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 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

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.

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 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 B to be a necessary assumption, it would have to be that making B untrue completely ruins the argument. The negation would be:

If a highly profitable corporation could save money by giving its employees expensive bonuses, it is not always because giving such bonuses would reduce the amount of time its managers must spend monitoring those employees.

But this doesn't ruin the argument. The argument is stating that sometimes (specifically the times when managers are wasting hours monitoring employees), it is true that giving out big bonuses -> managers monitor less -> company saves money. But the argument doesn't make any comment about the other times, when managers are not monitoring employees.

For example, imagine company Z, a very profitable company where managers never monitor employees at all. However, the employees at this company feel underpaid, and are constantly stealing money as a result. But then the company starts giving big bonuses -> employees steal less often -> company saves money.

Company Z directly violates the assumption given in AC B. But the existence of company Z doesn't hurt the author's argument- they never said anything at all about companies where managers do not monitor employees, so company Z is just irrelevant and off topic from the author's perspective. And irrelevant things are harmless!

As long as we can identify one possible hypothetical where AC B is untrue and the argument is okay with that, then AC B can't possibly be a necessary assumption for the argument.

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.

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.

I think that's drawing a bit more out of AC E than we can justify.

AC E only tells us: eliminating poaching (P) is necessary for effective conservation (EC). We don't have any reason to believe that eliminating poaching would be sufficient to cause effective conservation. Maybe eliminating poaching is just one thing on a list of a hundred equally important things that are all necessary for effective conservation to exist. AC E gives us:

EC -> P

Contrapositive: P -> EC

But you're drawing a conclusion more like:

P -> EC

Contrapositive: EC -> P

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.

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

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.

Look for the 'Advanced Logic' section on the syllabus page, there're a few videos dealing with biconditionals.

The first one is here: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/advanced-bi-conditionals/

Why is AC B incorrect?

The stimulus argument precedes like:

Premise) The world bank is assessing how difficult it is... to comply with regulations and pay taxes.

Premise) Our government has dramatically simplified tax filing for small and even midsized businesses

ASSUMPTION) Simplifying tax filing lessens the difficulty of regulation compliance

Conclusion) Our ranking will improve

The point of disagreement between our argument summaries is that you've identified a second assumption: businesses will comply with regulations more if the simplification of tax filing reduces the difficulty of complying with regulations.

The second assumption isn't an unreasonable one, but I don't think the author is including it in his argument! Remember that the "Doing Business" score is entirely based on how easy it is to comply. There is no relationship whatsoever between that ranking and the actual rates at which businesses comply; the author doesn't mention actual compliance rates even once.

This is what throws AC B into the 'irrelevant' bin next to the others.

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Why is AC D correct?

The critical phrase from the stimulus is "a hypothetical business." If the stimulus said 'hypothetical businesses' instead, then the question would be very different.

But we are talking about exactly one, single, solitary hypothetical business (per country being ranked). It has a hypothetical name like 'Amanda's Pet Supplies," hypothetical quarterly earnings reports, etc. 100% of the "Doing Business" ranking is based on how easy it is for this one hypothetical business to do taxes and follow regulations.

The finance minister is saying that since the country has simplified taxes for small and mid-sized businesses, their ranking will improve. But what if the hypothetical 'Amanda's Pet Supplies' is a gigantic business? All simplification to tax regulations for small and midsize businesses would be irrelevant to the hypothetical pet supply store then- it wouldn't impact their ranking at all.

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There's still something a bit frustrating here, though. What if I told you "It's hard for a man to find a job right now." You wouldn't think I was talking about one specific hypothetical man. Colloquially, you'd understand that I was really talking about 'all men,' not a single hypothetical man. Our colloquial, everyday speech often doesn't quite match up to the extreme grammar precision on the test.

But for this question, there's another clue to help correct that misinterpretation. Within AC D we see the phrase 'the hypothetical business.' This is more clearly a singular reference rather than plural, and is less prone to misinterpretation on colloquial grounds.

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.

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.

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.

Intermediate conclusions can be the flaw, every bit as much as main conclusions!

The stimulus we have here is a house of cards. It's bad. The author is completely incorrect in asserting that average frequency of ice ages means that Earth will be struck in the near future (intermediate conclusion).

The main conclusion follows logically from the intermediate conclusion: if Earth really is about to be struck, then funding really is reasonable.

Our goal is to strike at where the reasoning is weak. The reasoning between the intermediate conclusion and the main conclusion is strong. But the reasoning between the premises and the intermediate conclusion is terrible. The intermediate conclusion is the glaring flaw here.

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.

I wouldn't interpret AC D as implicitly referring to 'all' parents.

