LR. I'd love it if the first two sections in a row were both LR. And definitely not an LR experimental.
Yes, that is possible, and the one that weakens it to the greater degree would be correct since they always ask for the AC that "most weakens" the argument. Also keep an eye out for AC's that weaken a part of the argument that isn't central to the reasoning. For instance, an AC could weaken a part of the argument that is totally irrelevant to the reasoning structure and therefore isn't even applicable.
I'm with @, classical is the way to go. Mozart has been repeatedly proven to increase concentration, retention, and mental acuity in students of all types, and I find that listening to any one of his violin concertos before an LSAT or a practice LSAT always gets me focused unlike anything else.
I went through the RC in the 70's to try to glean some more information and feel more comfortable going into the sections. Nothing super profound, but I was at least able to categorize them by their most common types. Feel free to add any other common structures that you find!
Straight/Regular Passages:
Comparative Passages:
Passage A:
Passage B:
I'll add that this kind of thing just takes time. It took me a while before things started to click, and I just had to keep drilling assumption questions with the AC's covered up so that I was forced to think through all the possibilities for assumptions. Keep up the good work, you'll get there!
yeah definitely watch the webinar on Strengthen/Weaken strategies, it is the best resource for mastering those question types
73.4.20 https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-73-section-4-question-20/
This is a phenomenon-hypothesis Strengthening question, so we are looking for an answer choice that strengthens the hypothesis or an answer choice that prevents an outside factor from weakening the hypothesis.
The passage is basically saying that the process goes like this: When nerve cells are damaged after a stroke, glutamate can leak from them and can kill other nerve cells. We are left to reasonably presume that this is included in the definition of continuing nerve cell deterioration. Therefore glutamate is present in blood of those whose nerve cells continue to deteriorate after a stroke.
Answer choices (it came down to C and D):
A – incorrect because saying that any neurotransmitter that leaks from damaged nerve cells will damage other nerve cells does not strengthen the relationship we want. It doesn’t give us any more reason to think that glutamate in particular is impacting surrounding nerve cells.
B – incorrect because it’s irrelevant
C – This was very hard to eliminate, but it is incorrect for a couple of reasons. 1) Knowing that it is the only one that leaks from damaged nerve cells doesn’t necessarily impact the relationship. If it does, we have to stretch it with a bit assuming in order to do so (for instance, you have to assume that it actually DOES leak from those nerve cells). 2) It doesn’t rule out the possibility that glutamate could come from five billion other locations in the body. It therefore definitely does not strengthen the statement that glutamate from damaged nerve cells is a cause of brain damage. Just because it is the only neurotransmitter that leaks from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells does not mean that it only leaks from those nerve cells. In fact, it leaves the door wide open to think that it could leak from a long list of other places, and we know from the stimulus that we don’t care about those other places. We just want to know if leakage from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells causes brain damage, and this answer choice doesn’t give us enough security and clarity for us to be able to do that.
D – This is the correct answer, because it specifies that glutamate can ONLY come from damaged or oxygen-starved nerve cells. This enables us to say (or at least makes it possible for us to say) that glutamate very well could cause brain damage/long-term nerve cell deterioration, since the way it can get into the blood stream in the first place is from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells.
E – incorrect because 1) we don’t need to know anything else about nerve cells to conclude that glutamate causes brain damage, and 2) it doesn’t matter that they can leak glutamate and still survive intact. This has no impact on the relationship we are trying to strengthen, since if they were destroyed, it wouldn’t do us any harm or any good.
[Admin edit: replaced with link to question. Please don't post full questions, thanks!]
https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-76-section-2-question-24/
We are looking for a necessary assumption.
The conditional for the first sentence is: write in order to give pleasure /impart truth. However, the conclusion of the argument is that this conditional is not true. They say that if this conditional was true, then you could take any popular book on the shelf and the conditional would be: popular gave people pleasure /impart truth. To do this, you would have to assume that if a book gives people pleasure, then it would have to have been written in order to give people pleasure. Just insert the original conditional in right in front of the “/impart truth” part of the equation.
