Not a 7sage resource, but from what i see in tutoring clients-stylistically a big difference is that your SA really link up your premises right? You have some A->B, C->D, and if you do the work you can find B->C in the answer choices (95% of the time. love that if one question where it's "If A->B->C->D", and the right answer choice is just "A," but I digress).

In PSAr, you're using an abstract principle to help you link up B->C. So there's a bit more flexiblity/interpretation you need to have in your answer choices to see "well, would we fall under the principle to allow it to hook these two things up?"

In particular, where I see folks often go wrong, is when a principle is broader then it needs to be, or latches onto one premise versus a more expected one, they don't recognize how it fits. On PSAr, broad/strong is great! If "most As are Bs" is enough to guarantee the conclusion, an answer choice that says "all As are Bs" is stronger than you need, but that's totally fine!

tl;dr the big shift is in thinking through answer choices more tactically than SA and how they'd apply to the gap you should have found when working through the argument.

Hope that helps would be happy to take a whirl through one you missed as a more concrete example.

The stimulus states that the shoe factory "employs more unskilled workers on a full time basis" than other businesses combined, but it never says those unskilled workers come from. as far as we know, businesses in Centerville may entirely employ residents of other towns. Therefore, if the factory shuts down, it could have potentially 0 impact on the employment of residents of Centerville.

B is ultimately irrelevant-we're told that the Shoe Factory is over 50% of other businesses combined of unskilled workers, and our conclusion is just about unskilled workers, so comparisons to skilled workers is out of scope.

Ultimately, this is just a matter of paying close attention to language--that we're given a fact about the skills of the workers, but not told where they come from (it's preying upon a real world assumption that if the business exists in town X, it must employ people form town X. but that's a big assumption!)

I believe the edited subject here is incorrect as A is not the correct answer to that question. OP if you replace with correct question happy to address

The stated goal is to introduce the gene into the population (which you do by giving some of them the gene, letting them loose, and then mating introduces the gene into the wider population).

The flaw they're pointing out is that 2 of them would directly interfere in that process

-if you can't find a mate, you can't pass on the gene to progeny

-if you die of disease, you will also have problems passing this gene onto progeny

so in both cases, you could imagine the gene dying out instead of getting passed into circulation in the mosquito gene pool

This is, quite frankly, not an amazing question from LSAT, and it's not surprising to me that it's an older one, as it's (by their standards) pretty imprecise with its reasoning given the conclusion is around that you 'should/n't' do something, it's surprising that the answer choices don't more clearly play on that aspect as to weighing criteria.

That said, we're basically given a weighing mechanism between freedom of expression and influencing people's opinions.

All of that said, the problem with D is exactly what you think counsels in favor of it-"this information *could be useful.." we can kind of stop right there. you're now filling in additional premises to make this one relevant, but the answer choice must stand on its own as a weakener.

As to A, sure, it admits few (none would probably be a bit too obvious), but a. we don't have a better answer chocie and b. you're now doing the inverse of what you did for D-filling in extra premises to downplay the relevance A has, when on its face it rather does weaken the argument.

Hope that helps!

Sure-so this is a strengthen except so let's take a look--

A-strengthens because it provides direct evidence plant life pre dates half a billion years ago

B-strengthens argument by weakening claim life could have begun in oceans

C-strengthens by eliminating possibility that life producing organisms on the rock came from the ocean

D-actually weakens by raising the possibility that the carbon 14 in the rocks were not byproducts of living organisms, but came in through the atmosphere. undercuts claim these rocks are evidence of land based life.

E-mildly useful strengthener that the dating of the rocks was accurate.

There's just no downside to doing this (in terms of your application). I've had tutoring clients who took far later exams, and in one instance had been outright rejected by schools, saw a pretty big lsat bump (iirc 161 to 169), and then had some of those schools pull their rejection and offer scholarship. Schools. care. about. that. number. Is that great? probably not! but it's the world we live in.

But hard to emphasize how much the timing here is not an issue-if you're on the bubble, you're getting put on hold anyway so you'll have plenty of time to update. if you're getting in, you'll get in. and if you get rejected, well, see above. it's not actually the end of the line.

Typically, if the question is meant to test for this, the stimulus will go out of its way to flag something about the sample to you (ie 'a sample of 5 individuals' 'a sample of people ages 5-15' etc). If the question just says they ran an experiment/study, but is silent as to what the population was, overwhelming odds are the flaw is not related to the sample being unrepresentative.

So there are (at least) two ways of reading the flaw in this argument--

The gov could have alternate reasons for not releasing this info that have nothing to do with the validity of UFO sightings

Looking closely at the conclusion, it leaps to saying the UFOs come from extraterrestrials--as opposed to say unrecognized military planes from foreign countries.

A is an attempt to get at flaw 1, but it's just not great at latching on. It presumes the extra step that info on UFOs is 'secure information' (terminology not used in the stimulus), and even then saying they're 'generally' not forthcoming is not great for bolstering why they're not forthcoming in this particular case.

