Congratulations, and thanks for sharing your story! When people ask if it's possible, we can point them to your post!

I think for a lot of arguments you could probably think of multiple things the author is missing, but the correct answer will only point out one of them. Sufficient assumption questions are the only ones where the correct answer needs to make the argument perfect; for all others (NA, flaw, weaken, strengthen) the correct answer only needs to address one issue, not all.

The key is that only one answer, the correct one, will point to any real "hole/implicit assumption" in the argument. The other answers will point to things that might look like holes in the argument, but are actually not (like B which is too broad to be an actual assumption).

For the trickier questions, that's actually part of the difficulty. You read the argument and come up with 3 flaws, but you read the answers and none of them match the 3 flaws you found because they are going after a 4th one that you didn't think about upfront. That's why it's important to have an idea of what the most glaring flaw might be, but keep an open mind about flaws you might have not thought about.

I don't think it's similar to WES - WES gives you an actual numeric GPA on a 4.0 scale, so it's a lot more precise than LSAC, but I would venture a guess that if you had a >3.8 on the WES scale you'd be "Superior". I know of one person who's GPA was ~3.65 and got evaluated as an "Above Average", but I'm not 100% certain that this would be the case for any WES 3.65 or just for this specific country.

The easiest way to find out would be to send your transcripts and see what happens. The CAS account is good for 5 years and gets renewed every time you register for an LSAT.

I've sent mine in this spring, even though I'm not planning to apply until next year at the earliest, just to make sure there were no glitches. The evaluation in my case took less than 2 weeks, and then you don't need to live with the uncertainty.

I don't think it's necessarily a disadvantage to not have a numerical GPA, except for the fact that you can't be a "splitter". Your LSAT has to get you in on it's own.

Let's say your LSAT is at the 25th percentile of the school. If you're an American applicant with a 4.0 you'd be called a reverse splitter and the school might be willing to take your lowish LSAT in exchange for your high GPA. For an international "superior" GPA, your GPA doesn't get reported to US news, so it doesn't count as a bargaining chip. It does of course show that you are smart and capable, so that does matter, but it's likely not as strong of an asset as a GPA above the school's 75th percentile would be.

However, if your LSAT is high and your GPA is lower, you don't have to worry too much about being rejected because you're damaging their GPA percentiles.

So I'd say unless your GPA is rated "average" or worse and you're aiming for T14, it's pretty much going to be all about your LSAT (at least in terms of numbers). The GPA will be more of a "soft" factor, like work experience, accomplishments, personal statement and such.

You are right to notice the switch from "important" to "most important". That attention to detail will yield dividends in a lot of cases. However, in this case, because people think politicians can't solve "important problems" in general, that includes "most important problems" as well, so in this case the switch is not the main issue.

The glaring gap is that the author identifies ONE thing that can make people unenthusiastic about voting, but then concludes that decreased voter turnout is EXCLUSIVELY due to this issue. It's can't possibly be due to more women working and not being able to take Tuesdays off to vote, or politics becoming so dirty that people are disgusted with the whole thing, or that people prefer to catch Pokemons in the park instead of voting. No, the author says, it's due EXCLUSIVELY to people not believing government/politicians can solve their problems.

That's essentially what answer A is saying - he's excluding other things that could be contributing to decreased voter turnout. It's a bit tricky in wording, especially because "few problems can be solved" is a negation of the stimulus "problems cannot be solved unless attitudes change, and generally that doesn't happen through government action" so you have to figure out that it does mean the same thing.

LSAT writers often use such disguises to make the correct answer trickier to spot, because it won't exactly match your pre-phrasing of the issue.

You are right about your reasons to be suspicious of B. The author doesn't take for granted that people "even remotely associated" with a drug company are going to be biased. The doctor in question is EMPLOYED by the company, not merely "remotely associated". B might have been correct if it said "author takes for granted that people employed by a drug manufacturer are unable to weigh the side effects..." So, B is out because the scope is too broad.