This was counter-intuitive for me because I was immediately looking for a bridge to the conclusion of the stimulus, which is that those who write in order to give pleasure CAN impart truth to their readers. This one is tricky because it is asking you to look for the NA in a part of the stimulus that you’re not used to looking for it.
[Admin edit: Replaced with link to question. Please don't post copyrighted material, thanks!]
definitely read the question stem first. Then you can read the stimulus and know what you're looking for, rather than reading the stimulus with no specific goal in mind and then having to re-read it once you know what the question stem is asking for.
I like to do a few things while reading, but these certainly aren't universal. They work for me, but no guarantee they work for other people.
1) I use my pencil as a guide, but I don't follow each sentence. I keep it beside the paragraph and slowly move it down as I read. Following the sentence line can make me "read out loud" in my head and this slows me down.
2) I circle quantifiers and any other conditional/transition-type words. Examples of quantifiers: more, most, some, few, any, etc. Examples of transition/conditional words: thus, therefore, hence, if, only, except, all, etc.
3) I pause for about 3-5 seconds after each paragraph and say to myself what I take the main point of that paragraph to be. That way, when I get to the end of the passage, I at least have a general, 1-sentence summary fresh in my mind that gives me the overall structure of the passage.
Hope this helps!
PT 61, Section 4, Problem 25. And yes it is negate sufficient.
Example Sentence: You can't have snow without cold temperatures = /Snow --------> Cold Temperatures.
Correct Interpretation: Snow ---------> Cold Temperatures (/Cold Temperatures ---------------> /Snow)
My timing and scores improved on RC when I did two things in particular: 1) started bracketing the main point of each paragraph as I went so that I have a physical reminder of the important points of the passage when I try to answer the questions, and 2) spending time up front on the passage rather than on the AC's, just like LR. Not sure if this will help you, but in my experience these things helped a lot.
B is wrong because, while it may be true due to our knowledge of the world/the situation, the passage doesn't specifically say or imply that. With MSS questions, you have to be brutally honest with yourself about whether or not the stimulus supports EXACTLY what the answer choice specifies. This is especially true in the later practice tests (mainly in the 70's), where the test writers will give you an answer choice that sounds great except for one little tiny word hidden in the background that makes the answer choice incorrect if you're able to catch it. Honestly, for me, MSS questions are about reading super carefully.
Your hypothetical right answer would not be correct because, as with above, we don't necessarily know that through the stimulus. It makes sense, and we could easily assume that, but with MSS questions you have to stick as close as possible to the stimulus.
"Because McElligott's citrus juices HAVE NOT BEEN LINKED TO ANY BACTERIAL INFECTIONS, can't I assume that they contain less infectious bacteria than M'S apple juice?"
No, you can't assume that because, as was stated above, being linked to a bacterial infection is not the same thing as having fewer infectious bacteria. One is a relative/comparative term (less, more, etc) and the other is a fact (has been or has not been linked). It's these kinds of distinctions that the LSAT writers are challenging you to pick out.
A few thoughts and questions on my LSAT process so far (started studying in July):
1) Reasoning - I've been doing a lot more of this recently and have found that I'm consistently weak on MBT, Sufficient and Necessary Assumption, Parallel, and Method of Reasoning questions. I've started doing sections untimed just to focus on prephrasing and writing out what I need to look for, etc and that has helped a lot. However, my scores still go up and down - last weekend I went through a section and got 3 wrong, then got 10 wrong in another section the following day. Any consistency is around the 5-8 wrong range, which is too high if I am going to get above a 160. I'm hoping things will come together and start to click before too long. Any strategies or ideas on the weak points I mentioned above? I'm trying to do extra practice questions on those types but not sure if it is just something that has to come with time. A mentor of mine just suggested that I start diagramming the stimulus and every answer choice for all of the types of LR questions that I struggle with.
