That's stressful that they changed the date on you so last minute; I'm sorry.

I'm not sure why my letter was different (maybe it's dependent on test center and/or accommodation?) but mine told me that I was responsible for contacting the test supervisor to confirm accommodations and it wasn't optional:

This confirms that testing accommodations have been made for you to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) at the test center listed below. Please contact the test center supervisor, whose name is provided below, at least one week prior to the test to confirm your testing arrangements. If you do not contact the test center supervisor at least 48 hours prior to the nationally advertised test date, you will not be able to test, because supervisors are instructed to return the test materials to LSAC, if arrangements have not been made by this time. The accommodated administration of the LSAT will no longer be available to you. We request that you also contact the supervisor if you will not be testing.

All this to say that yes--definitely confirm with your test site, whether or not it was requested by LSAC. (I know that we are within the 48-hour window, but if there's anyone out there who hasn't confirmed and were supposed to, maybe try calling as soon as possible and fingers crossed your supervisor will be cool.)

Also, friendly reminder to print your accommodations letter along with your ticket.

I haven't taken it yet, but on my accommodations letter it says:

After section 1 a x minute break. After section 2 a x minute break. After section 3 a x minute break. After section 4 a x minute break. After section 5 a x minute break.

So I will have 5 sections + writing.

Even if you are exclusively thinking of law school, taking the GRE might not be a bad idea now that schools are starting to hop on the GRE bandwagon. Or if you can't get accommodated on either and you are less impacted by your disability on tests like the GRE, you could show that an unaccommodated LSAT doesn't represent your abilities.

Technically it was after the settlement, but that may not be wholly representative of their new policies. (If you'd like to know more of the specifics, feel free to PM me.) A lot has already changed since that time. For example, even after the settlement they would get back to you in ~six weeks, but you did have two weeks to appeal instead of the current policy of four days (which is ridiculous.)

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 said:

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 said:

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 said:

Definitely skip harder questions if you're not already skipping. You don't want to be needing every single second in order to finish on time.

Do you think it makes sense to skip the easier questions as well as the harder ones? I am pretty good about skipping over the time sucks (speaking of parallel questions...). But maybe I'm off-base about skipping the easier ones?

Not necessarily. If it's an easy question then you'll probably just be able to knock it out. I should have elaborated in my post above, but skipping the harder ones not only puts time in the bank for you, but also helps you stay in the zone and not lose your momentum. So if you're already doing that, good job.

It could also be that because many of the easier questions are right at the beginning of a section you take time to build up momentum and therefore are missing some of the easier ones. Do you do some warm up before PTs/ timed sections?

You're so right. I don't think I've given enough weight to the power of momentum before and during the section. I do warm up, but some days I will just do RC instead of LR since reading is the primary struggle on both RC and LR. I'm definitely going to start more inclusive warm-ups. Thank you so much!

Definitely. I had been turned down in the past (with over 200 pages of documentation that solidly covered all the criteria) and gave up for a few years. I then submitted basically the same documentation to the friendly folks at ETS (the GRE) and it went through without a problem. Had they not been legally obligated due to the policy on prior accommodations, I am sure LSAC would have rejected it again.

On that note--if things don't go as hoped for you this week, consider going through ETS. But fingers crossed you'll get what you need and have smooth sailing from here.

Mine took 12 business days. I didn't apply near a deadline and had a history of prior accommodations (so I didn't need to send them the hundreds of pages of documentation.) They don't try to make it any easier/less stressful than they are legally obligated, unfortunately.

All of this advice is amazing--you guys are the best! I was expecting a lot of "just keep practicing!" responses, but you blew my mind with your insight and spot-on tips.

@isaacmanoff752 said:

I was making some confidence errors as well and it really helped when I started reading and eliminating all the wrong ACs even when I felt 100% confident that one was right. If you feel like you don't have time to eliminate all the ACs, try and at least read an eliminate one or two other ACs to give yourself the opportunity to check your reasoning.

This is such a good point. I think one of my problems is that although I do go through all the wrong ACs, I get rid of them too quickly because I anticipate that if something feels off about them, it MUST be wrong since it's such an easy question. After all, tricky questions are just tricky because of attractive answer choices. (MPeabody's argument is vulnerable to criticism because of like 12 different things.) Plus, slowing down on a couple of these answer choices to see which trap they are setting will help to confirm the reasoning and ensure that I've read the stimulus and stem correctly, even if I don't fully devote as much time as I'd like on every single AC.

