You're very likely to do much better in October!

165 is clearly outside of your usual score range. Something went wrong; maybe you bombed the RC. That probably won't happen again.

Your recent practice test scores are very good, and expecting 170+ seems reasonable. This particular test didn't work out, but the next one probably will.

It's true that the LSAT is changing the format of the LG section sometime in the future, but February 2023 is almost certainly going to occur beforehand. Most articles now vaguely point to 'sometime in 2023 or maybe 2024.'

For early 2023, I wouldn't worry at all about the LG section suddenly transforming.

Nearly all of the questions without explanations are from the oldest tests, PT1-PT16. I think these older tests are least used for practice (the core curriculum goes all the way up to PT35), so might've just been deemed not a high enough priority to make videos for.

If you try newer weaken questions they generally have explanation videos, but also if there are particular old questions you want explanations for you can post them here! It is certainly more effort to post one than having a video already available, but pretty much every LR question posted here gets people coming in and writing explanations.

The answer is yes. If you do not have additional context like 'but not both' then you can always safely interpret 'or' as being the 'inclusive or.'

There's a 7sage lesson on this topic here. It goes into depth on why this question is such a valid thing to wonder about, but overall the answer ends up being:

Remember the rule of thumb is to read them like in sentence (1), the inclusive usage of the word. If the LSAT wants to communicate the "and" (incredibly rare) meaning or the "exclusive or" meaning (this happens often enough), it will be explicit and the context will disambiguate.

I think the only way that JY has arrived at the answer is really just to empirically observe that this is how the LSAT handles it. They could've chosen a different interpretation of 'or' to be the default / no context interpretation, and the 'inclusive or' just so happens to be the default that they chose.

In general- the usual question stem for MSS questions, "most strongly support," makes it sound like sometimes you'll have two answer choices that are supported by the stimulus and you have to choose which one is more supported, or even that sometimes none of the answer choices will be fully supported and you have to choose whichever one has the most partial support. But cases like these never really happen on the test. There are always four answers that are not properly supported by the stimulus, and one answer that is completely and fully supported by the stimulus. It's important to categorize MSS AC options in a binary way ('not supported' vs 'is supported'), rather than compare them on a spectrum (e.g. 40% supported vs 60% supported vs 80% supported).

If an AC is fully supported (the correct answer), then it shouldn't be possible for the stimulus to be true while the AC is false. This means that if you can think of a single case where the stimulus is true and the AC is false, that AC is wrong!

AC A. The stimulus indicates that political groups can become less influential after a certain, specific size threshold is exceeded. But it doesn't make any claims about what happens before that threshold is reached. Imagine that most political groups start out very small and expand slowly, taking many years to reach the critical threshold. Are stable periods generally more influential than growth periods during that pre-threshold time? We have no idea, since the question is outside the scope of the stimulus. It's possible that the answer is no. But if the answer is no, then this AC is false while the stimulus is true- AC A is wrong.

AC B. The stimulus makes no comments whatsoever about democratic societies functioning effectively. It also makes no comments about political groups interacting with each other, via compromise or any other means. Imagine that most political groups are evil cabals of lobbyists for industries that harm society. If they make compromises with each other, maybe it helps all of them get stuff done to advance their society-destroying goals. This hypothetical is compatible with the stimulus, which says nothing about political groups being good for society. But the hypothetical causes AC B to be false- AC B is wrong.

AC C. The stimulus makes one comment about large groups of people: diverse and sometimes conflicting economic interests can be found in almost any of them. Does that mean politicians are unable to ignore those large groups? We don't have a good reason to think so. Imagine that most large groups of people are poorly coordinated, and members rarely vote. Why should the politician pay attention to them, if they aren't even really influencing elections?

AC D. Something to notice here is that the claim being made is very, very soft. All that is necessary for AC D to be true is for it to be merely possible for a political interest group to lose their influence by becoming too big. This means that for AC D to be false, it would have to be the case that it is completely impossible for any political group to lose influence by becoming too big. Can that be the case while the stimulus is also true? We just can't make that happen. The stimulus tells us that sometimes a political group exceeds a certain size, develops diversity of economic opinions, and loses unity (and unity is necessary for a group to have influence). Either the stimulus is false (not allowed), or AC D cannot be false. So AC D must be true, based on the stimulus- that's full, complete, rock solid support.

