No! You should definitely be carefully reviewing what it is you're missing instead. Start with paraphrasing and making what you're reading into your own (part of this is years of study habits but it's never too late to start). Even as an English major, LSAT's RC can trip you up because there are certain words that you'll se are key, like concession points, conditional words, etc. Don't just blindly do a bunch of RCs. Start by doing what JY does in the RC videos.

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Does anyone know when Powerscore will release their predictions on this test?

They have: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3Bvd2Vyc2NvcmVsc2F0cG9kY2FzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Bvd2Vyc2NvcmVsc2F0cG9kY2FzdA/episode/YjM2YzQyYzAtYjEwYy00MmQ2LWExZTYtMTY5ZmNmZTkwYmU2?hl=en-CA&ved=2ahUKEwiimsrR57_yAhWOIDQIHarQC-gQjrkEegQIBhAF&ep=6

FYI on the forum, Jon said that he thinks the scoring scale is going to be something like Sept 2018 or Dec 2017 (-11 or -12 for 170).

I had the Norway Sweden question and I only had 1 LR…

There are lots of test forms in use. It’s not surprising. The same thing happened with weekend-to-Monday test-takers.

RC RC LG LR

i thought LR was hard but half of my mind was also on my poor guinea pig who’s currently in the ER possibly has meningitis

one of the RC i had national Nigerian language, something i forget, sentence reduction, Krauss

the other RC i had cowbirds (DNR the rest); thought both sections were probably around the same difficulty, kind of like PT89’s RC.

LG was standard if not easier; last game took a bit of time but i finished. It was about fashion designers and stores.

LR was rough for me as the last section. There was a question about Sisyphus and an Athenian with a name starting with C that I couldnt figure out. I thought the middle of the section was harder than the very end. In general kind of like a mix of PT89 but with more typical question types on steroids. Again I’m probably biased because I was worried about my guinea pig half the time I was doing the section and my proctor stopped me out of no where because her video wouldnt load. One of the proctors I had was great, the others all awful.

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@ agreed!! I thought the first LR was so hard but the second one wasn't so bad. For the other posters above who thought the reverse, I'm hoping the order of LR sections was switched for different tests (seems to be the case for double RC versions)

For people with two LR: are you thinking the experimental section was the one with the speed limit/mug incentive and the robot worker/tax incentive Qs?

@ Which PT did you think the LR was more like? I also think LR section difficulty depends on personal strengths/weaknesses. I for one, thought PT 89 and 88 LRs were relatively easier than other 80s tests, but that was probably because PT89 especially, was heavy on conditional and causal logic, and not so much other random sh*tty arguments that LSAT writers come up with.

It seems like the one with the Nigerian languages RC is the real RC, from what people have said.

Gr8, thanks guys! Also, found this:

What did y'all do with scrap papers after the test? Do the proctors ask you to throw them away or something?

JY's explanation of (E) is interesting ... I didn't think (E) was a flaw, actually. I thought (E) was:

- "a condition under which something occurs": condition --> something

- "a condition under which all its prerequisites occur": something --> A & B,

so condition --> something --> A&B

i feel like what JY showed as (E) isn't actually what (E) is saying ...

This question is super tricky, imo, because it's not immediately clear if the conclusion is talking about in general, or comparing between the two groups. It's hard to interpret the conclusion. The only way (D) makes sense to me is if the conclusion is talking about people who are confident/not in general. At first, I thought the flaw was they overgeneralized being overconfident in answering the questions vs. being overconfident in general, so (E) seemed attractive. But (E) still isn't what we want. I think the assumption you'd have to make for (E) is that confidence in business acumen affects likelihood of starting a business, which seems reasonable at first, but I guess not? The last half of (E) has to say something about likelihood of starting business.

