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steamboatwillie
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Jun 2025
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LSAT
Not provided Goal score: 170
CAS GPA
Not provided
1L START YEAR
2027

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Lessons · You Try - Spotted Trinidadian Guppies
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steamboatwillie
14 hours ago

i want these principle lessons to teach us when it is reasonable to infer some things. For example, it's not the most straightforward thing to infer "mating could lead to procreation" and yet this was the correct answer.

In the harder questions, reasonable inferences get more difficult to make.

0
PrepTests ·
PT132.S4.Q18
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steamboatwillie
Monday, Apr 13

Some questions with similar reasoning for Sufficient assumption:

PT145.S4.Q20

PT144.S2.Q22

For all of these, you are asking a "what if?" to get to our conclusion.

for this, we are asking "what if there is a third option to determine? and the premises give us two options, and they also ruled out one of the two. Our sufficient assumption will be there is no third option; if not the first, then the only other option is the second one.

1
PrepTests ·
PT150.S3.Q21
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steamboatwillie
Thursday, Apr 9

why is it wrong to infer that "hypothetical business" means "any business" ??

B) for this to work, we would have to assume that the ease of compliance would automatically increase the compliance. I get that that's not a reasonable assumption.

C) this brings in "other regulations". The report never compares the difficulty between regulations. Just the difficulty of complying with one regulation.

D) for this to be correct, we would have to put the inference above aside. I think?

1
PrepTests ·
PT150.S3.Q19
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steamboatwillie
Edited Thursday, Apr 9

looove how I totally missed the word "urban pollution" and got this wrong in both timed and BR. -_-

If (B) was true, that means the pollution (any kind) will not be reduced. This is somewhat consistent with Umit's argument.

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PrepTests ·
PT130.S1.Q15
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steamboatwillie
Wednesday, Apr 8

Here are all the possible inferences and impossible inferences that i could think of:

  • it's not necessary that any genetic research leads to genetic advance

  • it's not necessary any genetic advance was funded by govt alone or corporation alone

  • if there was any genetic advance from genetic research, then that genetic advance was funded by either govt or corporation

  • most to all genetic advance results in ethical dilemma

  • if there was any ethical dilemma from genetic advance, then that ethical dilemma resulted from either govt or corporation funding

the last inference in the list is what (D) is = ethical dilemmas cannot result from genetic advance without govt or corporate funding.

1
PrepTests ·
PT105.S3.P2.Q14
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steamboatwillie
Friday, Apr 3

It took me a good while before I realized that the question was talking about "consequences of a punishment" and not "consequences of the crime"

  • the consequence of a punishment is social benefits

  • but, the consequence of a crime is something indicated by the severity of it

A) the punishment does not depend on its consequence, and instead depends on the inherent fairness/appropriateness.

i chose E and C separately because i kept thinking "consequence" meant something related to the severity. ...

1
PrepTests ·
PT133.S1.Q10
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steamboatwillie
Friday, Apr 3

@SaharJannati I was stuck between A and D too. My best guess at why D doesn't work is because it's not a principle. This particular question has an answer choice that is a principle that bridges the gap between premise and conclusion. It's closer to a PSAr then, than a regular SA.

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PrepTests ·
PT131.S3.Q19
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steamboatwillie
Thursday, Apr 2

sooooo confused. I understood some concepts

  • do not take the sufficient's conditional to be true on its own. That's why A is wrong.

  • We have no particular inference from this complex ahh conditional.

right now, my best guess at making sense of this question is that:

  • the right AC has to be a conditional, bc we need something to establish our situation. The trigger is important!!

  • Our situation is "some people, ex babies, do not know dictionary definition"

  • We need the trigger to establish something about babies.

i watched kevin's explanation video. apart from getting the conditional diagram right, i did not get the reasoning behind E.

1
PrepTests ·
PT138.S2.Q16
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steamboatwillie
Wednesday, Apr 1

one analogy that could help you understand the difference between B and C is thinking in terms of "federal law" and "state law"

Every state law (local code) requires you to follow the federal law (national code).

When you break a federal law, you are breaking the state law.

This guy was charged under "breaking federal law". Which means this guy was breaking a state law. (C) is worded oddly but it basically says this guys behavior is required by national code. So this guy's behavior is also required by local code.

B) To me, it makes no sense to say a federal law is less or more strict than state law. In reality, federal laws are "less strict", and because state laws add on to them, they will likely be more strict.

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PrepTests ·
PT102.S3.Q4
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steamboatwillie
Edited Thursday, Mar 26

hey, if you chose (C) don't feel bad. Because in another stimulus with a similar reasoning, (C) could work as a weakener. It weakens by introducing plausibility of an alternate explanation for the algae growth.