AC E. It could be the case that the majority of political groups are completely ineffective from the start. Maybe they're usually poorly managed, or poorly funded. Or maybe they do tend to start out effectively, but don't usually lose effectiveness because they usually don't get big enough to hit the critical threshold. There's just so many ways for AC E to be untrue, and nearly all of them are compatible with the stimulus.

This is a very real concern when preparing for the LSAT. These materials are finite, and 93 tests isn't that many. Some tips:

On 7Sage, the examples and practice problems you'll encounter going through the syllabus lessons are all pulled from the "Core Curriculum." This just means tests 1-35. The idea is that the newer a practice test is, the more valuable it is to you as a finite resource. By limiting the lessons to only tests 1-35, J.Y. is conserving the remaining tests 35-93 for you. This means that you should also make an effort not to spoil questions from newer tests for yourself. If you read a forum post about a question, or look at one on the LSAT reddit, etc, always check the test the question came from and do not read or engage with questions that come from tests you haven't taken unless they are older than PT35! If you have a study buddy or group, you should be carefully coordinating which tests or sections you talk about so that nobody is looking at valuable unseen questions.

Keep a good and complete record of which tests you've taken. If you're taking them all on 7Sage, most of that record keeping is done for you. But you may also want to keep track of things like 'did I do all four sections on this test or did I only do three sections by simulating flex?' If you know which sections you skipped on which tests, then if you ever start running out of full preptests you will at least have some unseen full sections left.

It's true for me too that if I have ever seen a question or logic game before, I will still remember it to a significant degree even months later. For LR and RC, that does pretty much ruin the value of the question for a full preptest (so conserve aggressively!). However, the impact on LG is not as large as it feels. Even if you have seen every logic game and can jump to inferences in them quicker than you would be able to on a brand new game, continuing to drill and repeat games you already know things about is still a good strategy. Make sure you are at least running the inferences through your head. For example, don't start a game you've done before by thinking 'oh yeah, I remember G always ends up with T.' Think 'oh yeah, G always ends up with T because when G is picked, it triggers rule 3, which causes friction with... etc.' Let your brain walk through the inferences even if you remember the answers. That's the part of drilling that has all the good vitamins.

Don't waste an entire test! It's a mistake to stick too doggedly to a schedule like 'I have to take one test every X days, so I'm required to take a test today.' If you're feeling unfocused, or overly stressed, or any number of things that place you outside of your best test-taking mindset, then you probably shouldn't force yourself to take a new test at that time. When you are in a good test-taking mindset, the value you get from those questions is the highest. This goes for Blind Review too. Blind Review adds so much time to your preptest, and it's always tempting to just skip straight past it and see how you did. But when you skip or phone in the Blind Review, you are robbing yourself of value you could have extracted from those finite novel test questions.

Non-real LG, LR, and RC questions... exist. That's about the nicest thing I have to say about them. There are definitely LSAT prep programs and books that attempt to mitigate the 'finite real tests' problem by writing their own practice stuff. It's just not very good. Real LSAT questions go through layers of expert statistical and psychometric review. They belong to one of the standardized tests best correlated with its goal in the world (for the LSAT the goal is predicting your GPA in your first year of law school, which happens to generalize well to your overall GPA in law school). I have tried non-real questions before and they feel like suffering through a bowl of off-brand Cheerios when you're used to the real brand.

Don't feel too alarmed about this topic. 93 tests (plus a few more that for some reason have letter names instead of just numbers) is a small enough pool that you should plan carefully and put effort into not spoiling questions for yourself. But it's also a large enough pool that not very many people actually run out. If you end up taking the test a bunch of times, and you are putting months of study in between each test, AND you're burning through real tests at a faster than average clip, then it might happen. But most don't end up having all three of those things happen. You'll be able to see if your remaining test stock is dwindling too quickly as well, and can take preventative measures like slowing down your test-consumption rate.

