@ and @ Thank you both for your kind words and your perspective. I really appreciate it. I think I'm going to write the addendum and have at least a few people read it before I send it off to make sure the one is appropriate. Professional admissions counselling is probably good idea, but I'll have to see what my budget allows.

@ I'm sorry you also experienced this, but it's good you were able to maintain a strong GPA. I think if we do write about it, it just depends on how we frame it and approach it that will make the difference.

Thank you for the response. It gives me a little more perspective. I wanted to show a sense of growth academically, but I wasn't sure if my circumstances was too small to mention.

Shanna says that if you find art distasteful or you just don't want to take care of it anymore, you should have the right to destroy it.

We want our answer choice to defend that position.

C says we shouldn't allow people to destroy art unless we know future artists will make just as good of art.

But Shanna doesn't make that stipulation. She just says you have a blanket right, by virtue of owning art, to destroy it for whatever reason.

E backs this up. This answer is the more general principle under which her original claim falls. Not only do you have a right to destroy the art you own, you have the right to do what you want to your possessions as long as it doesn't harm anyone.

-edits for clarity and such-

This question is awful. The question stem is what really makes the answer choice correct. It wants us to explain why what was presented to us is considered a paradox. We aren't really reconciling anything and I think that is in part what makes this question tricky

E is correct. This answer seems completely irrelevant and stupid, but it isn't. It actually plays with the details in the stimulus. The stimulus lays out a situation in which we presume a low bid is placed because no one else wants it. That 'token bid' will win if there isn't a reserve price and they can walk away underpaying for an item. E.g. an item is worth 50 dollars. The person bids 10 dollars thinking no one else will bid because it's ugly. There is no reserve price, so they win for 10 dollars.

In the situation with E, we have a similar, but opposite scenario. We have a highly desirable item and the only way to win the bid would be if the bid made no economic sense, i.e. no one will bid on it. So say, the presumption is that one would have to bid at least 600 million dollars on the item for a chance to win. This severely limits the number of people from buying. Now, if a 'token bid' comes in low, it too will be a gamble that there are no other bids (because it makes no economic sense). They can the win the 600 million dollar item for 100 dollars. It's the same scenario.

This is why it's 'characterized as a paradox'. It applies to both scenarios.

The other choices:

A) Whether a bidder could accept or decline a bid doesn't explain why you would need a reserve price. Reserve prices are set to prevent a sale if there is a token low bid, not if someone revokes their bid.

B ) We don't care who the bidders are. This is similar to answer D.

C) This seems like the hardest answer to cross off, but I think the reason we can do so is because it explains why someone might use the a reserve price, but it doesn't explain the paradox of why reserve prices could be used for the most desirable items and to prevent low bids.

D) This is irrelevant. We don't care who the others are. It doesn't help explain anything.

If you're using the 7sage digital tester, I would take a look at the timing information provided. What questions are you spending more than a minute and a half on. Are you wasting a lot of time early in the section. If it's taking you 12 or 13 minutes for the fist 10 questions, are you hesitating over answers? Typically the first 10 questions or so are pretty intuitive and instinctual. Just click and go. If you're lingering over questions 11-18, you may have gaps in your understanding that cause you to hesitate for certain types. Maybe you aren't reading carefully enough and stumbling around in the answer choices. This can all slow you down.

I would go through question 17-25 (or the hardest LR questions) and see how well you do with them. Use a stop watch to track the time. If it takes you 3 minutes to answer each question, you'll have a better sense of how long it takes you to answer these questions accurately so you can use that to see how much time you'd need left by question 17 to comfortably answer them.

And as everyone says, speed will come with accuracy and remaining calm and confident through the test. Focusing on your understanding what you read and what the common problems arise in argumentation are essential to getting better and faster.

It depends on what the question stem wants you to do. A necessary assumption wants you to find the assumption that the conclusion needs in order to be true. in order to know if something needs to be true, you can negate it and see if it breaks the argument/denies the conclusion. In certain circumstances, it’s appropriate for the answer to reject the conclusion.

For instance, our argument wants us to believe that watching interactive tv will make children more obese. If there is already a baseline of children made obese by watching TV then for that base amount to increase, the amount of TV viewing needs to go up. The argument requires that to be true for it to be valid.

if we negate that idea, we have interactive TV will not lead to increased TV viewing. Therefore interactive TV will make children more obese. That just doesn’t make sense. By negating the statement, we remove it from the realm of possibility. when the argument can’t function without it, we realise that it is in fact necessary to the arguments validity.