Plausibility is a very weak weakener, though. So Id think of it as a last resort statement to weaken the argument.

In this case, C is not the answer bc D works better as a weakener. I hate that the 7sage analysis for C is not helpful to understand causal reasoning answering better. Yeah, we're not told whether these "other" minerals help growth but it does introduce plausibility of an alternate explanation.

So what's a better analysis?

D) is a great weakener. It tells you that some shells result from algae dying. If there was an increase in algae population, there would an increase in the shells too, during the ice age population.

But there wasn't. This weakens better than C does.

This is my analysis and now i know leve4,5 questions are messed up enough to have answer choices like this.

6
PrepTests ·
PT17.S3.Q24
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steamboatwillie
Tuesday, Mar 24

if you were between C and E, remember this is a MBT. I though it was closer to an MSS.

E) at least one supports the idea of two regions also.

C) we don't need both the regions' population percentage to go up. we just need at least one of theirs to go up.

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PrepTests ·
PT17.S1.Q11
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steamboatwillie
Monday, Mar 23

author challenges the environment's position that there will be a sustained increase in carbon levels.

he gives the support "nature will continually adjust the carbon level"

one way to adjust an increasing level is of course by offering decreasing levels on the other side (like a see-saw countering the up and down)

author assumes mother nature will offer decreasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere in a continual, sustained manner.

E) if true, tells us that the decreases will not be "continual" to the increases. there will be wide fluctuations, probably significant enough to not counter the sustained increases.

1
PrepTests ·
PT112.S3.Q8
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steamboatwillie
Sunday, Mar 22

i cant believe this a 3 star difficulty. The wording is enough to make me go "what on earth are u going on about? what even is clairvoyance"

1
PrepTests ·
PT111.S3.Q22
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steamboatwillie
Edited Sunday, Mar 22

guys the key word is "reliable" in the conclusion. If you asked yourself "wait, why would i be able to reliably determine the age just by looking at the how often it molts" then the assumption is that the molting happens in a reliable fashion.

A) once a year? "year" is not necessary. but it's a trap choice. so we dont have to eliminate that yet

B) appearance is irrelevant

C) more frequently than young. not super reliable. eliminate

D) this is trap again. and i know they teach you to pick an answer that makes you go "duh" and this one definitely did. HOWEVER, still this AC does not touch on the topic of molting, which is our main support. Let's keep going

E) they molt as often as when there's no food and when there's food. these are reliable indicators

now between A and E - negation time

A) they DON'T molt once a year. well, could they molt once a month? once every 10 years? experiments can establish this and we would be fine no matter the frequency.

leaves me with E) negated - they molt super randomly. Sometimes they dont molt when there's no food. How am i gonna tell the age now? I cant.

2
PrepTests ·
PT149.S4.Q18
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steamboatwillie
Edited Saturday, Mar 21

questions like this reaaaally make me mad. i figured the necessary assumption was In his witholding, Sanderson was intentionally misleading his cousin.

(C) reads like a requirement for the author's necessary assumption.

and that is WHACK

Anyway, I would have to believe something if I intend to mislead someone else about it at another time.

I'd have to believe the factory was closing, so that i can intentionally mislead my cousin another time.

1
LSAT · How do you improve TIMING?
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steamboatwillie
Thursday, Mar 19

@mhann007 thanks for sharing the RC tip. I'll try that next time and see if it works for me.

And I believe I have strategies for most LR question types. But I'm never confident when it comes to answer choices. To me, the answer choices are worded way worse than the stimulus is. So I'll just have to figure out how to process these tricky answer choices I guess. Seems harder tho .__. not sure if this is something people even struggle with.

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Thursday, Mar 19

steamboatwillie

😖 Frustrated

How do you improve TIMING?

Help!

I'm consistently scoring in 150s but my BRs easily average in 160s. I've improved at prephrasing and identifying question stems faster now. So I'm guessing the gap lies in interpreting the ACs correctly and also just knowing when to skip and go? When I see really lengthy stimulus (not just parallel reasoning questions), I would assume the target time is 1:20 or something but reading the stimulus itself takes 50s, so idk if I'm supposed to pick an answer in like 30s?? Is that reasonable??

If you struggled similarly and saw improvements in your timing, please help! How did you drill? How do you proceed in a section? Also if you think there is any other issue that I'm overlooking, let me know!

3
PrepTests ·
PT112.S4.Q14
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steamboatwillie
Thursday, Mar 19

this was a great question. I'm mad I got it wrong both timed and BR, but that's because I hate how I try really hard to make the wrong AC work in my favor. I got it right in my prephrase and yet I did not recognize my prephrase in the right AC. That part is the issue. I'm working on it...

