E's negation could actually be compatible with the argument. It is possible for there to be a landfill that has toxic vapors to humans but that has not caused a human's health to suffer, simply because that landfill is not frequented by humans. We have no idea if the landfill in E is among those that get converted into public parks. The real gap in the argument is that it does not say whether those landfills that get converted into public parks are part of the subset of landfills where toxic-vapor-producing products are "often" found. Note that the stimulus does not say that EVERY landfill has household cleaning products of the toxic-vapor-producing kind.

Not necessarily, just because Jarrett did not expect his action to benefit anyone, that does not mean he expected it to benefit himself. Maybe he expected his action not to benefit neither him nor his peers, but he did it anyway. Doing things that go against your own interest is likely. I'm assuming D appealed to you, as you tried to show that Jarrett criticized the essay because he hoped to benefit himself and therefore, the criticism is not justified. However, it does not say whether that was Jarrett's only motive. Perhaps Jarrett did want to gain prestige, but also hoped it would benefit at least one of his classmates. D does not rule out that possibility. Maybe, if D had said: Jarrett's only hope in criticizing Ostertag's essay in front of the class was to gain prestige and nothing else, then D would be better.

I would also add that you may have picked A on Q19 because you assumed that those inefficiencies that the industries that relied most heavily on computer technology struggled with were absent or irrelevant to the businesses that increased their reliance on computer technology. However, we cannot make that assumption based solely on the info we have.

By the way, D is not a perfect Weaken answer. It leaves open the possibility that even those businesses that had the greatest productivity growth actually experienced a decrease in growth since computer technology became widespread. But whatever the cause of that decrease was, it was not because of an increased reliance on computer technology. Remember, "greatest" does not mean "great": the growth of the businesses D refers to is relatively greater than other businesses, but it is not necessarily 1. greater than pre-computer technology world 2. nor great at all.

For A to be better, we would have to know that the passage rate was worse PRIOR TO implementing the new curriculum, but we have no indication of that. All we know is that a third passed, and that the national average is above a third. But, where is there any mention of the quality of instruction?? Curriculum =/= instruction, a curriculum could be great but instruction is poor (perhaps the instructors were not properly trained in the new curriculum). Another possibility is that the curriculum is actually bad but the instructors are the best nationwide. You must have scratched your head when the conclusion mentioned "quality of instruction" for the first time and rightly so. The trap here is in making you harp on the relationship between the new curriculum and the passage rate (i.e. did A cause B or the reverse), rather than the real issue here, which is the relationship (or lack thereof) between passage rate and quality of instruction, i.e. the passage rate being below the national average is not grounds for concluding that the quality of instruction is poorer.

I would also add that you are less likely to be punished for skimming LR stimuli in the first 10 questions and more likely to be punished in the last 10 questions. I find that the first 10 questions are typically cookie cutter, and if they pose any difficulty, it is typically in the ACs not the stimulus. For example, you will have a cookie cutter necessity-sufficiency confusion for a flaw question, and the ACs all look so similar that you have to read each one carefully and find the one that correctly identifies the conditions in the stimulus in the correct order. So, if you are going to use this method, definitely consider switching gears in the last half of the questions.

I am going to get a 173 on the October 2021 LSAT!

What would we need to be true for AC D to be supported? We would need to know that some people's dietary needs diverge from others (the second premise), and that those people's divergent needs cannot be accommodated by a single, narrow range of nutrients. I would have chosen D without hesitation if it had said "some" instead of "most." But I guess flexibility in AC language is rewarded in the newer tests.

Replying to an old comment in case anyone else came across this question and wondered the same thing. Yes, the stimulus does leave a gap between "solutions" and "creative solutions." However, if it safe to assume that "creative solutions" is a subset of the superset "solutions," and, given the conditional statement (PS --> U --> E), we can conclude that creative solutions, like ANY solution, only come from those who have experience. You know how some MSS questions will have a very specific stimulus but the correct AC is very general? For example the stimulus would say that cats have tails, and the correct AC would say that mammals have a terminal appendage. This question is the opposite, it applies a necessary condition of a large superset to one of its subsets.

following!