Even if B were to say interactive TV it still seems to suggest another correlation. We can’t draw causation from correlation.

A correlation just says that events coincide with each other. So children who watch a lot of tv tend to be obese. That doesn’t prove watching Tv causes obesity. Maybe they eat a lot of junk and drink a lot of soda. Maybe they have a health condition. Just because these two things occur together doesn’t prove one caused the other.

The stimulus gives us a correlation (premise) and a conclusion based on that correlation. I think you could read this as it saying interactive tv will cause/correlates with obesity

This is a necessary assumption question, so it wants you to find an assumption that the argument needs to make in order to be true. I typically read this as if the conclusion is true, what must be true.

B reinforces the premise by providing another correlation to back up its original assertion that TV viewing correlates with obesity. This might strengthen the argument, but it's not a necessary assumption. B does not have to be true when the conclusion is true. Interactive TV could cause obesity even if watching cable did not.

D is necessary though. The whole argument relies on the correlation that increased TV viewing increases obesity. If children are not going to watch more TV as a result of interactive TV viewing, then this whole argument falls apart. Therefore, it's necessary to assume D in order to come to the conclusion in the stimulus.

JY: This is not a particularly hard question.

Analytics: 75% chance of being correct (174).

Um, ok then.

This is very goal dependent. Is it possible, sure. Is it realistic, maybe. Is it the best thing to do, I don't really think so.

It will depend on how competitive the programme you pick is, how quickly you learn information, and how well you can put that information into use. While you don't have to study for any particular amount of time, the higher you want to score, the more work you will have to put in at diminishing returns. It's much easier to jump from a 150 to a 164 than it is to move from a 164 into the 170s (in my opinion). How long it takes you to enter your target range and stay there can't really be determined up front, but I think we tend to overestimate what we can do and underestimate the amount of time it takes.

My personal opinion is that if you haven't already gotten the administrative portion of the application done ( the personal statement, resume, letters of reference, etc.) then wait until next cycle. Use the time to prepare those materials and work on getting a strong LSAT because even if you're not applying to the most competitive schools, it will still help you get scholarship money. If you don't have to stress yourself out over LSAT deadlines (on top of working a full time job and handling other responsibilities) and you can sustain yourself financially for the next year (it seems like you can) then I wouldn't add an unnecessary deadline that may stress you out and impact your ability to actually learn the test..

Let's assume that during the first outbreak, there were 1000 reported cases and 5 per cent (50) died whereas now, 18 per cent died. The stimulus wants us to assume that the total number of cases remained the same. So during the first outbreak there were 50 deaths and in the second, there were 180 deaths. If that were the case, then we could clearly state the virus is more deadly. But we can't assume that the number of reported disease remained the same over time.

Answer B. says that in the first outbreak, many of the reported deaths were actually caused by some other virus. If that were the case, then even fewer of the deaths would be caused by this virus and if it's true that 18 per cent of current cases are dying, that's really bad. That seems to suggest that this virus really is more deadly. The first out break had 50 deaths in total , but some of those weren't from the virus. So less than 50 deaths to 180 is a big jump.

Answer D says that they were able to treat milder cases and no longer report them. So, I think there's two things happening here. First, our sample shifts. If people are no longer reporting mild cases, it sounds like the cases that are reported are more severe. What if we are now focusing on a subset of animals that are more likely to die. This doesn't mean the virus is more deadly.

Second, we have the percent/numbers. Without knowing the total number of reported cases, the percentages don't tell us that much. For instance, if there were originally 1000 reported cases that led to 50 deaths and now there are 200 reported cases and 36 deaths, we can't easily conclude that the disease is more deadly than it was before. Even if the death rate is increasing, it does not prove that the virus is more virulent.

I don't think I'm qualified to say whether you should or shouldn't put it on your resume, but one thought I had is that you probably will only want to include it if you've established your business somewhat. I don't know anything about you, so please don't think I'm making any sort of accusation, but I think admissions would look to see that you were actually running a company and not just giving yourself the title CEO while the business is in its infancy/planning stages to make yourself look more impressive or something. As mentioned above, law schools love transparency and I think this could create some shades of grey that may not be 100 per cent beneficial. You could include the work you do on your company in other parts of your application to discuss how it shapes you and what you do.

If you are going part time, I do think it could be less of an issue, since they know people have established jobs and other priorities going on, but for really competitive programmes they may still look and make a judgment about it.