As for D, "fails to address" is a fairly common phrasing for a "flaw" answer. I wouldn't focus too much on the words that introduce the answer, whether they "take for granted/fail to address/overlook/don't consider etc). It's usually not the introductory words that make the answer right or wrong, but the meat of the answer. And yes, in theory to have a 100% valid argument you do need to address all the potential "flaws", or implicit assumptions. In real life we aren't usually held up to the standard of 100% valid arguments, so if you say "My cat was left home alone. Now my furniture is all scratched. That darn cat scratched all my furniture!" most people will accept the argument and go along with the implicit assumptions that your cat is not declawed, that the furniture was not "all scratched" before you left and that nobody else had access to the apartment to generate the scratches. But if that was an LSAT argument you would need to address all these assumptions for the argument to be valid.

@danielznelson160 I'm all for waiting until you're 100% ready, but I think the reverse of that coin is that unless you're consistently scoring 180 you can make yourself think you're not ready yet for way longer than it would be useful.

At some point you have to put on your showtime clothes and face the beast in the real arena. You've studied for 2 years, you're probably running low on fresh PT's and it's therefore becoming more difficult to assess exactly how close you are to your goal. You've given the basics time to sink in, and you've practiced them on a lot of real PT's, both fresh and repeats, and your scores on fresh tests appear to be within your desired range (3 points above the "minimum acceptable" is probably right in the middle of "acceptable").

I don't think an extra 3 months of studying in your specific case would outweigh the benefit of having three chances this application cycle. NB: this is not advice I'd give to someone who said "I've been studying for 10 weeks, and I'm scoring 10 points below my goal, but I did get as close as -3 points on a repeat, and I really want to take September just to see what this test is like; I can always take December if it doesn't work out". To those people I'd say wait, but you're not those people. You've approached your studies with a slow and steady wins the race mentality, and you've put in the time. Realistically your "bad scenario" is probably that you score at the low end of your acceptable goal. In that case you have a decent score in your pocket to apply early and you can take December with a lot less pressure to try and get an extra few points. The "good scenario" is that you score in the upper half of your range and you get to forget all about the LSAT come October.

Go get them!

The LSAC doesn't calculate a numerical GPA for internationally educated applicants (undergrad outside of US and Canada). They use a credential evaluation outfit called AACRAO to look at your transcript and evaluate your GPA as Superior, Above Average, Average or Below Average.

AACRAO does this by converting each one of your grades into one of these categories: Superior=A level work

Above Average =B level work

Average = C level work

Below average=D and lower level work

Then they use some averaging algorithm to come up with the final overall evaluation.

AACRAO has their own way of assessing what constitutes, for example "A level work" for each country based on their previous experience with transcripts from the same country, so the same "grade" doesn't necessarily always convert to the same category.

If two countries have grades from 0-100, but in one country only the top 1% of students get >90 and an additional 10% get 80-90% and in another country 30% get >90% and another 20% get 80-90%, the same grade of 80% might be evaluated as "superior" in one case and "average" in the other (I'm making these grades up, there's probably not quite this big of a difference between countries, but they do take into account how your grades compare to other students in your country).

The LSAC does attach a copy of your transcript to the report, so AdComs can look at the "native" grades and courses you took as well.

Not having a numerical GPA can be a blessing or a curse - for an American graduate there might be a big difference in outcome between a 3.8 and a 4.0 GPA, but a foreigner is likely to get the same "Superior", so small differences matter less. If you were closer to a 4.0 you'll get less of a "boost" from your GPA, but if you were closer to 3.8 you'll get less of a penalty.

The lack of a numeric GPA makes your LSAT that much more important - that becomes the one solid number to "hang your hat on". You can't control how LSAC evaluates your GPA, but you can control how you do on the LSAT, so focus your energy on that and aim to do the best you can.

I think it would be very difficult for us to help you with this specific question, because the majority of people on this site have a different goal in mind and the rankings are also catering to this same goal -- to get a JD and practice law in the US.

