Also, on a side note, has anyone ever come across a flawed reasoning question where the answer was "the argument is flawed because they didn't cite any scientific evidence"? . If we are speaking scientifically, empirical evidence is clearly important. But, for our purposes, I just don't see how a lack of scientific evidence can ever be the logical flaw in an argument. I chose D for this answer, already suspecting it was wrong, but I did so by POE. Any thoughts on this?

To answer your side note, I don't think I've ever seen a correct flaw answer choice that features "not citing evidence for the argument." I'm curious... What exactly did A and D say?

I was trying to find a PDF of the test to help answer the question, but I only managed to stumble upon a Kaplan explanation. Without seeing the answer choices, I'm not entirely sure if it'll be helpful... Also @ let me know if posting this breaches any forum rules.

(A) The key word in this choice is “intrinsically.” The argument dismisses the value of clinical

trials for new surgical procedures on the grounds that the effectiveness of such a

procedure is “transparently related to the skills of the surgeon who uses it.” Even so, it is

reasonable to expect that some surgical procedures may prove to have harmful effects in

and of themselves, regardless of the surgeon’s ability.

(D) There’s clearly a qualitative difference between administering drugs and performing

surgery. Specific scientific evidence proving the dissimilarity is unnecessary

• In flaw questions, it can be useful to keep in mind the limitations of the test format.

Every argument has to be put forth in a single paragraph. So it’s unreasonable to

demand detailed documentation in support of every piece of evidence.

Old reading comprehension and logical reasoning sections might be relevant to the skills you learned throughout the core curriculum (e.g. active reading, parsing the structure of stimuli, etc.), but some of the question types are fully irrelevant. That's why J.Y. picks out specific questions from PTs 1 - 36 to learn relevant key concepts. As @ said, PTs 60 - 80 will be a more accurate representation of how you'll do on test day, but you may as well work through PTs 36+ if you have the time.

That being said, some of the unique, "non-traditional" logic games appearing in newer PTs have resembled very, very old games (e.g. the infamous virus game in PT79 was supposedly similar to a game in the early 1990s). If you're looking to master the LG section, I would definitely recommend drilling some of the more difficult/unique games in early PTs.

Cheers from a fellow Canadian!

A ~40 point increase!? Holy smokes! Big congrats :)

I agree with @ in that you'd probably be better off using your intuition to get this one. The question stem is a bit too dense in information and lacks clear conditional language. The answers, however, do have clear conditional language which can guide you to correct choice.

Here's what A) has to say:

Helpful --> Laudable

Wrong --> Led person to believe...

The question stem says "It would be laudable if the Jacksons passed along... (i.e. helpful)". Therefore, they fulfilled the sufficient condition in the first part of answer choice A (helpful --> laudable).

The Jacksons also negated the necessary condition in the second statement (they didn't lead Sara to believe...), so they were not wrong.

There's your pseudo-sufficient assumption/principle. Hope that helps.

Here's how I mapped it:

A is always the best student ("B") = A (---) B

I think this is a special case. If you're operating under the reasonable assumption that there can only be one "best student", then the arrow goes both ways. If you're asked about A, you know that they're the best student. If you're asked about the best student, you know that it's A.

However, a sentence like "dogs are always cute" would be represented as "dogs --> cute". The arrow only goes one way, since you now know that if you have a dog, it's always going to be cute. However, the arrow doesn't go the other way, since you don't always know if a cute thing is going to be a dog.

Your second statement is just a classic group 1 example ("the only"). "A is the only best student" = "the only best student is A". Therefore, if you have a "best student", you know it's going to be A (best student --> A).

PTs 77 and 79 (September LSAT) :)

@ There's definitely another circular game in the 70s, but PT79 can't be accurately described as such... The infamous virus game in PT79 is more like a "circuit" game, but the only game that is remotely similar to it was published in the 1990s (a very, very early PT).