Hey. Here is a little bit of information about the term pit bulls for context. (https://animalfoundation.com/whats-going-on/blog/pitbull-breed)

The first sentence is the conclusion. It wants to convince us that pit bulls are not a breed of dog (bred selectively for their genetic traits)

The second part goes on to explain why that is. Dogs can have jobs that they're trained for (seeing eye dog/police dog) and that is similar to the pit bull that is trained to fight.

I too struggle with test anxiety. I've struggled with plateaus, with the pressure of being a splitter, with the fear of wasting PTs, with the fear of being too stupid to learn, with the fear of anxiety attacks, and with burn out. I've been through it all and I've learned a few things that I might be helpful for you. I'm still testing my methods, but when I don't keep these things in mind, I know I do poorly.

It's incredibly hard to force yourself to calm down in the moment when you're stressed. So if you walk into a test worried about your score, worried about proving you've learned something, worried about testing conditions, worried about the noise someone else is making, worried that you're not good enough and you'll never get anywhere, you are going to struggle with calming yourself down. You can breathe as much as you want, stretch as much as you want, but you're still going to be on edge. You'll just be calm tense instead of rigid tense and that will transfer into your exam.

Fake it until you make it. Get yourself in a strong, confident, positive mindset well before you sit down to take the test. Feel good. Remember other times you've succeeded. If you've improved even marginally, remember that you've gotten that better score and that you're primed to improve. Tell yourself you're amazing, that you've got this. It sounds stupid, but this is the way to a calm, cool, controlled mind and body. When you feel truly relaxed you process better.

Be curious. Learn the fundamentals not because you have to, not because they're something to memorise, but because you're truly curious about how they work. Go slow. Ask questions. Do drills. At some point, when your Blind Review/Untimed scores are at or above your target, you'll get to the point where you have to trust you know what you do, but until then, always be curious and always be willing to learn something.

Be conversational and friendly with yourself and the test. Some people like to be adversarial with the exam, and that's fine. It might help you get into decisive mindset, but I think treating the test as something open, conversational, enjoyable goes a long way in taking the pressure off. It's no longer about conquering and proving yourself better than the words on the page. It's about understanding what is being said and being calm enough to form a reasonable/logical response. Be friendly with yourself. Treat yourself positively. Believe that you can grow. Be curious about your mistakes. Do things untimed until you feel confident that you've got this.

Hey, I’m sorry to hear about this dilemma. I would think that having spent so much time out of law school and demonstrating your academic competency elsewhere will benefit your reapplication, especially since you can point to clear external factor for your struggles and it’s been so long since you first were admitted.

I found this article that might be helpful, but I would check the schools you’re thinking applying to to see what requirements they have. Maybe contact their admissions department directly and speak to them about your concerns.

https://lawschooltoolbox.com/how-do-i-get-re-admitted-to-law-school-after-an-academic-dismissal/

@ No problem at all. I hope some of this can work for you too! You mention getting stuck between two answer choices. I think a lot of time, this happens because we are not 100 per cent clear about what we’ve just read and what we are supposed to do with it. This gets a little bit better with practice as we come to recognise patterns, but in order to recognise those patterns, we have to process what we’ve read. As I’ve become a calmer test taker and started to catch my mental laziness, I’ve become better at choosing between answer choices. I don’t think my knowledge has changed all that much but because I force myself not to gloss over things, I’ve become more sure of what I’m doing.

I don’t think it matters what the citizen has to say.The question stem asks us to weaken the council member’s argument. We don’t have to strengthen the other argument. We only care about the citizen to the extent that he provides context for the council member’s point.

The council member suggest that because there are fewer victims per 100 people there is a reason to believe that law enforcement is not less capable of handling violent crime. But the number of victims has nothing to do with the amount of crime or whether the cops can handle it.

D talks to the number of cops, but that doesn’t get to the council member’s argument. It may help the citizen’s argument, but that’s not the task at hand. However many cops there are doesn’t account for the change in the number of victims. If there’s 20 crimes and 10 victims per 100 people and now there are 20 crimes and 3 victims per 100 people, the number of cops hasn’t necessarily changed that.

E talks about the difference in victims per 100 people. E says that the healthcare system is better now. The people who would have died no longer die. It’s not that that cops can handle the amount of crime any better, it’s just that people who otherwise would have died didn’t and so you can’t claim that just because there are fewer victims per 100 people now that law enforcement’s ability is not decreasing.

Hi @ I don't want to downplay the importance of the fundamentals. You may have a wide knowledge/understanding gap and that is what is leading you to inconsistent scores. Sometimes we can apply what we know in one instance, but not another. I don't know your specific situation, but returning to the curriculum is often a really helpful way to improve and check what you know.