This is a pretty weird question. You're correct that only one of Popkin's flights has a Saturday in between. AC A feels weak as an explanation for her overall travel plans because it would only cause her to save money on that single round trip, and not any of the numerous round trips otherwise booked for the semester.

However, none of the other answer choices give even a small reason for her travel plans, so the small reason provided by AC A (a single flight is cheaper) does end up being the best answer.

AC B: If the super long round trip booking is more expensive than the short bookings, then Popkin is paying extra by having one of her round trips be a long one when she could easily have chosen for all of them to be short. So this one is the opposite of an explanation of her travel plans; it just makes her plan seem even more nonsensical.

AC C: If there's a perk for completing round trips quickly (to unlock free first class as soon as possible), then again the one long booking is sub-optimal compared to just making all of her trips the short less-than-a-week kind. Like AC B, it's a reason for her not to have grouped flights the way she did.

AC D) This is a pretty good explanation for 'why did Popkin make all of the bookings at once?' But the question stem asks us specifically to explain the grouping of her flights, not the choice to book everything at the same time. This AC is just irrelevant to the question being asked.

AC E: Also irrelevant to the grouping of the flights. It would explain why she booked at least seven days in advance (if she did, which is unknown), but doesn't explain anything about the odd grouping choice.

For me this hinges on the phrase "...of many people whose heart disease was not attributable to other causes," which describes people with elevated lipoprotein(a).

Since elevated cholesterol has been established as a (sometimes) correlate of developing heart disease, we can conclude that none of the people that were mentioned to have high lipoprotein(a) had above average cholesterol.

That pretty much destroys the idea that the lipoprotein(a) could cause elevated cholesterol, at least within the scope of the studies informing the stimulus author. By directly acknowledging that the people with high lipoprotein(a) did not have high cholesterol (or any other known heart disease causes), they've done their due diligence in ruling out a possible link between high lipoprotein(a) and high cholesterol- diligence that AC A accuses them of neglecting instead.

A family friendly newspaper has suddenly changed their business plan dramatically, becoming extremely non-family friendly. Afterwards, some of the companies purchasing ad space in that paper cancelled their advertising contract. The author concludes that those advertising companies must have done so because they felt supporting the no-longer-family-friendly paper was immoral.

Without reading any of the answer choices yet, there's a very prominent flaw in the author's argument. Why should we believe the advertisers who cancelled their contracts did so purely for moral reasons? It's also completely possible that they cancelled their contracts because advertising in non-family-friendly papers is not profitable, and they wanted to protect their profits.

The question could go in all sorts of directions, but if I see a prominent flaw in the stimulus argument, I expect / hope that the answer to the question will hinge on that flaw. I'm looking for ACs that interact with that flaw.

Choices C and E both interact with that flaw, so I agree that A, B, and D are easier to throw out than E.

But C is a better strengthener than E. C gives me exactly what I need to patch up the huge flaw in the stimulus: keeping the advertising contracts is expected to make more money than cancelling them, so the advertising companies deliberately made a decision that hurt their profits. The possibility that they cancelled their contracts in the interest of making money is completely deleted, so we need another reason for them cancelling their contracts. The author's idea that 'they did it because it was the moral thing to do' sounds much more reasonable now. Why else would they willingly give up some of their profits?

E is weaker because there are different (equally valid) ways of interpreting E, and only one of the interpretations strengthen the stimulus. The other interpretation weakens it, the exact opposite of what we want! Consider-

Interpretation 1: The income group that likes the new version of the paper is higher-income than the income group that has been reading the older version of the paper. This is pretty much the same as answer choice C (it means the advertisers that pulled out did so despite it being a bad decision from a money perspective). This is probably what you're thinking if you choose E as the answer.

Interpretation 2: The income group that likes the newer version of the paper is lower-income than the income group that has been reading the older version of the paper. This means that the advertisers started to lose money (or at least make less money) after the paper shifted focus, so it makes complete sense that many of them would cancel their contracts (probably to start new contracts with other papers where they aren't losing money). It makes the author look silly: 'the advertisers did something that protected their financial interest, I bet they did it for moral reasons unrelated to money.'

