@ said:

Way to kick ass Logician! This was very insightful/helpful. The untimed sections followed by decreasing time increments seems to be the exercise/solution I have been looking for. Thanks again for the insight and best of luck through the application process!

@ said:

This was one of the most insightful conversations I have heard thus far as I am studying and trying to reconfigure my methods. I really connected with @ because I am struggling with the plateaus and getting lost in the path to choose. Thank you!

Glad to hear it helped!!

Those fluctuations are completely normal. Each test is not equal, some may play more to your strengths while others, to your weaknesses. On top of it, unless your superhuman, your mental performance on each and every test will also not be equal. Your scores are statistically consistent, so don’t stress. Instead, focus on your execution and strategy as those are things that are completely in your control. Good luck!

Amazing! Congratulations 😊

All the arguments in strengthen/weaken questions are invalid arguments. Remember, on the LSAT, you cannot directly attack the premises, you have to accept them as true. If these questions contained valid arguments, you wouldn’t be able to do anything without altering/attacking the premises (which you cannot do 99.9% of the time), because the premises would be forcing the conclusion to follow.

I do want to chime in here and say that while improving memorization can, and i'm sure will, help to a certain extent, RC is not testing rote memorization. It emphasizes and rewards structural understanding, your ability to make reasonable assumptions, how attuned you are to the authors attitude, and drawing inferences. While understanding or memorizing details of the passage may help in this process, it's not addressing the core of what RC is testing. Additionally, I will say, just because this method worked for someone who scored a 180—who outperformed their PT's—does not mean it will work for everyone else, nor can it be attributed as the sole cause of his success; this is reminiscent of a bad LSAT argument.

@ So happy to hear that! and thank you! best of luck in your studying/applications.

You’re welcome!

Thanks! @

Amazing, Congratulations!

Perhaps trying a top-down approach in which we reorganize the structure of the argument from the conclusion down will prove more helpful.

Conclusion (sentence 3): Widespread effort for more restrictive air pollution controls are unlikely.

At this point you should be asking yourself why—why is widespread effort for these controls unlikely?

Support/Premise (sentence 1): people usually only care about the most obvious public health problems. NOTE: this is a direct answer to the conclusion (another way you can tell this is supporting it)

Now, looking solely at what we have so far, there is little to no support for the conclusion, as we have no idea whether air pollution is considered one of the most obvious public health problems or not. So in this case (again, looking only at these two sentences) a necessary assumption is that air pollution is not in fact one of the most obvious public health problems.

example/support for S1 (sentence 2): There is rock solid evidence that ozone (an air pollutant) can be dangerous even in quantities much lower than those permitted by law. this is an example of a public health concern that is not one of the most obvious

yet MOST people are aware that contaminated water presents a MUCH MORE widespread threat. This is an example of a public health concern that is one of the most obvious

so in terms of caring about public health concerns: contaminated water (one of the most obvious health problems) > ozone (not one of the most obvious health problems)

Looking at the answer choices:

B: This accurately describes the role of sentence 1. It is a premise used to support the conclusion that widespread effort for more restrictive air pollution controls are unlikely. Why is widespread effort for these controls unlikely? because people care only about the most obvious health problems, and based on sentence two, we have an example of an air pollutant (which is not one of the most obvious health problems), hence the author concludes widespread effort is unlikely.

C: This answer is descriptively inaccurate. The first sentence is not explaining why there exists awareness of HOW SEVERE the contaminated water problem is. Rather, the second sentence is an example that highlights what is said in the first—people caring only about the most obvious health problems (water contamination) and not others (air pollutants).

Read carefully, sentence two states "most people are currently well aware that contaminated water presents a much more widespread threat to our community (than the air pollutant ozone)." So they're aware of the water contamination health problem. Saying that people usually only notice and care about the most obvious health care problems is not an explanation of why they understand, or are aware, of THE SEVERITY of the water contamination problem. Notice & care /= being aware of/understanding the severity of the issue. You could notice that a car speeds through the neighborhood, and also care about it, yet have no idea how fast its going, or how dangerous it is.

Thank you again for having me!

I heard it’s usually a week (possibly up to a few) after orientation.

Well the good news is that you definitely don't have to draw out the logic for sufficient assumption questions. However, what you'll notice (especially when you really master conditional logic) is that it's really easy to write it out, and that most SA questions lend themselves really well to this method. This is because -rather than having to do the mental gymnastics of trying to understand everything the argument is throwing at you- you can just slap labels (A or X) on the premises and conclusion and follow repeated and established argument structures (Valid Arguments).

I often find that once people really grasp what it means for something to be sufficient, these questions become A LOT easier. So below is an explanation that I hope will help.

When we think of a sufficient assumption we're thinking of an assumption (unstated premise) that when added to the argument, makes it a valid argument. So what does this mean? Essentially all this means is that when the premise is added to the argument, it forces the conclusion to follow. Typically sufficient assumption answer choices tend to be strongly worded answers, and rightly so as the task at hand is to force the conclusion to follow. So lets look at an example of a sufficient assumption.

Premise: Tom is wearing a green shirt. (lets call this A)

Conclusion: Therefore, Tom will go to the park. (lets call this C)

Is this a good argument? of course not! how can someone reasonably conclude that just because Tom is wearing a green shirt he'll go to the park? So our job when attempting to make this argument valid is to add a premise, that when added to the argument, ensures that tom will go to the park. So here's a sufficient assumption.