@isaacmanoff752 said:

And if you are still feeling crunched for time, at the very least mark for BR any questions with wrong ACs left that you have not yet eliminated.

This issue with POE definitely stems from feeling like I don't have time to thoroughly justify every wrong answer, but you are right--if I can't fully eliminate each choice with the rigor I do on later questions, I should be coming back to them in the first place. Which goes along with the skipping advice some of you kind folks suggested.

@garicb485 said:

If you're not utilizing an efficient skipping around strategy, that would be a good place to start. It sounds dumb, initially, when your goal is to complete all questions correctly. BUT, the real benefit of skipping around is that it reorganizes the manner in which that time pressure manifests. This gives you a lot more emotional space to focus on each question.

Yes to all of this. I convinced myself that skipping was dumb for all but the hardest questions (~2 per section) since I plan on hitting every question with accuracy (if I can get rid of these stupid mistakes) and don't want to be rushed as the section gets more difficult. But because I feel so much pressure to get 10 in 10, I think maybe skipping some of the EASIER questions makes a lot of sense because that's where my feeling of pressure manifests and knowing I'll be able to finish with questions that are less challenging will allow me to attack them at a more appropriate pace.

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 said:

Definitely skip harder questions if you're not already skipping. You don't want to be needing every single second in order to finish on time.

Do you think it makes sense to skip the easier questions as well as the harder ones? I am pretty good about skipping over the time sucks (speaking of parallel questions...). But maybe I'm off-base about skipping the easier ones?

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 said:

I also tend to miss easier questions on LR, and I've found it's a momentum thing. I'll miss one, or think I miss one, or spend an above average amount of time on an easy question early on, and then I'm off my A game for at least the next 5 questions. Maybe just focus on doing some drilling of 1-3 star questions and really focus on finishing them with an average time of >1 minute per question.

Get out of my head---this is exactly what happens. I start falling behind pace and panic. I think drilling the first 10 or so questions in a section will not only help with trends and timing and understanding what makes easier questions easier, but will also build confidence. Because I haven't found a pattern in type of question missed, I had no idea how to drill this effectively and you nailed it.

Thank you so much guys--this is life(LSAT)-changing stuff.

I'm not sure I understand and/oragree with the rationale for why C is wrong, but I do see why D is stronger.

When I read it, I pictured that the quality control investigator worked for a grocery store (let's say Safeway), the supplier was Kellogg's, and the various manufacturing sites produced different cereals. (Not a perfect pairing up, but it worked well enough.)

So in this scenario, Kellogg's supplies Safeway with 10 brands of cereals that are all manufactured at different sites. Safeway sends people to investigate at Rice Krispies, Frosted Flakes, and Fruit Loops. (Note: The stimulus just says various sites, not ALL the sites.) They send samples back and damn--20% are defective. Safeway is getting ready to make some demands from Kellogg's, but there are a ton of reasons why Kellogg's could be wrong here that don't involve hand-selected samples.

1) The Frosted Flakes Factory is messed up. 100% of their products are bad (Tony the Tiger did some messed up stuff) and NONE at Fruit Loops or Rice Krispies are. Maybe the Frosted Flakes guy figured sending 5 boxes of flakes that were obviously NOT grrrrreat was enough whereas the other two overachievers sent a ton more.

2) Maybe 20% was evenly distributed over all three sites, but no one bothered to check on Corn Flakes and Apple Jacks. Safeway LOVES Corn Flakes and Apple Jacks. They have 5 shelves apiece for each of those guys and Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes take up one spot on a shelf. So even though multiple sites visited had high rates, it certainly didn't match up to was Kellogg's provides Safeway to sell.

That said, D was more obvious and requires less assumptions, but can somebody explain what I'm not seeing about C?

Remember--you can't actually take the contrapositive of "some" because it's an existential quantifier (the relationship between the two things intersects, but doesn't consist of ALL of those two things.) When they flip, it's just the order of the variables. You cannot negate them:

A some B

is the same as

B some A

but is not the same as

/B some /A

So some athletes are not lawyers: A some /L

is the same as

/L some A or some of the party-goers that are not lawyers are athletes

And we know that to be true, because we know there are bankers at the party who are definitely not lawyers but are athletes.