C strengthens the stimulus 100% of the time. But E strengthens the stimulus half the time, and weakens it the other half; since E gives us no clue as to whether the new readers are a higher or lower income group than previous readers, we should consider Interpretation 1 and Interpretation 2 as being equally likely.

Yep, you're 100% allowed to use control/command f on the real test. This isn't listed on LSACs website, but over the years the question has been asked of them many times and they do always confirm that it is allowed. Example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/h13xk9/the_final_word_on_controlf/

I'm interested. I'm in the -0/-1 space for LR, and it's definitely achievable. -0/-1/-2 even more so.

I'm in the EST time zone and signing off for tonight, but message me and we can discuss further tomorrow!

We actually can support the inference that damaged mail makes up only a small subset of correctly addressed mail!

Correctly addressed (CA) mail can fall into two categories: damaged in transit and not damaged. Damaged mail takes longer, and non-damaged mail absolutely always arrives within two business days.

The first sentence point-blank tells us: nearly all CA mail arrives within two business days. Since damaged CA mail arrives later than two business days, we can directly infer that nearly all CA mail is not damaged.

In your hypothetical scenario, nearly all (700/800) of the CA mail is damaged. But then nearly all of the CA mail will take a long time to arrive, and that directly contradicts the first sentence of the stimulus telling us that nearly all CA mail does arrive quickly- so it's not actually a valid hypothetical.

Having inferred that nearly all CA mail is not damaged, the only way to reconcile 'nearly all CA mail arrives quickly' with 'most mail does not arrive quickly' would be to conclude that 'most mail is not CA.' That's exactly what we get with AC D.

I thought that if the premises are true then a valid conclusion is necessarily true and never false. Is that the case?

True Premise1: A --> B

True Premise2: A --> -B

True Premise3: A

Valid/True Inference: A --> B and -B

Valid/True Inference: A and B and -B (because the A was 'activated' by true premise 3

Sorry if it seems like I side stepped what you were explaining previously, I have a few outlying concepts in LR that I'm not sufficiently comfortable with and I'm trying to tie them together.

Definitely, if the premises are true than all valid conclusions are true.

Each inference in the example above is valid, but they also result in an impossible paradox: "B and B." It's the same as saying you do have a dog and also you don't, or that you exist and don't exist.

Since the inferences are valid and the conclusion is impossible, the only thing left is to attack the premises. At least one of the three premises has to be untrue- no set of true premises will result in an impossible outcome.

Technically yes, that's valid.

It's impossible for it to be true that 'B and B.' So if you know that A --> B and B, then you can actually be certain that A.

There's a relevant logic game, PT34 S4 G4. It's the only time I've ever seen this inference being important on the actual LSAT. Spoilers for the game below:

! When you string all the conditionals together, one of the findings is that L --> O and O. The key inference is that L must therefore never be selected (selected = Souderton, not selected = Randsbourough). It's such a weird game because when you see a contradiction like that you'd usually assume that you wrote something down wrong.

@ said:

I feel like double stacking your most feared section consistently should be a priority for practice tests, but that just sounds so awful

I've been doing this and it does feel very effective. My endurance for RC is much better since I started forcing myself to do two of those sections every PT (and not knowing which one is the real one).

It really does feel awful though. Every PT is maximally exhausting this way. I'm glad that on the real test, there's a 2/3 chance that it'll be less fatiguing.

I don't think so. The only rule I'm inferring from these premises is A -m-> C, so the only 'must be false' information we have would be limited to mundane/direct contradictions of either that or one of the premises.

It isn't necessarily false- it's just an unknown that could be true, could be false.

In conversation you would probably never saw 'most' when you mean 'all.' But technically, something that is true of 'all' of something is also true of 'most' of those things, also true of 'some' of those things, also true of 'few' of those things, etc. So from A -m-> B, we cannot conclude that A --> B. So A --> C is a possibility.