SA: Whenever Tom wears a green shirt, he goes to the park. (A --> C)

When we add this assumption to the argument, its suddenly no longer a bad argument (structurally speaking), in fact its an iron-clad argument, in that its VALID.

Premise 1: Whenever Tom wears a green shirt, he goes to the park. (A --> C)

Premise 2: Tom is wearing a green shirt. (A)

Conclusion: Therefore, Tom will go to the park (C)

By using the term minimum, the question is asking you to reduce the number of law firm salaries (of the partners) to the smallest number. we know that every different position in the sequence is a different salary.

For example. can they all make the same salary? if so, then we would have one salary and that would be effectively the smallest number of different salaries. however, we know that one doesn't work because we have multiple individuals earning more/less than others.

So our goal for this question is to see how many partners we can give the same salary (or stack) without violating the rules. As shown in the video, the minimum ends up being 7 different salaries.

My approach to this question would be to see which game pieces (law firm partners) are least restricted in regards to where they can go in the sequencing chain. If a game piece has to be before someone and after someone, I would say its rather restricted. But that also has to be taken in context. As you can see the L - N relationship can go anywhere in the chain after K, and no one has to go after the N. This means they're actually quite fluid and almost act as floaters- to a lesser extent. so these two (L and N) are the two pieces that can be stacked/grouped into the same salaries as two other partners, effectively leaving us with a total of 7 different salaries.

I hope this helped!

There is a slight difference, but I would say it's negligible. So I'd definitely treat them the same. The main point is synonymous with the conclusion; a conclusion is just a claim you are trying to prove via the support from the premises. In other words, it is the main point you are trying to convey in an argument. So yeah, try not to get too hung up on the semantics, as logically, you are being asked to perform the same task.

The function of "not always" serves to deny the truth of a universal claim. In other words, if we said its not always the case that all apples are bananas (A --> B), that would equate to the statement that there exists at least one apple which is not a banana, or A some /B . So to answer your question, not always (or not all) should be interpreted as at least one is not or some are not.

congratulations and great post!

Amazing stuff!! Congrats @

Personally, I don’t think it’s too late. I think it would be reasonable to assume that if you got the consulting package now, you could have everything done come thanksgiving time- which is still considered a solid time to apply.

@ already pretty much covered everything. So I’ll just add a more general outlook. When doing your written analysis, you want to make sure that you haven’t looked at the correct answer yet (Sorry to be redundant, but you’d be surprised). Your job is to put forth a written explanation as to why you believe the correct answer is correct, and the incorrect ones, incorrect. If you’re just getting started you’re inevitably going to end up in the situation that you described- not knowing whether it is correct/incorrect. However, this is by design the goal of this exercise; to state and train your reasoning- Which means you have to explain it, then rinse, repeat, and learn.

So, once you’ve written out your explanations and realize that your reasoning was faulty, make note of where you went wrong and correct your reasoning accordingly. @ has offered up a great list of the questions you should be asking yourself. Naturally when you’re starting, you’re likely not going to have the correct reasoning- but everyone has an opinion, so state yours and try to make it as convincing as possible. Try to stay away from lax explanations like “irrelevant” “it makes no sense” etc.

this process is a pain in the ass but if done correctly, you will reap the rewards.

You can also check out the comments section. A lot of people have given in depth explanations to most questions out there, so make sure to utilize that resource too!

@ good stuff Jon!!

Congrats Josh! Hope all is well with you.

Another thing to ease your mind, if you're scoring in the range of your first 3 PT's it would be almost impossible to luck into a 165. People who are familiar with the LSAT know this. So don't worry, just write an addendum as you were advised above. Good luck!

Good question! In terms of the LSAT, the longer you study and the more you improve the better you'll get at determining what constitutes a "reasonable" assumption. In a sense it is a skill that you fine tune. With that said, there are also simple measures you can put in place to more often than not avoid unreasonable assumptions, such as being very strict with yourself when you're uncertain. i.e err on the side of caution (of course this is also easier said than done because, well, you don't know what you don't know). Another strategy you can employ is weighing assumptions against each other from different answer choices. For instance, lets say you've narrowed the answer choices down to 3 contenders, rather than trying to measure how reasonable a given assumption is in a vacuum, measure them against each other- and practice doing this not only timed but also untimed. Every time you pick the incorrect answer, make a note and contrast it to the correct one. How was A's assumption more reasonable than B's? this will become apparent a lot quicker when you really begin to dissect and analyze these things on a regular basis. The same thing goes for when you get an answer choice correct- contrast it to your second most attractive AC. There will always be a distinguishing factor between the correct and incorrect AC that will allow the LSAC to stand behind the correct answer-your goal is to find that justification.

good luck!

I’ll also chime in here in regards to retaking the LSAT. The only plausible scenario in which you retake a 170+ score is if you are extremely confident you will do better, and I don’t mean one or two points better. This decision should be based on empirical data, in other words, you’d better be scoring in the mid-high 170’s VERY consistently and even then, given the margins, there exists the possibility of scoring the same or worse. I’ll quote the dean of admissions at both Harvard and Yale “I would question someone’s judgement if they retake a 170’s score”.

This is not to say you absolutely shouldn’t, but it is risky, as scoring the same or lower on another take would likely diminish the light in which your current score is viewed; which is already in the highest echelons of the test.

In any case, good luck!