I actually have the same problem---give me a tough science passage or a verbose humanities one and I'm all set. However, for me it comes down to preference of subject matter--science and basically anything in humanities is great; Econ is the worst for me for whatever reason. Do you find that it could be partly a problem of subject preference? Another issue for me is that sometimes with easier passages or subject matter I'm very familiar with I just fly through the passage but don't actually take the same care in really reading through them so when it comes to the questions I have blind spots. Basically, I'm trying to slow myself down even on passages that I think are easy/familiar because there's nothing worse than getting to the questions and realize you did not actually retain anything because you were on a joy ride with the passage.
As someone for whom RC is their worst section I feel ya. I think I agree with the commenter above. If you are getting -15 on a section, what is your distribution of wrong answers? Are you trying to do all four passages in allotted time? I think if the latter is the case, slowing down is the way to go--I think going for three (or even two) passages in a section and just guessing on the others could be the way to go for now. I think it's better to get 90%-100% of questions right on 3 passages than trying to go for all four and missing easy questions you could have gotten to if you took the time to read the easier passages. That way you can build up the skill needed to then tackle on the last passage, and in the meantime you can cover the "leftover" passage in blind review and really hone your technique.
Ok I kind of see where you are going with this but I think in your scenario if a "better suited job" opens up (as you say) the current job of arts commissioner would no longer be "suited" to this other individual because they actually have a preference for this other job.
And even if you grant yourself that there is a small logical inconsistency within the answer choice, the other question you should ask yourself is: what other answer choice comes even close to A?
We are told that the report's authors concede that yes, the critique is valid and that ultimately they should focus on creating a coherent vision. But we're also told that for them to be functional they need government funding and in order to procure it they need to regain their reputation first. B is correct because it points out a weakness in the program organization---how could the program regain the reputation for competence through pragmatic solutions when the reason their problems exist in the first place is due to a lack of a coherent vision? What B is saying is that there is another route to gaining the reputation of competence which is through a coherent vision and not pragmatic solutions.
I think this is a classic case of absence of evidence is not evidence of absence--Smith's argument challenges precisely that (E). C is not correct because Smith does not say that the evidence is not accurate (they concede that yes tools were found 13000 years ago as Jones claimed), but they rather point out that the evidence is not interpreted to its fullest potential. Smith points out a weakness that there could have been tools dated to an earlier period on the migration route but the environmental factors could have played a role in the current lack of evidence.
As someone who is in a similar position (albeit my hours are less traditional), I would say if you're not in a rush to apply to law school in the immediate future (say you are willing to wait out at least another cycle) then studying for two hours a night Mon-Thurs and maybe 3-4 hours on Saturday and Sunday should give you enough time to boost your score and give you at least one night a week to just do you and recharge. But that is only if you can get good quality of study. Ultimately, quality of study trumps quantity. The upside of this is that you don't have to worry about your finances in the meantime but also if you quit your job that might contribute significantly to your levels of stress if you don't see the immediate boost in your scores despite quitting your job. I would definitely assess the upsides of both options and maybe form a backup plan in case you absolutely do not see the gains over the next few months. As for your manager, I think if you are well liked they will understand if you want to take a leave/quit and still be willing to write you a good rec letter.
Congratulations! That is quite a feat!
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Woah, I was in the late 40s for PTs averaging and was pretty consistently in the 163-168 range and just took PT 83 as a more recent one and got a 157. Granted I made a few silly mistakes, especially in the Logic Game section, but this has me thinking I should have started hitting recent tests a lot sooner. Are the more recent tests really that much more difficult?
I just started hitting the early 80s and I had a ten point drop between the stuff in the 60s and early 70s. I know there were a few silly mistakes made too, and I know I was going into the 80s with some anxiety about the "expected" score drop but oh man this is discouraging and I hope it's all in my head. Words of encouragement appreciated!
