I forgot that Sufficient Assumption questions want us to fill in a gap in logic mapping to make sense of the stimulus. I mapped everything out, but I didn't realize we could put "Happiness" wherever we wanted on the chain to justify A). I put it in a separate chain toward "trust" and assumed that "/Isolated ←s→ Happy", which didn't fit A). Gotta remember that the stimulus' conclusion is also a part of the logic chain

What a nightmare of a question to tackle under a time limit

E is worded very weirdly and I feel like a reasonable test-taker wouldn't see "no evidence" as meaning "oh, there's no evidence because the govt already destroyed it".

I interpreted it as "if it's true that there's no evidence that could support the defendant, then the question of if the govt destroyed evidence doesn't matter anymore". We know that prior to any possible destruction, no evidence could help the defendant. So even if the govt destroyed something, it wasn't relevant evidence. Whatever they destroyed had nothing to do with the case by virtue of it not being supporting evidence that the attorney referred to.

JY (and the writers) seem to interpret it as "if it's called evidence, then that's all we need to know. It doesnt matter if it supports the defendant or not; as long as it's known as evidence, it's fair game to question. That's why A is correct. It just seems like the issue was surrounding the timing of possible destruction instead of what the definition of "evidence" was, and I clearly didn't see that.

Anyone else see this question similarly?

Time eater. Skip and save for the very end

For Q8, did anyone else eliminate C because it appeared to confuse sufficient and necessary, and didn't state the main purpose of the passage? The passage implies that "if you have a complete understanding of the Pacific Coast's history, then you understand Asian settlers' impact". Asian impact is necessary for understanding, not sufficient. This also follows that historiographers' ultimate goal is to understand the history of the Pacific Coast. Recognizing Asian impact is a means to that end.

However, C claims that the main idea of the passage is understanding Asian impact, not understanding the history of the Pacific Coast. I fail to see how that was the author's main purpose. I picked E because it was the least wrong answer to me (even though I disliked "inaccurate" just like JY did), but did anyone else have the same issues with C that I did?

I was expecting D) to be a trap because it looked like flawed reasoning. It took a sample and then used the results to make a conclusion about the population, whereas the stimulus' conclusion only addressed the sample, never the population. I figured one of the other ACs would show a conclusion without mentioning the population and would be the correct one. Overthinking made me go 25 seconds over the average rip

Eight 4 or 5-star questions in the last ten questions of the section is malicious business

When you think about it, you can get this question correct by only reading the last sentence of the stimulus, and I despise it for wasting my time like this lol

I don't like this question because they're playing on how we interpret this broad conclusion. Yes, A) supports the conclusion. That's only because the conclusion is so vague already.

I chose E) because it supports the premises, which support the conclusion. If "me too" drugs cause the OG companies to lose money, then that supports the idea that they cause price reduction. This in turn supports the idea that "me too" drugs benefit consumers.

A) completely ignores the premises and just introduces a whole new premise. So yeah, it's technically correct, but that just seems really shady given how we're reinforced with the idea that a correct strengthening AC bolsters the connection between the premises and conclusion (as seen in the Goku kamehameha graphic in the previous core curriculum).

I didn't choose D) because "match" threw me off. I assumed that the phenomenon and its numbers were just a part of the theory, and that "match" was implying that both the phenom and theory were one and the same. I didn't realize that "match" just meant that the numbers in the phenom and theory were the same. That's on me, but I really do think that referring to them as a "match" was a sneaky diversion from the right AC.

I chose E) because I assumed that "the mediation process" that AC was referring to wouldn't work only because it was starting this late into the process. In other words, was the AC saying that mediation is too costly no matter when it starts, whether it's at the beginning or later? I thought it was only referring to if it began later. If I had known that it was stating that mediation will always be too costly, I wouldn't have chosen it.

I completely misunderstood D). I interpreted it as "a plaintiff should never be granted a right at the cost of a defendant being denied one", which I saw as fulfilling the assumption requirement given that the plaintiff was denied questioning on the grounds of the codefendants getting to keep their counsel. Did anyone else read it as this?

