Can someone explain PT13 S2 Q18 to me

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Hello everyone,

I would appreciate it if you could provide insight into some potential questions I have received from various applicants with similar/repeated questions. Here they are:

If an applicant has gone to 3 academic institutions: two in US/Canada and one outside US/Canada, will all 3 transcripts be included in LSAC's GPA? It's worth noting that one institution attended outside US/Canada had a 4.0 GPA grading scale with a US/Canadian-based curriculum.

A course was taken twice/repeated. The transcript shows both grades along with course credit however the 1st attempt is marked as an "extra" course meaning while it does have a credit shown, its credit value is equivalently 0 as it does not count towards the institution's cGPA calculation. Hence, would the 1st attempt need to be mentioned/ will count towards LSAC's GPA calculation?

Would meeting a law school's 75th percentile GPA allow you to get in if you meet its 25th percentile LSAT score? Kinda like a reverse splitter per se.

Thank you :)

Going to start by saying I know very little about how this works... I hear that some people's GPA are raised by the scale that the LSAC uses. The highest grade at my college was an A, an A+ wasn't offered. I have a 3.6 (I think?), therefore would that be raised at all by the LSAC? Assuming I need more information to calculate this I just don't know where to start (lol, as you can tell the grades that brought me down were the math-related courses).

🔢 I'm currently scoring: 160-165

📆 My planned test date: February 2024

📈 To study, I have been: Have been studying for several months now. My studying has consisted of different methods throughout.

🔑 My goals for this group are: Help each other out with our respective goals. Whether you are new to studying or have been studying for months such as myself, I hope that this space can be used so that we can collaboratively help one another achieve our objectives.

🔍 We'll focus on: Anything and everything!

👥 Study Group Name: TBD

📚 When we'll meet and what we'll do: All messaging and meetings are done via Discord, but time is totally up to the availability of those in the group, it is fluid.

✅ How to join: Feel free to click on the link below to join the server via Discord, and please do message me if you are having any issues either joining the group or creating a Discord account. Like I said above, this group is open to all, from beginners to long-time studiers. I just hope that this study group can help each and every person in it and that we can use this group not only to learn and improve our studying, but also where we can reliably hold each other accountable as we get closer to the test date(s).

https://discord.gg/dkVdVXqWrc

Hi y’all,

I am taking the Jan LSAT, and I am trying to decide which day to take the test. I’m testing remotely and am fortunate enough to be completely available for all offered days (Wednesday through Saturday).

Is there an optimal day to remote test to avoid issues from Prometric’s end? Does the system run into more difficulties on Friday or Saturday? I’m assuming more people take the test on those days. Are there more glitches on first day?

I took the Nov test on the 2nd day, early in the morning, and didn’t run into any issues.

I understand testing/proctor interruptions are ultimately random. Just wanted to see if anyone had some hunches?

At the end of the day, whatever happens, happens. Best of luck to everyone studying!

Would anybody be able to put me in touch with someone who went to UCI Law? I am applying there and would like to ask them some questions about their experience.

I couldn't find a good explanation for this question.

Admin Note: Edited title. For LR questions, please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question."

Hi Everyone!

Head’s up: later this month, LSAC is doing a system-wide upgrade that will affect some of their online services. It will begin at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, December 22, and is expected to end at around 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, December 23. During these 24 hours, certain LSAC services, including candidates’ online accounts on LSAC.org and LawReady, will be offline.

During this time, people will be unable to complete transactions such as registering for a future LSAT, submitting fee waivers or accommodation requests, accessing their accounts, or submitting applications.

Services on LawHub.org will remain available during the upgrade window. Scheduling for the January 2024 LSAT will continue through Prometric. However, information on candidate accounts will not be updated until the upgrade is completed.

If you have any further questions, you can contact LSAC via https://lsac.zendesk.com/, email them at lsacinfo@lsac.org, or call them at 215.968.1001.

if my parents have received a bachelor's degree in another country do i say yes or no to being a first generation college student? i just wanted to clarify if it matters where they got their degree from

God has really blessed me! I took the lsat 5 times and finally got a 150! I know its not much but im so happy! I want to thank 7sage for all their support!!

Which laptop would be the best one to take LSAT?

I now have a MacBook and updated to macOS 14 Sonoma before the announcement that it is not supported was made. I checked with Apple tech support that it cannot be downgraded. Thus, I’m going to buy a new laptop (I had to buy one anyway) and would love to hear your suggestions! (No MacBook please though)

Also, would love to know if touchscreen laptop is allowed, such as Microsoft Surface Pro 9 or etc.