Whereas, if you understood the conclusion as saying people in general who are overconfident, and the entrepreneurs and business managers being in this group, then (D) makes more sense. It still doesn't strengthen completely because of course, the conclusion is comparative, and nothing is said about people who are less confident. I think this is where another problem arises--is that you have to understand "less confident" in the conclusion as meaning not overconfident.

I guess another way to make sense of (D), while understanding the conclusion as referring to the business managers when it talks about "people who are less confident," is that the comparison is quite meaningless if business managers didn't attempt to start businesses. I don't know, though, because I think if business managers didn't attempt, then the likelihood is 0, so then of course entrepreneurs' likelihood would be higher.

Dunno what to do with questions like these. I hate it when the LSAT writers are vague. #help.

I also had a weird share screen moment at the beginning (the button just didn't show up for a couple of minutes) and my proctor took his sweet sweet time showing up and checking me in (entire thing took 25 mins until I actually began). There was a brief moment when the LSAT told me my internet connection was unstable, which I'm pretty sure is just straight up false, but that didn't bother me. I did have a terrible and legit traumatic experience in the August LSAT, though, so the bar is pretty low.

Other than these things, no tech issues at all! I felt like my test this time went much better than August's. ProctorU sucks in general and I feel like they definitely don't pay or train their proctors enough, but compared to my last experience in August, this time was much better. I don't know if my LSAC survey after my August LSAT complaining about my proctor fiascos did anything, but if it did, I'm glad. I'm just happy to be done with the LSAT.

wait you’re not allowed to talk about the topics for this exam??

The factual accuracy of (B) in 16 is also in question. The passage doesn't really talk about peptides binding crystals together so much as it binds to semiconductors to help semiconductors crystallize.

In (22), (C) - (E) all weaken, if anything, or is just irrelevant. (A) kind of does, too, but all in all is just irrelevant. Not really sure what to do with it. Ok, so other people has started doing something too, what does that have to do with Belcher & Hu, though? If anything, it's more like competition. But there's not evidence to say if it's competition or collaboration, so you just can't do anything with (A). (B) is a very subtle answer choice in that you just have to think about it in relation to the passage. If there are even more semiconductors that work in the same way and can be substituted, that gives Belcher & Hu's current research even more of a boost than what they have already done.

The most important thing that helped me get -0 on this passage's questions is, I think, trying to stay calm and going back to the passage to clarify any part I didn't understand.

Even scary-sounding words aside, what's being talked about is quite complicated. Semiconductors make up transistors which make up small computer chips. Semiconductor crystallizes into transistors. Peptides that B & H grew themselves can help semiconductor crystallize into transistors.

There are definitely lots of details, so I think the best way to tackle this passage is probably to get a big overview of the things you know, latch on to the facts that you know for POE, and then go back to the passage to re-read to understand the details (like "They grew ...," "resembles accelerated evolution," the whole crystal growth thing, etc.) Memory definitely helps with timing here. Because it's such a facts-dense material, and so many things are unfamiliar, the things that are familiar stand out more, in my opinion, and you have to hold onto those.

The way I thought about (C) was different than JY. (C) was just immediately irrelevant to me because how much you pay the factory workers has nothing to do with whether they're needed or not. It has to do with how many the employer will hire, but not how many the employer needs. I need an AC (air conditioner). Danby's AC is more expensive than Frigidaire. The cost affects which AC I buy, but doesn't change the fact that I need an AC. Now, even if (C) said "most" factory workers, I think it's still irrelevant because we don't know if most factory workers are most workers whose wages are directly affected by minimum wage requirements. And even if we do know this fact, we still don't know if these workers in Country X constitute "a large segment of the working population." It's kind of a stretch to interpret "working population" as meaning population whose wages are directly affected by minimum wage requirements. So, all in all, just completely irrelevant.

(B) wasn't as clear to me because I wasn't sure if the conclusion was only about Country X or all countries, but the context of the stimulus suggests that it is about Country X. (The conclusion is "Surely this increase in demand for ...")

