definition has been used a few times instead of its first) or certain assumptions that I just force myself to memorize (i.e. the word 'waste' is usually intended used to signal something that is not necessary, rather than what we usually associate it with, like excess or something to be discarded).

I have a similar issue with NA and being too committed to my prephrase, but it's been helping me to mentally divorce myself from my prephrase and taking everything given to me at face value. Especially for NA when the ACs are often so weak and obvious, there are many hidden defender assumptions that sound 'weaker' than another AC but are still necessary.

As for the red admiral question, you first made an assumption that the poisonous butterflies fly to evade predators, when this was never given to us in the stimulus. In fact, it is implied that the poisonous butterflies do something differently from the red admiral butterflies to evade their predators. We don't need to know what that thing is, but we just need to know that it's different from the non-poisonous ones. The researchers are basing their hypothesis on red admirals, or non-poisonous butterflies, by comparing their behaviors to the poisonous ones. For their conclusion to follow, we need to know that the non-poisonous butterflies and the poisonous butterflies are relevantly different, which is what (A) is saying.

Hope this helps! It's definitely frustrating, but the LSAT world of assumptions is learnable!

I spent almost an hour on this question, but I think I finally figured out how to diagram this (thanks to one of the tutors in this comment thread):

Stimulus:

• [favor + /violate → /passed] → /well-functioning

• Let X = favor + /violate → /passed

• X → /well-functioning

Remember for PSA/SA questions, we need to guarantee that our conclusion (/well-functioning) follows from X.

AC A:

• well-functioning → [/violate + benefit → passed]

• I eliminated immediately (A) because it mentions "benefitting" people. Just because the bill is favored, it doesn't mean that it necessarily benefits them. Our chain will not link.

AC B:

• if well-functioning → [opposed by influential + favor → (eventually) passed].

• Let B = opposed by influential + favor → (eventually) passed

• if /B → /well-functioning. We need to show that /B is true from the stimulus.

  • /B = [opposed by influential + favor] and /(eventually) passed

• The thing is, we are told by the stimulus that it MAY eventually pass, even if it's opposed by influential + favor. To say that something will NOT eventually be passed is not the same strength as it will not be passed for many years. So /B cannot be true.

AC C:

• if well-functioning → [favor + oppose by /influential → passed within few years].

• Let C = favor + oppose by /influential → passed within few years

• if /C → /well-functioning.

  • /C = [favor + opposed by /influential] and /passed within few years

• Our stimulus tells us that the people who oppose it ARE very influential. /C cannot be true.

AC D:

• if well-functioning → [passed → favor + /violate].

• Let D = passed → favor + /violate

• if /D → /well-functioning.

  • /D = passed and [/favor or violate]

• if passed and [/favor or violate] → /well-functioning

• Wrong trigger. The stimulus focuses on bills that favor +/violate that will likely not get passed. /D cannot be true.

AC E:

• if well-functioning → [/violate + favor → passed]

• Let E = /violate + favor → passed

• if /E → /well-functioning

  • /E = [/violate + favor] and /passed

• /E is true! The bill in the stimulus does not violate human rights and is favored by most AND it will likely not be passed. Therefore, since /E is true, we can conclude that this society is /well-functioning.

@ClarkMichael I can try to explain!

This is what the stimulus says:

• If healthy → macro and micro

• commercial fertilizer → macro

But (D) says:

• If healthy → commercial fertilizer and micro (i.e. grass clipping)

We are never told that to be healthy, we must use commercial fertilizer (healthy → commercial). The only things that we know are required are macro and micro nutrients. If you thought that this was the right answer, you may have switched sufficient-necessary in the conditional commercial fertilizer → macro. Given what the stimulus says, we are not able to chain healthy → macro → commercial fertilizer that would allow us to infer (D).

Whereas (C) says: commercial fertilizer is not sufficient to maintain healthy lawn if there are no grass clippings. This is very strongly supported, as we know that if there are no grass clippings, we will need to find a different source of micronutrients to supplement commercial fertilizers for a healthy lawn.

My two cents on this question:

Kevin's point that the author doesn't explicitly complete his argument really made things clearer to me. I will label the speaker's conclusion as "MP (Main Point)" and the claim that is being refuted as "OPA (Other Person's Argument)".