2) Games - my scores go up and down. Last night I did a section with 5 wrong and the other day I did a section with 10 wrong. I have a feeling it just depends on the difficulty of the section, but then again there are games that JY says are easy and should take 5 minutes and they take me 10 minutes, as well as some games that he says are insanely difficult and I breeze through them. Overall it is hard not to get discouraged when I repeatedly do LR and games sections and get 10 questions wrong, don't finish the games in time, etc. I'm trying to remember that I need to focus on gaining a complete understanding of everything I'm doing right and wrong so I can efficiently improve, but right now it seems like I'm plateauing. I'm assuming this means I just have to keep pushing through and trying to gain understanding until I make a breakthrough? Any tips on breaking through a plateau?
Don't let this get you down too much. One thing that is important to remember, especially in the early stages of your prep, is to not take yourself too seriously. This is especially true as far as timing goes. I didn't time anything for the first 2 months and used those months entirely for learning the test and understanding the question types. The early parts of your prep should be concerned primarily with building a foundation of understanding, so don't worry about timing yourself right off the bat.
6am - wake up
6:15 - 8am - study
9 - 5 - work (I study during any spare moments at work, sometimes up to 2 hours)
5:15 - 6:45pm - work out/relax with a hobby/eat dinner/catch up on the rest of life
7 - 10:30/11pm - study
sometimes I skip the work out/relax part and just go right to dinner and then studying. Fridays are always completely off.
I struggled with the same two types of questions. A change for the better came when I changed my mindset from looking for the right answer to looking for the wrong answer. In other words, I increased me level of scrutiny when examining such questions and approached each answer choice with the primary goal of being able to fully explain and write out why it was wrong. Hold a high standard for what you will let an answer choice say about the passage before you choose it. Ask yourself, "Does the passage REALLY say/imply that?" Once you can identify what is wrong with each part of a tempting AC, write it out. That is the key. If you can verbalize and then write out explanations for why every answer choice is right/wrong, you'll improve a lot.
Give it some time. This happened to me when I started doing 70's RC and my scores went way down. The 70's are definitely different than the 60's, and the 60's are a lot different than the 30's. Give yourself several PT's to adjust to the new style of writing and new way of questioning. This is also important for later on - make sure you have been doing 70's and 80's RC passages for a while before your actual test so you are used to the tactics used.
Utilize JY's memory method on every passage. Take it slow and start by challenging yourself to remember not only the main point of each paragraph but also as many of the details as you can. This way you'll be stretching your capacity to retain information and will be increasing its capability for when you're under pressure in the test. You'll then be able to back off once you get closer to the test and look at the 10,000-foot-view with a better perspective and mindset.
Glad it is helpful, keep up the good work! And I think we all know that @ will go completely off the grid with the Switch being released haha
tjphil239
Hey everybody!
I wanted to share my 18-point increase story with you all and outline how I did it while working full time. I started studying for the December 2016 LSAT in late July on very short notice. My wife is in graduate school in a very remote part of Missouri and the only job I could find was 1.5 hours away at an agricultural law firm. I’ve worked a full eight-hour day every day since August 1st and only studied for a little over a week before starting my job, so it’s pretty much been a constant balancing act.
I’m not anything special. I have a very average intelligence level. My diagnostic PT was a 145. I had to work my tail off for the score I got, and the score I got reflects my best effort over six months of, on average, four or five hours of studying a day (minus Fridays). That’s what I have to work with and it reflects my absolute best effort. Sure, I’d love it if I was naturally smart enough to get a 170 with ease, but at the end of the day the most fulfilling part of this entire process is the knowledge that I gave it everything.