I completely misunderstood the first paragraph in Passage A (I thought it was arguing that we should not dispense WITH cosmic justice just because of human limitations, when it was arguing the opposite) yet only got 1 question wrong lmao. RC is pure sorcery.

I would caution you against automatically writing off an AC on an NA question just because it sounds like a sufficient assumption. In more recent tests, we have seen AC that sound like SA as the correct answer on an NA question. In this question, note that the author is not saying that chemical fertilizers are behind the poor quality of the soil. The cause, the author acknowledges, is abandoning green manure crops. Yet the author concludes that we should abandon chemical fertilizers. Can't we keep using chemical fertilizers (since they are not shown to be harmful in the stimulus) AND grow green manure crop (a practice that is not shown to be incompatible with using fertilizer in the stimulus)? AC E points to exactly that - fertilizer and green manure crops are incompatible.

Have you tried the skipping strategy on LG? Do the typical "complete and accurate order/list" question first as usual then skip to the "If X is..., which of the following must be true/false". Once you finish these questions, you will already have additional inferences to your original board and rules list, so it should make attacking the rest of the questions easier. How do you do on LG during BR? Do you typically nail LG when untimed?

Can we always assume that if the proportion of X decreased, (X here being thieves who abandon cars before owners realize), then the proportion of Not[X} increased (i.e. more thieves are failing to abandon the cars before the owners realize, so those thieves are more likely to get caught and convicted)? #help

C is attacking an assumption that you made, not one made by the argument. Beware of this distinction!

If you are still struggling with AC C on Q26, note that the author's alternative explanation does explain why proposers insist on fair divisions because fair divisions are less likely to be rejected than say 70-30, and fair divisions increase the chances of survival (line 51), therefore fair divisions are in the proposer's survival's interest. Also, even if you did not have enough time to confirm C as the correct answer, go back to the purpose of the passage. The author is interested in explaining fair divisions, i.e. why proposers propose 50-50 and why responders reject anything less. So it makes sense that the author's alternative explanation accounts for both things. If it only accounted for responders but not proposers, then how is it more valid than the explanation that the author argues against in paragraph 3?

Notice that the conclusion is only about those species that went extinct 2,000 years after the first migration, whereas E is about a completely different subset of species (species that did not go extinct 2,000 years etc.). This is a classic incorrect AC on weaken questions; the conclusion posits an explanation about one group whereas the incorrect AC denies the explanation using a different group. Just because some species survived does not mean that the microorganisms did not cause other species to go extinct: this is perfectly consistent with the real world.

What tripped me up in this question was that the conclusion was about future change (will increase), whereas the premises are all about past change (over the past 8 years). I saw the shift from the preserve's population to that of the valley's in the conclusion but kept looking for an AC that shows that just because X happened over the past 8 years does not mean that Y will happen next year. #help

It's a "normal" LSAT but it is different from the pre-COVID LSAT in that it has 4 sections instead of 5 and one of the 4 sections is experimental. When you get your score, it will say LSAT, not LSAT-Flex

Would love to join! I have the same target score, test average, and timeline.

Your interpretation of B is giving it too much credit. All B says is that some editors do not think you need to go to journalism school to be a journalist. We have to make so many assumptions for B to weaken the argument. First, we have to assume that "some editors" means enough editors think this way. It easily could be only one editor. Second, we have to assume that editor's views have an impact on hiring and recruitment. An editor could think you do not need school to be a journalist but may still only hire those who did go to journalism school for whatever reason (maybe their newspaper's best journalists all did go to school). Can you think of any other implicit assumptions you made when reading B that you did not catch the first time around? Being able to catch those assumptions as soon as they come to mind is a super useful skill on weaken/strengthen/flaw questions. There is also something else about B that makes it a cookie cutter wrong answer: "some (people) believe...". Unless the stimulus uses language like "believe/consider/think", beware of ACs that use this language. It's almost always a trap.

Bizarre to say the least. I contacted them almost three weeks ago and have yet to hear back why I was denied a makeup test and whether the “repeated section” bit was misleading information.