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qiranzhou362
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I usually got -4 to -6 on RC, and -4 on the rest of other sections on PTs. I have significant improvement on the other two sections following blind review method, but Reading Comprehension is the section that I found no improvement after 2 months of full-time studying.

I saw people mentioned to figure out the relationships between various subjects and opinions and to anticipate the answer after reading question stems, but I found it very difficult to do so. I usually can get a fair understanding on the structure and any shifts from paragraph to paragraph, but I found it insufficient to answer inference questions.

There are usually at least 3-4 different subjects and opinions in a passage. The relationships among them are extremely difficult to keep track of. For difficult passages, the subject matters and different people's opinions themselves are difficult to understand, not to mention handling their relationships with each other. For example, in a passage (PT30, S3, P2) there is a debate going on about Greek Dramas tragedies written by an author X, and 3 scholars give different and distinct opinions on what lead to the consequences. When I read, I understood that there was a debate going on, and three scholars give different opinions about the same subject, which is Greek drama tragedies. But one question asks what is the difference between the opinions of scholar No2 and scholar No3, I can't summarize the difference, even after going back to read it one more time.

Convoluted answer choices add another layer of difficulties to the questions, which sometimes give me trouble, since I am not a native English speaker. But this problem is a minor one compared to the former. These all give rise to trouble when doing inference questions.

Does anyone have experience on improving skills on handling relationships and make inference upfront? Or any general advice on how to deal with these problems? And if any of you know a tutor can help with these issues, tell me please. I'd really appreciate your help, and thank you in advance.

Good luck studying, everyone!

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Thursday, Mar 24 2022

qiranzhou362

Need advice on retaking and waitlisted.

Hey guys! I hope you are doing well! I have a question that really needed some advice!

I scored 173 last August and am applying for the 2022 cycle. I have multiple scores on my official record. I still have one last chance to retake the LSAT if I want to.

I am thinking about retaking the LSAT because I was waitlisted and rejected by all of the schools I am applying for. Although I am still waiting for the last three schools, I am worried.

I read on some discussion forums and blogs that for Asian who has a lower GPA and is aiming for T15 Law schools, the LSAT needs to be 175+.

If I retake, and my score is lower than my previous, it will get ugly. On the other hand, how much better off if I have a 175+? It seems very risky, but I really don't know anything else to do now. For the schools that waitlisted me, I don't have many updates. I saw many people with higher GPA and LSAT than I were also waitlisted. I am afraid I won't have much chance with a slight update on my resume.

So I am really frustrated and hoping someone can give me a suggestion on whether to retake or not? And other than retaking the LSAT, are there any other soft factors that can improve my chance of getting in?

Thank you very much for your help! Good luck studying the LSAT and applying for law schools.

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qiranzhou362
Friday, Jan 24 2020

I can't wait to join this BR! Thank you so much for holding this as always JY!

PrepTests ·
PT146.S4.P1.Q5
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qiranzhou362
Tuesday, Sep 17 2019

#help can any one explain the third paragraph of passage A. I don’t understand what is "insufficient evidence to named a reasoned nullification decision.

JY explained it in question 5, but I don’t really understand what constitute insufficient evidence? Is it a lack of evidence? How does the remaining sentences support this point?

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qiranzhou362
Saturday, Nov 16 2019

@ said:

@ Fixed!

Thank you for holding these sessions! They are super helpful for my LSAT journey. I will definitely take your advice on LR, and keep practicing! I will tell you how effective it is on the next BR call you hold :smiley:

Looking forward to joining your next session. It is so lucky to join 7Sage!

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qiranzhou362
Friday, Nov 15 2019

I think the link of recording nov 15 doesn't work.

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qiranzhou362
Monday, Sep 14 2020

No matter it will be flex or in-person, they will ask you to choose a test center.

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Tuesday, Dec 14 2021

qiranzhou362

A huge Thank You to JY and 7Sage!

I got 173 and I hope JY can see my post, because I couldn't do it without the curriculum and the blind reviews. I also hope JY still remembers me, since I was always on the blind reviews back in 2019.

I also got a lot of advice about studying LSAT from JY, which was pretty helpful. Since English is not my mother language, and I have zero foundation in logic or critical thinking, it took me a while to get familiar with the test. I didn't even have an initial score before I started the LSAT journey. I didn't dare to calculate my initial score. I guess it was at most 138 because my LG section was blank. I was terrible at games.

