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rrmradi209
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rrmradi209
Tuesday, Nov 15 2022

@gcoughlan842 said:

I ended up with LR-LG-RC-LR. First LR felt fine...but I fully didn't finish game #3 about the dog walking. I must have missed an inference/spent way too long on games 1 and 2 because none of the games seemed very difficult...it was just like I couldn't get my head in it so I guessed on probably 6 or 7 Qs which I am SO disappointed about. RC felt difficult, especially the one passage with 8 (???) questions, but at least I finished everything. The second LR was hard but I was also so checked out by the time I got there.

Did your RC include a passage about whales and pitch?

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rrmradi209
Friday, Nov 11 2022

@jamesmatthewshepherd950 said:

Also, you’re showing the admissions team that you’re carefully planning ahead, and contrary to the appearance of applying “late” you’re actually considerate, strategic and well organized as evidenced by your strategic early application to the school, even though your lsat score is not yet available.

While applying with your LSAT score already on file is advantageous, "appearing well organized as evidenced by your strategic early application the school" is not a legitimate consideration that law schools take into account. Not sure where you heard this, but this doesn't factor into admission considerations. The January LSAT is accepted by all (most?) schools, they don't go further to then determine whether you taking the January LSAT is a consequence of your disorganization. Conversely, they don't assess applicants who already have an LSAT score on file as 'more organized' than any other. Any negatives associated with taking the January LSAT is already reflected through the consequences of being evaluated late within a rolling basis admissions process, which is that places are distributed overtime and not all at once. This is the extent to which taking the Jan LSAT can be problematic, nothing more. People have various reasons for taking the January LSAT, just as some may have been able to take it in October vs. November or any other month. When a school agrees to accept the January LSAT, they're not saying you're going to be considered in an inferior light to your "more organized" competition. You're going to be considered as any other applicant; according to the standards and requirements set out by the school, with the caveat that some seats have already been filled. Any further determination as to how "organized" an applicant is based on when he took the LSAT, or how that factors into his application as a whole is seriously unjustified. Even more grossly so, when you imply that this has an effect on how he is assessed as an applicant, i.e. how likely he is to succeed in law school once that application in its entirety has already arrived in the laps of the school's addcom.

Law school admission process is, in short, just them assessing how likely you are to succeed in their law school (and beyond that, how good of a fit you are), often accomplished through considering EC's, grades, LSAT scores, Personal Statement, and other considerations that that vary from school to school, but are usually explicitly mentioned in the guides that schools provide for students looking to apply (none of which mention an inherent disdain for Jan LSAT test takers). They don't bother making arbitrary and wildly speculative assessments about your application, such as he applied for the January LSAT therefore he's relatively disorganized compared to everyone who did not, for the obvious reason that its a ridiculous conclusion to arrive at.

The obvious reasons anyone takes the January LSAT, is they believe they can score better than if they were to take it any earlier, or that there were some circumstances that prevented them from taking an earlier LSAT date. In the former, you are better of taking the LSAT in January if it is going to lend to a significantly stronger application, and therefore further evidence you're likelihood of being able to succeed in their law school (which is any law schools primary concern). Encouraging someone to preclude themselves from the opportunity to strengthen their application because of some speculation that you will somehow appear disorganized is very strange.

If you can guarantee a significant boost in your LSAT score by taking the January test, then its worth taking, generally speaking. If you have an already strong score on file, then that becomes debatable. It just depends on your likelihood of being admitted given your current score, and your preferred schools requirements. Are you a competitive applicant with your current LSAT/GPA, if so, then doing the LSAT again is not ideal.

You should not be giving out wrong advice, and by extension of the nature of the advice you're giving, encouraging applicants to worry about factors that are grossly speculative that in-turn can have a negative effect on those factors that admission committee's do in fact legitimately consider.

You're not showing the admissions team anything of that sort ,as the above poster described, by applying with an LSAT score already on file vs an LSAT score taken in January. Admission committees are not involved in playing any guessing game, they look at the resulting score of your LSAT (amongst other factors such as GPA). A 155 in November does not beat a 160 in January (assuming the difference is pertinent given the school you're looking to apply to).