Just looking for some tips. I only started studying 2 weeks ago :|. I performed my first PT 72 and got 140

Brutal honesty incoming.

I'll be the first to say that, if you sincerely want to achieve a 160, you should reschedule your LSAT for when you're actually prepared to write it. You are not going to magically make a 20 point jump to achieve a 160 when you've only been studying for 2 weeks and have 2 weeks remaining.

I have another 10 PT to complete 62-71, my plan is to do 5-10 within next two weeks

STOP STOP STOP. DO NOT WASTE ANY MORE PREPTESTS LIKE THIS. Your PTs are highly precious study materials. If you don't have a solid foundation of skills that you need to write the LSAT, you're simply going to throw PTs away by writing them.

Sign up for a Starter course on 7Sage and acquire the skill-set you need to conquer the LSAT. Please take the time, whether it be 6 months, a year, or however long you need to truly master this test. Aside from your personal statement, this is your last obstacle to law school! Don't rush it!

@ I scored a bunch of 169s in the 60s and 70s, but my highest PT score was actually the same as what I got on the real thing (a single 170 on PT77, which I wrote ~a week before my test). My situation (i.e. scoring 3 above my PT average) is definitely abnormal though... I'd probably attribute my success to having written high-stress standardized tests before, like the 8 hour MCAT.

-10 is also a reasonable benchmark for consistently scoring 170s. PT79 (my test) also had a pretty generous curve at -12.

Scored a 170 on test day with an average PT score (10 most recent tests or so) of 167. J.Y. usually mentions that you'll score +/-3 of your 5 most recent tests, although I think most people end up on the minus side.

I'm not sure where to find it either, but it's relatively easy to convert all your marks either by hand or through excel/google sheets. If you'd like, I can walk you through the process or you can follow the conversion table: https://www.ouac.on.ca/guide/olsas-conversion-table/

Similar to your diagnostic, I scored a 153 with a -10 on LG, -15 in LR, and -9 in RC. Like the situation you described, I managed to jump 17 points to score a 170 on the September test. Before going through the core curriculum, I thought sufficiency and necessity were the same thing, and believed that Logic Games were bloody impossible. However, mastery of the core curriculum and reinforcing your skills, habits, and raw test-taking abilities through PTs/practice will eventually bring you closer to your target score.

That said, improvements were definitely slow, and often occurred in plateaus of PT scores. I don't think there's a particular shortcut to jumping your scores, but mastering Logic Games is definitely a start. While practicing LGs throughout the curriculum, I took over double the suggested time to complete each game. Consequently, "jumps" in my PT scores were directly correlated with my progress in learning the games, with gradual improvements in RC and LR after each exposure to similar questions in PTs.

One caveat is that newer LSATs have at least one "unique" game. Mastering all the traditional games covered in the curriculum will prepare you for roughly half of the newer LG sections, but going -0 on all the PT LGs might not accurately reflect how you'll score on the real test.

@ Yes. The logic games in PTs 50 - 60 become highly formulaic and recognizable. I've never done any of the earlier PTs, but students have mentioned that there were a fair number of "unique" games, including a game that was similar to September's virus game.

All PTs from 36 onwards. However, I regret not looking over earlier PTs, since September's virus game kind of threw me off. If you have the time, it's definitely beneficial to do as many PTs as possible before your test.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about the LSAT's writing sample. To my understanding, it isn't used formally in the admission process. I think J.Y. mentioned that the writing sample might be used to verify that your personal statement wasn't plagiarized, but even that seems unlikely.

Also, conciseness far outweighs quantity in terms of the writing sample.

The difference between a sufficient and necessary assumption is incredibly subtle, and distinguishing them requires a fair bit of practice. However, mastering this distinction is the key to answering "necessary assumption" type questions on the LSAT.

A necessary assumption is a condition that the argument absolutely requires in order to be valid. If you take away this condition, the entire argument falls apart. The tricky thing is that necessary assumptions are super subtle. You might not even be aware that an assumption was necessary until you apply the "negation test" that J.Y. discussed in the core curriculum.

