are you making sure to compare the answer choice to the line in the passage? Are you picking "trap" answers that are 'not quite what the passage said," or trap as in "they were in the passage but not where the question was asking about"? Do you have an example?

Look for patterns. I generally say that flaws fall into one of two categories - a scope shift or a structure flaw. A scope shift is a change in terms - the evidence talks about dogs and the conclusion talks about cats, so we are assuming that what's true about dogs is true about cats. A structure flaw will have matched terms but a mismatched relationship - this is where you get your necessary/sufficient flaws, your correlation/causation flaws, etc. Also practice with abstract answers and going element by element to compare to the stimulus - if the a/c says "assumes that something is true merely because people believe it," your evidence has to say "people believe X" and your conclusion has to say "X is true." If you have a specific flaw question you are struggling with, feel free to post it and where you got stuck and I'm happy to help.

What are you doing differently on untimed work? Think about how you can do that with timed practice. Are you skipping key steps when you have a timer going?

@ktacklesthelsat

Also start with the a/c that talks about tokens or clay as most likely to be correct. Several of these are so broad that they're unlikely to be supportable with the info here.

@ktacklesthelsat Yes, you do have to know where to look, that's the key task. Most questions have clues in the question stem to tell you where to go back and research - a highlighted line, a paragraph number, or a reference to a specific topic. This one doesn't, but you can take each answer choice and quickly evaluate whether its too extreme, etc, and where it would be if it's the answer. A question like this that doesn't clearly clue in the question stem or the language of the a/c directly is honestly a small minority. Don't fixate on this one; most of them do give you some direction. But once you find it, it's clearly objective that this would logically follow - first sentence of paragraph 3. If they didn't regard them as redundant, they probably wouldn't have replaced them.

Make sure you have a way to "test" answer choices. Remember when you took algebra? You might solve for X and get X = 5. Ideally then you plug it back in - drop 5 back in for X in the original equation and make sure it works. Same thing here. For NA that's doing the negation test. For weaken that's going back to the evidence, then saying "but" the a/c, and making sure you say "yep, now I'm questioning the conclusion." etc etc. Also think about scope, whether you want strong or weak language, etc. Most of the questions really only have 2 (at most) even plausible answer choices when you take strength and scope into account, which can be done really quickly.

Hi, I have almost 25 years of LSAT teaching and tutoring experience, please feel free to message me if you're still looking. Thanks!

I promise it's still objective. The LSAC has to be able to say "C is the only credited answer because the passage says. . . " You should expect that the right answer WILL have a reference in the passage that tells you why. They may not spell it out for you with a neon sign, but it's there. Do you have an example of one you think is not objective? It may not be direct, explicit, or handed to you on a platter, but it's absolutely objective!

I don't think timed drills per se are the answer. Look at where you are losing time. Think about what you want in an a/c. Strong or weak language? How do you test an a/c back against the stimulus (negation test, etc)? Get a better handle on what you like and don't like in a valid answer for each question type.

@RachelMeltsin So why are you missing questions?

What are your deficiencies? It's hard to make recommendations without knowing what you are struggling with.

What was different on test day? Were you surprised to get your scores or did you know when you took it that you weren't doing well? Do you have a plan to avoid the same issues that occurred on the test? I can't speak to admissions (I don't do adcon, just the actual LSAT) but do you need higher than 172 for your schools?

You want to consistently be a couple of points above your target before taking the real thing. Most students will go down a couple of points on test day because of anxiety. You were averaging about a 143 with those scores, and the test is a +/- 3 points. It's hard to say what you need to do differently without knowing why you are missing questions. Do you have good fundamentals? Do you have a clear process for each question type? "Ok, this is weaken - I need to identify evidence and conclusion and find an a/c that makes the conclusion less likely to be true. I generally don't want weak language in the a/c and I can test it by adding it back to the evidence and seeing what that means for the conclusion." Why are you missing questions when you review? Also if you need a 150-155 for your schools, don't take the test again until you have a significant chance of hitting that as shown by your practice test scores.

