So, in a RRE problem, there are two phenomena (literally, things we can see/observe) that APPEAR contradictory (e.g., a paradox). We are looking for an answer choice that either could be a CAUSE of both things being true at the same time or some kind of explanation as to why both could be true at the same time.

In this case, the two seemingly contradictory facts are

(1) people who voluntarily use their headlights at all times have a lower rate of accidents than people who do not.

(2) in cases where this was made a mandatory law, the rate of accidents did not decrease (as it would be expected to do).

My first thought was that the effect observed in part 1 could have an alternate cause -- maybe people who voluntarily keep their headlights on at all times are just more cautious drivers and, thus, they get in fewer accidents.

It turns out that (C) captures this idea. This then explains why (1) happened the way it did and (2) happened the way it did. It's the real cause behind the apparent cause.

On these questions, you want to watch out for answer choices that eliminate one phenomenon or only give details on one phenomenon.

(E) is wrong for two reasons:

It "seems" to addresses why it doesn't work in (2), but not why it does work in (1) -- doesn't explain the decrease of accidents in (1). It also doesn't explain why there wasn't any reduction at all when it became mandatory in (2). Even if that is the case, we would expect there to be some benefit of accident reduction when it was made mandatory and, presumably, more people started doing it than before.

To accept this answer, we would have to ASSUME that it wasn't the case the daytime visibility was poor in the areas in which (1) was observed. The stimulus gives us no information to that effect. It just says, "in areas where it is option when the visibility is good..." It never tells us how often that is, it could be once every 50 years or never. Whenever we have to add in an assumption like this to make an answer choice work, the answer choice is wrong. The only exception is when it's a very obvious, undeniable "common sense assumption." This would be my rock solid reason for elimination.

Oh, dear lender to whom I was once greatly in debt for my undergraduate education, go study the basics of logic and learn how to identify premises and conclusions. Once you do that, main point questions are just identifying and paraphrasing the conclusion of the argument. Beyond that, make sure you are choosing the FINAL conclusion and not a subconclusion. For assumption questions, learn, memorize, and master the standard flaws and learn the five ways to weaken or strengthen a causal argument. Doing those two things should give you a big improvement. Beyond that, practice trying to weaken (attack) every argument you see. That discipline will also yield a lot of improvement. Don't quit though. The test is learnable.

I strongly second sucralose's suggestion. I had a big problem with misreading a rule in LG and it was causing me to a lose a bunch of time or miss points. I now do exactly that and, if I do find a rule that eliminates 2 or more answers, I double check it and then save myself the wasted 3-5 minutes or several points that could have resulted from continuing on with that erroneous understanding. Other than that, as you practice and continue to be punished for sloppy reading and fix your mistakes, you will get better and better over time. Also, as you read explanations and start to notice the subtle shifts in wording and similar tricks, you will become more attuned to them and catch them earlier and they will become an easy way for you to get the right answer quickly on such questions.

It is good to learn, memorize, and continually review the major flaws. However, a lot of the questions in the flaw family will have flaws that don't fall into one of those exact categories. So, it's good to be flexible in your thinking. When reading questions with arguments, I first look for one of the standard flaws. If I haven't seen one, I ask myself a question that attacks the central flaw, "What if X?"

PT56 S3 Q10 - false to answer an important question -- this is actually a common pattern. To paraphrase it, "We're popular, because we are as popular as this other thing in the same category." There is a question that needs to be answered though: how popular is that other thing? If it is not popular, then the conclusion doesn't follow.

PT52 S3 Q4 - has a flawed assumption and, again, a question that is not answered. What if the research is cited by those popular news outlets, because it's actually good? If it is, that weakens the argument.

PT54 S4 Q16 - has a gap in the argument between "growing incentive" in the premise and "will surely be built" conclusion. What if the incentive will never grow enough to justify the project?

So, all three questions follow a similar pattern of having a big question that is left unanswered and that wrecks the argument if it is answered in the negative.

Getting faster has three parts: (1) using the right technique, (2) practicing that technique to where you are using it correctly and consistently, and (3) building up pattern recognition for the recurring elements on the test (e.g., flaws and types of arguments).

For the first two, pick a good metholody. Then, learn the system for the problem type and apply it through drilling. Review after your drilling, learn from your mistakes, and apply what you learned to more problems. Repeat.

For the third, you need a high volume of practice questions, sections, and tests over an extended period of time.

If you do those things, you will get much more accurate and much faster. Worry about accuracy first though. Only focus on speed when your accuracy is perfect or consistent with your goal.

