I don't know why the existence of cheating would surprise you. They are underground industries everywhere in the world that assist students to cheat on exams. Back in high school, I knew someone who bought the answers to questions on SAT they were taking. But the point is: even if a few guys succeed in getting into top law schools by cheating, they most likely won't survive the rigorous studies there. So it's a mug's game.

AC D is tricky to me because I interpreted the "short-term consequence of a law's repeal" to mean the the potential loss of its long-term benefits, which is mentioned in the stimulus. I understand the link is rather weak but when I answered the question timed, my train of thoughts just brought me to that connection.

I think this question requires a bit of outside knowledge to spot the error faster. Older LSATs seemed to have more of these kind of Qs than recent tests.

A small tip. I always cross-check these tricky questions on other forums where ppl go in length to analyze each AC. So far I found this learning strategy helpful.

In LSAT logic, "many" means some. The stim actually implies that some mass extincitions followed major metro impacts in the first sentence. So the necessary condition holds true.

Maybe some people would jump to questions they got wrong for explanation rather than going through the entire video. Then it makes sense JY repeats the rule in case they miss it. Just my two cents.

AC B specifies the craters to be"meteorite craters". Volcanos cannot form meteorite craters as the stim indicates. Whatever those natural causes are, they by default would not be volcano activities. This distinction is subtle but key to answer this question.

I think you need to assume McElligott's citrus juice doesn't undergo any process that might affect its flavor. We don't know if this is true according to stim.

Here what we know about Tom is that he's a heavy coffee drinker. D is wrong because if we're making inference from a group to an individual we should know what characterizes all those people who drink a lot of coffee. But in the stim the sample population is people who suffer from extreme insomnia. Thus AC D talks about a flaw that doesn't exist.

The conclusion talks about holding the law-abiding citizens responsible for the crime that some people in their society commit, not that of the causal relations between the environment and the actions (which is the first part of the argument). Plus, the latter also doesn't say that crimes cannot stem from a majority law-abiding society. It only holds that environment shapes the actions of individuals, whether positively or negatively.

E is a rather tricky AC because it's not the most intuitive choice after reading the stim. The point is, the lawyer cannot logically establish that his client was insane at the time of the murder because there's only evidence to suggest he was sane after the murder. There're two separate errors: 1. No proof to be sane -x-> Not actually sane 2. Proof to be sane afterward -x-> Not sane all the time. AC E talks about the second type.

The lawyer should go over all the possibilities to prove his client's innocence, instead of presuming that the jury and the judge will follow his logic.

Well same problem to me. Although I knew given the context social drinkers must have sth to do with light drinking, the term remained confusing enough to have me choosing the wrong AC. I suppose back in the '90s this term was more clearly defined as drinking culture has changed a lot since then.

Some old LSAT questions were badly worded due to the writers' use of jargon. I think there probably was some bias back then that all test takers were native English speakers who the writers supposed to know these terms well. If question of this kind appears on a modern LSAT, it definitely will have some expounding on key concepts.

AC D does not explain why the funding is inadequate. We're assuming that more scientists/nonscientists need more money but still govt funding today could afford them. This AC could make serious sense if it mentioned that ten years ago there was virtually no one involved in wetland protection.

Also I think that the word "scuttle" does not preclude any modification of the project cost (say replacing a $100 sink with a $80 one) that still makes the argument valid.

The fact that people cannot abort a project due to how the contract says about it does not incentivize the contractor to overrun the cost because they make the same profit anyway on fixed-profit terms. More importantly, this AC does not explain at all why fixed-percentage contractors are less likely to overrun the cost even if they have the motive to do so. As such it does poorly at addressing the discrepancy.

Another good example of how basic knowledge in a different area helps to save one's time figuring out a convoluted LSAT question. I would have gone miles to break down the stim had I not taken multiple econ and accounting courses back in college.

For RRE questions, I think the point is that you need to figure out what possibly causes the discrepancy between two phenomena. Here we've got the fact that the mall is creating economic activities (i.e. revenues) while they are not reflected accurately on the net increase in local economy. We MUST take this as given, and the correct AC typically should not contradict it.

Now let's go back to your assumption. The mall does contribute $100 m to the local economy (gross increase), but out of this $100 m, $50 m could have been spent elsewhere (say some corner stores) if the mall wasn't built. That is to say, the mall diverted some revenues from other businesses, so these corners stores suffer a loss of $50 m. So the net increase of the local economy is $50 m.

A personal note, if someone has taken accounting or macro econ, the stem will be much easier to digest.

I originally chose AC D under timed condition since it seemed to include the key part (i.e. time dimension) of the conclusion. However, during BR I found the wording of AC D a bit tricky because "the metaphor of reading" is nowhere embodied in the original argument. (I asked myself: What is the metaphor of reading?) Rather, the stim incorrectly assumes that for anyone to "read" a painting, he must follow a particular path. Taking its contrapostive, we get: /Particular Path --------> /Reading. This is a logic fallacy since there are probably other paths to follow. AC D also uses "characterization" which I think is a confusing word (Remember, the link between the premise and the conclusion is a flawed conditional logic). Therefore, this AC might looks attractive but it falls short of describing accurately (i.e. without ambiguity) what the argument is about.

The problem of the argument doesn't fall within time dimension or the term reading. Instead, the argument assumes that there must be a "particular" path that you must follow to read (understand) a painting, which as JY makes clear is illogical. That's to say, particular path is not a necessary condition for reading a painting. Any conclusion that follows this assumption is wrong and irrelevant in ACs.