1
PrepTests ·
PT148.S1.Q23
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steamboatwillie
Tuesday, Mar 17

@HollieRVA (C) tells us working teenagers spend more time driving than school teenagers. I don't think that means most teenager driving accidents do not occur while driving to school. Time spent driving does not indicate number of accidents.

the problem with (C) is that we don't know what time working teenagers start their day. Say their working day started after 8:30am as well, combined with they are not sleepy. Then the phenomenon "overall teenager driving accidents declined" could be attributed to these working teenagers clock-in time and NOT school time. That's bad for the author who's trying to establish, changing school time definitely caused less accidents.

I'll admit (E) isn't fantastic either but if you were between (E) and (C), then ^ is what the issue with (C) is. I didn't get it right either bc I just eliminated (E) thinking "what's surrounding region gotta do with this place"

TIL that strengthening by ruling out alternate explanations, also means ruling out possibility of it as well. Or making our city look good compared to the surrounding region. (E) makes our city look good compared to the surrounding region.

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LSAT · How often are you PTing?
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steamboatwillie
Monday, Mar 16

i think getting a better understanding of the foundation is more important than doing more PTs. So I wouldn't worry about not having a lot of PTs in your completed drill set. However, be wary of spending too much time just doing untimed drills and telling yourself that you're just working on foundations. Every now and then, do timed sections/timed drills.

I struggle with RC time, and learning to read a passage in 2-3 mins is what I struggle with. So i've been practicing that now along with revisiting foundations for some question types.

So you just have to balance the work load. And give a PT once you feel like you've improved a little. When you do give the PT, make note of how long you spend on the question, whether you approached it the way you had practiced, etc.

3
PrepTests ·
PT122.S1.Q8
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steamboatwillie
Edited Monday, Mar 16

my argument for (C) is, wouldn't a fellow vervet identify the type of danger based on the call? because it's not possible that a predator is both from land and air. When a vervet say calls out a land-predator alarm, a fellow vervet is bound to know what that means, by eliminating one of the two options.

I get why (D) explains and perhaps it's the right answer because it just points out a difference just like their alarm calls indicate a difference. RRE answer choices are usually just in that format. Still I don't think (C) does not explain.

Even further, if (D) wasn't true for vervets, there is a chance for them to survive predators just because they have these land-only and air-only predators.

so my takeaway is, this LSAT question is just awful. The right AC is not more of a logic-based but more like following a format.

1
PrepTests ·
PT148.S1.Q12
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steamboatwillie
Monday, Mar 16

i would very much argue why it's not a reasonable assumption to have (C)'s "disease" interpreted as a "killer disease".

Especially, since for A it is much more reasonable to assume "less predators means more chances of survival"

The only thing wrong with (A) is that it does not explain why the wolves continued to prosper. It's a half-scope AC.

meanwhile, (C) explains both why the wolves continued to prosper and also why the moose population grew.

That's my reasoning for picking (C) even though i got this wrong in both timed and BR. :<

2
PrepTests ·
PT18.S2.Q13
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steamboatwillie
Wednesday, Mar 11

the underlying principle in the argument goes something like this:

"this action that was intended to just affect one person now affects everyone, because whatever applies to one person applies to everyone"

C) isabel performed an act of heroism to save one life.

but saving one life means enriching everyone's life.

so her act enriched everyone's life.

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PrepTests ·
PT116.S3.Q20
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steamboatwillie
Tuesday, Mar 10

don't you love how the use of the word "computer" in the correct answer choice is one that could mean "those computers that design the microprocessor" or "those computers that have some flawed microprocessors"?

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PrepTests ·
PT16.S3.Q26
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steamboatwillie
Tuesday, Mar 10

it looks like there's no discussion for this question yet, so I'll start.

If i understood this correctly, then the author concludes that taxing labor earnings is pernicious. He supports this by first claiming taxing labor earnings forces the laborer to work for another's purpose. First of all, what a one-sided way of looking at things but moving on....

Then he gives a plausible definition for "involuntary servitude" as the same and that involuntary servitude is pernicious.

One flaw is that just because they potentially share a definition, doesn't mean they are the same. So I'm looking for an AC that points out a difference or states there is a difference between the two.

I couldn't make out clearly whether the first sentence is the conclusion or whether "Taxing earnings is pernicious" is the conclusion. If it's the first sentence, he is making a moral claim but there is no gap from the support really because he does provide a sorta moral support - calling it pernicious.

Let me know what you think of my process!

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