@ said:

Same boat, but I think if you're struggling, it's your mind and body telling you to take a break. I'm taking November because I knew I'd need some down time after August and didn't want to rush into October. Good luck.

Totally right. Need to listen to myself. Thank you and good luck to you too!

@ said:

OMG SAME. The only thing I can tell you is to turn off distractions and redo your first ever practice test to see growth. It's hard to get back into the rhythm and you'll have to ease back in 1 game/passage at a time.

This is such a good idea! I hadn't thought about redoing my first PT. I'm hoping this gives me some confidence lol! Thanks and good luck to you!

You might be fine doing one game for a week or so to get familiar with the concepts, but you should really be doing full sets. For example, some games, you can finish in five minutes. But some, it's totally OK to get in ten minutes. So doing all 4 games in one set gets you that variety!

I keep confusing strengthening and weakening questions! I try to remember that the question is a strengthening question, but then as I go through the logic and the answer choices, I forget, and I inevitably choose the weakening answer.

Working full time and trying to study is super hard! I learned that I can't hold myself to such a rigorous standard as X number of hours. Instead, I try to value what I got out of studying. Sometimes I study for 5 hours on a weekend and feel like I did nothing productive. But other times I study for one hour and feel like I learned a lot.

Here's what I've been doing: I wake up at 5:30, go to a coffeeshop and start studying by 6 am. I work 9-5 (sometimes longer). I try to get an exercise in every other day in the afternoon. I try to eat healthy. I see my friends. I take Saturdays off. I think this helps with burnout! Good luck :)

Not sure if other folks feel this, but it seems like in the more recent LSATs, there are some assumptions they are asking you to make.

For C, I thought that the high start up costs was a limiting factor in getting geothermal power plants to other areas. I assumed that if they lowered these high start up costs, these areas would be able to get geothermal power plants. But that's way too big of an assumption to make, and like JY says, it brings another issue of "If the start up costs are so high, how is it economical?"

For D, you do still have to assume that these advanced technologies of drilling will allow you to reach these previously untapped areas. But that's a safer assumption to make and doesn't make the other mistake that C did. Ultimately, it's the best answer choice out of all of the other answer choices. It might not be great, but it's correct.

This was really got to me. I picked D because somewhere along the question, I got confused in the argument and conclusion.

This is a causal argument. They're saying that in sewage sludge, bacteria is evolving to resist heavy metals. They've also noticed that they're becoming resistant to antibiotics as well. (These are correlations for as much far as we know.) They conclude that heavy metals in sewage sludge is causing the antibiotic resistance.

B is the correct answer choice because it provides us with a control group. The bacteria in sewage sludge without heavy metals didn't grow resistant to antibiotics.

D is actually weakening our argument. If there's high levels of antibiotics in these sewage sludge, the bacteria could have just grown resistance to the antibiotics on their own, without the heavy metals.

Obviously I agree with JY's explanations, but another way of looking at it is by thinking through what a valid scientific study is. The test wants us to assume that these two studies are the same, but in actuality we know there are so many differences: food/pill, duration, amount of people in the study, population, etc. The answer choices just get at all these differences. Another possible explanation to the discrepancy could have been that everyone in the 24-year study was a runner/swimmer! So like answer choice E, it could've been a lifestyle factor that affected their health, not the beta-carotene.

The schedule that they give you factors in every single practice set, estimates the amount of time it takes to read the articles, and how long each video is. Often, you can skip the articles because the videos already covered it. And you can also usually skip a lot of the practice sets (I usually do one easier one, one harder one). You should tailor the schedule to what works for you!!!

What helped me was doing "confidence drills" - it's basically doing drills as fast as you can. It can be 10 questions, 20 questions, or a whole section. But it's mostly just to speed through and test your confidence. You'll be surprised by how many you end up getting right. After doing the drill, I do a pretty extensive Blind Review because I usually know that some questions I wasn't sure about purely due to timing (for ex., I wasn't able to diagram a formal conditional logic question, or I didn't quite understand the stimulus). This helps you trust your intuition more. This will also flag for you certain "fundamentals" that might actually not be fundamental for you. If you're getting caught up on causation, for example, and that takes you longer to answer, you should review/drill causation. I hope that helps!

Does anyone know any other similar argument structures as this one?

A -> absurd

/absurd -> /A

---

not (A)

#help

@ said:

What did y'all do with scrap papers after the test? Do the proctors ask you to throw them away or something?

My proctor didn’t ask but the rules say to rip it up in front of the webcam. So I asked my proctor and he said to rip up all pages even unused in front of the camera.

Had the same experience as most on here! LG-RC-LR-RC. The second RC was significantly harder and I actually felt the LR was tricky as well. The LG was straightforward and hopefully it’ll be my saving grace. Good luck to all!!!

@ I am on the same boat! August was my first test. Do you regret canceling your score? I am trying to decide if I should cancel mine.