On the other hand, a sufficient assumption is a condition that may make an argument valid, but it's not necessarily a condition that the argument needs in order to work. Unlike a necessary assumption, if you take away a sufficient assumption, the argument doesn't fall apart. For example, there might be other sufficient assumptions that support the argument just fine.

In addition to the basketball player example that J.Y. used in his lessons, here's another example that might help...

Argument: I'm the best figure skater in the world.

Sufficient assumptions: I'm more graceful than Patrick Chan, one of the world's best figure skaters.

Necessary assumptions: I'm not a paraplegic.

An easy way to pick out the necessary assumption answer on the LSAT involves using the "negation test", which involves logically negating each answer choice. In the above example...

a) It's not the case that I'm more graceful than Patrick Chan, one of the world's best figure skaters

Okay, so I might be less graceful or as graceful as Patrick Chan. What if I'm more graceful than Ashley Wagner, or if I have some quality other than gracefulness that makes me the best figure skater in the world? As you can see, negating this assumption doesn't completely wreck the argument. Now, if you negate the necessary answer choice...

b) It's not the case that I'm not a paraplegic (i.e. I'm a paraplegic).

See what happens when you take away/negate the necessary assumption? If I'm a paraplegic, how can I even skate to begin with? Like I said, necessary assumptions are incredibly subtle, but they're necessary in order for an argument to hold up.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. Cheers, and best of luck on your studies.

Haha I'm in a pretty similar situation... Girlfriend in first year medical school with plans to propose, a mother-in-law (ish) I'm pretty close to, and a father-in-law that I'm friendly with but supposedly doesn't quite approve. What's the father like?

Congrats! Best of luck on the rest of your studies, and I hope it keeps up :D

Heya,

I was in a similar situation during my prep, where I was scoring in the low 160s and missing ~ a game and a half each PT due to time constraints. As I began to accumulate techniques and intuitions through watching J.Y.'s video explanations and PT commentaries, I was able to push to consistently score in the high 160s/low 170s. The new "miscellaneous" games in the late PT70s might give you a fair bit of trouble, but being able to have at least an 80% accuracy on LG is probably the easiest way to score in the mid 160s.

Have you gone through the full curriculum? I'll be honest... While 158 is a fairly modest goal, I wouldn't throw away a perfectly good attempt with only a month to study and a diagnostic score so far below your target.

Don't sell yourself short. If you can wait for the next application cycle, you'll be able to work through the core curriculum, finish ~50 practice tests, and potentially score so much scholarship money that you'll be coasting through law school for free.

Hey @.vaid. Sorry to hear that your LSAT didn't go as well as you hoped :( Retakes generally yield better results, and as you've probably already heard, most Ontario schools have a fairly holistic admissions process. A 161 is widely considered by schools to be competitive, but this threshold varies a bit with your GPA (i.e. a GPA in the 3.9s will give you more leeway with a lower LSAT score and vice versa). If you take a look at the "accepted" forum threads at lawstudents.ca at the moment, you'll be able to see people with LSATs and GPAs all over the spectrum. Be advised, however, that most people accepted earlier in the cycle (December/January) will be on the higher end of applicants.

One piece of advice... February isn't terribly far off, so if you're dead set on re-taking then, make sure you're absolutely confident that you'll be able to score even a low 160 on a bad day... In other words, the average of your last 10 PTs should be from recent tests and in the mid 160s.

Feel free to message me if you have any other questions about the LSAT or the Ontario admission process. I recently wrote the September LSAT and have received early offers of admission to Osgoode and Western.

Relax, reset, and refocus. You've got this!

I had the exact same feeling right after writing the September LSAT.. 170 or 150. I found it helpful to just completely forget about it and distract yourself until you suddenly receive your score.

There's a 7Sage party in Toronto!?!?

Very well deserved! Congrats CGR!