All we know about lawyers is that they aren't bankers. Do we know anything about their athletic prowess?

Given what we know, all of the lawyers could be athletes. This could be the annual gala for the Professional Athletic Association where EVERYONE is an athlete. All of the lawyers are athletes. All of the bankers are athletes. All of the doctors are athletes. But to attend, you have to declare just one profession because they are super snobby about "Jacks of All Trades."

Hope that helps!

No contrapositives for "some" discussed here: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/intersection-translations/?sscompletedlesson=1643

and earlier somewhere else that I couldn't find, sorry.

Glad C won the plurality because I found it so attractive.

I'm going to break down my line of thinking because this is one of the few questions that really misinterpreted the stimulus and it seems as though I'm not alone.

I took Malthus' position to be that "insufficient food will doom humanity to war, pestilence, and famine." It seemed like that was his conclusion and that his premise was that the human population was growing faster than human food-producing capacity.

I thought OUR argument was saying that Malthus' premise was wrong (nope--human food-producing is doing a-ok) but that conclusion will ultimately be correct because of the argument's additional premise.

To me this additional premise was very confusing. "A lack of biodiversity will eventually erode our capacity to produce food"? Is the lack of biodiversity in the food or the human population? Because if it's the human population that could impact the statement we are trying to answer questions about...

Trying to come up with a concrete example, I thought about the recent movie Interstellar and (no major spoilers, I promise!) how there was a sudden shift between technology improving food production and all of a sudden it wasn't and there was a dearth of farmers who could farm without relying on technology.

So with my concrete example in mind, I narrowed my choices down to B and C.

B says that the idea that human food-producing is doing a-ok is used in the argument to support the conclusion that a well-known view is misguided. I discarded this one because Malthus' VIEW wasn't misguided (the argument states that his view about insufficient food dooming humanity is spot-on.) Rather his method-of-reasoning was misguided. On retrospect, "a well-known view" is also suspect.

C states that human food-producing is doing a-ok is an observation that actually supports Malthus' position of "we don't have enough food--we're all going to die." Why does it support that? Because of that "yet agriculture advances often compromise biological diversity" bit. Or rather BECAUSE we are producing so much food, we've screwed ourselves down the line.

To me, C is saying that Malthus has Premise A. The argument had Premise A'. Even though A was a lie and A' was the truth, A' still supports Malthus' conclusion. And A' is what we are being asked for in terms of its role.

Now, looking back, I can see that it is a general fact that will eventually change. (Answer Choice D). And when that changes, Malthus' premise and conclusion will ultimately sync up, which is what the argument is saying.

I also focused on the fact that what was eventually changing was the fact that while we are okay now, "We're all going to die eventually." (Malthus' conclusion.) I quickly eliminated answer choice D because I thought it was trying to trap me into what the change was. Because even though it's clear we won't produce enough food down the line, it didn't seem as though that was the point of bringing it up. It seemed as through it was brought up to say that even though Malthus' Premise A was wrong, we should believe his conclusion.

I think (although I'm still not sure) what I didn't catch before was that our argument claims that Malthus only has one idea: "Human population explosion"+"we don't have the technology" = insufficient food and death." He doesn't have a premise and conclusion structure--we are just presented with the conclusion. So because it's just the one conclusion, refuting part of it could not support his position, and hence C is wrong.

And if we take it as one idea, then the fact that human-food producing capacity not staying the same is important for our argument, because what our argument says is "Malthus WAS WRONG, but he WILL BE RIGHT" rather than "Malthus WAS RIGHT but for the WRONG REASON."

Since our definition of argument is premise + conclusion, I'm not sure I would approach a similar question differently in the future and I feel like I'd be likely to get this wrong again. I thought the word "observation" in answer choice C was sketchy (it seemed to be more evidence or fact) and the fact that the stimulus specifically states "proven correct in the future" should be a strong indicator of D being correct. But I still don't feel that confident, even though I think that if I take the revised argument structure, MY method-of-reasoning is solid. Does anyone else have a more solid understanding of why JY immediately dismisses C as "not supporting Malthus' position?"