I write down question numbers I want to return to. Each number gets a squiggly, put in a box, or put in a circle depending on how confident I am in my answer, so if there isn't very much time left at the end I can focus on them in the right order.

Other than that, the only notes I ever make in LR are for parallel reasoning and parallel flaw questions. It takes a long time to diagram out the ACs for those questions so I avoid it as much as possible, but the most difficult questions in those categories sometimes just have to be diagrammed.

You'll find similar features on the real LSAT to the 7sage interface. But I also highly recommend taking at least one preptest on LSAC's platform, because that is 100% identical to the interface for the real thing. You can do that here: https://lawhub.lsac.org/library. Your login is the same as the LSAC account used for the real test.

I'm trying a new drawing program for LG stuff, here's an elimination for Q22 AC A. The shaded bit in the bottom corner is an elimination for the board with [I: V-Y-W-V] specifically too.

Diagram Here

There isn't an official way to take a practice test with proctoring from Proctor U.

There is kind of a mock proctored test coming up (two section research study), but unfortunately it will be happening in December.

You can find a lot more information about the study on this page.

They do, here's their pricing portal.

For this question the first thing that leaps out to me is that the gap between the premises and conclusion is particularly wide. The premises tell us that the British government does not fulfill civilian researcher requests for information about UFO sightings. They also tell us that some civilian researchers have criticized this.

And then suddenly the conclusion says, this indicates there have been extraterrestrial space craft sightings on Earth!

The premises didn't even mention extraterrestrial space craft. They mentioned a broader category of flying things (UFOs), but that's not the same at all.

Consider a simpler argument: 'Sam saw a mammal in his yard last night. So Sam must have seen a unicorn.' A good way to strengthen this argument would be to establish that 'mammal' = 'unicorn.' A good AC might say 'Unicorns are the only mammal in Sam's country.'

Similarly, a good way to strengthen the argument in the stimulus would be to establish that 'UFO the government won't tell civilian researchers about' = 'extraterrestrial space craft.' AC B tells us that every time the government withholds information about a UFO, that UFO must be an extraterrestrial space craft. Not telling civilian researchers about a UFO is an example of withholding information about a UFO, so we're getting the exact link that we wanted to strengthen the argument- making AC B a great answer.

The phrase 'withhold information' in AC B and the phrase 'deny the requests... to have access to data' in AC C are functionally identical here; they're equally definitive phrases. If I'm withholding certain information, that also means I'm denying requests to access that information. Conversely if I'm denying requests to access certain information, that means I am withholding that information. These phrases are just saying the same thing using different words, so I wouldn't consider AC B as being less definitively worded than AC C.

AC C fails because we don't have any good link between 'something to hide' and 'extraterrestrial space craft.' Let's say AC C is true, and the government really is hiding something. It could be nearly anything! Maybe they're hiding the fact that they ran out of funding for UFO-detecting radars and the whole department has been doing nothing for the last month. Maybe they're hiding the fact that they detected a brand new USA spy plane, so USA doesn't find out their spy planes have been compromised. The example possibilities are endless, and 'they're hiding extraterrestrial crafts' is just one of those endless possibilities. This is a case where the AC using such broad phrasing makes it a worse strengthener, not better.

One tip to keep in mind is that you should always be trying to get through LG really fast. Even if you are doing an untimed practice set, you need to be rushing. Otherwise, you risk practicing strategies that work in untimed conditions (always get the correct answers), but are terrible strategies on a real test (just too slow).

For example, resorting to brute force too often. With unlimited time, there's nothing to prevent you from brute forcing every single question. You'll write out pages and pages of boards, and absolutely get every single question correct. But you'd never have time to use that strategy on a real test!

Another common accurate-but-slow strategy that you don't want to practice is giving yourself too much time to double check things. Double checking your setup and answer choices is great for accuracy, so it can become a dangerous crutch- you can't waste time double checking things on the real thing. You want to be able to set up your game and then confidently rely on it for the rest of the questions. It feels very uncomfortable to be so confident when there's always the possibility that you missed something, but you don't have time to look! You just need to hope that you got your setup right the first time. With practice, you essentially always will.

