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.

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.

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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

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12-month is preferred

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

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!

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 :)

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

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.

I've been trying to just choose the answer that I feel is correct, based on intuition. So I don't map anything or write anything down on my first go. Then in BR I do the full analysis. I'm hoping this trains my intuition and speed!

I don't think that'd happen because it just gives us the right answer (he is using the word right in two different contexts).

I think this question does use cost-benefit analysis (paint vs. colored paper), but the argument relies on you connecting the Premise --> Conclusion bridge, like we've seen in PSA and SA. At least that's how I saw this! I got it wrong on my first try because I was so focused on the cost-benefit analysis piece. And answer choice A kind of baits you into thinking that it's giving even more reasons to prefer colored paper. But I realized in blind review that the focus of the argument is actually connecting the argument back to whether colored paper helps teach the use of color.

I feel exactly the same, and I think it's because the actual conclusion is itself a conditional statement that you have to parse out, as JY says:

If acquiring money sacrifices health then one should not acquire money.

Whereas I had my conclusion mapped out like this: "shouldn't sacrifice health for money" -- which sounds similar but the end conclusion is different. In JY's version, it's "should not acquire money" and in my version, it's "shouldn't sacrifice health."

When you parse out the conclusion, you realize that it's not really about health. It's about money. You shouldn't sacrifice your health to get money. So one step further, what would happen if you had to sacrifice your health to get money? Well, you shouldn't get that money. And that's where our conclusion comes from.

Then the rest of the logic makes more sense.

I'm not sure how to get this right on test day, but I'm hoping with enough drills I just begin to intuitively state these conclusions correctly.

I had the same confusions. I think it's because the question stem is really asking us how the conclusion can be inferred if one of the answer choices is assumed. (A) bringing us a rule is the whole point of the question stem - it delivers us our conclusion because it bridges the premises and conclusion. My understanding is that (D) doesn't give us a bridge to our conclusion; it basically just reemphasizes our premises with more strength (Ms. Sandstrom knew that her column could incite trespassing that could result in damage to the Mendels’ farm).

Agree with chipw207, and I wanted to add that I think JY makes these quick decisions about "only if"s because he's looking for where the conclusion falls in the sufficient / necessary conditions. So with this question, in answer choice C, the contrapositive of our conclusion fell in the sufficient condition. That's great! It likely means that the contrapositive of the necessary condition is a trigger for us. And that's exactly what happens - we take the contrapositive and arrive at our conclusion.

BUT if answer choice C said "Use of pesticides is unacceptable only if..." then we can disqualify this answer because our conclusion is in the sufficiency, and if we took a contrapositive, it would only get us to "use of pesticides is acceptable" which isn't our conclusion anyway.

E presents an alternative hypothesis! So yes, a possible alternative cause to low cancer/heart disease.

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.

I think that's why we're practicing so much so that we internalize these causal claims. Then, during test day, we wouldn't have to explicitly draw out these causal claims. We can just read it, determine if it's relevant, pick an answer choice, move on.

That's the goal!

But C doesn't actually contradict the conclusion. JY was saying that's probably how people understood answer choice C.

Answer choice C basically just says that sunscreen was developed with research backed by dermatologists. That doesn't mean it's good research, or that sunscreen definitively works...maybe it's just good for acne? Who knows? It doesn't weaken our argument though.

I thought the exact same thing! I chose E and quickly moved on. But on a deeper look, this time, it's not quite the same as the jogging question or the dramamine question. If we assume that the beliefs in Answer Choice E is true, then that means that people most susceptible to skin cancer are using sunscreen most regularly. Then why is skin cancer still increasing? It doesn't weaken our argument.

In the jogging question, it wasn't that people who stretched got MORE injuries than those who didn't. It was just that they got about the same amount of injuries, so maybe the people who stretched were just prone to getting even more injuries.

But here, if this were a self-selecting group phenomenon, then maybe it would've been that the most susceptible to skin cancer are using sunscreen most regularly and their rates of skin cancer are down or at least have not increased.

I hope that's the right way of thinking about this question. It really tripped me up! Especially because B is sooooo subtle.

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.

Sure, but they said the captive bird's average beak size hasn't changed. If an answer choice said that the captive bird's food supply has changed, it still wouldn't be correct.