As an aside, I mentioned the thing from Interstellar because I think it both helped and harmed me on this question. Making the abstract concrete is generally really helpful on questions like these. And had I not been able to conceptualize biodiversity and the point that was being made, I probably would have been staring for a long time at the question trying to figure out the argument that was being made. But because I was so focused on biodiversity and thinking about how sad Matthew McConaughey was about being a farmer, it actually became HARDER to see biodiversity's role in the argument. It seemed separate from Malthus' faulty premise; instead of seeing it as justification for the fact that he will be right eventually, it seemed like an alternative explanation: Matthew McConaughey not wanting to be a farmer will lead to people starving. Not: Matthew McConaughey not wanting to be a farmer will erode our capacity to produce food to meet the needs of the ever-expanding human population. I'm not usually one to diagram, but it may have helped here when I was so (dazed) and confused and caught up with Farmer McC.

AA --> LBD --> DCPF

(Agriculture Advances leads to a lack of biodiversity which leads to a decreased capacity to produce foods.)

Also, I probably would have completely frozen on this question had I not recently seen Interstellar. Point being: Take a study break and go to the movies. :D

I made a huge mistake in that I glanced at the stem and saw the words, "most strongly supports," underlined them and stopped reading the stem, and went about trying to answer this question. As mentioned in the video, this is a strengthening question and NOT a MSS question and the answers for each are vastly different. Because of this, I quickly eliminated all of the answer choices. I saw that I had underlined most strongly supports so instead of reading the stem again, I read the stimulus and all of the answer choices again. I knew why each was wrong, but ultimately picked E because it was the "most" strongly supported. I couldn't figure out how question 3 was so tricky. I caught this immediately in blind review when I decide to not be an idiot and read the whole question.

Morale of the story 1: Read the whole freakin' question stem

Moral of the story 2: Sometimes when I quickly eliminate all of the answer choices, it's because I misread/misinterpreted the stimulus or an answer choice. But if they are all feeling REALLY wrong, I need to double check the stem.

I spent way too much time on the question because I was looking for extra information in the answer choices. I was looking to see the no daisies being edible was wrong, and so although I had D some C and C some E, I wasn't comfortable choosing Answer C initially. And although her friend being incorrect was her conclusion, that wasn't actually part of her REASONING which is what the question stem asks us to look for. Reminder to self: Keep reading stems carefully.

While you definitely can do lawgic, I found it easier to not to.

After reading it, I knew I was looking for a member of a group to speak for all members of that group on an opinion that wasn't in their area of expertise and to have a trait they would say those that didn't share their opinion didn't possess.

To me, this was much faster than diagramming it out and having to diagram out answer choices.

In A, Ralph didn't try to speak for all biologists.

In C, Yuri didn't try to speak for all wine connoisseurs.

In D, Xi didn't try to speak for all photographers

In B Franz spoke for all fathers.

In E Betty spoke for all corporate executives. But she didn't deny the trait they possess (honesty), so it was wrong.

If you find lawgic easier or just want to practice, go for it. But for me, lawgic would have been a huge time suck on a question I found pretty easy.

I oscillated between C and D and changed from D to C in blind review.

While I definitely got that Adam Smith is the authority on free trade, it didn't seem as though he was appealing to his expertise, rather he was just stating the definition that is universally accepted so that we could see how NAFTA did NOT fit the accepted definition, and therefore was not representative of free trade.

I can see how name dropping in general is an appeal to authority, but I ultimately went away from it because the argument wasn't, "FYI, THE Adam Smith and he agrees with me so don't even try to argue." The focus seemed to be that there are factors required for free trade and NAFTA has one that will prevent it from being truly free. That factor is non-representative instance of our concept of free trade, hence the conclusion is NAFTA is misnamed.

Again, I do understand that name dropping will often be an appeal to authority. And I also get what J.Y. wrote below about "the economist who first articulated the principles..." But since they are principles and not guidelines, there did seem to be a strongER case for non-representative.

I'm wondering if my misreading of this has to do with the word instance? Maybe since it's not one very specific example of how Canadian-Psych-Major-Joe is restricted from exporting pizza to Cuba (that was article IX of NAFTA, right?) and is instead talking about the broad idea of boundaries that makes C incorrect?