If I understand correctly, you are going to be enrolled in a Masters program in France and have the opportunity to spend a year at a law school in the US on an exchange. Presumably the choices are limited to the schools your French university has an exchange agreement. I don't know a ton about French universities, or about the French law market, but from what I could gather from friends of mine who have done ERASMUS type programs within the EU, the fact that you did the exchange matters more than where exactly you went, unless it was somewhere really prestigious like Oxford or Sorbonne.

For those purposes, I would say all the schools on that list are going to have a similar amount of name recognition in France (they are good US/Canadian schools, but not Harvard or Yale). Whichever one you choose, you'll benefit from having done an exchange in the US/Canada. So unless your professors (who have more insight than me in what matters to French universities and employers) advise you otherwise, pick a place where you'd want to go and spend a year.

USC is in Los Angeles - obviously a lot of people on 7Sage love that, but LA is going to be very different from anywhere in Europe. Plan for a lot of driving. You might love it, or you might hate it - it won't be boring for sure and it's likely to be the most "different" of all the places on your list.

Montreal, McGill, BU and Brooklyn are all in major East Coast type cities. I'd take east coast over LA any day, but that's because I've already done Southern Cali and it wasn't my cup of tea. I'm still glad I got to experience it for a few years.

Montreal is likely to be the friendliest to a French speaking person - that might be a plus, or a drawback - maybe you want to be immersed in English only.

Vancouver is one of my dream cities - upper west coast, gorgeous surroundings, awesome city. It would be very far from France, so it would be harder to visit home (that's only a problem if you're planning to go back and forth a couple of times).

Good luck - it will be an interesting year wherever you go!

Yeah, this would be a lot easier to explain with a whiteboard....

Generally, we notate left to right (with the exception of say, problems with "floors" or "shelves" where it might be more intuitive to notate bottom to top.

Because of the way we'd write on a number line, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, it makes sense that when you write:

A--B--C--D you mean A before B before C before D (so A can be 1, B can be 2, C can be 3 and D can be 4).

So, however you arrange your number line (1 is most expensive and 4 is least expensive, 1 is tallest 4 is shortest, 1 is smallest 4 is biggest and so on), you make sure that the "tree" follows the same direction. In most cases it's intuitive, but not always.

Example:

if 1 is shortest and 4 is tallest, then

A--B--C--D means D taller than C taller than B taller than A OR A shorter than B shorter than C shorter than D

If 1 is tallest and 4 is shortest, then

A--B--C--D means exactly the opposite, D shorter than C shorter than B shorter than A OR A taller than B taller than C taller than D.

Just make sure you notate consistently between the tree and the diagram in these trickier problems.

As far as "reading" your tree, the best trick to remember is that you can only infer relationships between things that are connected WITHOUT a change of direction.

A--B--C--D

\

E--F

You can't say anything about the relationship between F and D, because you can't get from F to D without changing direction (go back from F to E to A, forward from A to B to C to D). So, F can be either before or after D (unless there's another rule that prevents that).

But you can say that F is after A, because you can go just backwards from F to E to A, all in one direction.

I think you'd benefit greatly from the Starter package, JY does a great job explaining these things, but if you can't afford that, look up his free explanations to a few of the relative ordering games - it's a lot easier for it to "click" if you see it in action (and JY has a whiteboard :-)

@jhaldy10325 makes an excellent point - it all depends on how far you are from your target score. If you're already there or slightly above, keep PT'ing 2 a week and you won't run out of material. It's important to get into those 70's sooner rather than later, especially if you struggle with timing in LR - I found the 70's LR not necessarily more difficult in terms of the logic, but quite a bit more time consuming with longer, hairier stimuli. If you are close to your target scores on newish tests, I'd say you don't need to save all that much material for a retake - if you score substantially below your potential, you will know it's not lack of knowledge but a failure of executing under pressure - you can work on shoring that up with retakes.

If you're not in the ballpark on pre-60's tests and you find that your scores drop even further once you move to the 70's, you'll need to be thinking long and hard about taking September at all, because you'll be almost guaranteed a re-take (and 7Sage is big on not wasting takes).

