Hey there,

With 1 week left, realistically speaking, there is not much time left for you to "learn" new things. I think it is actually wiser for you to spend the remaining time on other important prep for the LSAT: maintaining a good physical and mental condition so that you are at peak condition on the actual test day. Eat well, practice sleeping early and waking up early, go visit the location of your test and plan out the route, create a mental image of what you will do on the morning of the exam and so on.

Cramming excessively during the remaining days can cause a burnout, which is actually counterproductive to your ultimate goal: well, to do your best on the actual thing. Look at professional athletes during their final days of prep. Do they kill themselves over a couple of hundred meters till the very last day of prep? No. They gradually lower the intensity of their training and focus more on recovery and maintenance of their condition. It's pretty similar with LSAT :)

your welcome :)

I agree with your categorization of weakening questions. Here is my big picture approach to each category.

(1) Causation: almost always flawed due to correlation -> causation (A corr B, therefore A cause B). So in order to weaken..

1. A exists, B doesn't (and vice versa)

2. B cause A (flip)

3. C cause A or B (3rd cause)

4. A corr B is actually spurious (this type of answer choice is very rare though).

(2) Assumption: usually involves a shift in scope like SA or NA questions (idea X -> idea Y). These types rely more on your intuition and answer choices will almost always address the jump.

(3) Phenomenon-Hypothesis (an observation is explained by a single hypothesis). So in order to weaken..

1. Alternative hypothesis that explains away the observation. An important thing to note is that the alternative hypothesis must explain the phenomenon FULLY, not partially. Treat these like RRE answer choices.

2. Show that the proposed hypothesis is incomplete. Something in the line of "ok, but what about this observation?"

And as a rule of thumb, always watch out for trap answer choices that SEEM to attack the premise but are actually not really doing so. These answer choices usually contain quantifiers (some and most), and words that indicate the degree of something that can go EITHER way.

I think we are on the same line. "Hasn't accounted for" is precisely why it is irrelevant to this particular question. Think about what A is saying again. It is not "agreeing" with the stimulus' conclusion. It is saying that "let's suppose it is true, then blah blah." But we are not even sure whether the conclusion is true or false. The author is trying to convince us that it is true, so what good is there if you suddenly create a hypothetical situation out of something that needs to be proven in the first place?

@kedarmoghe154 Great! Yea, "retaking" old PTs helps you to recover confidence. I usually get 180 when I retake one and it makes me feel like the king of the world.

I don't really know what is the best way to review wrong answers once you reach a certain level of understanding. After all, comprehension is not enough to do well on the LSAT. Personally, I realized that it really boils down to how well you do under time pressure, so I changed my reviewing style to focusing more on recognizing "clues" and avoiding trap answer choices, which of course, do require you to know why the wrong answers are wrong.

But this is quite different from thinking over and over why the logic of the answer choice is wrong. When you have 35 minutes to do 25~26 questions, you simply do not have time to fully comprehend. So I try to review strategically by "getting the sense" of typical wrong answer choices for each question type.

For example, I realized that for the newer LSAT, answer choices are usually wrong because of specific words. "Most" is one of the most common wrong answer indicators, and if the question stem is MBT or MSS, "most" should be raising red flags all over the place unless it is explicitly stated in the stimulus.

Yea.. so this is generally how I approach my review these days. What about you guys?

@random329 Haha I just took 3 days off and I feel so much better. I did some games to get rid of my guilt for good during those days, but none of the heavy lifting. You should definitely recover from burnout prior to the test day. We only have 2 weeks left!

Hey there,

Since you understand why E is the correct answer, I will just give you a reason why A is wrong. "Crying must have the effect of reducing emotional stress" is the conclusion that the argument is to reach. So considering what happens if this is tends to be true is irrelevant to the argument.

Think about it in conditional logic.

A -> B.

B -> ???

For MP questions, it's almost always a paraphrased version of the conclusion explicitly stated.

No more, no less.

haha @paulfan2011115, that's a weakening answer choice right there.. and yea, I can't believe I am actually thinking about it in LSAT terms.

Anyway for James, I think it certainly is a burnout. 170ish to 160? That is just insane.

I guess we all have to be very careful about this phenom, especially during the couple of weeks following up to the test day.

How do you guys recover from burnout?

Hey lawschooldreams,

First of all, I do understand your frustration. SA type questions have become progressively more difficult and opaque, especially their answer choices.

But remember that the fundamentals are the same. Your job is to link up the premise to conclusion with another piece of information that makes the conclusion more valid. In this case, its not 100% SA question so you do have some room to spare in its validity.

So let's go through the stimulus again, and I apologize in advance for the term "destroying the link" that I used before. Maybe this is why you were confused with the explanation. After looking at the question again, it actually doesn't "destroy" the link, but it gives less support than B does. And here is why.

Again, the premise you are given are two pieces of info about recording sales: 1. good sales indicate that the band is not authentic; 2. poor sales indicate incompetence. From this evidence, the critic concludes that therefore recording sales is NOT an indicator of success.