I always seem to struggle with the questions everyone else finds easy and pick unpopular answer choices which scares me about how I'm interpreting these. Hopefully that means someone clearly sees what I'm getting wrong?

Just a quick note on a stupid mistake I made and will avoid in the future so it hopefully won't happen for any of you:

For #4, I originally liked E and A but didn't want to spend so much time on one of the first questions in the set, picked E, and circled it. I went back to check it with seconds to spare before time was up and re-scanned the portion about being pushed into the forest and decided to switch my answer. I had completely forgotten that the passage continued in the next column and even though I remembered thinking that E had definite merit, because I was able to locate the exact mention of answer choice A and time was up, I switched my answer.

Upon BR, I realized I had not remembered to even look at the end of the passage. Even though the sentence I was looking at was at the bottom of the page and ended in a comma, not a period. D'oh.

My two take-a-ways:

1) If you are going over answers with very little time to spare, don't switch answers unless you are really confident. I don't often trust my gut and as someone who tends to make a lot of silly mistakes, this is probably a good thing. But I certainly spent more time with this questions the first time than on the second pass and should have recognized that I wasn't reading all the relevant information in the passage (including what J.Y. mentioned about making sure to find the answer to the "appropriate question" in that paragraph.) It's often discussed here about choosing answers in panic and I think this goes for checking answers, too.

2) Don't forget to check to see if a passage continues in the next column when answering questions or coming back to check answers. I think it's hard to do when reading a passage because for the most part, they usually split paragraphs when continuing over--and if not, you'll see the top of the next column is not a question. But in the frenzy of answering questions, or revisiting it after reading other passages, it might be easy to forget if you aren't mindful of it. I may start putting boxes around the entirety of text in a second column if I notice I have this issue again.

I definitely get what you are saying. The passage certainly says okapis "WERE infrequently captured" and the answer choice says, okapis "ARE infrequently captured" and mentions the group of hunters again. I agree it would be a stronger answer choice if "for hunters" was omitted. I also spent some time wondering, well--since more is known about how they travel and the narrow band in which they live, maybe hunters could get better about finding them.

But this is unnecessary and there are two key words in the question stem that led me to safely choose C: Based on the passage, the author would be MOST LIKELY to agree with...

It's kind of like the difference between a sufficient and necessary assumption. The most likely leaves a little bit of wiggle room that admittedly makes it "less airtight," but alerts you to the fact that it doesn't have to be. In fact, it's almost suggesting you will probably have to make an inference. It's not like the question before (5) where it specifically is asking what was mentioned in the passage or not. Most likely is telling you that these things aren't in the passage, so which one conforms THE MOST with what was.

I'd gotten out of the habit of reading stems really closely because I feel like I've seen them all so many times that I understand what the questions are asking me to do--but we're told to read them carefully for a reason. They do shape the answers we're looking for.

To be honest, I wouldn't bank on accommodations. I wouldn't even apply. Personally, I have had *several* qualifying disabilities--including ADHD--heavily-documented for well over a decade. I first took the LSAT a few years back and didn't even apply for accommodations because A) The LSAC is notoriously stingy when it comes to giving out accommodations B) It costs about $2,000-$3,000 to get the complete testing done that they require and it's still a huge gamble and C) They flagged the scores for those that got extra time and I didn't want schools to look at my score differently.

I am currently studying for a re-take and while most of A and B are still true, extended time tests are no longer flagged and folks who have had previous accommodations are able to basically get reciprocity if they had those accommodations on the SAT, GRE, or whatever. Although I didn't have it on the SAT, I had formal accommodations (IEP, 504, etc.) in high school that suggests I SHOULD have and decided to give it a shot. My file of documentation is very thick and current (I have a lot of records that show how these disabilities are impacting me presently) and did pay to have the extensive testing done (and luckily found someone who had a sliding scale.) That said, I'm still not holding my breath and am preparing for my test under normal time constraints.

You can see just how many requests they got and how many they granted by disability and accommodation via their own report here. It's up-to-date through the February 2012 test:

http://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/research-(lsac-resources)/tr-12-01.pdf

(Make sure to copy and paste the link)

I understand that they are trying to be the most fair by only allowing accommodations to those that would not gain an unfair advantage. And I'm not saying that you (nor I) would gain an unfair advantage with accommodations. I think that by trying to protect the validity of the test, they often screw over individuals--but I get where they are coming from.

