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zhaoqiangbai561
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LSAT · Should rescheduling LSAT-FLEX due to technical problem be counted as "candidate cancel" ?
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zhaoqiangbai561
Sunday, Jul 12 2020

@ said:

I had the same issue today - I asked them if it includes a note about why the candidate cancelled and LSAC said no and that I would need to include a note in my applications to law schools about why it was cancelled... which is so stupid.

This is indeed stupid. Took for granted that "Reschedule" is equivilent to "Cancel"? I think they can write the story into an LR Flaw question...

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I experienced technical problems during my LSAT-Flex today. My proctor instructed me to quit the test and contact LSAC for rescheduling. I followed my proctor's instruction. The LSAC staff helped me reschedule to October (since there is no longer availability for July; I already registered for the August test). Everything was good except I later found the status of my July take had been marked as "Candidate Cancel". I called them again, and they explained to me that this was because I was exposed to the test questions and they had to mark it as "candidate cancel". Did any of you have similar situation? What did you get?

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PrepTests ·
PT134.S3.Q15
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zhaoqiangbai561
Wednesday, Jun 10 2020

===== quick, complete explanation =====

Task: Weaken

Core ---------

Conclusion: Hiring this adviser is likely to have a big payoff in several years (CAUSAL)

Evidence:

(ANALOGY)

investing in an economic adviser is somehow like doing preventative maintenance on a car

(CORRELATION)

elsewhere in this region, there's a correlation between spending $$ on an adviser and earning huge ROI's.

Analysis -------

Well, both pieces of evidence are famous LSAT patterns. So who knows whether LSAT will 1.weaken by showing that the analogy is a poor fit

or

2. weaken by undermining the correlation->causation part of the argument.

The author is definitely assuming causality in the last sentence ... to reach his conclusion, he has to believe that it's BECAUSE they spent $$ on an adviser that they got huge ROI's.

Answer Choices ------

(A) Does this weaken the analogy? No, because the author freely admitted that preventative maintenance almost always pays off. Beware the weakness of "some" on STR/WEAK questions.

(B) Does this weaken the correlation -> causality part of the argument? Yes.

In order to believe that ADVISER is the cause of LARGE RETURNS, our ideal science experiment would compare two identical cities, one with an ADVISER, one without, and see how they each do in terms of RETURNS.

Any difference between the two cities being compared weakens our science, because THAT difference (and not the ADVISER-difference we're attempting to measure) might really be accounting for the outcome of the experiment.

(B) is essentially making OUR city "less fair to compare" to the OTHER cities mentioned in the correlation.

Is it strong enough to worry us?

Yes, potentially. OUR city has a much smaller population and economy than the OTHER cities.

It is possible that an adviser would have a similar effect on our, very different, city?

Of course! But (B) is weakening the argument by attacking the relevance of one of its premises.

We could attack the CAR ANALOGY for its relevance.

Similarly, we can attack whether the CORRELATION cited is relevant to us. Someone arguing with the Columnist might say, "our city is too small and uncomplicated to merit hiring a long term financial adviser ... of COURSE you benefit from having one for a large, complex, populous city ... but we're basically just a sparsely strewn town of mobile homes, off the freeway, with a gas station and a McDonald's.

Make no mistake, this answer IS very, very weak in what it does. It almost does nothing. But it does do something. It raises an eyebrow at the applicability of the columnist's most direct piece of evidence: the correlation in OTHER cities.

(C) WHY motorists or city councils would choose not to do preventative maintenance is out of scope. The conclusion cares about the potential effects of hiring an adviser.

(D) So weak that it's useless ... "many city councils", so like "at least 5 city councils are unwilling to pay as much as most qualified advisers would charge." Great. Why would that super weak statement influence my assessment about whether OUR hired adviser is going to make us money?

(E) Tempting because it's relevant ... but the conclusion's PAYOFF is "in several years", so it's perfectly consistent with that to say that we didn't see a ROI immediately.

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Admissions · Personal statement + Resume swap
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zhaoqiangbai561
Thursday, Oct 08 2020

I am interested too

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