I somehow got this question correct pretty quickly, but upon review, I couldn't figure out how I got it right. I think I had the same line of thought at JY, except I thought of one more thing---D talks about cosmic rocks raising dust on earth, whereas the stimulus talks about the earth's temperature dropping, because of cosmic dust. Cosmic dust and earth dust are not the same thing.

Once I noticed the LSAT writers were trying to confuse cosmic rock with cosmic dust, I felt more certain that D was correct.

This is not a super helpful explanation, but I hope it offers additional understanding as to why D is correct.

The logic chain J.Y. wrote out makes sense; it's the same logic chain I drew, but here's my problem with answer choice D.

The conclusion is that society should never allow violated rules to go unpunished, but the correct conclusion should be society should not allow routine non-punishment. There's a difference between never allowing rules to go unpunished (one violation, and you're out) vs. no routine non-punishment (if you're punishing more than >70% of the time, then that's non-routine). Given all of that, shouldn't answer should D state that the argument confuses never allowing unpunishment with sometimes not punishing violations?

Does anyone else see why I'm having a hard time choosing D?

Is anyone else having issues connecting from a Mac? Is it possible for the session to be "full"?

@ said:

@ Gosh I can't even barely remember anymore what I had or what passages were in what section, I think I vaguely remember African textiles? If I could get so lucky that the sandstorm/fossil dating passage was experimental, that would be a dream. It was my first section and it kind of messed with my head to not be able to finish.

I can't make any promises but I know for sure I had nothing on sandstorms, so I think you're probably in the clear :)

@ said:

@ @ @ I also was an international test taker with 2 RC sections...really hoping the first one I had was the experimental because I didn't finish the last passage, which has never happened to me before, whereas the second RC section was easy/moderate to me. Does anyone remember a passage that had to do with sandstorms and layers of rock?

Hii, according to TLS the RC about African textiles was the real deal.

I don't think I got an experimental passage about sandstorms. I got one about the banking industry & astrophysics, and those were killer.

Did anyone take the Asia/International test? I wanted to confirm what were the experimental sections? I had two RCs and one of them destroyed me.

I chose A instead of B, because I wasn't sure if "not canceled" is the same thing as "completed." We shouldn't stop working on the project, but does that mean we should complete it??

It was a tough call, and I picked the wrong answer choice :/

How would the contrapositive look with the unless statement? NOT just biconditional arrow NOT equal right to basic liberties OR Inequality tolerated (at this point, I get confused with how the unless statement will play out)

Thank you for this post, @

I'm just like you, I like being good at whatever I do. The LSAT is one of the few challenges I've encountered that I cannot seem to overcome. I was so frustrated last week, I actually had a complete meltdown in the middle of taking a practice test. I know I sound super dramatic, but trust me, I've never felt so low. Thanks for sharing kind words--it makes all the difference!

@, @, and @,

Sami said she'll do separate sessions early morning/evening if 5 people are having scheduling conflicts. I'm one of those people, since I live outside the U.S. If you all are also having scheduling conflicts, please let me know! I'm desperately searching for 4 other people with the same problem as me.

Q.17 confused me a little. I chose E because the passage states that the way in which contingencies affect our individual/group identities creates a structure of forces, and THAT (referring to the structure of forces) is a partial determinant of our actions. I know B wasn't even mentioned, but contingencies themselves don't seen to be the partial determinant, so how can we eliminate E? What am I doing wrong?

It's no problem, Sami. I really appreciate you offering an alternative plan.

HEY EVERYONE: if any of you have a scheduling issue, please help a fellow 7Sager out here and let me and Sami know. I so want to join in on her study group, because I really think it's useful to identify the cookie-cutter LR questions (after all, LR is 50% of the test.)

@ if no one else has this issue, then I'll do everything I can to attend these LR sessions. I think I can make it to your Sat RC sessions, because that's Sunday morning for me. Thanks again for being so great about all of this!

As a follow-up to my comment above, does anyone know of any 7Sager that offers the same type of course as Sami, just at a different time (preferably when it's night/morning in the U.S.)?

Hi Sami,

Is there any way you can offer the same course at a different time? I live in Thailand, so 3pm ET is 2am for me. I even considered waking up to attend the course, but since I work full-time, I didn't want to jeopardize my concentration at work.

If you can't offer the course at any other time, can I somehow get access to the recordings? I took the complete package for 7Sage, and have access to all the PTs otherwise (at least I think so!)

The extraneous phrase " sometimes they are able to become friends..." really confused me when I first read the stimulus, because I couldn't figure out how making friends factored into losing interest in the hobby and exacerbated loneliness. I understood the stimulus when I re-read it the third time, but I often don't feel certain when determining whether a phrase has any bearing on the argument. Tips?

So it seems that negating the answer choices allows you to correctly identify E. I'm wondering whether you can treat this question stem as a necessary assumption question in general, or is this strategy just specific to this question?

I would also be very interested!

My biggest issue with this question was that I couldn't determine the argument structure--what were the premises? What was the conclusion? I thought the argument was that the personal bias in reporters' lower negative coverage (% wise) of the incumbent served as evidence that they overwhelmingly supported the incumbent.

But the premises are the following:

Most reporters supported the incumbent in the last election

Reporters gave the incumbent 30% negative coverage vs. 54% negative coverage to the challenger

Conclusion:

Reporters' personal feelings toward the incumbent was reflected in the amount of negative coverage they provided the incumbent

Anticipated answer choices

-maybe the challenger was objectively a bad candidate; therefore, he deserved more negative coverage; the coverage is unrelated to reporters' personal bias

-maybe the pie for the incumbents' total coverage is significantly bigger than the pie for the challengers' total coverage, i.e. 30% negative coverage for the incumbent could still be more negative coverage in absolute terms than 54% negative coverage for the challenger, in which case voting patterns are NOT reflected in negative coverage.

Answer choice B I think gets at my first anticipated answer choice--it's not a matter of personal bias playing into news coverage. Maybe the challenger goes around town saying objectively negative newsworthy things while the incumbent is saving the day while in office

Did anyone else make the assumption that something that's more fashionable is more expensive for answer choice C?? Because I totally didn't see that...

I was confused between B and C, because they both appear to be weakening answer choices. For B, since the painting is unsigned and Larocque typically doesn't sign his paintings, the painting is now likely to be an original Larocque work. My only reservation was that we don't know if his students also leave their paintings unsigned.

For C, none of the paintings currently recognized as the work of Larocque's students contains orpiment, but I couldn't help wonder whether there are other student paintings lying around that have been undiscovered and do contain orpiment.

I guess I'm making a bigger assumption with answer choice B, but I felt very torn during the test and during blind review.