I was blessed to have the amazing advice and wisdom of Sage Daniel (@danielznelson) throughout my prep process. If he was able to take every single 7sager in the world as his personal pupil, I would make it mandatory. As it turns out, he went to middle school and high school with my wife and came to our wedding, so we had a connection to begin with. If you are stuck at any point of your prep and need to break through a plateau, get in touch with Daniel and let him help you. It’ll be the best thing you could ever do for your LSAT score.
My daily schedule was the same throughout my entire LSAT experience. I would wake up at 6, study from about 6:30 – 8:00am, get ready for work and go to work from 9 – 5, then either work out and study till 11pm or go home and study until 10:30 or 11pm. Some days I would also go to the library until 10 or 11pm if I wanted a change of scenery. I would also utilize any spare moment I had at work (down time, lunch breaks, etc) to do a few extra logic games, complete an RC passage or two, or peruse the 7sage discussion forums. On slow days at work, I would sometimes get in an extra two hours of studying this way.
The way to beat the LSAT is to become obsessed with it. Steve at lsatblogspot.com has a great document of 101 tips for the LSAT from pupils of his that improved ridiculous amounts (like 140 to 170), and the biggest take-away from that list is that the people who conquer the test are the people who make it their life. I did that, and it paid off, especially near the end of my prep. If you really want it, you have to mold your entire life around the test. For instance, I decreased my frequency of working out, started timing my morning chai tea so that I would be most awake around the time I knew the LSAT would start, started some basic meditation that I would do before each section, made sure that I was always putting in focused study time on weekends from 8am to 1pm, and much more. I made a binder, divided into sections for Games, LR, and RC, and filled it with notes, reminders, tips, and tricks that I learned from the LSAT Trainer, the 7sage curriculum, my conversations with Daniel, and my personal discoveries as I studied. I’ve condensed that binder into a bullet point list that is at the bottom of this post that covers the most important things I learned for each section.
Now for the actual study schedule. I broke my studying down into two phases – an understanding phase and a preparation phase. Since I had just over four months to get ready for the December LSAT, I spent the first two months learning the test and second two months taking practice tests and working on my weaknesses. Do not start taking practice tests until you have a broad, functional, relatively comprehensive knowledge of the test. Knowing how the LSAT works and what it will try to do to you is half the battle. To that end, spend the first half of your prep (or at least two months) just learning the test. Read the LSAT Trainer, go through the entire 7sage curriculum and take religious notes, answer questions on the 7sage forums, read the Powerscore bibles (but only to do the problems and get extra practice – I wouldn’t recommend their games-tackling methods, for instance), subscribe to Steve from lsatblogspot.com’s weekly LSAT emails, do the free logic games at Cambridge LSAT’s website, read papers on formal logic, do at least 4 logic games a day and watch JY’s videos for them, read a book or two to keep your reading skills sharp, get used to reading RC passages quickly, choose a few LR sections a day from the early PT’s to do untimed, etc. I used predominantly the prep tests from 1 – 39 for this part of my prep, which lasted from late July until mid-September. This approach paid off bigtime for me. I was shooting for a 160 on the December LSAT, and when I took my first PT in late September after doing nothing but learning the test for two months, I hit a 160.
Then comes the preparation part of the process. This entailed starting with 1 PT per week on Saturday mornings for two weeks, then doing 2 PT’s a week until two weeks out from the LSAT. I understand this might change for some of you depending on your timeline. I started with PT 67 and worked my way up through PT 77 a week and a half before the LSAT. The weekend before the LSAT I took a retake so that I could build confidence. For me, I took my PT’s on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings (Fridays were my off day – make sure you have an off day every week! It’s important for mental health). In the days between your PT’s, your focus should be identifying your weaknesses and drilling them to find ways to improve.