To visualize this stimulus, imagine a dialogue between two people, one of them being the music critic. What is a good indie band these days.. ah, let's take Vampire Weekend as an example.

So a fan of Vampire Weekend says "look, these guys have sold 1000000 copies of their new album! Wow they are successful!" And the stimulus is the music critic's response to the fan's remark: "no no no, how many albums they sell cannot be used to say that they are SUCCESSFUL because numbers don't show the whole picture. They indicate problems of authenticity and incompetence."

Now, the key issue with the critic's remark is the meaning of SUCCESS. What does it mean for something to be successful? Who says that authenticity and incompetence are indications of success? Sure, in our world they do.. but in LALA land, you just cannot make this assumption. You need to provide it.

The reason being is that what if the fan of Vampire Weekend replies "whatever dude, Vampire Weekend still sells 1000000 copies and although they are not authentic, they are still god damn rich and money is all that is important" or "well, they may be incompetent.. but I still like them because they are incompetent. Reminds me of my old days of garage bands." You see where this is going? You need to provide a bridge that links the notion of these two ideas with what it means to be successful.

As for E), the problematic phrase is "not in themselves marks of success," which means that authenticity and incompetence (derived from recording sales) are not 100% indicative of success. But doesn't it still leave some room for recording sales to be used to say whether or not the band is successful? The conclusion straight up rejects this notion.

B) on the other hand, just nails it 100% leaving no room for such possibility. It says that yes, lack of authenticity or incompetence do mean that you are unsuccessful, therefore, sales cannot be used to say whether or not you are successful.

Let me know what you think!

Ah, this PSA was a hard one. But like all SA type questions, just focus on the premise and conclusion, and how to link them.

The conclusion says that record sales should not be used to gauge the success of an indie rock band.

Why? Because good sales indicate that they are too "trendy," and in the indie rock world, being poppy is "uncool" and these guys actually prefer their sales to be not so high. But on the other hand, they also don't want it to be too low because that just means that you are incompetent (yea.. fickle bunch of people right?).

So the key words that you need to link up in this stimulus are "trendy" and "incompetence" to "not being successful," which B does precisely.

If you read E closely, it actually destroys the link between the premise and conclusion. If you tell me that authenticity and incompetence are not enough to gauge the success of an indie band, why the hell are you telling me that record sales (which indicate the two ideas above) are a bad way to gauge success? Can't we use it along with some other measures?

Haha.. my symptoms seem to indicate a burnout.

Yes, I do feel guilty about taking a break for an hr. I actually feel guilty all the time.

I will make sure to give myself 2~3 days of complete rest before the test day.

Hey there K,

I don't know about the others, but you certainly are doing better than me. -1 RC?? That is amazing. My lowest RC ever was -3 and that was from the 50s. 60s RC is wooping my ass so hard that it is bleeding haha. Anyway, I just want to tell you that you should be happy about your achievements and keep the momentum going! You seem to have mastered 2 parts out of 3, which leaves you with just 1 to improve on. And who knows, maybe on the test day the LSAT evil decides to give you a break on LR and you end up with -6 total wrong. With your current streak in LR and RC, combined with that shine of light in LR, you are in the 99th percentile.

Don't lose faith.

wow.. Q7 is just begging you to get it wrong haha.

Hey JY, answer choice E seems to be quite uncharacteristic of LSAT to allow you to make the assumption that no antibiotics decreases meat yield (because the stimulus only says that AB increases meat yield). Wouldn't you agree?

May I request an alternative explanation to this question that relies more on intuition?

For those who have not taken 62 yet.. be mentally prepared..

It's a total mind f@#$. I thought maybe it was just me but turns out to be a notoriously difficult PT. Jesus I was shocked by the LR Game RC combo attack haha.

Is it just me or did others also find this section merciless.

I can see where this is coming from. I feel that there is a major shift from the 50s to 60s in terms of LR and Logic Games.

For LR, I don't think the logic is harder per se, but the answer choices are way more confusing. Even though I understood the stimulus and know what to look for, I can't quite burn through the answer choices because they are all so similar and the correct answer is usually only different by a single word.

And for games.. I don't know about you guys but this area certainly got a lot harder for me. I used to average -2 on games due to silly mistakes but starting from the late 50s, this section started to be where I lose bulk of my points at. Many of the newer games contain more 'global' questions which requires heavy usage of trial and error, and for people like me who are kinda sloppy, these questions are like mine fields.

I eliminated A precisely because of the reason that Elizabeth delineated.

There are plenty of questions on RC that preys on the misunderstanding of A cause B, no A, therefore no B. But I guess "would not have been as strong" is ok.. Should definitely commit this to memory.

I like sea cucumbers. Koreans love to eat them raw.

I agree with Elizabeth regarding C. Why wouldn't the actor possess a copy of the play? We would have to assume that the actor gave it back or something.

Ok, but then for D, what if the spectator really liked one of the characters and memorized his speech? I guess C is a better choice because the jump we need to make for C is less than D.

But still very unusual for LSAT to give such vague question.

BTW, JY were you sick or went to a rock concert or something before you made this vid? Your voice seems crackly than usual haha.