I feel like the correct answer here strengthens but is overly strong for a NA.

For NA when we negate, aren't we supposed to be on the hunt for whether an interpretation of a negation can still be squared with the argument (so in a sense, we should be looking for the interpretation most friendly to the original argument)? And if we find it, that means that answer choice is not a NA?

In this case, the negation of D is "some of the least enthusiastic are among the most committed." But it need not be the case that any of those students who sit at the overlap are the ones who passed. We can have an overlap of least enthusiastic and most committed and, at the same time, have exactly 0 of the overlap students pass and have only least enthusiastic students who aren't most committed pass. In which case, the "proving ground" mechanism failed and the argument stands, because the mechanism fails if a single student who is not most enthusiastic passes.

Instead for this to truly be a NA, I think we needed the correct answer to say "Some of the least enthusiastic students who passed are not among the most committed." I believe this would negate to "All of the least enthusiastic students who passed are among the most committed." There is no interpretation of that negation that lets the argument stand. The "filter" the class aimed for completely worked.

What is the negation for "should/ought to do something"? As in, say we wanted to contrapose the main argument that ends with the conclusion "should return the book at the promised time". It sits wrong with me that it would be "should not return the book at the promised time" (which might then be synonymous with "wrong" in AC A). Maybe it's something like "don't have to"/"not obligated to"? So you're free to return or not return the book at the promised time...

#help

For #2B I actually think this answer choice is wrong not because of the "how to measure" part, but because it speaks of measuring "lichen growth rates" instead of just lichen growth. They tell us how they measure lichen growth, that is, by measuring the diameter of the largest lichen on a boulder. It seems they then take this measurement of lichen growth and compare it against growth rates known for a given species (citing one species typical growth rate as 9.5 mm/century) to determine how long the lichen has been growing, to date that growth, telling us when lichen first established themselves on that boulder.

For # 2E "an application of...their use in studying past earthquakes" is precisely to predict future earthquakes. The application of, the usefulness of studying past earthquakes is to predict future earthquakes, as the last sentence of the first paragraph tells us.

I don't know if I agree with J.Y's explanation of why AC A in 22 is wrong. If we take "key nutrients" to be the same as beneficial microorganisms (something that a few folks in the comments take issue with), then the actual, biggest difference between the nearby land that had been out of production for 20 years and the experimental plots that were enriched with soil from that land is that the latter was still overrun with disease organisms. How I read it is that the enrichment process made the two types of lands somewhat similar in terms of the presence of healthy microorganisms, but didn't address the disease organisms that were more rampant in the land just taken out of production compared to the land that had been out of production for 20 years.

If this is not the case, and if we can take"key nutrients" to be the same as beneficial microorganisms, then both AC A and AC B are equally correct.

Which lesson goes over transforming an "or" statement into an embedded conditional statement? #help

Do we translate "even if" (in answer choice D) any differently than just "if"? #help

Applying the likely = most translation from question #24 of this same section, wouldn't AC B translate to the following?:

A → (most) B → (most) C , therefore A → (most) C

And, if so, had the reasoning in the stimulus been A → B → C therefore A → C, wouldn't this answer choice still have been an incorrect match because we can't say an "if A, then B" argument is the same as an "if A, then likely B" argument? #help

I don't exactly agree with his support for answer choice D for #17. In my view, what he points to are undesirable consequences, not unreasonable consequences. I found the support for this answer, instead, in the first paragraph of Passage A where the author cites Saint Augustine and says"to proceed against lies by lying [the view] would be like countering robbery with robbery [the unreasonable consequence of following this kind of tit-for-tat view]." That outcome would be in-keeping with a definition of unreasonable as closer to"nonsensical."

I'm confused how we are interpreting "on average" here. Are we taking it to more loosely mean that it's what is usually the case for any specific country? So they tell us "on average" the value is 70%, and then if we refer to any random country, we just assume it's probably 70% for that specific country?

Contrast this with the strict definition of the term, which would mean we took a pile of countries and averaged their % tourism revenue going to foreigners and arrived at 70%. This wouldn't let us know the % for any individual country, but we would know that it would be impossible to arrive at this average without at least one more individual countries having a % tourism revenue going to foreigners of equal to or greater than 70%.

Considered in isolation/not with reference to the test question here, is the argument in AC B valid? The form is: A → B, likely /B, so likely /A.

#help

So, to be clear, the conclusion of this argument is the entirety of the conditional statement "if steel manufacturing plants could feed the heat they produce into thermophtovoltaic generators, they would greatly reduce their electric bills, thereby saving money"?

I find that conditional, or "qualified," conclusions like this trip me up. I'd like to study more questions with these types of conclusions. Does anyone know of some other questions that fit the bill? #help

I think there is something subtle going on here with the wording "it is not surprising" in the conclusion. On a third pass through on BR, it led me to look for a principle with a predictive component, which only D offers (with "a business WILL improve"). If the principle says x will be the outcome, then that outcome should not be surprising.

Has anyone noticed any other questions with this type of wording in the conclusion? #help

Has anyone else found any other questions that appear to hinge entirely on the distinction between an"argument" and a "claim" that J.Y. noted in this video? #help

I'm not sure I like the representation of the "aside from/except those" statement as a "carve-out." I think it might be more systematic and methodical (and apply well to games) to represent it as an embedded conditional:

LC → P

P → (/WOE→ W) (if you're a poet, unless you write only epigrams, you have wit)

Combine to LC → P → (/WOE → W)

Ariel is a lyrical composer (LC) who does not write epigrams (/WOE). So Ariel is a poet (P) who does not write epigrams (/WOE); and if you're a poet and don't write only epigrams, you have wit.