In the same situation as you! Powerscore said that this test could've had a looser curve especially because of that RC section, so I was shocked to see my score. I hadn't scored below the 160s in months. I think it could have been an overcorrection, and I've seen that opinion on Reddit too... but of course, I have no idea. But it's comforting to know that others feel similarly! Here's to October/November!

My fave dinner is miso salmon: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/crispy-skin-salmon-with-miso-honey-sauce

I blanch some kale / leafy greens to top it off. It's my "night before PT" meal!

This was a much simpler question than I think I initially thought.

The question stimulus is a dumbass city planner (no hate to city planners! love y'all) who doesn't understand highways, commute times, and downtown centers. So they said, that to relieve traffic congestion, they built a new highway that connects these suburbs to downtown. Ok...well that's a terrible idea because now downtown is going to be super congested with all these cars.

But our stimulus city planner is dumb. Now he's asking us, "Oh no! What happened? Why is there an average increase in commute time for workers downtown?"

Because you literally built a highway connecting all these drivers to downtown. Now the downtown roads near the highway are super congested, probably because people are trying to get off and go to their office parking or something, and now people are experiencing an increase commute time! It's that simple. (E) in downtown, traffic on the roads near the highway became more congested after the new highway opened. As in, "Why is there an average increase in commute time for workers downtown?" Because of congestion downtown.

I originally chose (A), and like JY quickly says, it doesn't quite explain anything. I would also argue that you'd have to make the assumption that the "most people" they're talking about who live in one of the city's suburbs lives in the suburb that is now connected by the highway. I mean, even if we take that assumption, it still doesn't explain anything about why there's an increase in commute time.

I think A + E was my prephrase answer, but because I didn't quite get it, I just landed at A and moved on.

I feel dumb -- but I didn't choose (A) because in my head, I was like... "How could better soil lead to plant diversity? Where would those plants have even come from!" A quick google search helped. Lol

I couldn't figure out why C was wrong, and I keep retaking this question and getting it wrong lol. I thought "Duh, box office success does not depend on whether audiences find the film funny or whatever." Isn't that what the stimulus literally says?

NO! The stimulus just says that a film's financial success does not SHOW what audiences found funny or whatever. We don't know what a film's box office success depends on...

I was fishy about D because I just thought it was too general (which is usually good for MSS but I was just weirded out). I thought... "Film historians don't believe that film reviews in newspapers and magazines reveal typical audience views" -- in general? I think I would've liked this answer choice better if it said early 20th century newspapers and magazines.

I've been taking the 7sage flex tests with three sections for an accurate score, but I always start my practice test with a random problem set of LG, RC, or LR. This way, I'm replicating testing conditions with four tests (take a 10 min break after your 2nd section), but I'm getting an accurate score for the flex portion.

Premise 1: Psychologists say that kids in 9-month school schedules forget stuff during their breaks.

Other people's argument: Other educators proposed a 12-month school schedule with breaks spread out.

Premise 2: 12-month schedule won't let kids forget.

---

Conclusion: Based on the psychologists' research, 12-month is preferred.

Put even simpler than this, the argument is comparing 9-month schedules to 12-month schedules. The 12-month schedule is the winner. But why? The author notes a downside to the 9-month schedule. This is kind of a "secret downside" flaw a la Ellen Cassidy's The Loophole. What if kids also forget in the 12-month schedule?

The correct answer choice (C) gets to this assumption: takes for granted that in comparing two situations, an undesirable result (forgetting) is correlated with only one of them (9-month schedule but not the 12-month schedule).

This is a great question because while I can analyze the way I did above via comparison and secret downsides (which is what came naturally), you can also analyze it as a causal argument:

9-month -correlates- forgetting

12-month insures kids don't forget

---

12-month is preferred

But wait a minute - what if 12-month also correlates to forgetting? (Secret downside flaw still applies in this analysis)

I watched “Crash Course Studying” on YouTube and learned a lot about focus & concentration, anxiety, etc. It didn’t magically solve my problems, but it gave me a context into the way I was thinking and assured me that I wasn’t alone. I’d highly recommend it!

@ said:

Hi there,

You're always welcome to resume your subscription at any time. As long as you use the same email address to re-subscribe to the course, you won't lose the information in your account (progress, analytics, etc.)

I hope this helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you!

For me, it was really helpful to think big picture as I studied. It's been a while since I did the CC, but finding patterns in each question type and looking at the logical structure of all the problems made it clearer that the test is pretty mechanical. I think repeating all of the problem sets are pretty unnecessary, and I don't really know too many people who've done all the problem sets that are on the CC, but watching the videos and doing a few to get a good sense of the structure & some of JY's tips is good! I really think it's AFTER the CC that you grow a lot as you find what question types you're having trouble with, what sections are difficult, etc. Good luck!

A disclaimer: my experience is only my own!!! However, with that said, I dropped about 6 points below my PT average on the August test, and I have spoken to many people who have dropped even 10 points. I would be wary about your score on the PT and just focus on how many you are getting incorrect.