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rrmradi209
Thursday, Nov 10 2022

@rrmradi209 said:

i am struggling with LR, just hit 19 on a 25 and want to perfect it best way i can. im wondering if this is a good class to register for? i am considering both this 7sage and the lsat demon live course.

Tomorrow at 12 pm there will be another live session with JY, if you sign up for the upgraded membership ($99), you can attend that, Just navigate to the top bar on the website, hover over 'course' and click live classes. Tomorrow (or later today?) the schedule will show JY's class.12 pm (EST) Nov 11 ( tomorrow) you'll be able to click and join on zoom.

We had one today, it was great as expected. Give it a try before you sign up for other courses, since presuming you're already signed on a 7sage regular membership, it would be better to exhaust your options here before you spend and even greater amount to access an alternative studying resource. (don't know anything about lsat demon other than I've been getting more frequent youtube adds from them).

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I've been doing LR for some time and for so long have been stuck around -5/-4. I have a solid grasp on the question types and what they require me to do, but I'm also lazy and have, for my entire LSAT study journey, avoided fully diagramming and exploring the logic embed in LR questions. I can eliminate most answer choices based on general rules, such as "this answer is prescriptive and therefore wrong". However, this approach which isn't exactly thorough prevents me from fully understanding the logic structure embed in any given stimuli, and by extension, also from applying said logic structure to the answer choices. Thus, with my shortcut approach, not only am I consistently not improving, but also liable to do much worse when that intuition is hindered by pressure on test day (done the test 3 times)..

I joined on his live class on a whim, which requires the updated subscription to access ( I believe $99 a month?), and I am taking my LSAT 3 days from the time of this post. All I can say is, I wish something like this was available sooner. JY's logic diagramming within his explanation videos are good (I think?) but they don't cut quite as deep when compared to live classes that often lead to a 'no loose ends' analysis.

The pace of live classes are not fast, going over just a handful of questions in the 1:30 - 2 hours. With that being said, there were no questions that we went over in which I did not learn something new. In this sense, the analysis is thorough. This is surprising, because the questions asked by participants/7sagers during his live session often initially struck me as trivial. They almost always, however, lead to a point that I personally did not notice/consider/realize. For allot of the questions I considered easy, they could've very easily (if the LSAT makers wanted to) been turned into a 4/5 star level question, and in that case, what otherwise seemed like a trivial inference, has now become a critical component of the question - that I would've missed.

During class, JY said something along the lines of 'Even if your intuition works, you need to be able to prove it'. If you feel you lack in this regard, I recommend you join his LR live classes. Whilst, I cannot speak to the efficacy of this class for those scoring near perfect on LR, I think for everyone else, these live classes may very well be worthwhile.

Not an advertisement, just a guy who's been studying for this damn test longer than he should be. If you're on the fence, give it a try.

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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 12 2022

Ellen Cassidy: Loophole. great book for logical reasoning

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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 12 2022

It makes sense. If you are talking about Canadian schools, I would avoid "creative language" and go for just a more straight forward approach at addressing the given topic of the statement.

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rrmradi209
Tuesday, Oct 11 2022

Further example of my process, PT 57, S2, Q 10.

Process:

Conclusion: "On our farm we have great concern for our cows environmental condition"

Premise: Increase cows comfort

Intermediary conclusion: Increase cows comfort also increases profit

What I then say back to myself: 'Increasing your cows comfort is equal to being concerned for your cows environmental condition. Really? Oh it also helps to boost your profit, go figure. '

At this point, I have some understanding of the argument. The sarcastic remarks I tell myself are reflective of skepticism, at this point I am skeptical of the farmers claims, particularly that he has great concern for his cows environmental conditions. On an intuitive level, I understand I can weaken this argument by saying he cares about the profit, and not the environmental conditions. I can similarly strengthen this argument by mitigating this, I understand that the correct AC for a strengthening question stem would address the farmers interest in profit, specifically would down play such interest while supporting a greater concern for the cow itself. I also note that the stimulus oddly equates a cows comfort with its environmental condition. In this sense the conclusion in the stimulus is too strong/broad for its premises. I think nothing more and move on.