I studied for a total of 2 years combined. I worked full time and had a 1h 40m (mostly subway) commute into the city for the last year of my prep journey and worked full time and overtime for most of the time apart from that with the exception of a few months that I took off in between jobs when my son was born. In the last year, for a while I woke up at 4 am and studied before leaving my house until I got too worn out and went back to waking up at 5 am. No matter what though, I would study on the subway commute to work, usually an RC or LR section. I would then arrive to work 45m early and do a section of LG. At lunch I would eat quickly and do another section of LG or whatever I needed to work on. I would then review what I studied on the subway ride back home and then drill individual question types in LR or whatever else I needed to work on. In total, I was still able to fit in 3 hours per day on the week days, sometimes 4 if I could sneak in some extra. I would then PT on Saturday mornings, take a break, and blind review and review it in the afternoon. It's hard to do while working full time, but it can be done.

I think that, ideally, it's better to wake up early before work and study in the morning when your mind is fresh than to study after work when you're tired. One thing I will say though: make sure you're getting your 7-8 hours of sleep per night -- ideally, 8 hours. With my situation it was hard to consistently get enough sleep and it definitely hurt my performance in practice and on test day. Hope that helps.

It's the same as the regular test. You make a ProctorU account and schedule it through their website.

You should review them, because they were originally real administered sections and they will still be a good source of information about (1) your weaknesses and (2) the repeating patterns of the test.

The wrong answer journal should include anything you get wrong in any practice you do, specifically for LR and RC. For LG, I didn't do a wrong answer journal, but I did similar work in a spreadsheet that I had for fool proofing logic games. For logic games, I would write the mistakes I made in the game and how to avoid them for future games. The general goals for practice questions should be to practice your technique, to learn from your mistakes and learn how to not repeat them, and to learn the recurring patterns that will make you faster.

There's a lot to say here...

(1) General approach: I read every stimulus with a skeptical and aggressive posture. I search first for the conclusion, then the support, and last the flaw or flawed assumption. If there is no conclusion (and thus no argument), I figure out what type of question it is and prephrase if possible (this is all similar to what she advocates in the Loophole). As I read, I also break the argument down and figure out what each part is doing structurally and why it is included.

(2) When you learn a new question type, you need to drill that question type using the exact system you learned for eliminating wrong answers and then choosing the right answer. If you don't apply the system, you have a bunch of theory that you can't apply. In general, you want to learn one new type a day using this process, while continuing to drill the old types using the system you learned.

(3) Be elimination focused, rather than right answer focused. This will greatly increase your accuracy. Remember that every wrong answer is wrong for objective reasons that should follow the system you learned. Gut feeling or intuition are not reliable guides on harder questions.

(4) Learn, memorize, and master your common flaws. Practice looking for them in every question with an argument. That will give you a big advantage on 8 out of the 14 question types.

(5) Be diligent in blind reviewing, reading good explanations, and completing your wrong answer journal.

(6) When doing (4), spend a lot of time thinking about your erroneous thought process or method that caused you to choose the right answer and then thinking about how you can fix it and guard against it on future questions.

(7) Apply what you learned in (4) and (5) to old wrong answers from that same type and new questions from that same type (5-10~).

I hope all that helps.

I second the request for this feature. It would be very helpful.

I have the same issue. First, in terms of your mentality toward the test, treat the practice test as practice and not an ego boost/confirmation. Try to do each question perfectly, but accept that you will probably make mistakes. When you do make mistakes, think of them as being helpful, because you have unveiled weaknesses in your knowledge or technique that you can now fix before you take the real test. Also, accept that there will be variance in your scores -- there is a reason the LSAT scores are given with an accompanying score band.

Aside from that, the best way to alleviate that kind of test anxiety is through getting better at the test. I have a Michael Jordan quote on my desk that I like and use for motivation and encouragement, "I never feared about my skills because I put in the work. Work ethic eliminates fear."

In the test proper, when you feel yourself getting anxious, focus on controlling your breathing and take mini-breaks when needed and don't allow yourself to think about the result. Just focus on maintaining your process that you've been practicing.

Lastly, try L-Theanine, I found that 200mg is helpful for calming my mind. There is a study you can find on the NIH website about the benefit of caffeine and L-theanine for test anxiety and test performance.

I hope all that helps. I seriously struggle with test anxiety (and, to some extent, anxiety in general) and these things have helped me.

Is the test score within your current PT range? Then, don't worry about it, because variance is to be expected. If not, is it a one-time outlier fluke or a consistent downward trend? If it's a one-time outlier, then don't worry about it. If it's a consistent downward trend, take some time off, catch up on sleep, and do things that make you happy, because you're probably suffering from burnout.

