All closed everyone. Thanks to everyone who showed interest.

yes

That kind of jump will be tough, especially with that schedule. I don't think it's impossible, especially if you're missing a bunch of LG questions, but like @ cited, the LSAT is standardized. The point of the exam is to define your LSAT abilities to a number as accurately as possible. You are most likely to score your average. To have that sort of increase, you'll have to change something fundamentally. Not impossible, but with your busy schedule, improbable.

C is wrong because there is simply no support in the stimulus for knowing what art "typically concerns" critics. Every time the critics are brought up there is a modifier to them ie. "the critic who chooses to address overtly an artwork's political implications" and "critics who attempt... blah blah". For C to be correct it would have to say something that is true of all critics. We know nothing of the set of all critics, but only of those 2 subsets.

E is correct. You're right that E more or less restates the last sentence. This is more a fact set than an argument though. E is correct because if the criticism only on aesthetic evaluation necessarily (always) ends up endorsing the politics of the artist, then of course it doesn't reject it. By definition endorsing at the very least means that the artist is not rejecting it.

I'm sure you didn't need a vocabulary lesson though. The difficulty in this question I believe comes from keeping those subset of critics separate in your mind and prompting yourself when you see an answer choice that says something of all critics to be very critical of that statement.

See what I did there? :)

What do your analytics say?

I started in mid 150s like you on BR and my last PT i got 169/176 after two months. I'm assuming you did your diagnostic completely cold like me. If you did, that's a very workable score to get up to the 170s. I recommend starting on games. If you can get 0/-1 on games consistently then you're golden. Drill your conditional logic so it's automatic. I've learned that under time pressure, knowing your conditional logic down cold is usually what separates the 0/-2 LR scorers from the -2/-4 LR scorers.

Thank you for this. I also have a lower GPA and therefore feel the same pressure to perform 175+ (preferably 180) to get to T14. I am very early in the process, but sometimes have trouble having enough time for the most difficult LR questions at the end of the section. I normally arive at questions 20-21 with 5-6 minutes left which for the most difficult questions is usually not enough to feel 100% confident in all my answers. For the easier LR questions, do you read every answer choice despite knowing almost certainly that when you read C, for example, that it's correct, or do you immediately move on? I feel like this could help me tack on at least 45 seconds to a minute per section which would help a ton and calm me so that I can take my time to think through the hardest questions at the end.

2 RCs, one with Krauss's quantum mechanics as the last passage, and one with the Incan Empire. Really hoping the Incan Empire section was the real one.

Just in regards to LSAT scores/medians? I would probably agree. The pandemic has allowed me (and I'm sure many others) to focus on the LSAT much more and see score improvement more quickly. Only time will tell though.

The question stems asks for something that supports the conclusion that animals are equally right and left handed, and not, like the example of the dog gives, unequally (for example) right handed. A is wrong because the stimulus gives no connection between scratching and handedness. B is wrong because the stimulus gives no evidence linking only using front paws and handedness. C is wrong again because the stimulus does not explicitly connect sitgma to the reason people are handed. D is wrong because it supports the fact that dogs can use either side equally. E is correct because it provides an outside influence for the reason dogs usually shake with the right paw. After E is taken into account it could be the case that dogs are, without influence from trainers, equally left and right handed, but because they are influenced by trainers, they only shake with the right paw.

I've only recently been getting consistently 170+ and by consistently I mean only the past 3 PTs. But since you're mostly talking about LR and my LR has been exceptional lately I'll chime in. Personally, there are many questions, even the 4 and 5 star difficulty questions where yes I normally will eliminate answer choices extremely quickly, sometimes within reading a few words. Those answer choices are easy. But that doesn't mean every question is easy. In my last PT I got question 2 on an LR section wrong during the exam. (Right in BR) And in JY's explanation he also says that he was confused while taking the question under time pressure. 170+ scorers tend to go through a period of underconfidence errors on the easy questions.

To answer your question, yes there is a point where even the most difficult questions can be easy, but things such as confidence, stamina, focus, health, mindfulness, all come into play. And putting it all together cohesively and consistently is a completely different beast. Any single LR question? No problem. 50 in a row after reading about one person's contributions to an obscure architecture movement in the early 1900s and the critics' response? Not so sure.

A point that is brought up a lot in the early podcast episodes is that most people 165+ are probably making more procedural errors than anything. Fundamentally the skills are there, but again, putting it all together on test day is where 170+ and especially 175+ scorers really differentiate themselves. If you are testing in mid to high 160s and BRing consistently in 170s then it's mostly the process. What's your skipping strategy for LR? What's your order strategy for LG? What's your optimal reading time for RC? And after you've figured out what works for you, are you sticking to them piously, or letting your procedure slip under time pressure? I'm not saying be robotic, but having a plan goes a long way, which I believe is what has taken me from mid 160s to low 170s, and looking at my mistakes in my 170+ exams, I know it is what will take me to 175+