If you see an AC and think 'yep that's definitely a valid answer,' do you find yourself still looking at the rest of the ACs? That's another way that lacking confidence in your previous decisions slows you down! If you see an answer that you think is right, pick it and move on immediately.

You don't have time to check for mistakes. If you move too cautiously out of fear of paying for mistakes, you are guaranteeing that you will be punished later (have only a couple minutes for the last game). Better take a chance of punishment (you really do make a mistake, and fail to notice because you are moving quickly with confidence) than to take a guarantee of punishment.

These are the hardest categories in LR for me, and people in study groups seem to frequently say the same thing.

I never find myself diagramming other types of LR questions, but for the parallel question types I will almost always write out the lawgic unless it's an especially easy one with simple and short reasoning. I generally won't waste time attempting these questions without diagramming first, since I'm nearly guaranteed to have to resort to diagramming anyway.

The correct AC is frequently a perfect match for the stimulus when it comes to lawgic. So instead of going through the ACs in order, I recommend checking for topical differences during the first pass and only diagramming the ACs that don't have topical differences. You can return to the skipped ACs later, but a surprising amount of the time you won't need to.

Here's an example I recently did from PT61- don't read further if you are saving PT61 as a pristine practice test!

This is PT61 S2 Q23, a parallel flaw question. The diagram for the stimulus looks like:

BH = brick house

FY = front yard

2S = two stories

BH --> FY

FY --most-> 2S

Therefore BH --most-> 2S

So superficially, I think it is most likely that the answer will have one 'all' relationship, one 'most' relationship, and a conclusion that is a 'most' relationship. The right answer could totally look different, but I'm going to start by assuming that the right answer will have identical logic and worry about other possibilities later only if I have to.

AC A has these elements and no others, so I take the time to diagram it. Instead of diagramming the bits of the AC in the order that they appear, I try to force them into the same order as the stimulus. I want to start with the 'all' relationship, then the 'most' relationship, then the conclusion:

L = legislator

PS = public servant

RFO = ran for office

L --> P

L --most--> RFO

Therefore P --most--> RFO

It does look similar but it's not quite identical. To be identical, the 'most' relationship would need a P instead of an L, and the conclusion would need an L instead of a P. I'm not disqualifying this AC, but for now I'm moving on in the hopes of a perfect match.

Looking at AC B, it's definitely not going to be a perfect match- there's no 'all' relationship to be found. AC B could absolutely be the correct answer, but right now I am only looking for a perfect match so I skip it.

Looking at C, it's not going to be a perfect match either- there's no use of 'most.' I'll skip this one for now too.

Looking at D, it's got all three topical pieces just like AC A, so I'll diagram it. And again, I make an effort to shoehorn the order I write things down to best resemble the stimulus.

L = legislator

PS = public servant

NRFO = never ran for office

L --> PS

PS --most-> NRFO

Therefore L --most-> NRFO

It's perfect! Of course the nouns are different, but the reasoning is exactly the same as the stimulus lawgic. There's no way to get a more perfect match, so I'm not even going to read AC E. And I'm not going to bother returning to AC C or D either. By being strategic about which ACs I spent time diagramming first, I ended up only needing to diagram 2 out of 5 possible answers.

Even if I for some reason considered AC E before AC D, it wouldn't have made the topical round, because just like AC B there is no 'all' relationship included.

Of course, this strategy only gets you a quicker answer some of the time. There will be other questions where none of the answers are a perfect match, and you have to do a second pass diagramming the stuff you skipped in the first pass. But a useful amount of the time, this strategy of focusing first on potential-perfect-matches will save you time. For this question, it really paid off.

Very interesting news. It looks like LSAC is also offering a free service to people who participate in the study:

Additionally, participants will be able to choose one from a list of incentives offered by LSAC. These include:

Score Preview for an upcoming LSAT administration

One free Credential Assembly Service (CAS) report

Free Law School Success subscription for one year

LSAT SuperPrep and LSAT SuperPrep II test prep books