I had the same line of reasoning here and I am so glad I'm not the only one! B seems way too strong and overarching.

I agree with this response. This is not what JY says, but I think your response is more in line with the actual logical flaw here.

Hi! We have the same name!

Send me a private message and I'll send you a video of how I solved it.

Vicki

If you can swing it I suggest the Loophole by Ellen Cassidy and the Daily Live Tutoring with her as well.

Most problems with LR come from misreading the stimulus or trying to read it all at once and remember it all at once. Read it line by line and make sure you know what you're reading before you move on to the next line. If this slows you down significantly, that means you don't actually know what you're reading and you should definitely get the Loophole book.

Were you working full time or devoting time to studying full time? Or a mix of part time for both?

I'm working full time as an upper level manager and can't devote a ton of time to studying during the week, so I try to do an hour or two everyday during the week and then devote all day saturday to studying.

What do yoy mean by "recurring patterns that show up" in RC?

Thanks!

Victoria

I got this one wrong and something that helped me understand the logic was to switch out all of the important words to other words that were more familiar to me.

I kept gen theory but switched art with bananas, aesthetic with beautiful and painting and sculpture with yellow and sweet bananas. Premodern I switched with magic. music i changed with plantains.

The purpose of a general theory of bananas is to explain every beautiful feature in any of the bananas. Magic general theories of bananas, however, focus primarily on yellow and sweet bananas. Every magic theory of bananas, even ones that succeed as theories of both yellow and sweet bananas, fails to explain some feature of plantains.

After I wrote this down I realized the keyword here is "any" which encompasses all bananas. So in order for the conclusion to be true, a general theory cannot fail to explain every beautiful feature in any banana. So therefore, plantains can't be bananas by this definition.

Logic is formulaic; if you can't understand the variables they give you, try switching out the variables for others that make more intuitive sense to you.

I hear you.

I've been studying for 2 years, started 7sage back in December, and even got a private tutor (who is lovely, by the way, but sessions are $$$) through them and my score actually went down from where it was before I got the tutor (after 10 weeks). I find that JY's teaching style does not usually work for me unless I already know what he's talking about - for example, the abstract concepts don't work for me (the flashcards for or, if, if only, except, etc definitely made me more confused than when I started). I also find that the lessons tend to be so incredibly tedious that it makes me not want to study at all. I say this as someone who was a math/science teacher for four years and is now a program manager for a PhD program. I'm not an idiot. But the amount of work that is expected to go into this without actual accurate feedback tailored to you is insane (why did I get this wrong? JY just told me to go watch another lesson if I don't understand it but a simple explanation without the 'if you don't get this yet you're obviously not ready' would be way more helpful...).

I'm also reading the Loophole in Logical Reasoning book and it's really helping me improve my logical reasoning skills. I find that Ellen's teaching style works way better for me (she's funny but not in a mean way that often turns me off from the lessons on here) and after I learn something from that book I can tackle the PTs and problem sets a lot smoother. My suggestion would be to find different resources for your different needs. People who score high on this test rarely use just one resource, many of them use a variety and most take in-person classes. I've done Khan Academy, the Lsat Trainer, 7Sage, 7Sage tutoring, and the loophole in Logical Reasoning. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. I find that 7Sage is great for analytics, PTs and alternative explanations, my tutor keeps me on track, and the loophole helps teach me how to crack the concepts that have not been clicking for me. Khan Academy was a great place to get my feet wet and see if this is something I wanted to devote my time on. You may not need as many resources as I have used - I have ADHD and an accommodation so I need a variety of styles to keep me engaged.

I've also purchased other books that I haven't used and watched many youtube videos. As annoying as the process is, you can improve, but you may need to find the resources that work for you. I believe in you! At the end of the day, this is a hard test and requires most people to put in way more work than they normally would study, because it doesn't assess factual knowledge, it assesses the way we think, and we've been thinking that way our entire lives.

Should you ever need a buddy to vent to - reach out! I'm always looking for an LSAT buddy. I'm taking the June/ August/ October LSATs.

I'm in a similar boat. I have ADHD, I work full time and I feel like I can barely PT. One thing that has really helped me was getting a tutor, and trying to meet people either taking the test or who have taken it and have similar goal cores to myself. If you know anyone who was able to get their goal score, ask them what they were doing and try to emulate that, then adjust for what works and what doesn't.

So for a lot of LR questions like this, I used to get very tripped up as well with the extra language. I think what helped me was starting to see the stimulus as Premise (+ Premise )=Conclusion, and all of the other info is junk. And really really trying to simplify the premise and conclusion stuff by sifting out the important meaty bits from the extra junk. I've emphasized the meaty bits below.

So for this one:

Research shows, contrary to popular opinion, that all other things being equal, most people who have pets are less happy than most people who do not. Therefore, any person who wants to be as happy as possible would do well to consider not having a pet.

Look at the first sentence.

"Research shows, contrary to popular opinion, that all other things being equal, most people who have pets are less happy than most people who do not. "

What is important here? If you were going to explain this to a friend or relative from memory, how would you do it?

I would say something like, "I've heard that people with pets are actually less happy than people who don't have pets" This is our first premise. It looks like there's only one here.

Next sentence: "Therefore, any person who wants to be as happy as possible would do well to consider not having a pet."

I would explain it like this: "So if someone wants to be as happy as possible, they shouldn't have a pet" This is our conclusion.

If we added "all other things being equal" back into my casual explanation, would it change the meaning of what I was trying to say?

"I've heard that all other things being equal, people with pets are actually less happy than people who don't have pets. So if someone wants to be as happy as possible, they shouldn't have a pet"

The answer is, no, because "all other things being equal" is just LSAT junk that's thrown into the stimulus to confuse you. All other things do not have anything to do with the things in our argument. What we care about are the important meaty bits of the premise and conclusion. All other things being equal literally means absolutely nothing here. The LSAT does this A LOT.

I hope this is helpful!

Hi! This is basic sufficient vs necessary trickery.

If you know A LOT about history, it will be EASY for you to impress intellectuals.

Is this the only way to impress intellectuals?

What If I know a lot about science?

What if I can tap dance?

What if I am a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic octopus?

The stimulus doesn't say anything about knowledge of history being the ONLY WAY to impress intellectuals.

A good rule of thumb is to remember that sufficient conditions and necessary conditions are not the same. Sufficient →Necessary (sufficient implies necessary). Sufficient conditions are ONE WAY to guarantee the necessary conditions. They do NOT represent every way that the necessary condition can be met.

Ask yourself, "What would be necessary to make the statement below true?"

Therefore if you are not [BLANK] it will not be easy to impress intellectuals.

Does "well versed in history only" make sense here? Does "well-read in history only"?

I hope that helps!

Lol, as a child born out of wedlock, the term bastard hits hard and not in a good way. It's maybe ok for Game of Thrones, but it's 2022...

I am interested! I also had a somewhat winding experience and am working in higher ed now.

I’m not sure if this is helpful or not but I started studying with the LSAT trainer schedule and I supplement the practice drills with the 7sage custom problem sets because they have the explanations and are much easier than going through the book with paper and pencil. I’m sort of at the end of LSAT trainer’s 16 week schedule and only doing 1-2 PTs per week with a lot of review and drilling specific question types.