With this in mind, I move on to the question stem.

"of the following propositions, which one is best illustrated by the dairy farmers statements"

The answer must be provable, not powerful. (concept from Loophole Ellen Cassidy's LR book)

AC: A) Conditional + physiology of milk? What in the hell? Immediately eliminate.

AC: B ) Ok sounds good

AC: C) More than other animal? Stimulus makes no mention of other animals. Immediately eliminate.

AC: D) Prescriptive answer choice; (telling us how something should be done when the stimulus doesn't do that.) Huge no, immediately eliminate.

AC: E) Stimulus makes no mention of "ThE KeY To MaxIMIzInG ProFIts" (Insert DJ Khalid). Immediately eliminate.

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rrmradi209
Tuesday, Oct 11 2022

In my opinion, if you go into the answer choices hoping to find the answer somewhere there, you will almost always be spending way too much time on the question, getting it wrong, or both. You should know the answer, roughly at least, before going looking at the answer choices.

Actually I shouldnt have said this, because many times my process wont necessarily lead to anticipating an answer choice, maybe because the argument is extremely sound, or perhaps overly ambiguous. In any case, the process will provide you with a better understanding of the stimulus, and a more simplified version. Which will ultimately up the chances of settling on the right answer choice.

Admittedly, sometimes things don't click, something about the stimulus is just so foreign to me that I cant wrap my head around the argument being presented. PT 57, S2, Q7, ( I got a -2 on timed take of this LR, and -1 on BR), this is the question I couldn't get timed nor on BR. Despite being one of the apparently easier questions in this section, I simply could not wrap my head around the stimulus. It happens, it is what it is.

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rrmradi209
Tuesday, Oct 11 2022

You are falling into some trap you are unaware of. Remember, there is no guessing in LR, consider that every wrong answer choice is intentionally designed to be attractive.

To directly address your concern, yes there is something for you to further improve on if you're finding yourself in the situation you've described.

On a more elaborate note, I've been studying LR for sometime and have managed to get -1/-2 on timed LR and -1/0 on BR. Usually the -1/0 on BR for me comes to down heavy conditional question, SA/PSA/Flaw, that require relatively excessive diagraming of conditionals.

I saw the greatest improvement in my LR the moment I understood that the "answer to an LR question is in the stimulus". Its very simple, if I go into the answer choices already knowing what the correct answer would/should address, then I'm highly likely to immediately select the correct answer after skimming through the choices while easily eliminating the others without falling into traps. If I read the stimulus, and couldn't figure it out, then I'm likely to spend significantly more time looking through the answer choices, thinking deeply about each one and whether its right or wrong, while also being increasingly more likely to pick the wrong one and ultimately also wasting a bunch of time.

There is a process to LR, an ACTIVE Process that you must keep in mind while you go through that section, this process is what gave me the most improvement:

I read the stimulus, mentally note the conclusion, the premises, and then in my own words I summarize the argument presented in the stimulus, while also noting what is potentially wrong with it. If I identify it is a premise set and not an argument, I simply do the same but instead I note to myself what the inference is likely to be.

At this point, I have a good understanding of the argument, and I am already anticipating the correct answer choice.

I move to read the question stem, based on the question type, I categorize the answer as needing to be either powerful or provable (concept from Ellen Cassidy Loophole book, very good LR guide book).

Based on 1 and 2, I am able to select the right answer choice with high confidence, while also quickly eliminating wrong answer choices.

In my opinion, if you go into the answer choices hoping to find the answer somewhere there, you will almost always be spending way too much time on the question, getting it wrong, or both. You should know the answer, roughly at least, before going looking at the answer choices.

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rrmradi209
Monday, Oct 10 2022

@jhaldy10325 said:

Depending on where you’re scoring, the answer changes dramatically. A lot of people actually do worse on RC after “studying” it. Especially in the -4 to -8 range, people got to be careful.