I would say this with regards to A and B:
A is the NA in this argument, and it's actually once that pops up pretty often on the LSAT, so once you get used to it, it becomes pretty obvious to note elsewhere. You say yourself that it is "restating" the information. That's good! It's a NA so sometimes it will feel like it's restating the information because it is making explicit an stated assumption in the argument--that is what's happening here. If you negate A it would say: even without screening (the same screening you are arguing for due to cost saving effects!) if would be cheaper to simply treat the patients....so the screening is so prohibitively expensive it would make more sense just to treat the patient once they got sick. Yeah, this would go completely against the argument so it clearly is the right answer.
B on the other hand just does not do anything for me. Ok so this is kind of like the first sentence but it kicks it up a notch to say it's most diseases not just some/certain diseases. Ok, so that goes way beyond what the argument assumes. We also need way more info here--which diseases are preventable? What's if some of these genetic flaws are preventable but do not require any treatment once the person gets a disease (say something like eczema is preventable and genetic, but once you get it a mild version where it's just itchy and it doesn't really affect your life...speaking from experience here)? Again just because a bunch of these are preventable or not preventable tells you nothing about which diseases can be cost effective if you prevent them. What if the argument simply needs one disease that is so expensive to treat that if we prevented it we could save money on it (look again at how mild the first sentence is), in that case the number of these diseases would not affect the argument because the argument does not tell us anything about the types of preventable diseases or the variety in costs of treatment as relative to prevention or anything else that would make B something that is assumed by the argument.
The conclusion tells us that because businesses care about profits they will do this other thing--install safeguards. But does this conclusion need to follow? What if I told you that businesses were 100% confident they would not be responsible for any accidents and they care about profits, would they still feel that it makes sense for them to spend money on preventing accidents that they know won't happen? Yeah, no. Option A is a milder critique along the same vein--it tells us that while they are not 100% confident accidents won't happen, they still wayyy underestimate the risk which suggests that they might not find the financial incentive to safeguard themselves against something unlikely to happen.
B on the other hand basically reiterates the premise---businesses are obsessed with profits. Cool. But does that tell us how likely or not they are to deem these preventative tactics useful for them? You could infer for example that because they have a long term strategy then they must be aware that say over a 20 period year they're more likely to have an accident, but you need to make a leap there for B to weaken whereas A is solid as is and does not require more work on your behalf. And as such, it is the answer that MOST weakens.
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I actually have another question I asked on the forum today; it's about another question. Would you be able to answer it too?
Sure, although I can't promise it will be helpful.
I'll throw my two cents in.
1 We are given a conditional statement as a premise (if traveled to and from then would've eaten sea food), however, this being a conditional statement we are not supposed to take it as a fact that has actually occurred already, although the author of the argument certainly makes that assumption or they would not have made their conclusion.
2 the conditional statement does not necessarily talk about the process of initial settlement of the islands---we know this because of "long journey to and FROM the islands"--honestly, this sounds like the author assumes they maybe traded with the mainland or maybe were looking to bring in food they couldn't grow themselves, or even pigment for their paintings, etc because generally you do not go "to and from" when you are settling a place (or that is not how it would be described).
3 We do not know how often this travel occurred, whether you take it as meaning the original settlement or possible trade (et al), so because we don't know how often it happened and over what course of time the paintings were done they could have still depicted the "current" diet while still doing this other stuff, it's just that if they were going to and from once every few years and the paintings were done in the interim then one would not assume it would have these "exotic" sea foods depicted because they wouldn't have been eaten at that particular time on the islands.
So there are definitely assumptions that the argument makes, but we simply cannot assume that just because a conditional is present that it has actually happened. Think of it this way: you are doing a LG and you are told "if B is in 3 then D is in 5" would you go ahead and place B3 and D5? No, because it is a conditional that has not been triggered, so it's not the case that Bs and D5 must occur. It's the same idea here, If A then B does not mean we have to take it as a fact that has happened. The argument makes that error and that is why the conclusion does not follow.