(A) also weakens because if all the prices go up, i.e., inflation, then there won't necessarily be more demand. Say your spending money is now 2x what it was before, and the things you will buy are also 2x what it was before, then you end up buying the same amount of things, i.e., demand doesn't change. So this attacks the major premise, which is quite common in weaken EXCEPT questions.

another more obvious way to approach this question is perhaps recognizing that caffeine only affects Ca out, not in! So, I don't think the comparative issue that JY mentions is as much of a problem as that you simply can't conclude anything about Ca deficiency given that we only know Ca out. Because total Ca level is out + in ! This is a concept that the LSAT tests a lot. They only give you one side of the story, and you need to realize that the other side isn't there, so you can't actually draw any valid conclusion without that information.

Ca out (minus) could be much more, but if Ca is in (plus) much more than out, then the kids who drink a lot of caffeine shouldn't have more broken bones than kids who don't! That's what (A) points out. You can think of it kind of like a simple math question. A negative value like -5 can be counter acted to be positive by adding it with a positive value that is larger in absolute terms, like +6.

This is pretty tough, and I don't think I would've been able to see the average concept if I were presented with this question. You can POE to get (A), though. It might make it easier if you think of the 38% as overall. So, overall is 38%, one of the two groups is lower than 38%, then the other must be greater than 38% so that the overall can be 38%! (So, as JY says the number of the two groups doesn't matter; the LSAT writers are just tricking us because they know we're used to a lot of # & % questions with these confusions.)

Mathing your way out of this question is impossible on the exam. Instead, think about it as an "overall" is probably more efficient.

E ... lol. The LSAT stereotyping, making us assume that Indian Singaporeans only eat Indian curry. Classic. The assumption that LSAT allows you to make is stereotypical, casual racist ones :) !

Maybe the LSAC should really reconsider its method of "rigorous" testing the questions. If you get 1000000 white ppl reading this question over and over again, of course you'll barely find anything wrong with it. I wouldn't believe LSAT if they just told me that there's not a significant difference between the numbers of students of color and white students who got this right.

This question took me a while, and I think JY's explanation is probably a more efficient way of thinking about it.

My thinking on BR was: Okay, let's say armor gives you +50 points for defense against predator. But limiting growth speed? There's nothing to say if limiting growth speed has anything to even do with defense against predator! Ok. At the same point in time, the lake one will be bigger than the ocean one. But then so what?

Even if we assume having a smaller size is -? points for defense against predator, here is all that we have:

ocean: +50 - ? = O

lake: 0 + 0 = L

Without giving any more information, the author then goes on to conclude that L > O.

There are so many assumptions here! 1) growth speed has something to do with defense against predator; and 2) whatever that question mark is, is greater than 50, the points for armor. And of course, this scenario is assuming that not having an armor doesn't deduct points, and that not limiting the growth speed is 0 instead of enhancing growth speed.

On the real thing, I didn't think of all of this in this much detail, but I did have somewhat of the points model in my mind. Crucially, there's just no information about growth speed to conclude that it's better than armor for defense against predator. And, to make a conclusion about which is a better defense against predators, shouldn't you be presenting evidence about what happens when they're faced with predators, i.e., are they eating or being eaten?

When I saw (B), that showed me that the assumption in the argument is that growth speed has something to do with defense against predator. (B) shows the possibility that growth speed or size has nothing to do with defense against predation, but rather for surviving winter, which makes a lot of sense! Definitely a lot more sense than defense against predation! If you're larger, you're probably slower, and you have more surface area which means the possibility of being targeted by a predator is that much higher!

(C) is a classic trap answer choice. Kind of a funny one. Insects, really? Am I supposed to assume that insects are more dangerous for lake fish? And even if I do, where are your results to back this up? Do lake fish die less often because of their size protection against insects? What even.