Any reason for this? Genuinely curious and asking.

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PT127.S2.Q24
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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 05 2022

LOL

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PT127.S2.Q20
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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 05 2022

cross through must was an accident and i cant edit for some reason

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PT127.S2.Q20
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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 05 2022

I think I ended up rambling here a little bit too so ill just rephrase

-Question asking us what must be assumed (necessary

-C vs E

-C goes above and beyond, prescribing that if theres ANY chance regardless of how tiny, they should not provide psychological help.

-E says if its unlikely to be of high quality, the psychologist should not provide psychological help

- C is, through its strength and excessive nature, is sufficient for the conclusion to be true, but its excessiveness makes it unnecessary.

- E gives us the wiggle room to enable the conclusion while not going above and beyond

- C can be false and the conclusion can still be valid

- If E is false, the conclusion is invalid

- Thereby E is the necessary assumption

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PT127.S2.Q20
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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Oct 05 2022

How can you argue that this should be treated as an SA question, let alone, is an SA question, when the question stem is clearly asking you to identify the assumption that is necessary for this argument all the while including an SA trap answer with the intention to trip you?

I think your rambling about the term "less than high quality" makes no sense, and you're thinking about this too deeply for no real reason.

They did not give us a definition of "High-Quality psychological help", or rather they do not inform us of what this exactly entails. In the same way, they do not define "Less than High Quality". This point is irrelevant to the question at hand and an examination of the stimulus/argument.

The stimulus tells us there's such a thing as High-Quality psychological help, but that providing this 'High Quality' help is nearly always incompatible with also providing entertainment on radio/talk shows

(which is what the psychologists are expected to do when appearing on talk shows/radio: entertain + provide psychological help)

,and that therefore psychotherapists/psychologists should never provide psychological help on a talk show.

Keep in mind almost always incompatible /= incompatible. It's strong but not 100% more like 90-99%.

In any case, the question stem then asks to pick the answer choice that contains the assumption that is necessary for the conclusion to be valid.

The conclusion being: Psychologists should never provide psychological help on a talk show.

The stimulus tells us something: that high quality and entertainment are incompatible. The conclusion makes a jump, and prescribes , that psychologists should therefore not provide psychological help on a talk show. Why, where did this prescription (conclusion) come from?

This prescription (conclusion) is enabled by both answer choices C and E.

But the question stem is asking us for the answer choice that contains the necessary assumption - the assumption that is necessary for the conclusion to be valid, and not the assumption that is sufficient to enable the conclusion.

At this point, C is suspect. Answer choice C is so strong that it would almost become detrimental. If we chose answer choice C, not only are we prescribing that psychologists should provide psychological help on talk shows, but also in any scenario in which there is a chance that the psychological help could be less than that of high quality. So even if there is a 1% chance that the psychological help could be of less than high quality and a 99% chance that it would be of high quality, we would still be prescribing the psychologist to not provide psychological help. The reality is, there will likely always be a chance, no matter how small, of psychological help not being of high quality. In this sense, answer choice C goes above and beyond, and it becomes blatantly clear, that in the face of answer choice E, it is wrong.

Answer choice E, in its prescription to not provide psychological help, gives us more wiggle room. It tells us that if the psychological help is unlikely to be of high quality, then it should not be provided. It permits psychologists to give psychological help, all other things aside, even in scenarios where there might be a, for example, a 5% chance of the psychological help being less/not of high quality. It does not go so far as to preclude other realistic scenarios, and it does not create consequences that extend beyond the context of the stimulus and heart of the argument. It is the correct answer choice - the answer choice with the assumption that is necessary (and not excessively sufficient) for the conclusion to be true.

Your point about defining less than is moot. It's reasonable to conclude, based on the stimulus, that less than high quality /= high quality. I mean, honestly, what in life is less than high quality, but somehow also high quality? In any case, this question is unimportant, if not irrelevant, to this NA question.