It was very frustrating when I started. I tried a couple of LSAT study platforms and books, including Blueprint, LSAT courses at my university, A Self-Training Guild to LSAT, Powersocre, Manhattan, and finally 7Sage. I won't say that the other studying materials weren't effective, but they are just not right for me. I really enjoy the 7Sage curriculum because it explained everything from the beginning. I didn't realize I even missed something very basic before I started to learn the curriculum. For example, I didn't know when I read a stimulus, I should first separate background information and the main argument. It was very basic, and I believe all other studying materials have mentioned it at some point, but I did not catch it. It was when I watched the courses on 7Sage that I realized it was super important to do so in order to get to the right answer.

For 7Sagers who are still preparing for the test, my advice will be to find a teacher that suits your way of studying. It is more effective for me to listen and watch videos when I learn, so 7Sage was a perfect fit for me.

I also found out that redoing the curriculum once in a while was extremely effective for me. JY also mentioned it a few times when giving the blind reviews, which was one of the helpful tips I got for attending the blind reviews! I always learned something new when I redo the videos.

Can't thank JY and 7Sage enough for this amazing community on my journey to law school!

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qiranzhou362
Tuesday, Sep 14 2021

I scored a 173 in August 2021. It was 98th percentile.

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qiranzhou362
Thursday, Sep 10 2020

@

Thank you for answering my question! It helps a lot. Like you said, the knowledge here is very specific and I now recognize that what knowledge answer choice B is talking about is explicitly stated in stimulus. Now it makes sense to me why answer choice B is wrong.

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Tuesday, Nov 09 2021

qiranzhou362

PT91.S4.Q8 (P2) & Q22(P3)

For Q8, I have difficulty deciding between B and C. I have some disagreement with some words in both of B and C, which makes it even harder to pick.

Based on my notes, I wrote down the MP of Passage A as "Intro to market and advocate for its abilities to forecast and efficiency to learn."

Mp of Passage B as "against to think market as too different from other polls. Fallible."

However, it does not help much to answer Q8.

(B) what can be learn from studying the movement of stock markets?

(C) Can markets be used to elicit reliable information?

For B, I understand that both passages discuss markets in general instead of stock markets. However, we do know the authors of both passages are mainly concern about what the movement of markets represent. For author A, the movement of a market forecasts, learns from collective wisdom. For author B, the movement of a market, the movement represents the populace opinion of a certain time period. But the main problem remains that they are not talking about stock markets, but markets in general.

For C, the question is about markets in general, which is a correct description of both passages. And I am confident that author A agrees and mainly focuses on illustrating the fact that market can be use to elicit reliable information. However, I am not quite confident about what author B thinks. Author B says that market is more of a reflection of people's opinion of the time, which means that it can either be right or wrong. And she also says that market is fallible. But I would not say author B argues that markets can't be used to elicit reliable information? It is too strong for passage B in my opinion. But it did come out to be the correct answer choice. Please help me out with this.

For Q22, I was completely lost after finishing reading the answer choices. I was attracted to D. Please help me with E!

Thank you for reading my post and discuss the questions with me. These are the only two questions I got wrong in the section, so if you have any questions about the section, I am glad to help! Good luck!

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qiranzhou362
Tuesday, Nov 09 2021

Hi,

For Q9, in order to choose C "present and interpret", both authors need to write their passages in a neutral tone because that's what present and interpret will be like. However, if you take a closer look at passage A, you will find the author's purpose is to tell you how intelligent and efficient market is. If Author A's purpose is to present you what a market is and how it functions, it should covers both advantages and disadvantages of markets. If you only read Passage A, it is very probable that you will find the market is a great tool for predicting and learning information. That's how author A is trying to do: to advocate for the market. On the other hand, if you take a look at Passage B, the author presents you her opinion of the market to be "fallible" and "people should get over it". The first paragraph sets a very strong negative tone for the whole passage that the author's purpose is to deflate the market.

I hope this can help.

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qiranzhou362
Monday, Nov 08 2021

@ said:

The generalization is actually the researcher's claim: people tend to gesture less when they articulate abstract rather than physical concepts. The disconfirming evidence is in the second sentence: that this generalization is "far from universal" - meaning it isn't applicable to all cases. But the stimulus' conclusion states that just because the researcher's claim doesn't happen all the time doesn't mean we have grounds to reject it. The last sentence points to the psychological fact that people may perceive words differently than others. So if someone doesn't make gestures while articulating something we view as a physical concept, it may actually be the case that they think of it as an abstract one. While the stimulus isn't actually agreeing with the researcher's claim, it's doing more to defend the claim than undermine it by presenting an alternative explanation for why the claim seems to be in conflict with our evidence (aka reconciling the two).