As far as drilling, I wouldn't cannibalize fresh tests for drills - just drill retakes (or really old tests) with shorter time constraints. If you're only missing a couple in BR, you probably need to work on you timing/skipping strategy. It's probably not a matter of "retaining the stimulus" but rather of underconfidence picking your answer or not enough practice quickly eliminating wrong answers. Try to make yourself go 25 in 25 ( this includes skipping, so you don't actually have to answer 25 questions, just go over them), then take another 5-10 minutes (5 for retakes 10 for fresh) to go back over questions skipped/questions circled for review. This will make sure you don't miss any softballs because you ran out of time, and it would force you to pick your answer and move on - this can sharpen your "trap spotting" instincts quite nicely. And you'll have 10 minutes on a fresh test to attempt the hardest questions without worrying you won't finish the easy ones.

In your example

Q--R--P--L

l

G---F

I'm gathering that the "character" between Q and G is meant to represent some kind of connection between Q and G? But unless the game allows for equality (Q at the same time as G), I'm not sure what kind of connection it would be.

There are three ways I can envision the tree looking:

1.

Q--R--P--L

\

G--F

(at least the way it looks on my computer) would signify Q before R before P before L AND Q before G before F

2.

Q--R--P--L

/

G--F

Would be Q before R before P before L AND G before F; Additionally, G before Q.

3.

Q--R--P--L

G--F

Would be Q before R before P before L And G before F; No relationship between the two rows

I realize this may look a mess and very different on a different browser. I'm not sure how you do a tree on more than one line....

In none of these scenarios F or L can be first (at least not in a typical left-to-right notation that most people use where first is on the left and last is on the right.

Q and G are the only ones that can be first in the third case; G is the only one that can be first in the second case. Q is the only one that can be first in the first case.

L and F are the only ones that can be last (in all cases).

Does any of the three notations look like the example you're trying to figure out?

I think the confusion might come from not quite understanding what the stem is asking you to do. Basically, it's saying: Which of the following statements (answer choices) would make the stated conclusion be true, given the two premises (garnished with a lot of junk, granted).

It's really just a combination of two SA questions in one.

The first one can be boiled down to:

Premise: Sara would find the forwarding helpful.

Conclusion: It would be laudable for the Jacksons to forward the number.

What's missing from here? What can we insert between that premise and that conclusion to make the conclusion true?

"It is always laudable to do something helpful".

Now the first part of the argument would read: Sara would find forwarding helpful; it is always laudable to do something helpful. Therefore it would be laudable for the Jacksons to forward the messages.

The second one can be restated as:

Premise: The Jacksons didn't lead Sara to believe they will forward the number.

Conclusion: It wouldn't be wrong for the Jacksons to not forward the number.

What can we insert in the middle there to make the conclusion true? Something like "it's never wrong to do something you didn't lead people to believe you would do" would be very similar to what we did for the first half. (/lead to believe will do --> /wrong not to do)

Alas, they are not going for that; they are going for a little twist: "wrong to not do something only if you led someone to believe you would" (wrong not to do --> lead to believe will do). This is essentially the contrapositive of what we were expecting - a pretty common trick the writers use.

B doesn't bridge the gap because stating "it's laudable if it's not wrong" doesn't deal with the possibility of "well, what if it IS wrong?". The premises ONLY tell us that Sara would find it helpful and that the Jackson's didn't promise anything. The premises don't tell us if any of it is wrong - the concept of wrong only comes into play in the conclusion, and that's why you need a bridge. Answer B connects the two parts of the conclusion with each other (laudable and wrong), but it doesn't connect the premises with the conclusion ("helpful" and "not promised/led to believe" to "laudable" and not "wrong"). Answer A is the only one that does that.

So, this is a very long winded stimulus and "which principle would most justify" questions are not the most common, but at the end of the day it's a Pseudo Sufficient Assumption question, so we have to treat it the same way we'd deal with an SA, except with a less "airtight" requirement for the correct answer.

In all that long stimulus, they give you essentially two useful premises.