I want to add a little bit of my personal experience here to explain what I really mean by drilling your weaknesses. This is where your obsession has to change focus but increase in its intensity. After every PT, I would go through the 7sage analytics. This gives you a good idea of where your weaknesses are. However, I would also do my own set of analytics, and this is where you can really break down your weaknesses. For me, Flaw, NA, and MSS were my original weaknesses. Up through the December test, I would count how many of each I got wrong and drill them over and over. This worked to some extent, as I was able to achieve a 163 on the December test, tying my previous best PT score. However, it was in prepping for the February LSAT that I discovered what it really takes to conquer your weaknesses. You have to get much more in-depth with your analysis. Ask yourself, “Why did I get this wrong? Was the issue in the stimulus or the answer choices?” For me, it was the answer choices. “Did I not reading the answer choices carefully enough? Did I not understanding how the answer choice impacts the argument? Or was the issue in my lack of scrutiny? Did I not think carefully enough through whether or not the stimulus actually says what the answer choices says it does?” In short, you have to get down to this level of nitty gritty in order to truly understand your weaknesses. I realized after several PT’s that I wasn’t fully understanding what certain AC’s were doing to the argument. This was especially troublesome on Strengthen and Weaken questions. Only by getting to this level of understanding will you know your weaknesses.
That’s how you understand them. Now, the way to conquer them is to write out explanations for why each and every answer choice on a troublesome question is right or wrong. I did this for LR and RC and can honestly say it was the single most beneficial technique I ever used for increasing my LSAT capabilities. I wish I had started doing it earlier, so if you are in the later stages of your prep, start doing it today! Write your explanations out by hand, and then, if the question is really hard, type a full explanation. In my opinion, this is the key to breaking through that huge mid-160’s plateau that so many of us struggle to get out of. A week after implementing this habit, I rocketed to a 167. I’m telling you, it works. You just have to put in the time.
The list of tips for each section is below. Before I go, I want to share with you one more thing about the mindset for the LSAT that I believe is very important for anyone setting their sights on the test. I grew up on a small-scale, draft-powered, self-sustaining organic farm in New Hampshire. I fully intend to buy some land and have a farm again myself once I am out of law school. Part of our farm’s unique appeal was that we used teams of oxen for all of the farm work, rather than tractors. Over the years, I spent hours each day with our teams of oxen, hauling firewood, plowing gardens, bringing in the harvest, and much more. Years of this kind of closeness have shown me the intricacies of these massive animals’ gentle personalities (some of them weighed over 3,000 lbs). They are smart, goofy, athletic, loyal, devoted, caring, and courageous in ways I will never be. Not to mention tremendously, unbelievably, mind-blowingly strong. But one thing that all of them have, no matter what their personality differences may be, is an unquenchable sense of commitment to the task at hand. I’ve stood next to them as they’ve strained to move a giant downed tree, falling on their knees and back up again, foaming at the mouth, clashing their horns together, just for the sheer joy of trying. Even when I managed to get them to rest for a few moments, they would restlessly paw the ground and shake their heads, eager to throw themselves against the yoke again and conquer their nemesis. As you approach the LSAT, think carefully about what you are willing to put into it and what you hope to get out of it. If you’re willing to be even half as consistent and committed as these oxen were, you’ll go far.
LR:
Games:
RC:
Daniel is the absolute best!
@ Ralph Nader that's insane! I improved 18 points from my diagnostic in late July to my December LSAT, all thanks to 7sage.
Are the sections the same for everyone who got 3 LR sections? In other words, if I see that someone else has 3 LR sections like I did, are we talking about the same sections in the same order? Or are the 3 LR sections in a different order for everyone who had that format?
@ I had the same layout, and I'm with you - really really hoping the first section is real and the second section isnt. I can't seem to remember which questions were in that section, but looking at the comments here it looks like the third LR section was real. I honestly cant remember if there was a question about bed mites. Really hoping the first one was too. Anyone else have this format and remember any questions from that section?
I certainly didn't get into the language as much as you did, but I eliminated B because it is only talking about the oceans. There are plenty of other food sources in the world that could very well last much longer, so this AC does not necessarily strengthen the argument.