The reason why B isn't the correct answer is for that reason: the conclusion doesn't say that the researchers are correct (aka supporting the claim), it just says the evidence alone doesn't provide a sufficient reason for the claim being wrong.

Thank you for your explanation! C makes much more sense to me now. I misunderstand the word "generalization" completely. I thought the generalization was "to point out that such a correlation is far from universal"because I assumed there was another group of people holding an opinion against the scientists'. However, when I read the stimulus one more time it occurs to me that the author does not bring up another group of people. Instead, it just says that it is insufficient to reject the claim by pointing out it is not universal.

I always try to amend the stimulus a bit to see what would make an attractive wrong answer choice to be the correct one.

Answer choice B" appealing to a universal psychological generalization in an attempt to support a claim about the use of gestures". For it to be a correct answer choice, the stimulus should be using "a universal psychological generalization" as a premise/evidence to support a conclusion "about the use of gestures". In this case, the author says something like the correlation happens to everyone with various expressions; for example, some people perceive words like "comprehension" as expressing a physical action rather than abstract one, in the opposition to other people who perceive words like "comprehension" as expressing abstract one.

And the conclusion will be like "the scientists' claim about the correlation between gesturing and articulating what would be abstract rather than physical concepts is correct.

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Monday, Nov 08 2021

qiranzhou362

PT91.S2.Q22 - Need help

Hi,

I am having trouble understanding which part does "a generalization with apparently disconfirming evidence" refer to in the stimulus. And that is why I did not choose C even after broke down every sentence in the stimulus.

Here is my thought process to the question:

Structurally, the stimulus has three parts:

  • The first sentence is an OPA by some researchers.
  • The second sentence is author's conclusion.
  • The third sentence is the premise to support the conclusion.
  • Factually,

  • The first sentence introduces a correlation: gesture less :dbl: articulate what they regard as abstract than concrete.
  • The second sentence contains author's statement that even if the correlation stated above is not the same for everyone (not universal), it doesn't prove that the correlation is wrong for that matter. Based on my understanding, the author implicitly refers to another group of people whose opinion is that the correlation is not the same for everyone does prove the correlation does not exist (rejected).
  • The last sentence is the evidence/fact the author uses as an example. My paraphrase to this sentence is that, even some people describe the correlation differently than others, their description still falls within the correlation. So this correlation still exists.
  • I quickly eliminated A because the argument is not about "the ambiguity of a word". I eliminated D and E as well because they are too far from being correct based on my familiarity of the scenarios they usually describe in the LSAT.

    But then I can choose between B and C because I could not match the abstract language from either answer choice to the original argument.

    For B, the author does appeal to something in the premise to support the conclusion. However, the supporting premise is more of a factual evidence rather than a universal generalization.

    For C, the author is using a psychological fact, but the second part of the answer choice is really difficult for me to process. I couldn't find a reconciliation between a "generalization" and "apparently disconfirming evidence". To me, the premise perfectly supports the conclusion and I can't see why it is apparently disconfirming.

    I also have a disagreement with the discussion above about the author actually agree with those scientists' claim about the correlation. The author just says that not being universal does not reject the existence of such a correlation. Correct me if I am wrong please! So instead of simply agreeing with the scientists, the author points out that even if the correlation is not "universal", the correlation still exists because people describe the correlation in various ways.

    Lastly, for questions of method of reasoning, we need to identify the way the author makes her point. In this argument, the author uses an example to argue that the correlation can still exist even if it is not universal. However, C says that the author try to reconcile the generalization and the fact, which is different from my understanding of using the fact to support her conclusion, so I eliminated C and chose B eventually.

    I appreciate anyone who read and answer my questions! Thank you!

    Admin Note: Edited the title. Please use the format "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of question"

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    Tuesday, Sep 08 2020

    qiranzhou362

    PTC2-S3-Q18 Education critics' contention that

    Hi,

    I have trouble understanding answer choice B. What is it like to be ambiguous in an LR stimulus? When I was doing this question under timed, I thought ambiguous notion of knowledge was the author does not state whether her example of some Greek philosophers' opinion is right or wrong. So I chose B. Even after watching the explanation video, I still have trouble understanding why B is wrong and what would a stimulus be like if the correct answer choice were B. Any #help would be appreciated!

    Link to the question: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-c2-section-3-question-18/

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