MP: If intend pleasure → impart truth

OPA: If intend pleasure → /impart truth

I spent so much time trying to figure out how the last sentence was supporting MP, but it's actually pseudo-supporting OPA's claim in a hypothetical situation. This is MP setting up for his argument that OPA's claim is absurd.

• If very popular (sells well) → book gave pleasure → at least some /impart truth

  ------------

• OPA: if intend pleasure → /impart truth

What MP is trying to show is that OPA's argument leads to an unreasonable conclusion. Do I understand anything about what he's trying to say about popular books and imparting some truth? No. But I don't need to!

MP needs to establish OPA's argument first before he can show that it's a false claim. In that case, we only need to link:

• book gave pleasure → intend pleasure (D)

We can also think of it as: if MP gives premises (to either refute OPA or support his own argument) about books giving pleasure, we need to link it to MP's own conclusion that intending pleasure can impart truth. Or in other words, the MP is quite poorly setting himself up for a counterargument for OPA unless he can assume that books giving pleasure → intend pleasure.

I haven't seen many stims like this, but it's definitely one I will be coming back to!

I was stuck on this question, but ultimately (D) is wrong because we don't know enough whether the intentions are entirely irrelevant. What if someone had bad intentions when they were attempting to resolve the marital problems? Would it then be reasonable for us to assume that their intentions are irrelevant to whether it's justified to meddle in their relationship?

(E) is correct because by saying that something is usually ineffectual and therefore usually unjustified leads us to the claim that if something is good intentioned and effectual, only then would this be a justified act.

The crux of the argument doesn't rely on the fact that it's well-intentioned or not, but on the fact that it's ineffectual and can cause further resentment. So removing the relevancy of intention doesn't strengthen our argument because we still need to connect effectiveness with whether something is justified.

You can retake the questions in the same order that you took them, I find that a couple months is long enough to forget material! Definitely don't touch those recent PTs until you really need them. When retaking questions, I try to focus less on the correct answer (if I remember it), and I instead go through the steps in my head very methodically and intentionally so that I can match the answers (kinda like a math proof?). It's harder to do for RC because there's less 'problem-solving' but it still helps to force yourself to reread every word, highlight intentionally, and talk yourself through each answer choice before ultimately choosing the best one.

RC Implied is also pretty similar to MSS/Fill-in-the-Blank/MC so you can practice that skill in LR. I think a couple people mentioned here that Powerscore(?) may have a mock RC passages with questions in them that you can buy as a textbook, so you can look to see if it's worth purchasing!

@Mina.G They probably won't make a video for this because it's an old PT but I can try to explain it!

P1: Gov provides insurance for individuals' bank deposits.

P2: Gov also requires banks to pay the premiums (a regular payment made to an insurance company to keep a policy active) for this insurance.

P3: The individuals primarily benefit from the insurance; therefore, gov should ensure that these individuals pay most of the premium (instead of the bank). In other words, the thing that benefits the most, should pay more for the benefits than anyone else.

Conclusion: the gov should require the individuals to pay for the premiums per their individual bank deposits.

So the individual should pay, and not the bank. There's a couple of assumptions being made here, but the main issue has something to do with the individual NEEDING to pay. The assumption is that the bank can't pay, or that the bank won't pay. This is the part we attack.

(C) does this:

Banks do not always cover the cost of the deposit-insurance premiums by paying depositors lower interest rates on insured deposits than the banks would on uninsured deposits.

Negated, (C) says that banks always cover the cost of premiums. That's all we need to know. If this were true, then the individual does not need to pay, the bank already covers the cost by paying them lower interest rates! Therefore, it CANNOT be true. We want the individual to pay!

(C) gives us that room to think that for at least SOME instances, those banks won't cover the cost. If the banks won't cover, then yes, the government should make the individuals pay. This is necessary for our conclusion!

I'm not an admissions expert or anything, but I think t100 is still reasonable within your reach as long as you remain open to options. I do believe that you're right and that you should report it on your C&F as clearly and honestly as possible, as there is a chance that it will come back to you when you apply to take the bar later.

This is what LSATDemon says about it:

Can Disclosure Affect Your Chances?

The impact of a disclosure depends on the nature of the incident. Minor issues, especially those without formal charges, are unlikely to hurt your application significantly. Admissions officers often appreciate applicants who handle such situations with honesty and accountability.

If you’re worried, apply broadly to different schools. Each school has its own approach to C&F issues, and applying to a range of programs increases your chances of acceptance.