Finally, I think you can interpret D in two ways: 1 as some have pointed out, it could be challenging a premise (by triggering the sufficient we know that they would have had to eat this type of fish) by saying that they actually had other means of feeding themselves. There's no rule that you can't do that on the LSAT, it's just that they don't do it on the test because mostly it would make our life too easy (and in the real world you absolutely would go after someone's argument if it was factually incorrect). 2 Even if you don't kick the sufficient (so no one travelled to and from) then it is still somewhat weakens the conclusion in that it is somewhat similar to A in this regard. Basically, when on the island these people had another reason why they did not need to rely on or source fish, since they had awesome jerky.
The way I read C is "you are entitled to withhold information to at most the same or a lesser rate than lying" which doesn't do anything for this argument because it's this weird comparative statement---to what extent are you allowed to lie on the application? We don't know, so it's impossible to evaluate. Honestly, if anything one would think that you're probably not entitled to lie at all (and depending on the job it could be a crime) which again would weaken the argument if anything (but of course you shouldn't be making this assumption here either way because the stimulus gives you no support to do that). Whereas E is much more straightforward---you are told simply that you have no such obligation (i.e. you get a pass for not disclosing info that in theory is against company's policies). And this strengthens the conclusion because it gives you another reason for why the couple should've hidden their relationship.
@ I have a feeling that unless you have accommodations that grant you this you will not be allowed to use any kind of ear "wear"--you are literally told to remove any large jewelry and show your ears to the webcam so they can see there is nothing in/on them. Also, at no point did I actually hear my proctor so that was not an issue (you can type your responses).
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Not sure why we are bringing real world into our analysis. We are to accept the premises as true.
You're absolutely right that it's irrelevant for the purpose of answering the question itself, but I felt like Ashley2018 was struggling to understand why the stim was written that way in the first place (as opposed to the structure of the argument itself) and being able to wrap your head around the subject of the stim can sometimes help to see/understand the logical structure of the argument, as well as its flaws.
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The conclusion is the public's fear
...that wasn't my question.
my question was why would the government help out the nuclear power plants with financial liability? seems to me the gov't is admitting they're unsafe.
it's really hit or miss with this forum, isn't it?
I'll give this a shot so bear with me: if this situation were to arise in the "real world" and we knew that the government was taking on this liability yet believed nuclear plants were completely safe there could still be ways for both of these things to be true. Maybe the nuclear power plant corporations themselves don't believe their businesses are as safe as can be and somehow were able to make a deal with the gov't to "subsidize" them in case of disaster? In this scenario the gov't can still maintain that they believe nuclear power plants are safe, yet extend the liability not on their own accord but from pressure from power plant corps themselves. That would be one scenario. Mind you the reasoning for this doesn't matter, other than it exists and you are trying to make valid someone else's argument, so you kind if just have to roll with it. In general though, sometimes in contracts you'll have clauses that protect you from things that you're almost certainly confident wouldn't happen but you put it in on the off chance, or because it is standard procedure, but it doesn't somehow betray your true beliefs about what you deem likely or unlikely to happen, safe/unsafe, etc.
In Lesson 11 Question 2 we have a series of statements about someone else's conclusions, not an argument. The breakdown of the stim is something like this:
1st sentence--general statement about methodology.
2nd--a hypothesis
3rd---conclusion #1
4th--conclusion #2.
If this were an argument we would expect the reporter to provide evidence used for conclusion #1 and #2. How do we know that bears and raccoons diverged so long ago? What is it about their DNA? We are given none of the premises/evidence.
In Lesson 16 we have a very short argument. First sentence provides a premise (the increase in prices caused the decline in home use). Second statement is the conclusion. It's a pretty "sparse" argument but it is an argument. Also typically on LR you will have someone else's hypothesis/take (as background info) on an issue followed by the actual argument but here in both cases it is someone else's research which probably adds to the confusion.