The fact that ADHD became so trendy and people used it as an excuse for everything and many HAVE tried to game schools, tests, etc. with it sucks. My point is that even with about 15 years of documentation including less "popular" diagnoses than ADHD, I'm not counting on accommodations. I've been prepping for my re-take for over a year and it took about a solid month to put together all the documentation/get the required testing. (No exaggeration.) You're welcome to cut that time out of your study schedule if you want to pursue it, I just want you to realistically think about the cost-benefit ratio. (Obviously for me, I did ultimately decide it was worth it.) (Oh, and you should know that the deadline for applying for accommodations is generally about a month ahead of the exam, so even if you randomly had all of the paperwork laying around, you wouldn't be able to apply for accommodations on the December test--it closed yesterday.)

I do not deny that your ADHD is real or that you probably were suffering for a long time without diagnosis. It sucks that you don't have a paper trail and it is commendable that you are getting through/got through undergraduate without accommodations and probably had to work harder than others without ADHD. But your chances of getting accommodated are slim-to-none, particularly without a long history of documentation.

As for other strategies--what has been working for you up until now? As I said earlier, although you are just getting diagnosed, my guess is you've been symptomatic for quite some time. How have you dealt with it in the past? As for meds, they can be very helpful, but to be honest, it may take time to find the right dosage. I know with the December test coming up, this may not be welcome (or feasible) advice, but it may be best to postpone the test to February or June for optimal test taking conditions--which would result in sitting out the current cycle.

It's also best to do some reflecting and/or scientific methoding about how you study best. Do you study best in a library with other people around or a silent apartment? Do you have more focus in the mornings or afternoons? Is it best to have no distractions available ( like music) or is the silence deafening? As you get closer to the test date, you will need to practice in simulated conditions and will want to leave plenty of time to acclimate, but if you want to maximize your time while getting the foundations built, focus (pun intended) on what works for you. Capitalize when you ARE able to focus. (Study breaks are great but sometimes when I get into the "groove," I can study for hours on end and if I stop and take a break, I find it hard to re-enter that mode.)

I would also ask whomever diagnosed your ADHD to tell you a bit more about it--is it the inattentive type? The impulsive type? Each has different consequences for how it impacts your test-taking and they should be able to offer some tips.

If you (or others) would like to know more about the accommodations process or studying with disabilities, feel free to message me. I probably went into more details than wise in a public forum, but I love 7Sagers and the fact that they tend to be pretty positive and supportive and not so jerk-like about things like ADHD and accommodations and I know the process is kind of confusing and nebulous on purpose.

My mistake here was that I took the statement, "Environmentally responsible corporations are corporations that do all they can to do less" as an MP/SC instead of context and that coloured my reading of the rest of the stim and the answer choices. Why did I do that? Because I brought in outside knowledge in my attempts to read this skeptically.

My thought process: Is that all a corp needs to be environmentally responsible? What about not not cutting down trees or experimenting on endangered animals? So you reduced pollution and you couldn't have done it all the way? Do you want a cookie? (In other words, because I had the answer choice so pre-chosen in my mind, I didn't even pick up on the fact that it wasn't necessarily all the company could have done. I kept reading to see if I picked up on anything else, but being so hyper-focused that I do so in vain.)

When I got to the answer choices, I quickly eliminated A (for the record, he DOESN'T take it for granted since he says there aren't current methods that will eliminate all pollution) and B (irrelevant) and got to C: It generalizes too hastily from the inapplicability of a specific criticism to the inapplicability of a class of criticisms. I interpreted this as: CEO is concluding that because he has reduced his pollution, his corp shouldn't be considered environmentally irresponsible. Just as I thought! Boom.

...Except, is environmentally irresponsible a CLASS of criticism? Since I assumed there was a lot of ways that one could be responsible/irresponsible, I could argue that just because a specific sufficient condition for the criticism (doesn't pollute less) doesn't apply, that doesn't mean that other sufficient conditions (experimenting on endangered animals) doesn't apply. But are all these sufficient conditions a CLASS? What class would they be? Environmental criticisms lodged against corporations? Maybe. But I just stepped into a chain of assumptions. But as I was going through this question, the assumptions happened automatically and verified my thinking. I like it when I'm right, so I moved on.

