#feedback others have said this below, but JY's argument against C was terrible. you don't have to disregard the fact that the self-portrait was a self-portrait. you can reasonably accept that as true and also interpret C as saying "whoever painted the self portrait could've simply modeled for the historic battle painting."

i get why D weakens the stimulus more, but JY's read of C was super uncharitable.

Echoing others for A. For B, a brief email will suffice. Simply say you're applying to law school and would like a LOR. Perhaps share a few details about why you chose them (i.e., what impact their class had on you and what strengths they can likely speak to). Just make sure to email your profs now while you're relatively fresh in their minds. They won't actually be able to submit the LOR until you're ready to apply, but the fresher their memory of you, the better the LOR will be.

Can't speak on leniency, but plenty of folks apply to law school with 2+ years of work exp – and plenty get admitted.

had this correctly diagrammed but didn't take the contrapositive of the D > /C because of time ... which means I didn't chain it up to the rest of my diagram and completely missed the correct AC. this question is so, so obvious otherwise.

you're the GOAT for this explanation. thank you.

ugh i got this right timed but second-guessed myself on BR :(

#feedback i don't think JY effectively broke down why D was wrong in Q27. (great job with explaining why B was right, but he basically dismissed D out of hand)

LSATHacks had a really great explanation: D is wrong because it assumes the author was critiquing uplift agreements themselves vs. the restrictions on them.

I missed the edit window for my previous comment lol but even though I get why A is right, I don't love JY's argument against C. The author doesn't say the view of human nature is UNsupported, just that it's "not the explanation BEST supported by the evidence." Is the point more that "not ... best supported by the evidence" doesn't necessarily mean "ambiguous evidence"?

I felt really good about C on blind review and actually thought A was way too strong, but I see where I went wrong. What tripped me up was the "human nature" part. I kept looking for evidence in the first two paragraphs, which felt more explicitly tied to human nature and much less assertive re: plausibility than A itself. But if I'd read between the lines a bit more, I could've connected "ignoble tendency" back to human nature and seen that the author really didn't like that framing.

To JY's question: anyone come up with a better explanation for 15? I get why C (the AC I chose) is wrong, but not 100% why E is right.

Ugh. I ruled out E on timed and BR because I read "typical benefits" as "typical benefits for managers," which the psychologists do seem to infer (even if the inference = that there's little benefit). Good reminder to read closely.

had to scroll way too far to find this but this was the only explanation that helped me understand why C is definitively wrong. it FEELS like it should introduce bias, but that's an assumption. B doesn't require any extra steps for bias to exist.

I cannot stress this enough: the vertical depth / submerge diagrams made this SO much more intuitive. I diagrammed horizontally and the ACs just did not click. Still got the Q right, but I was way less confident about it than I was after using these vertical diagrams.

If your point is that A ≠ the contrapositive, then yes, strictly speaking, you're correct.

But the contrapositive 100% accounts for A, i.e., "non-poetic literature" = "not poetry" = "can be translated well." Which I think is why A is correct, regardless of whether "not poetry" = "non-poetic literature."

Echoing all the other replies! I sort of randomly chose E timed. I was maybe 90% confident in E during BR, but that lingering 10% was shaky because I was hung up on "emerged." Rereading that first sentence, that hangup was so dumb lol.

Great reminder to thoroughly read the stim.

Probs replying too late to be helpful here, but: that "indirect reference" is exactly what makes E incorrect.

The question stem asks for the "most strongly supported" AC. Direct support is inherently stronger than indirect support, right?

The stimulus doesn't explicitly state that "covering trendy subjects" = "popularity."So there's no direct support for E.

But the stimulus does explicitly state that "[current children's books'] lack of substance leads to ... short-lived [books]" – in other words, that a substance directly impacts its longevity. That's almost exactly what B says... about as direct support as we can get.

Strictly comparing B and E, then, we can see that the direct support for B makes it the clear favorite for "most strongly supported."

(And beyond the stimulus's content, I'd add that E's "indirect support" is shaky anyway. Plenty of unpopular books cover trendy subjects – just think of all the failed dystopian novels in like 2013.)