Figure out what's different. Are you panicking because of the time? Do you spend time on steps you don't need? Are you evaluating answer choices critically? For example, I see students who read answer choice A. Stop. Think about it. Hmmm. Does that work? Think some more. Maybe. etc etc etc. But if it's a NA question and you know you generally don't want extreme language and A starts with "every", you don't need to read more - go on to B because A is probably wrong. Look for ways to quickly eliminate answers. Identify conclusion and evidence instead of just starting at the top of the stimulus and reading the whole thing. Look for the gist, rather than belaboring every detail in an argument. Spot patterns - "this goes from the group to the members" is often enough without needing more specifics as to what is going on. Identify where the time is going to figure out how to stop losing it.

@ktacklesthelsat right. About 15 percent of the passage gets asked about. You read a paragraph 3 times trying to understand every detail then they never ask you about it and you’ve wasted that time and effort.

@ktacklesthelsat Yes. 1) you're doing it instead of belaboring trying to understand/memorize. 2) it shouldn't take long - "1- why dinos dead? / 2- 2 poss expl / 3 - expl 1 - meteor / 4 - expl 2 volcano / 5 - prob the meteor 3) it helps you to see where to go back and look up answers - "oh this question is about the meteor theory so it should be in paragraph 3."

I don't really "count" blind review scores for much. What matters is your timed scores. You can look at individual questions in review and identify that timing was the issue and that rushing is why you missed it, but honestly the BR score is, in my opinion, a meaningless statistic. Work on getting your timing down, or keeping focused, or whatever it is that you identify as the source of error when you review.

Do you have an example? For some question types vague is fine. For example, for purpose "explain a phenomenon" is fine, but not for main idea. If you have a specific question you had a problem with that would be easier to look at for context.

High level first pass read. Focus on paragraph map to create a "table of contents" and getting purpose and main idea. Remember it's open book, not a pop quiz from memory. Use language in the question stem to go back and look up where answers will be. Untimed until you are comfortable with high level read and how to research, then timed sections.

Can you clarify what you are asking? A contrapositive is a relationship between two formal logic statements - one is the contrapositive of the other. You can chain FL statements, and the fact that you got a FL statement by contraposing another FL statement doesn't change that it's a FL statement.

If you mean can you turn A -> B -> C into not C → not B → Not A, then yes, because you are just taking

A → B

B -> C

and turning them into

not B → not A

Not C → Not B

But I don't like big left to right chains. I like to keep each separate statement on its own in a list so I can scan the left column. That's just my preference based on how my brain works.

You'll be better able than we will to identify why you had the score differential since we aren't in your head. Neither of these scores are accurate predictors of where you are currently in terms of scores as neither reflects a real, timed conditions performance. So first off I'd have you do some introspection about what was different about your process each time. As for being stuck between two choices, things that I think are helpful are remembering for the question type do you want strong or weak language, can you bring in things that are not explicitly mentioned in the stimulus, and having a way to "test" an answer choice to make sure it's correct - like the negation test for NA. You shouldn't just be looking at answers and going "this one seems ok," you should be saying "I know this is correct because if the evidence is true, but then this one is true, I'm not so sure about the conclusion."

It really depends. Some students pick things up quickly; for some it takes longer. Remember that the first few points will be easy as you learn basics, then it becomes harder as you go to pick up the last few. It's certainly fine to shoot for August, but it may take you longer.

@sj112 I generally tell my students no more than 2 1/2 -3 hours at a time, and usually the only people who can get in two study sessions a day are the ones who are literally only doing LSAT (not working, in school, etc). Quality will trump quantity.

It's impossible to say whether an unnamed show at your library will help, but in general I find that materials not aimed at the LSAT are usually overinclusive and go way beyond what you need for this test.

So my approach is a zoom out view. This is open book - nobody is taking the passages away from you. When you move on to the questions you want to understand the big picture ideas but don't worry about the details. If and when they ask about them, you'll pick them up. But on the first read stay on the high level stuff. Skip the details and minutiae - the for example, the in addition, the excruciating specifics of the science experience. "Curie did the experiment that proved her theory" is what you need, not every step of the experiment.