B is getting at flaw 2--we have no evidence from the argument that the UFOs are necessarily from other planets, and this fills that gap by saying the gov would only withhold the info if they were from other planets, hence strengthening the arg.

The below is all great advice. I'd summarize it as--do whatever practice will leave you feeling fresh and confident but not burned out. If you feel like your LG is a bit shaky, do a game or two just to feel your rhythm out. if you have strategy notes for LR, give them a reread so you feel like you have in your mind how to tackle your question types/what to do when stuck.

maybe don't tackle a bunch of new hard questions, but review some old ones you missed to remember why you missed them, what to be on guard for on the actual test.

don't take a full section or test-it's not targeted enough to make a difference, and the nerves it can cause if you don't do as well as you want far outweighs any boost you might get if it goes well.

@ said:

I took it in June, and here is what I would recommend based on my experience and what others (including my tutor) told me:

Take it easy. You want to be as fresh as possible for tomorrow, so do not push yourself. Limit your studying to 1 hr, maybe 2 at the absolute max. Do not try to do any hard problems. I would keep the difficulty to under 3 stars. Trust that the prep you have been doing until now has been enough to get the score you are shooting for. Cramming for hours today is not going to improve your score tomorrow. If anything, it will tire you out.

Look at your analytics tab and find the problem types you struggle most with. Do easy (1-2 star) questions, practicing the mechanics behind it to build confidence and familiarity.

Be active. Now, I do not recommend running an Iron Man, but even taking a walk around the block will get your blood moving and help you expend some nervous energy. You will probably find it harder to fall asleep the night before the test, so even expending a little energy will help you fall asleep faster.

Do things you enjoy. The more you wallow in stress and nerves, the worse you will do. Watch some TV, read a good book, hang out with friends and family, etc.

Lastly, re-read testing instructions for tomorrow and the rules for what you can and cannot have in the testing room or testing center. Make sure you know how to access the test tomorrow morning. The better you know it today, the less stress there will be for you tomorrow.

I hope that helps and good luck! You are gonna do great!

Eventually, it's good to use timed drills/PTs to focus on your timing and stamina, and then BR or separate sectional, untimed drills to focus on comprehension.

In the beginning though, I'd emphasize accuracy over timing--you're not going to build your comprehension skills if you're not taking time to understand the questions.

As for how to tackle answer choices, this depends a bit on which section we're talking about--

In LR, for argument questions, you certainly want to come in knowing what you are looking for. If you're doing that, weeding out wrong answers should not take you much time (most of the time), and will familiarize you with common wrong answer types to be on the look out for.

In logic games, however, I think it's more worthwhile to build an understanding of what question types are better handled what way, and when to fully test an answer choice vs not.

'could be true' questions are often faster, and more accurate, to solve by PoE--it's much more straightforward, and less error prone, to show whey an answer breaks a rule, than to fully do out a whole model to show something 'could' work, and you're more likely to forget a rule/mess up its implementation when you try and sketch a full model

'must be true' otoh are often solved fastest by scanning the answer choices, ignoring obviously wrong answers, holding on ones that look difficult to test, and first going for answers that are easy to test/put the most pressure on the rules--these answers are usually rignt, and if they're not, they're the fastest to model and rule out, so you don't lose much time. (note i'm being a bit brief here--global vs local will make a big dif here, as most local qs can be solved through initial deductions that provide the answer)

Hope that helps!

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@ said:

I can't say I've seen real trends from 70 to current, though of course that will change when the logic games section gets the axe.

Is the LG section getting axed at some point in the future? Wasn't aware

Yes. TLDR--LSAC lost a lawsuit years ago now that logic games discriminated against vision-impaired folks who can't diagram. They've previously said they would remove LG in 2024, but afaik nothing firmer. You can read a bit more here-https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/when-will-logic-games-be-removed-from-the-lsat/

So far what they've field tested was a similar idea to LG but with each question having its own limited rule set, so no big games requiring a full diagram. Again, to my recollection though, they've only done one big field test of this and it's unclear how successful that was in terms of getting reliable difficulty, curve, etc (not that LSAC can be said to be so concerned with the curve since they ditched the fourth scored section and now basically disclose as little as possible about the curve!)

Hi-

LSAT tutor with a decade of experience here. Your intuition is correct-

i recommend using tests 70-current for when you want to take full practice tests for diagnostic purposes/feeling what it's like to sit with a full test.

tests 54-69 i use for section drilling-you want a mix of questions that are relatively aligned with current tests

below 54 i use for drilling question types--when you want to tackle a particular type of game, lr question, etc.

These are slightly arbitrary divides but--

below 54 (i think it's 52 or so i never remember exact number) you lose the comparative reading passage, so reading is pretty different.

Older logic games tended to have far more rules, so not as representative.

LR questions were a bit more sloppily constructed when you go back below the 40s/30s (some implicit real world assumptions, poor vocab shifts).

Accordingly, great to use the older tests for practice on skills, I just wouldn't use them as a reliable, aligned benchmark to how you'd score on the current test.

I can't say I've seen real trends from 70 to current, though of course that will change when the logic games section gets the axe.