Did anyone else use this approach instead of the "carve-out"?

#help (Added by Admin)

Is there any way to diagram answer choice B in lawgic, reflecting, along with the not both rule (can't be both A and B), the new premise/fact (someone is both A and B), and the conclusion that follows (so not from Tedenco)?

Maybe it's an embedded conditional? So it would read "if someone works at Tedenco, they are not both an accountant and corporate attorney":

T —> (A —>/B)

And then we fail the necessary by saying the person is both A and B, requiring us to contrapose back to /T.

#help (Added by Admin)

I scored 8 points lower than my average PT score and 2 points lower than my diagnostic a year ago. I've been studying full time, so these results were baffling and demoralizing. For what it's worth, I had the double RC section. Going off of Reddit, it seems like the folks with that iteration of the test saw the biggest deviations from their average PT score, for some reason. (Of course, my LR training tells me this could just be a coincidence.)

@ said:

I was similar. Averaging 176 on PTs and got a 173 on my first take. I retook, felt really good about the second take, and got a 174. My goal was 177. It was a good decision for me, and I think I'll retake again, but I've been so burnt out by this cycle I don't want to think about doing it again right now. For what it's worth, extreme splitter that's been rejected at 9 schools, waitlisted at 3, (one in the teens, one in the 20's, one in the low 30's) and still waiting to hear from freaking Minnesota.

@ As someone who will be going into this next cycle as an extreme splitter as well, I'm really curious to hear how the rest of this cycle panned out for you. Also, how early did you apply this past cycle?

Does anyone know if command F is an option on the LSAC loaner tablets?

For AC A, if we want to represent it in lawgic, do we need to worry about capturing that we're talking about both people with doctorates in the liberal arts (L) and people who are interested in financial gain (C)? And if so, is it a subset/overlap situation (like we saw in question #22, answer choices A and B, from the other section of LR from this same test) or something else?

The "if" in this question is throwing me off compared to the wording "who" in the other question. Worded like the other question AC would read "would hire doctorates in the liberal arts who are interested in financial gain" rather than "would hire doctorates in the liberal arts if they are interested in financial gain." I can't tell if these are basically synonymous.

#help

I'm kinda in the same boat re current scores and score target for October, so maybe take my advice with a grain of salt. But in studying LR and looking for patterns, I've found that a different way to slice the content, rather than by question type, is by argument type which the curriculum sorta does (for example separating out questions based on formal logic and those based on empirical premises) but isn't as thorough as I'd like. So maybe if you sort and study your past questions wrong along that major axis - formal logic vs everything else - and then subcategorize from there, you might find patterns you're not otherwise seeing.

Wouldn't answer choice E (C --> MM), when added to the other premise (MM --> C), result in the bi-conditional relationship C ←→MM?

JY says E's wrong because it confuses necessity and sufficiency. But I thought it's wrong because it forms that bi-conditional which isn't useful for us in reaching conclusion.

#help (Added by Admin)

Did anyone else feel hesitant about C for #19 because it said "scientific experiments" (plural). Had they said "research" I wouldn't had an issue because the term is agnostic on how much research. For "experiments," though, I only detected one specific experiment, the study in which they generated a neutrino type and then confirmed it converted into the predicted neutrino type (in the process of which they were able to estimate the nuetrino's mass). Did anyone get the impression that this constituted multiple experiments? Or saw textual evidence elsewhere for any other experiments supporting the theory of oscillation?

I haven't yet encountered a truly satisfying explanation for why #12 is C, that is, how the relationship between these two ideas (cultural conservatism and an uncritical attitude toward Spanish language) is actually supported in the passage. My best stab at is that the text notes that the official and literary language of Spanish poetry dates far back (and, going far back, was already standardized and exhibited linguistic) (lines 10-14). Cultural conservatism as the passage defines it is in a sense an affinity for/clinging to an idealized cultural past (lines 32-34) . Presumably this idealized past includes this standardized, linguistically unified Spanish language. So to cling to the idealized past would presumably include clinging to this version of the language...and, to keep it standardized and linguistically unified, would perhaps entail not being open to outside influences and, I suppose, not being open to using language in radical and innovative ways (which is how taking an uncritical attitude towards a language is partially defined in 28-29).

Hi @ ! I attended this event on splitters, which was really helpful. I was one of the people with my hand up at the end that there wasn't enough time to get to. I tried to post my question on Twitter but haven't gotten a response so am wondering if I perhaps tagged it incorrectly (#7SageonCH).

In any case, I was hoping I could just direct my question here:

Somewhat analogous to the question that was raised about premed majors as a particular class of low GPA splitters, I wanted to ask about what I imagine is another particular class of low GPA splitters: first generation, low-income students who experienced adjustment difficulties at, at minimum, the outset of college and then atypical adversities throughout college (so no upward GPA trend to point to). Do you have any advice for navigating the application pieces/the overarching message strategy across the different application pieces for this class of splitters in general? And any pointed advice on tackling the GPA addendum, especially in trying to walk that fine line between explanation and excuse? The first-gen low income status feels like a delicate topic to dance around. Any application pieces I attempt seem to either under-explain/under-contextualize or over-explain/over-share.

I noticed the recording for a later clubhouse event (that was held 6/2) has posted on the podcast. Is there still a plan to upload this one?

Also in general, to not miss these events real-time, is it the case that the clubhouse admissions events are held about every other week on Wednesdays at 9pm EST? And once we're a clubhouse member, we don't have to worry about being among the first 100 to register, correct?