'All' is a very powerful word, with a dramatic effect on any AC. D refers to 'parents' only, without attempting to invoke something as powerful as 'all.' None of the language in D is strong enough.

Instead 'parents' here means 'some.' 'Many' tells us that some parents will be inconvenienced, so AC D makes a match.

The important distinction here is that the premise is really only stating 'authors sometimes judge their manuscripts as being bad;'

An attack of the premise would look something like 'authors never make judgements about their manuscripts.' That'd be a pretty bizarre AC, directly contradicting a fact from the stimulus, and would never be on a real test.

AC C isn't incompatible with the premise though. AC C completely agrees that authors sometimes make judgements about their manuscripts. AC C also adds some completely new information: sometimes those judgements are erroneous. But nowhere in our premise / the stimulus is it stated that authors make correct judgements, so that bit of information from C isn't creating a conflict with the stimulus.

The argument in the stimulus boils down to:

1) Authors will often have their unpublished stuff become published after they die

2) Authors often think that one of their unpublished works is bad (and do not ever want bad things to be published)

Conclusion: Authors should make sure to destroy the stuff they think is bad, so nobody can publish it after they die

It's much easier to see the flaw in the stimulus by considering an argument with fewer words, but the same flaw:

1) Cheese planets are too dangerous to visit

2) I think the moon is made of cheese

Conclusion: I should not visit the moon

The conclusion only follows if I am correct that the moon is made of cheese, but there's no reason to think that I am correct in particular. AC C for this argument would be 'sometimes I am incorrect about a planet being made of cheese.' It's a good answer because it directly points to the flaw: thinking something is true =/= the thing actually being true.

Between AC A and B, the key is keeping in mind the difference between the Stones' contention and their assumptions.

Their contention is the claim they are making; their conclusion. The Stones contend (line 52): "in the late eighteenth century wealthy men married widows less often than before."

The Stones' assumptions are the reasons why they believe that. We don't know how many reasons they have, since the passage only really mentions one (line 57): that "widows had more money than never-married woman."

The passage tells us directly that Staves "challenges the contention," but "does not completely undermine their contention." Instead, Staves "does counter their assumption that widows had more money...."

This is why the word 'refute' in AC B ruins that answer choice. To refute a contention would be to completely undermine it- to claim that the contention is 100% false and to show evidence of the falseness.

But Staves does not claim their contention is 100% false. She challenges it by showing that one of the underlying assumptions is false, but challenging a contention is not the same as point-blank denying a contention. AC B saying 'refutes' goes too far, over-exaggerating what Staves has said.

It's easy to underestimate the power of a word like 'refute.' It's a very strong, dramatic term. Refuting something is a heavy denial of that thing, not just a question or two being raised.

Reading the passage, I end up with an outline like this:

1) Introduces a Mystery

The effects of gravity in the universe only seem possible if the universe had 90% more mass

2) Introduces Neutrinos

Some people think Neutrinos solve the mystery, but that can't be true, because they have no mass

3) But Wait!

New evidence says that neutrinos actually do have mass [oscillation research]

4) However

The new evidence solves part of the mystery, but not the entire mystery

5) Overall

Nevertheless, we solved part of the mystery and that's a really good thing

Looking at the purpose of each paragraph in the passage from the macro level, AC A looks really good to me. The 'new evidence' of oscillation being observed is accepted and celebrated by the author; the only complaint made is P4: discovering oscillation won a battle but not the war; the mystery is only partially solved.

It sounds like you've hesitated for the phrase in the last paragraph "If the evidence holds up." But this is one colloquial phrase against the bones of the entire passage. It's valid to interpret this phrase as reminding the reader that the things being described currently rely on just one research study, but the author isn't really expressing significant doubt that this study will turn out to have been wrong.

If the author had written an entire paragraph about how this is just one study and we should have doubts until more studies are conducted, then AC A would be a bad answer. But this isn't an idea that the author spends time exploring or digesting.

Having a stronger impression of the author's main purpose in each paragraph is crucial here. The purpose of the passage is to teach us how recent evidence about neutrinos having mass has partially solved a fascinating scientific mystery.

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AC B requires that neutrino oscillation research will be directly "useful" in further dark matter research. But the passage only says that we've made progress.

Imagine that the remaining 70% of unaccounted for "dark matter" is made out of solarinos, an undiscovered particle emitted by small stars. We discover this particle in 2030 by inventing an especially advanced telescope.

In this case, knowing that neutrinos oscillate had nothing to do with the discovery of the other type of dark matter. AC B is like saying that finding one item on a scavenger hunt will help you find all the other items; different types of dark matter are very possibly unrelated to each other.