Lastly, you're not going to make a magic 5 point improvement in 2 days. Better to rest up and be fresh for test day. This close to the test, I would just do some light maintenance stuff and try to get as much rest as I could.

Regarding score drops, to give you some encouragement on this point, my tutor got a 171 on a PT the day before the LSAT on which he scored a 178.

So, don't worry about it too much, don't focus on the outcome during the test, and, instead, focus on doing each passage, problem, and game correctly and efficiently "in the moment." Also, in the event that you do underperform, you can retake and will probably do better on the next one. Good luck.

The 7Sage curriculum has them in one place. Additionally, if you read the PowerScore LRB, each question type has its own chapter with all the different question stem variations for that type. I made a flashcard with those on it and the right and wrong answer types on the back and then memorized it.

I will add these points to the valid points others have made. For reference, my current PT range over the last 12 tests taken is 169-178 and I scored a 168 on my last official take in October. I was an idiot and didn't do my diagnostic the right way with the timing, so it was 161, but had I done it honestly, I think it would have been more like a 150 or high 140s. I have been studying for a year and a half in the aggregate (6 months in 2018, 1 year since December 2021). I am retaking in January. (I include this information for the sake of credibility not boasting.)

First, the arch of improvement is not necessarily linear in the short run. There will be peaks, plateaus, and regressions. You also could be suffering from burnout, depending on how long and how intensely you've been studying (though if you've only taken 6 pts, I doubt this is the case). All of these things have affected me at different times and even lowered my official LSAT scores compared to my PT scores.

Second, don't worry about ploughing through PTs until you've mastered the concepts and skills for each section -- if you do this now, you are wasting PTs. Use older tests (1-35) to drill by type on individual games and LR questions, then timed sections, then full tests.

Third, brace yourself mentally for the very likely possibility that your goal score will take a lot longer to attain than you had initially planned.

Fourth, even when you get into your "goal range" so to speak, brace yourself for the likelihood that you may have to retake once or multiple times to actually hit that goal score/range, given the variability and luck that is built into the test based upon your own strengths and weaknesses compare to the tests selection of types and concepts.

Fifth, regarding LG and LR, expect your process of studying with whatever you're using, whether exclusively the 7Sage stuff or the PowerScore Bibles or whatever else, to be recursive. I have gone through the LR Bible twice and the LG Bible three times and each time I gleaned something new or relearned something I had forgotten. I have also worked through the Loophole. It's better to learn them deeply by going a bit more slowly and sufficiently practicing the techniques than to rush through them and not really learn or master the techniques and concepts. Another final point on LR (which applies to RC as well) is that a lot of getting better at LR is gaining the experience of having been sucker punched, tripped, and trapped by the test makers several times in your drilling and practice tests. They have an arsenal of tricks and repeating patterns that can only be learned well through a large amount of repetition.

Sixth, regarding RC, learn the types and subtypes of the passages (I personally used Reading Comp Hero for this part after reading the PowerScore RC Bible, the Manhattan RC book, and doing the 7Sage RC course, but then ended up (1) simplifying the RCHero method of classification and then (2) not using his notation method and just doing it mentally). Learn the handful of things that they test on (Viewpoints, Author opinion, Author tone, Structure) and watch for the indicators. Also, you can use the same methods to eliminate RC wrong answers as you can for the corresponding LR types. Lastly, with RC, do the work of going back through a large set of past completed passages and analyzing one question type at a time, noticing recurring patterns (e.g., in the passage the author says mostly good things about a viewpoint/author, but then he criticizes one point. Then, the question asks about the author's attitude toward that viewpoint/author. The answer is often something like "qualified approval." (qualified showing the slight negative aspect, and approval the mostly positive)). Then, expect to have to drill the heck out of RC like you do LR and LG. My scores in RC didn't get to a consistent -0/2 until I had done almost every RC passage 1-70.

Stay strong and keep studying and practicing. Take breaks when you need them, which you will. Learn each section the right way, practice the right way, taking the necessary time, then trust the process that you will improve if you keep doing it the right way. Don't worry about speed until much later. In all three sections, you will naturally get faster as you perfect your understanding and technique and, often, paradoxically, trying to go faster will end up wasting time and making things take longer. I hope all this helps.

These are very helpful as a reference. Thank you for sharing. Quick thing though, aren't 5 and 7 in the invalid forms identical? Is there a reason for repeating it in that slightly different form?