1. The Jacksons didn't lead Sara to believe they would forward her number.

2. It would be helpful for Sara if they did forward.

Then you have a two part conclusion:

It would be laudable if they did forward the number, but it wouldn't be wrong if they didn't.

You have to find the correct answer that bridges the gap between the premises and the conclusion, and it's easier to do it if you separate the conclusion in it's two components.

a. It wouldn't be wrong if they didn't forward the number

b. It would be laudable if they forwarded the number.

Answer A bridges premise 1 to part a of the conclusion (not being helpful would be wrong only if you led the person to believe you would be i.e not forwarding the messages would only be wrong if you led the person to believe you would) and premise 2 to part b of the conclusion (it is always laudable to be helpful i.e. it is laudable to forward the number because it would be helpful for Sara if they did)

@476.rizeq But...you're a sage lol. Why are you retaking if you don't mind my asking?

I don't mind at all - sometimes I ask myself that. I'm aiming for HLS and I have an international GPA, so I'd like to be at least at their median for the LSAT - I'm sure I can woo the AdCom with my scintillating personality, my breathtaking achievements and my outstanding diversity, but I'd rather have the numbers :-)

And I also secretly like the LSAT - After nearly a year it's become like an intellectual hobby and I look forward to my daily LG practice and my weekly PT's.

I'm implementing this as we speak. I also found that the pressure on test day makes 35 minutes seem shorter - I never struggled with timing during PT's, but I did during June's administration. Because you know the stakes are high during the real thing, I believe there's a tendency to linger just a few extra seconds on each question "just to make sure" instead of moving right along like you would in a PT. Those few extra seconds add up to a few extra minutes per section, and for me that was enough to push me to go uncomfortably fast toward the end of the section (I started reading passage 4 after the 5 minute warning, for example).

So for September I'm practicing with faster timing - I'm trying for 28 minutes on retakes and 30 minutes on the few "fresh" tests I have left (they are all in the 20's).

I'm hoping that by doing this for several months I'll reset my internal pace to something that would leave enough "breathing" room for test day, nerves and all.

I can't imagine anybody feeling offended by being asked to write a letter while the memory of the student is still fresh in their mind, even if the letter only gets used a year later.

Start as soon as you can, that will give you the best chance to find the most enthusiastic writers you can, and it will give them enough time to give you the best letter they can.

Good luck!

@thecubicleescapee957, congratulations on following your passion. You are an inspiration to all of us sitting here waiting for our big brass balls to grow already!

I do an abbreviated version of the Memory Method for RC - that is I stop for a few seconds to summarize the paragraph before moving on to the next one (in my head, not on paper). I don't think it uses up too much time. I wouldn't do a "full" memory method which involves writing down a summary of the passage - I think the time spent would outweigh the benefits in that case.

Hi @vduran1988561 - the advice above is all solid, and I fully agree with all of it, especially no more PT's until after the curriculum, no mixing learning sources for the time being, taking your time with the lessons, doing it in order and paying attention to the problem sets. You have the Ultimate+ package, so you can save a few of the problem sets at the end of each lesson to drill after you start PTing and you identify your remaining weaknesses. You don't need to finish ALL the problem sets to cement the material in your mind, but it's important to do at least 2-3 sets.

On a separate note - I noticed a few turns of phrase in your posts that suggest that perhaps English is not your first language. I apologize profusely if this is a completely unfounded and offensive assumption - it's completely possible that you are just typing quickly and making changes here and there that make some words appear out of place. But, if you are an ESL student (and even if you aren't, but you find the RC section difficult) set aside some time to read dense materials in English in your spare time (I believe people recommend The Economist and Scientific American). Reading any material, especially if you're reading it as if it were an LSAT passage, is, even for native speakers, a good way to practice reading faster and reading for structure without using up precious PT's.

You now have your diagnostic, and there's nowhere to go but up - Good luck!

@jjwang120271 A further question: do you recommend I do drills (i.e. q-type drills) alongside the core curriculum?