That said, for many people the way we think and read (comprehension) in real life is vastly different from how we think and read on the LSAT. We don't typically scrutinise every word someone says to us. We don't only think within the bounds of the exact sentences they use. We don't use conditional logic. We often skip past what we don't understand. I can go on and on.

Training ourselves out of doing this is hard. Its easy to fall back on these comfortable ways of thinking and reading during a timed, stressful exam. We have to build the habits of good reading and reasoning by practice them over and over again. Doing a deliberate review of questions helps to ingrain these habits, which in turn helps increase our accuracy, understanding, and speed.

Putting a ton of pressure on yourself to do well can be extremely counterproductive and harmful to your overall improvement. The more stressed and anxious you are about the whole thing, the more likely you'll do poorly. (I'm speaking from my own experiences studying.) @ is probably right. Take a break and try to relax a bit (or at least worry about something else for a while).

If you're going -10 or more and that's not where you want to be, you probably shouldn't be taking LR sections back to back. The thing is to make a conscious, deep review of each and every missed question. LSAC is tricky and subtle. They purposefully design each question to include traps that seem stupid when you spot them but are damning if you don't.

The way to a strong LR section is through deliberate and conscious actions that mitigate our unconscious/standard thought process until these new actions override the old unconscious habits. Because of that, we must take the time to understand the nuances of how test writers think, what is important to them -- whether its the types of questions they ask or how they attempt to confuse and distract us. This is only possible by breaking down and evaluating each question. This takes a ton of time (though it's relative to each person).

You can definitely improve your LR score. It just takes some patience, not merely with the amount of studying, but also with yourself.

@ said:

Please help me. I don't get why my scores aren't increasing when I'm studying so much. When do you start to see gains/increases in your PTs after studying for so many hours? I'm not seeing progress...

It may be time to look into how you're studying and not quite how long you're studying. I was spending a ton of time studying without actually studying, if you know what I mean. I sat for hours 'reviewing' questions, but in reality, I was still just scraping the surface of the question because I didn't understand the difference between just writing out what I thought I knew about the stimulus and the answer choices and actually making the connections in my brain. In short, I wasn't reading or working to comprehend what was happening. I was reading just to check off a box called 'review'.

I can't necessarily explain exactly how to do it since my way of comprehension is different than yours, but here's somethings that have helped. There are three things I need to understand before I leave the stimulus. (1) What do the words mean. (2) What is their purpose (premise, context, conclusion, errant information). (3) What analysis can I take away from it. The third is the trickiest because this changes depending on what is said and what the q-stem asks us to do, but it is also where you want to spend most of your time.

I constantly reaffirm that I know the topic of what is being spoken about as I read (1). I don't just label the purpose of each part, I try to explain how it fills that purpose and what LSAC wants us to think about when they use that particular phrasing. What assumptions or ideas are they pushing us to make. Are they trying to confuse us or distract us from something else (2). And finally, how can I combine the information from steps (1) and (2) to prepare myself to answer the question they ask. This is the pre-phrase part, where you try to anticipate what the answer choice might look like (3).

I apply these concepts to the answer choices as well by constantly reaffirming to myself I know what they mean, that I understand their purpose is in relation to the stimulus and the question asked, and finally, what is the analysis to determine whether it's correct or not

These steps are all baked into the review process and you might do all of this. I'm not trying to suggest you're not doing the right things, but what it boils down to are the subtle shifts in quality (i.e. how well it impacts your comprehension level) that will lead you to gains. It's a personal experience that, at least for me, required a much more conscious effort and self awareness than just knowing I was performing the steps of review.

So this is a main point question. We just want to find the conclusion, which you point out is the first sentence. Then you want to move into the answer choices and just pick the answer that best paraphrases that conclusion.

Here B does that. It says scientists should use a higher proportion of double blind techniques than not. It's giving them preference, which is akin to using them whenever possible.

The other answers don't sum up the conclusion.

A says objectivity may be impeded bc of prior expectations, but nowhere in the stimulus does it tell us that. Not the conclusion.

C We have no idea if scientists neglect to consider this. It is not the conclusion we spotted.

D is also not stated. It never tells us something should happen. We might think scientists should refrain from bias but the stimulus doesn't say that.

E says double blind techniques are often effective ways to ensure objectivity. This seems more like an assumption to me. We just know that these techniques are preferable to non double blind techniques.

Do you do better when you're BRing or practicing untimed? Even if you think your fundamentals are strong, dont be afraid to go back to the curriculum to reaffirm and refresh your memory. The others have good advice on that.