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PT119.S2.Q21
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rrmradi209
Sunday, Oct 02 2022

I'm pretty sure D is wrong because the overwhelming disastrous consequence is the psychiatrist breaking her duty to patient confidentiality.

Answer choice A: A student's chance at an internship might be harmed (of which the teacher presumably knows nothing about, so the element of overwhelming evidence of disastrous consequence is not present)

Answer choice D: Psychiatrist 100% knowingly breaks patient confidentiality

Therefore answer choice A

To support this further; if you are doubting the 'disastrous' nature of the psychiatrist breaking patient confidentiality, answer choice D makes somewhat of an effort to communicate that this duty (duty to her patient) is equivocal to the duty of reporting a crime (duty to the law).

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PT125.S2.Q19
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rrmradi209
Thursday, Jul 21 2022

It seems as though if you did not contrapose the conditionals about J losing/winning, then answer choice D would have flown over your head

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PrepTests ·
PT125.S2.Q18
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rrmradi209
Thursday, Jul 21 2022

If the first sentence, being the context, was not included then this game would have been easier. I believe it's there to just cause some confusion. Otherwise, the gap in the logic is all the more apparent when you read the stim without the context/first sentence.

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PT107.S3.Q19
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rrmradi209
Monday, Jun 06 2022

He’s trying to argue that it wasn’t the large meteor because of the status of the rocks in relation to the polarity of the earth or whatever (spoken in layman).

Having the impact be of sufficient size to cause the mass extinction is a precondition for him to reach the conclusion THAT IT WAS IN-FACT NOT THE METEORITE IMPACT SIMPLY BECAUSE the rocks would have been correctly aligned with the polarity.

So in reality, that is a necessary assumption, but answer choice ‘A’ doesn’t note that, it notes “MORE THAN SUFFICIENT”. Because answer choice ‘A’ includes “MORE”, it no longer is a necessary assumption for the argument the professor makes.

If the impact size was not sufficient in size to cause the mass extinction, then by default it would not make any sense to consider the meteor as the culprit in the first place. The problem with answer 'A' is the phrase "MORE THAN SUFFICIENT". What is NECESSARY, would be the size being "SUFFICIENT".

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PT107.S3.Q19
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rrmradi209
Monday, Jun 06 2022

He’s trying to argue that it wasn’t the large meteor because of the status of the rocks in relation to the polarity of the earth or whatever (spoken in layman).

Having the impact be of sufficient size to cause the mass extinction is a precondition for him to reach the conclusion, THAT IT WAS IN FACT NOT THE METEORITE IMPACT, simply because the rocks would have been correctly aligned with the polarity.

So in reality, that is a necessary assumption, but answer choice ‘A’ doesn’t note that, it notes “MORE THAN SUFFICIENT”. Because answer choice ‘A’ includes “MORE”, it no longer is a necessary assumption for the argument the professor makes.

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PT107.S3.Q19
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rrmradi209
Monday, Jun 06 2022

A could have been a correct answer choice if the word "most" was not included. Classic case of providing a stimulus and question stem intended to overwhelm and confuse the test taker when the solution in actuality relies on simply being aware of the fact that 'A' is a 'nonsense answer'.

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rrmradi209
Sunday, Oct 03 2021

Read about moral philosophy, nothing more to it. They're almost always cookie cutter moral principles.

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rrmradi209
Saturday, Sep 18 2021

@brookegojazz136 said:

@brookegojazz136 said:

I didn't say there wasn't a pattern. I said the pattern does not seem to be linked to the categorized question type.

It doesn't matter. If you cant see a pattern of any kind that would give indication as to what you are doing wrong in getting -4, then you're not looking hard enough. There's no way around this, the reality is you've still got work to do in achieving a consistent sub -2 and to neglect that by suggesting that your -4 is because of random chance or misreading/rushing is misleading to OP.

Getting -4/-5 out of 25 questions is no margin of error. Its indicative of a lack of understanding of some aspect of LR.

-1 is an acceptable margin of error, maybe -2 if your LR section happens to have an impossibly difficult question that we see every now and then.