The curriculum already includes some drills at the end of each chapter, under the heading of "problem sets" I think the problem sets included with the starter package should be enough to consolidate the basic understanding of the curriculum. Once you move into the PT phase you can use the analytics to identify your areas of weakness and drill those further. At that point you can either upgrade to a higher package so you get more problem sets (you should have a good idea of how much you like 7Sage and how useful you find it by then) or you can use the question bank to make your own problem sets by filtering for the specific type you need and the degree of difficulty you need to make them appropriately challenging.

Yeah, a new "old" PT would work as well - something that's not too dissimilar with the ones you've taken so you can compare your feel about the test on an apples-to-apples basis. If you've only done 60's and 70's before then a 30 might feel either easier or weirder, but if you've done a bunch of early ones before you'll be able to get a fair idea of where you stand after the hiatus.

The starter package contains exactly the same curriculum as all the other packages, so you should be well covered with learning the fundamentals. I would say that it's VERY valuable for both LG and LR, with a solid "build from the ground up" approach to both, as opposed to giving you shortcuts that you need to remember. The RC section is more of a hands on demonstration rather than a lot of theory, but that's mostly because there isn't a lot of theoretical background on how to approach RC, other than "read for structure, not for content". That being said, watching JY go through passages and questions is very helpful in seeing this concept in action, as well as learning how to quickly eliminate wrong answer choices.

If you want to get into more nitty-gritty analysis for RC, you can supplement with the LSAT Trainer book, which has (imho) the best approach of all the LSAT books out there when it comes to RC.

As for the prescribed PT's you can certainly substitute the PT's you have in the place of the recommended ones (with the loss of explanations for the sections outside of LG). But we're all here to help if you get really stuck on a question.

One word of caution if you decide to go the prescription/supplement way to alleviate insomnia and anxiety - make sure you are well used to taking whatever you'd be taking the night before the test. Everything you want to try for the test, try for at least several PT's to make sure you're not adversely affected.

And whatever you do, don't take the exam until you're ready. This is your third and last take for two years, so it has to be right. From where I'm sitting, doesn't seem like September will give you enough time to be properly prepared, just because the curriculum alone will take that long and you still need time for PT's. If you have to reschedule/withdraw, yes, that's going to sting financially, but not nearly as much as scoring well below your potential will, in terms of scholarship money and job prospects after school.

Hi @40450.parham - welcome back!

I think you can start "easy" by re-doing one of the PT's you've done before to assess how much, if any, the break has impacted your standing. Pick one you've done a long time ago and you won't remember the answers, and take the score with a grain of salt, because it's likely to include an LG section you've already proofed, and that alone can push your score up significantly. The point of this PT would just be to assess how you "feel" about the questions. Do you still remember what to do when you see an NA question? Are flaws as clear as they were before? Are you struggling more to remember how to diagram an "unless" statement than you did before the break? Did you remember to check each answer for potential words that give it away as a trap?

If you conclude you haven't lost much ground, then you can proceed with your studies where you left them. If not, pay special attention to the skills that have gone rusty and focus on those first, either by revisiting the curriculum if they are fundamental skills, or by drilling if they are more "strategic" skills like identifying trap answers and skipping time sinkers.

For comparative passages, and ONLY for those, I actually quickly skim over the questions first and pick out the ones that mention a single passage. I write a big A or B next to the question to know which passage it belongs to. I also make a note of the questions of the type "passage A mentions this but B doesn't" or viceversa.

I answer the "single passage" questions right after reading the corresponding passage.

For the "A mentions B doesn't" I cross off the ones A doesn't mention as soon as I read A, and work through the remainder after I finish B.

I then answer the questions that refer to both passages (main idea of both, Passage A is more what than passage B, the two authors would disagree about which of the following, and so on).

I guess that's pretty similar to @jhaldy10325 's strategy.

It helps answer the "nitty-gritty" questions while the relevant passage is fresh in your mind, so you can then concentrate on the more general comparative questions without being afraid of forgetting some details.

Congratulations! Take a moment to savor your achievement before diving right back into it!