I'm not sure I can say anything that you probably haven't read before but I could definitely walk you through one NA question that you are having trouble with or haven't done yet. But in general, NA is something that MUST be true given the argument. So for example:
Every Wednesday I buy apples.
Today is a Wednesday
Therefore I will buy apples
NA: Would be something like "Every Wednesday I buy fruit" because all apples are fruit, thus it MUST be true that I buy at lease some fruit on Wednesdays. If you negate that--it's not true that every Wednesday I buy fruit--well, that would completely destroy my argument because I clearly say that I do buy fruit (i.e. apples) every Wednesday.
Obviously this is a super easy NA example and they can get really tough. For whatever reason, NA did not click for me until I got the hang of SA. Have you already covered as SA? Sometimes I feel like having the two to compare and contrast can really make a difference. Also, more of a general advice that works for your problem with NA is to try to never move on to the answer choices until you fully understand the stim, which is ever more important with SA, NA type questions (I think). So when you are still learning NA, make sure you take the time to really get the stim, and hold off on the really difficult NA questions until you are comfortable with easy and medium ones. And finally, at least in my case I no longer have to negate the answer choices, I kind of just know/feel/anticipate what the answer is going to look like so the process definitely speeds up.
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70s and 80s are definitely more recent. I also consider 52 and up "modern" LSATs because they have comparative passages, so I'd use those for full PTs. Anything below 52 I'd categorize as older (but still highly valuable) drilling material.
Thank you for your take! I haven't ventured into the 80's yet as I don't want to "waste" them but at the same time you gotta pull the trigger at some point.
That's amazing! Congratulations!
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Many think that the PT's in the 80's are most representative of the current tests, which I completely agree with. I used tests from 1-40 as foundational work then everything from 40-May '20 I have been using for PT'ing. Best advice I have, don't burn through the 80's too fast and don't think you have to take PT's in a linear order. As for difficulty, there's a ton you can take away from older tests, for example PT's 1-10 are known to be the most difficult logic games sections and are great for mastering miscellaneous games.
Very helpful! Thank you! I find it slightly discouraging that there's only like ten PT's that are the most "representative" of the current test but you are right, there's definitely a lot to learn from the older PT's.
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@ All three sections are equally weak... Seems like I have to focus equally on all three really.
I'm not sure how many logic games you are doing per week but when I first started studying I was terrible at them and found that if I were doing an equal number of LR and RC passages as LG I was not improving as fast as I had hoped. So what I did was study LG exclusively for a month making sure I foolproof-ed every game and I found that at the end of the month I was MUCH better. At that point I started adding LR and RC into my study schedule while maintaining (and improving) LG.
Hi all!
I feel like people often make a distinction between recent PTs that are available and older tests which some would say are less difficult. My question is: what counts as one of these recent tests? Is it anything after PT70? PT80? I would like to make sure to save those for when things get "real".
To me the difference between B and C came down to the emphasis in the answer choices:
B states that future innovation would depend on "the outcome of various current research projects, including that conducted by B and H". And that is not the focus of the passage---the author goes at length about B and H's research and only tangentially mentions DNA stuff, so the answer choice should reflect that emphasis and C does that. There's also something about B's phrasing that is...inchoate? Honestly, can't pin point exactly what it is (I'm not a STEM person) but there's something rudimentary and sketchy about it. I realize that is not helpful.
Firstly, good catch on >.5 and .5 as they will often exploit that kind of language, however, here were told "for despite its ability to neutralize stomach acids"---suggests that this is continuous function of the chemical. Yes, it will continuously neutralize stomach acid (presumably yes, at quantities over .5 grams), which is what you want when you take an antacid, but it could also contribute to this other bad thing (impaired kidney function) at doses larger than .5. So it's not that doses of over .5 no longer work at neutralizing acid, but that it adds a possibly dangerous side effect on top of the benefit.