Moving Forward with Confidence

If you’re dealing with a C&F issue, the best approach is transparency and factual clarity. Review each school’s questions carefully, seek advice when needed, and respond honestly. Remember, it is always safer to disclose when in doubt. Law schools value accountability, and a clear, concise explanation can ease concerns about minor past incidents.

It seems like you've done enough stressing over this one-time mistake, and I personally don't believe that it's as damning of a crime as literal plagiarism or copying off another person for an exam. All you can do at this point is to finish your undergraduate to the best of your ability, secure great academic recommendation letters, and score as high as you can on the LSAT. I don't think your GPA is 'wrecked' quite yet, and I think you are demonstrating an active student life with a wide range of involvement. Granted, I don't know you, and I can only speculate; but from one stranger to another, I believe you when you expressed regret for your past mistake and that you have been trying to rectify it since then.

@pjin It helps to reword (C) first before negating!

(C) The ideal bureaucracy will always have complaints about unprecedented problems.

Negated:

The ideal bureaucracy will not always have complaints about unprecedented problems.

Then our conclusion wouldn't follow because we need unanticipated problems forever to expand regulations forever, and we need expanding regulations forever to have an ever-expanding system of regulations!

If you think that you should diagram, you should diagram! Just start writing things down, even if you don't know what to diagram. Just be on the lookout for conditional indicators, and it should hint to you what to diagram. You can practice diagramming drills where you just take a bunch of conditional stimuli and diagram them quickly without answering the questions (this isn't a 7Sage feature, but you can just select conditional question types from the pre-PT100s). It might not be realistic to diagram everything during the actual timed PT, but eventually you'll be able to discern what to diagram and diagram mentally.

I think your LR can realistically go up to -1/-2 by Aug/Sept, but I think your RC may need a little more of a jump. If you're not keeping a WAJ for RC, I would recommend doing that! And take note of the type of passage and RC Question type that you're getting wrong. I like to think of RC as a longer form of LR, with mostly MC/MSS/Inference question types.

You've made a lot of progress since your diagnostic score, so be proud of how far you've come! I think that 170+ is possible, but it's also important to be mentally prepared to study beyond Aug/Sept (as someone who has been in 160s jail for months).

One more thing regarding The Loophole: it's a really good resource and handy tool! But from my experience, I would be careful about using the powerful/provable spectrum words to inform which answer to choose (logic will ALWAYS trump word strength). Knowing the strength of an AC that you need for a question type is absolutely important, but I think the more recent PTs have been starting to stray away from the powerful/provable spectrum language and instead testing more on actual conditional/causal relationships (you might already know this, but just in case other people are wondering!).

Wishing you luck fellow 7sager, you got this!

It looks like one or two of the passages in RC made you a little stuck! Don't worry about it too much, you're still averaging -1 to -3 per section and you did great on BR! I would just spend some time with those passages and try to identify the things that you missed under timed. Keep it up!

I don't know about the dual enrollment (most high school college credits i.e. AP/IB are not counted towards your LSAC GPA) but the LSAC GPA is scaled to their own metric (what courses get counted or not counted is on their website!).

My college also doesn't award A+s, and from what I've seen online, there isn't much that we can do. That's why some students have 4.2/4.33 GPAs, and some students could have 3.9/4.0 GPAs (both excellent GPAs). Unfortunately the student with a higher GPA will be recorded as such, even though it doesn't necessarily mean that a 4.2 GPA student is a better candidate than 3.9 GPA student. However, I believe that admissions are notified about whether the school awards A+s or not, and they are generally aware of this discrepancy.

Law schools will receive the CAS report from LSAC which has your scaled GPA, but I'm pretty sure that they also receive the original transcript from your school, which will have all of the information about the dual enrollment from high school and your undergraduate GPA.

Yes, but it's not that noticeable of a difference as it's accounted for already when they convert the raw score into the weighted score. So if you got the same score, you can reasonably assume that your average performance is that score.

The LSAT also includes a score band with your score, which is a range +/-4 points of your official score. So if your score fluctuates a little, it is not solely a reflection your abilities but also an assessment of whether your performance was at your best/average/lowest.

I think it's recommended to gauge where you are by using your average score, while keeping in mind that your current potential is your highest score.

I think as long as you show how you've overcome / learned to manage your mental health and how overcoming those struggles makes you a good candidate for law school, it should be okay :-)