How up to date is everything? For example, I believe the UNC LSAT median is 168 now, not 167. Is this just splitting hairs?

@7Sage Tutor Great explanation!

@SihunKim Let me see if I can help. First of all, this is an LR-like Strengthen question so we are not trying to find any additional evidence in the text to support our answer choice exactly. We are trying to choose the answer choice that, if true, best supports the highlighted claim. I can also see how you think of it like weakening the assumption that the author takes issue with, but I also think we can think of it as strengthening the author's implicit claim that cooking is not too recent of an innovation to have an impact on biological adaptation. Put another way, cooking is old enough to have an effect on human biological adaptation.

Looking more closely at D, to me it doesn't indicate any adaptation has occurred (compare it to B which states the adaptation has occurred pretty clearly). When I read D, I think these early humans ate a bunch of plants and that shows up in their bones (not that different from being in their blood). If it were really an adaptation, we would have to know that strontium stayed in the human bones beyond when they changed how much plants they eat, which we don't. So to me, D doesn't indicate any adaptation has occurred, and even if it did, how does it have anything to do with the author's claim about cooking being old enough to have an impact on biological evolution. There's no aspect of time in D.

Hope this helps!

I don't think you'll find an answer to either of your questions. You can even look at Reddit for past official test dates like June and usually there are instances of both 3 LR, 1 RC and 2 LR, 2 RC discussed and the order can be pretty much random too. I know I got 3 LR then 1 RC last time I took it in June

So I would say just be ready for anything. One thing you can do to address your concern is doing endurance drills like a 30-question LR section (adjust time accordingly) or a 5-passage RC section. This way, just 1 section or two back-to-back sections of the same type shouldn't bother you too much.

I think you could do 2 things: 1) depending on where you're at with your studying, you could always go review those parts in the core curriculum, 2) probably more immediate, drill these areas. Make a custom drill with conditional reasoning questions only, maybe set to 3,4,5-star questions or just 4&5. You can start with untimed work then progress to timed. Aim for 100% on those drills before moving on. Repeat with causal reasoning.

@Hello Sure! Well I was pretty confused on this question because as I was reading answer choices C and D, and I read "the only," I used to think if you saw "only" that meant it was "Group 2, Necessary," but I must've missed somewhere in my core curriculum that "the only" means Group 1, Sufficient (as mentioned in the explanation video). So the correct translation of the first sentence of answer choice D is frogs -> lagoon and for the first sentence of answer choice C, it's lagoon -> frogs. If you didn't know "the only" was Group 1, it gets pretty difficult to translate. Here's all the conditional indicators: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPYJihoE=/. If you haven't done that part in the core curriculum, I suggest looking at the conditional and set logic lessons, e.g. https://7sage.com/lessons/foundations/conditional-and-set-logic/conditional-sufficiency-and-necessity-indicators

I was today years old (2 years of studying LSAT) when I realized "the only" was group 1....

@ad20667 It's in paragraph 1. While it seems like the author of Passage A is siding mostly with those who are defending judicial sincerity, they do present the arguments of the legal theorists who reject the necessity of judicial sincerity and the author doesn't flat out disagree with them. Especially in sentence 2 of paragraph 1, where they discuss how judicial sincerity might ignore "myriad institutional considerations," this implies that a judge might forgo judicial sincerity in order to consider those other considerations, which would be the positive benefits mentioned in the answer choice.

@seantan166358 I think I see what you're thinking here, but I think it's a too strong of an assumption to believe that author A was talking about "nonlegal situations" when they discuss ordinary moral thinking. I think they're discussing how ordinary moral thinking applies to judicial/legal situations.

Even if you assume that they are talking about nonlegal situations there, does the author of passage B express an opposing opinion on that issue? I think not.

@anzbel Good question because I also chose D mistakenly. I think what it comes down to is having a grasp on both ends of the conditional particularly the part that says "likely to reveal important information about a medical condition." There's a difference between that and saying hormonal imbalances do not constitute a medical condition. That could be true, but the study could still reveal important information about a medical condition. Each word is important. I know that's similar to "read more carefully," but that's all I've got! 🤷🏻‍♂️

@MRaymond I definitely agree with both of your points that 1) the way the question stem is worded in emphasizing the "validity of the evidence" supports B more, and 2) that the written explanations here are not great. I thought the explanations in this forum were in some ways better: https://forum.powerscore.com/viewtopic.php?f=602&t=35606

@MRaymond I'm about to send a tutor a question about this because I think we were thinking pretty similarly on this one. I also chose E because I thought it suggested that the bear was using its senses and thus not truly navigating. But now that I've thought about it, I think E has a number of issues: 1) it's not as strong of an answer as B. If you really think about how important the assumption is that the bear is not dropped in familiar territory, that's crucial for the strength of the argument. 2) Even if E is true, can the bear really somehow magically smell to it's home over 300 miles away? When you really think about it, it really starts to feel like a stretch. I'm not super satisfied with my own explanation, but hopefully a tutor can chime in.

A LOT of questions. Any tips on figuring out the best ones to use? Should we just go by gut reaction/what speaks to us?

@ericjwilliams285 Dang bro, tell us how you really feel