literally wanted to pull my hair out afterwards.

What really helps me is to immediately ask myself "what is the skeletal structure?" when I see that it's an analogy/parallel question.

Meaning, I approach the stimulus by understanding I'm going to be labeling specific subjects/ideas as A, B, or C (etc.) and then will need to find that in the answer choice.

The diagram I built for this question was:

P (paleomycologist) --> SPOP (scholarly publications other paleomycologists)

PM (Prof. Mansour) --> PD (Prof. DeAngelis)

-----------

PM --> P

or

A --> B

C --> D

-----------

C --> A

Then, I immediately tried to find an answer choice that closely reflected this structure.

Although this may not help for everyone, I hope it was somewhat helpful:')

Yes! I think your technique is great, but I also believe it will take a while to see an improvement in your score since time takes a lot of practice in itself as well (at least it did for me).

I'm not sure when your exam is, but what really helped me to expedite my progress is to take my time during lessons but then do separate timed quizzes afterwards to become familiar with time-pressure.

But then again, what do I know haha.

Hope this helps:")

Another note I tell myself that's very helpful is that:

Necessary assumption answers are airtight. That, without the airtight answer choice, the argument will fail. I also view NA assumptions in a separate category where it's just a fact regardless of whether it strengthens the argument, or not.

Whereas, I view sufficient assumption answers as one of many supporting statements to validate an argument.

When I was going through SA questions, I would find the right answer, but challenge it by thinking of another answer that could replace it. This helped me to discern what makes an answer "airtight" vs. what is just one of many other options.

Hope this helps!

What really helped me was to just move on in these situations (not understanding why they're wrong despite reading the explanations), especially if I answered it right/understood why it was right. Moving on also helped me to be efficient with my studying time.

You just need more exposure and practice to be able to verbalize why wrong AC's are wrong, but not being able to verbalize it won't hinder you from learning since I'm sure repetition & practice will inevitably allow you to do it overtime.

My thinking may be wrong, but I clumped "Migrate South Winter" altogether rather than making "winter" its separate idea. Since we reuse "bird" in P2 anyway, I didn't kick "bird" up to the domain. This also helped me link the lawgic easier.

All birds migrate south in winter. The monarch butterfly is not a bird. Therefore, the monarch butterfly does not migrate south in winter.

P1: Bird → migrate south winter

P2: Monarch butterfly → /bird

C: Monarch butterfly → /migrate south winter

No, not for Group 3 and Group 4 indicators. For Group 3, you can pick either idea, then negate that idea and make it the sufficient. Same idea applies for Group 4: "negate necessary" except you'll make it the necessary. I found this information in the "Conditional & Set Logic" tab!

This works for G3 & G4 because you'll get the same answer whether it be the contrapositive or original form.

For Q4, wouldn't "ONE must know" make the following subject the sufficient condition?

Meaning, the second chain would look like:

cast → mix?