I think even (A) fixed to say at rez on 10th street would be wrong because we don't actually know what Miranda thinks. Miranda only says lacking indoor seating will likely fail, but that doesn't mean she thinks not a lot of people want to eat outside. It could very well just be they don't want to stand eating. Indoor without seating is not uncommon among small restaurants!

The way I did this question was to target & mend the weakness in Maria's argument, which was pretty clear to me and kind of cookie cutter too--voters seeing Reade as competent can be because they understand Reade's discussion of complex campaign issues. (This should certainly be the reason a politician is supported/not, IMO.) (D) mends this weakness by saying no, it actually can't be, because they can't even identify what the issues are! So it's more likely that it's truly purely just seeing Reade's face and feeling like he is somehow more competent.

JY's explanation is good, too--you can approach it by weakening James' argument (for me strengthening Maria's is easier idk why but I've always been better at strengthening than weakening), and you do that by attacking James' assumption AND linking it to Marias (because remember, the task is to strengthen Maria's argument). (D) is kind of like the negation of the necessary assumption of James' argument. He assumes that viewers understand the complex issues that Reades' ads discuss, and another even deeper layer assumption is identifying the complex issues. If you can't even identify something, how can you even understand it?

I think, like many questions on the LSAT (most if not all), if you can spot the issue with the argument(s) the right answer is very apparent and the wrong answers, even the attractive ones, are very apparently irrelevant. Honestly, I don't quite understand why (A) is attractive because why do we care about Reades' opponent?? Reades' opponent discussing the same things as Reade doesn't do anything. Are the complex issues discussed the same way? No idea. I mean, think about it, there are so many ways to discuss complex issues, and the bad way is to make things even more complex (which is what the LSAT writers and bad writers do), and the good way is to simplify things so that the listeners feel like the complex issues aren't complex at all (which is what Justice Elena Kagan is great at). Maybe (A) is trying to get you to think that they both discussed in the good way? Even if we assume that the complex issues are discussed the same way, this does absolutely NOTHING to Maria's argument. This just doesn't make Maria's conclusion more or less likely to be true given her premise. It's barely tangential. You just have to stretch so far for (A) to reach where you want it to be.

this was a super subtle one! i certainly didn't see it until D jumped out at me, and even then, was still kind of like huh? and POE crossed out E. The way that helped me think about this is no obligation not to cut down trees is an obligation that can be owed to more than just trees, like our society, mother nature, etc., whereas the premise has only established no obligation to trees. D, of course, says it in a very roundabout/not the most intuitive way, but that is essentially what's missing. We haven't established that we don't have an obligation to non-tree entities, but obligation to avoid cutting trees is also an obligation to non-tree entities.

I think (E) is tricky b/c the conclusion doesn't make it clear that they are talking about specifically emotion-provoking situations. I for one, was wondering if they were over-generalizing until I let that go because from the context of the argument, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they are concluding about this study and this study only. I also thought: based on the evidence, all they can conclude is that it's not consciousness of inhibition that causes rise in HR. When I did this question, though, I didn't go further than that, so was trapped by (E). The next thought should be: yeah, because another commonality between the two groups is EPS! The conclusion just takes the one commonality, act of inhibition, to be the only one.

On 12, something that might be fun to do during the real exam and that would actually help is to imagine a book/movie that fits the answer choices. I actually quite enjoyed doing this. When I saw (E), I just thought of The Catcher in the Rye, and I was like yes. Holden, nobody cares about what you think and the number of times you say "phony." (I really dislike Holden and that bias just so happened to help.) Another similar one is probably bits of any of the ancient Greek and Roman mythologies, like the Odyssey or Iliad or Aeneid. So many of them are just like ... they are of no relevance to me as a modern reader, and most of the content is just beautiful, flowery language. (B) and (C) are like Love Actually, lol. (D) I think is like some scenes of Sherlock (book & BBC series). (A) is kind of like a poorly made documentary, lol. Can't think of a real-life example but that's what I thought of when I did this question.