Each question type is nuanced in what you are expected to do and look out for, and each question difficulty further builds on that nuance. To suggest that you've done all that you can in mastering LR questions but you're stuck getting -4 is just delusion; that's why I said, if you can't see a pattern you're not looking hard enough.

Being able to answer every question on BR means nothing if you're spending 6 minutes trying to answer a higher difficulty rated question. Time is simply part of the equation on the LSAT, to try and separate time from performance is just doing yourself a disservice. Using the idea that you do well on BR to support a claim of having done everything but still getting -4 is just delusion.

To answer the latter part of your initial comment where you pose the question of a potentially better method than just practicing and time management:

Try selecting question types you tend to underperform on, or you think are not your strongest, then go to problem sets and filter for that specific question type. Then filter that specific question type by difficulty. Then do each difficulty, or just start on 3 stars since that's probably going to be where you want to start as someone getting -4. Do a ton of those, and as you do them, note on a word document for each question, the nature of the answer.

For example, flaw question types:

pt 1 s2 q13:

Argument blah blah blah false dichotomy. Just describe in your own words the flaw in the reasoning.

Once youve done this for a ton of flaw questions, try to determine the frequency of each flaw as it appears in the stimulus argument. Find out what is rare, what is common, what is easier in terms of wordiness within the answer choice, etc....

Move onto 4 stars, do a ton of those, try to see how they differ from 3 stars. Is the stimulus harder? Are the answer choices wordier? Is there more trap answer choices? etc...

You want to dissect the answer choices, and this will reveal to you certain information about that question type, e.g characteristics of 3 star flaw questions. It is this way that you will then be looking hard enough.

Another example, albeit more ambiguous, some people tend to think of strengthen and weaken questions as opposites. This doesn't really help because there's a different approach to each question type that you should have mentally assumed before taking a look at the given answer choices. Simply saying, I'm going to do the opposite of weakening and strengthening doesnt suffice. Strengthening questions are significantly more subtle in the way they expect you to strengthen it. There's a stronger emphasis on contextual relevance in strengthening questions and this lends to more subtle answer choices especially in the 4/5 difficulty range.

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rrmradi209
Saturday, Sep 18 2021

@brookegojazz136 said:

I didn't say there wasn't a pattern. I said the pattern does not seem to be linked to the categorized question type.

It doesn't matter. If you cant see a pattern of any kind that would give indication as to what you are doing wrong in getting -4, then you're not looking hard enough. There's no way around this, the reality is you've still got work to do in achieving a consistent sub -2 and to neglect that by suggesting that your -4 is because of random chance or misreading/rushing is misleading to OP.

Getting -4/-5 out of 25 questions is no margin of error. Its indicative of a lack of understanding of some aspect of LR.

-1 is an acceptable margin of error, maybe -2 if your LR section happens to have an impossibly difficult question that we see every now and then.

Each question type is nuanced in what you are expected to do and look out for, and each question difficulty further builds on that nuance. To suggest that you've done all that you can in mastering LR questions but you're stuck getting -4 is just delusion; that's why I said, if you can't see a pattern you're not looking hard enough.

Being able to answer every question on BR means nothing if you're spending 6 minutes trying to answer a higher difficulty rated question. Time is simply part of the equation on the LSAT, to try and separate time from performance is just doing yourself a disservice. Using the idea that you do well on BR to support a claim of having done everything but still getting -4 is just delusion.

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rrmradi209
Friday, Sep 17 2021

@brookegojazz136 said:

if you do not see a pattern in your incorrect LR answers while usually getting -4 you are not looking hard enough.

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PT131.S2.Q20
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rrmradi209
Wednesday, Sep 08 2021

This is true. Except they are generating a sample that is intended to be provided to a Quality Control Manager. That is a giveaway in some respect which many of us happened to ignore. It then does make sense that one would generate a sample of products that are suspected to be defective to be given to the Quality Control Manager; because the Quality Control Manager will then confirm if they are indeed defective or fine to be sold.

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