I got the answer right, but E) was so terribly-written that I spent a good 30 seconds just trying to make sense of it alone lol

I’ve never been more demoralized than getting this wrong in both a drill and BR, only to find out it’s a 1 star lol

I completely misinterpreted C in Q10. I assumed that Passage B DID have specific examples in that it described the writing habits of practicing lawyers and the quality of law school courses. If I had known that "specific examples" basically just meant name-dropping, such as the conference in Passage A or citing an article, C would've been much more convincing for me.

I made an incorrect assumption in choosing E, but I also considered it the least bad answer because B tripped me up. I thought it was a trap answer because Oblicek wasn't directly causing the misfortune. It was ultimately up to her brother whether he takes out the loan or not, so I assumed that the logic was irrelevant because it was just an enticing trick regardless. I clearly overthought this question since it was apparently a 2 star lol

In Q20, I understand how E is correct because JY explained it well, but I think the reasoning for D being incorrect is completely BS. If the results of the study lend credence to the dowsers' accuracy, then it's a tale of opposites. If the dowsers were significantly more accurate than the scientists, then the scientists were significantly less accurate than the dowsers. If the dowsers could locate a dry fracture zone on request, then this wouldn't be worth mentioning as evidence in their favor unless it was also true that the scientists could not do so on request. If JY's hypothetical was true and maybe the scientists could do so even better than the dowsers, then how does mentioning this help the dowsers?

This is the most heartbreaking question passage I've ever read

I gotta remember to read the entire AC before eliminating it. I already knew that "recent proposals are ill-advised" was the conclusion, so when D) began with "It is a conclusion...", I immediately crossed it out in lieu of C) since the latter framed it as support. If I'd read the entire AC, I would've seen that it wasn't suggesting the statement as being the main conclusion.

For Q21, I understand why the other ACs are incomplete or wrong, but D is weird because it doesn't sound like a main point for a problem-analysis passage. In those, the main point is typically the author's argument or what they're trying to convince us of, but D doesn't take a stance. It just describes. If anything, it sounds more like a single position or spotlight main point, since it's objective and descriptive. Just seems like a problem-analysis main point should almost always take a side in some way.

For Q14, I fail to see how the socioeconomic flux FACILITATED the cakewalk instead of implying that the cakewalk succeeded IN SPITE OF the flux. "In the flux, an art form had to be capable of being many things to many people in order to appeal to a large audience". This suggests that the flux is an impediment in which only something as unique the cakewalk could succeed. D) claims that the flux helped the cakewalk proliferate, and I really don't see that in this paragraph

For Q18, I can see why E is correct (even though I assume the proponents of Pan-Indianism are more nuanced than just "everything about current Native American culture is leading toward assimilation"), but I don't see why B is wrong. Pan-Indianism supporters DO negatively characterize cultural borrowing by calling it assimilation and dilution of traditional values. They don't even use the term "cultural borrowing", instead describing it in a harrowing light. It's the author who corrects these perspectives and clarifies them as cultural intertribalism. So why is that not considered discomfort?

D is such bs lol. If the reasoning for why it's incorrect was true, then the stimulus' conclusion should've specified by saying "producing characters more automatically freed up mental resources for other activities for the participants". Without an indication that the domain of the conclusion only applies to the experiment, why is it incorrect to assume that it's a universal statement?

I originally picked B but switched to D during blind review because I read B's "funded by elected representatives" to just refer to money coming directly out of the reps' pockets, not taxpayer money allocated by the reps.

I switched to D because it seemed to fit the argument that the taxpayers weren't treated unjustly, because they have a method to remedy the situation through voting those representatives out. Basically, if you don't like how we use funds, don't vote for us. You reap what you sow. I see now that that doesn't work because the columnist said "NO taxpayers have been treated unjustly", which means my above reasoning wouldn't work. Maybe there were some taxpayers who didn't vote for these reps because of their stance on offensive art, and yet they still have to suffer the election outcome because their candidate lost. In their case, voting was not a remedy that actually worked for them.

I just didn't like the wording of B on my 2nd pass through. Maybe that was an instance of BR's lack of time limit resulting in overthinking

Deleted, my bad! Post-video clarity