My timed scores were stuck for a while at -7 or so even though my BR was -3/-4. I don't want to jinx myself, but I'm more consistently reaching those targets. I felt I knew enough of the material, but I couldn't perform (and I am still learning this skill).

I think 90 per cent of this test is mental fortitude. Try to be as distant from the test as you can be. If you see each test as zero sum or proof of improvement, you will stress and be afraid of missing questions. This stress will not help you do well and understand the LR.

I suggest slowing down when you read. Don't just read slower. Read at a comfortable speed, but pause after each sentence or concept. Translate it back to yourself. Make sure you have a strong grasp of the stimulus before you move on.

Once you understand the stimulus then do the same thing for the answers. Don't rush through them. Be decisive, but take your time to understand what they mean and how they impact your stimulus.

Don't allow yourself to get lazy or give up. This was a huge issue for me. Things I didn't understand, Id gloss over and waste so much time with because my brain thought it had read the words, but there was no comprehension and its hard to force yourself to do it correctly the second time. It's easier to do it right the first time.

All of this sounds like it will take forever. Sometimes it might, but you can do this and still get your easier questions in under a minute. The time tends to balance out as you get more confident and experienced.

If you're an anxious person like I am, try and pay attention to your mind. You may physical feel pretty relaxed, but sometimes your brain can start to panic/rush and sooner or later you're tense, not breathing, and sabotaging your ability to understand. Even if you are not stressed about the test, your scores or lack of improvement, other things like work, family, friends, life, etc. can impact how you feel later in the day even when youre not still actively thinking of it. Some deep breathing and meditation cantrain yourself to remain calm and so you can do the above-mentioned things.

If you can hit your target untimed (or timed), try and identify how that feels for you. What things are you doing while you're testing. How does it feel in your body and what thoughts are you having. What thoughts were you having earlier in the day that may impact how you feel now. Before you take a section, think back to those feelings and thoughts. Try to replicate it during timed conditions. When you remember that you went -2 while being in a certain mindset/mood/state before, you will feel more confident that you can do it again.

The author believes that when natural resources are low, we can just rely on the change of technology to allow us to do the same thing without the resources in question. Instead of an ox, use a tractor.

E tells us that we have a biological need for air and clean water, implying a continual demand that will never go away, otherwise we'll die. If we were to use up or pollute all of the air and water and technological change has no affect on how much we need air and water, we are SOL. There is no means to replace our need for these resources through technology. That coupled with perpetual demand means those resources may eventually deplete because there is nothing available to replace our need for oxygen with. Therefore, it is less true that we will never run out of natural resources.

C tells us that business might lose money at first, but that doesn't get to the issue of how do we handle the constant demand for air once we start running out and have nothing to replace it with. I think you'd have to make large assumptions for C to be impactful to this argument.

@ said:

Im gonna reword the stimulus to make it more clear.

Reworded Stimulus

Women over 40 have have more difficulties at giving birth than women under 40. People who are born from difficult births have a higher chance to be ambidextrous. Therefore most people who are ambidextrous are born from women over 40.

I think the way you've rewritten the stimulus leaves out some information. Women over 40 have more difficult births than younger women. People who are born from difficult births have a higher chance of being ambidextrous. Since other causes of ambidexterity have nothing to do with the age of the mom, there have to be more ambidextrous people born to 40+ women than younger.

The argument is making a comparison and in doing so, it misunderstands the relationship between per cent and numbers.

So lets say each month there are 100 babies born to women over 40 and about 10,000 babies born to women under 40. Even if women over 40 have a higher percentage of difficult births, and therefore a higher percentage of ambidextrous children, the actual numbers of ambidextrous children need not show that women over 40 had more.

In this example, it's clear that even if 60 per cent of women over 40 had ambidextrous kids, vs 40 per cent of women under 40, there is no way that the over 40s had more ambidextrous kids.

I tend to see NA questions as if the conclusion is true, what must be true.

In this case, knowing that there are a few examples of hairless dogs in other countries doesn't preclude the notion that these dogs must have traveled between Peru and Mexico exclusively. Me bringing some dogs to Spain doesn't mean that someone in Spain then turned around and brought them to Peru. It doesn't make our conclusion wrong.

Initially I dismissed E because it was a value judgment, but the whole argument here hinges on that value judgment. Dogs must have travelled by boat because traveling over land was extremely difficult. It must be the case that traveling by boat was at least somewhat easier than traveling by land. Otherwise, they wouldn't use boats and whole argument breaks down.