Important lessons learned here:

-While pre-guessing answer choices is a strong strategy that works most of the time, don't let it bias your reading of the passage or answer choices.

-If you are looking to confirm a pre-guessed answer, double check that it does not requite any additional assumptions.

-When answer choices make generalizations or uses general terms or synonyms, double check that the term matches up the phenomenon it is describing without having to make additional assumptions. Particularly when looking to confirm your answer. (I usually have the opposite problem--I'm leery of picking an answer choice that doesn't match verbatim.)

If a democracy is well functioning, then any bill that is opposed by influential people but favored by most other people will promptly be passed into law.

The only issue with B is that it says eventually. In a non-well-functioning democracy, the bill will "not be passed for many years, if at all." So in order for the democracy to be considered functioning, it's got to happen quickly.

What tripped me up here was a reversal in the meaning of answer choice C. (Right now, 30% of people pick C so I'm guessing it's a common problem?)

I figured out that W --> FHD was the conclusion.

How do we know?

LC --> HD (If we have large clouds, we'll have heavier downpours.)

But how do we know we'll have large clouds?

W --> LC

So I picked C: It is a statement that the argument is intended to support but is not the conclusion of the argument as a whole.

I read this as saying that C is a subconclusion supporting the main conclusion, but it's not saying that all. The STATEMENT is supporting the ARGUMENT--not the other way around. If the argument intended to support the statement, that means the argument's conclusion is supporting the statement. The only instance I can see this happening is if after the conclusion, we are provided with an example or a suggestion that the statement could possibly be generalized in the future (but a distinction would have to be drawn clearly to suggest that this was NOT the conclusion.) This would be extremely rare, if at all possible.

Had I not moved on after seeing C, I probably would have read answer D and seen it's correctness, gotten confused, and parsed out why C was wrong, but that probably would have been a huge time suck. So yay?

I really had trouble selecting "A" because even though the astronomer did seem to make his conclusion based on there not being evidence in favor of the other side, I didn't really equate "good reason" as evidence against the hypothesis. It seemed to me that the issue was that he wasn't offering any evidence against the hypothesis, which is why I chose "E." I've seen and selected this answer choice without a problem on many other incarnations of this question and was struggling to figure out why this tripped me up. In the process, I think I came to an important understanding about flawed argument structures:

I suppose if you equate premise and evidence, what he offers as his premise is what he is trying to use to support his conclusion. And since it is flawed, it doesn't matter if the premise IS actually evidence or not. Because:

Even if good reason and evidence aren't the same thing AND

Even if the premise doesn't support the conclusion AND

Even if a premise doesn't constitute "evidence" (which is kind of the same thing as above, but there is a slight distinction)

The astronomer is TRYING to support a conclusion with a premise, and because of that, he is offering that premise as "evidence." It doesn't matter if it's not evidence. What matters is his intention.

So when you have a flawed argument, as long as there is a premise that is attempting to support a conclusion, it doesn't have to be right, on topic, coherent, definitive or have any specific quality other than being CLAIMED to support the conclusion. And if it is being claimed as support, we can assume that the person making the argument does see it as a good reason/right/evidence/on-topic/coherent...and perhaps definitive depending on the other phrasing.

I'm sure this is obvious to most people but I wasted a lot of time on this question and I do feel confident I won't let it happen again.

I have a really hard time understanding why E is the correct answer. I figured the correct answer would justify comparing fins to wings (which it does), but it doesn't seem to justify how this is relevant to their hunting rituals. Just because the fins help the Plesio travel long distances doesn't mean that it will not lurk and ambush prey. Nor does it guarantee that it will chase prey over long distances. Technically I'm built to travel significant distances but I'm really freaking lazy. If we had information (either from the stim or the answer choice) that suggested birds' wings evolved so that they could chase prey over long distances, I'd be convinced.

It just seemed so unrelated to the actual conclusion, that I figured mention of birds was fluff and the answer choice was a trap. I picked C because it explains why it would travel over long distances.

Am I missing some obvious mention of birds and their prey? Or another reason why E can complete the argument?