So I'd like to give some background regarding my current life situation and my statistics applying to law school. Last year, my LSAT score was 148 and I have a 3.4 GPA. I had an amazing personal statement and letters of recommendations were great. I also had a couple months experience working at law firms at the time. However, I was naive and chose not to retake the LSAT and really was on the shit end of the stick. I was waitlisted everywhere and didn't get in to any law school. There is nothing I can do except to look forward and move on and learn from my mistakes. So, I retook the LSAT for November 2023 and I got 154 LSAT. Now, I spoke with my law school advisor and he is telling me that I absolutely need a new letter of recommendation (preferably from current employer which is a law firm) and to add what I have done in the past year in to my personal statement. I'm skeptical on how much this really matters in comparison to my LSAT score jump and I'm just not sure if it's worth going through the hassle of getting a letter of recommendation from my employer, who is a pain in the ass tbh.

So here are my current stats - 154 LSAT, 3.4 GPA, bachelor's degree in philosophy from UCI, 1 years and 10 months experience working at law firms, great personal statement, letters of recommendation, and resume, a re-applicant, I've attended a few schools law school events and have gone on campus tours, and I'm applying in December.

I'm applying to local schools in Southern California - Loyola, Southwestern, California Western, USD, and Western State.

Now my questions and concerns are as follows:

I understand that an updated personal statement definitely matters and I will update it within this week. However, is it really worth getting a new letter of recommnedation when my old letters of recommendations were already solid?

As a re-applicant, I'm very unsure how these law schools will look at me and my application. I know my LSAT score is a big plus but do law schools really care about the other things in my application compared to my LSAT score?

Is the fact that I applied with my previous LSAT score and chose not to retake it until a year after I got denied a bad look? After all, I have a +6 boost in my score.

I could just be overthinking and need to chill tf out. If this is the case, please drop a comment telling me to do. It would be much appreciated.

Thanks to all who took the time to read through my post and current life situation. I look forward to seeing your guys comments.

Based on an examination of three types of rates (small, average size, and large), a recent study found that in rats, SIZE↑ correlates with HEART PROBLEMS↓. In other words, the study found that the greater a rat is, the less likely it is to have heart problems.

RRE EXCEPT. Four of the answer choices must be able to CONTRIBUTE to an explanation of this correlation; one does not. I did not do a pre-phrase here and went straight to the answers.

(A) Compared to large rats, smaller rats are more likely to have fatal diseases that strike earlier than heart problems. Under timed conditions, I took this to suggest: Small rats generally are more likely to die before heart disease strikes, so that heart disease will be overrepresented among the surviving small rats. However, this inference does not follow. If small rats tend to die young, the total NUMBER of surviving small rats that gets heart disease might be smaller, but there is no indication that there would be a corresponding increase in the PROPORTION of small rats that gets heart disease. This answer choice thus does not contribute to an explanation the observed correlation and thus must be right.

(B) Small rats are more likely to have blood vessel issues that causally contribute to heart disease. This helps to explain the correlation.

(C) Larger rats have less stress than smaller ones. If you assume that stress is causally related to heart disease, this contributes to an explanation. Under timed conditions, I thought that this assumption was too big of a jump, but compared to (A) this answer choice still is better. (A) does not contribute to an explanation at all, (C) does so if we make an additional assumption that seems fairly plausible from a common-sense perspective.

(D) The most common cause of heart disease in rats also causes them to be small. This explains the observed correlation by identifying a joint cause of small size and heart disease among rats.

(E) Larger rats do more exercises than smaller rats that causally contribute to heart health. This contributes to an explanation.

(C) is right, (A) is wrong. Under timed conditions, I had taken (A) to lead to a sampling bias making smaller rats not afflicted by heart disease less likely to survive such that heart disease becomes overrepresented among the surviving small rats. However, this inference is false. Just because small rats might be more likely to die for reasons other than heart disease, heart disease does not have to afflict a greater proportion of the surviving rats. I made a mistake here in assessing the implications of this answer choice and then switched to (C) because (C) requires an additional assumption to be explanatory ('Stress causes heart disease').

Takeaways: I originally had chosen the right answer (A) but then switched to (C) after mistakenly making the above-described inference. I likely was overthinking (A). I need to keep an open eye for the distinction between NUMBERS and PROPORTIONs. If unsure, close my eyes for a couple of seconds, do some deep breaths, calm down and reflect. I definitely felt uncomfortable in selecting my answer but could not quite identify what went wrong. NUMBERS vs. PROPORTIONs is a crucial distinction here, similar to e.g. POSSIBILITY vs. ACTUALITY, INATE vs. ACQUIRED, or MENTAL STATE vs. REALITY. Be vigilant, stay alert to these commonly used distinctions.

Hi! just wanted to know how everyone's improvement was after just one month of studying! Starting score and what it was after a month!

(P1) According to dinosaur fossils, dinosaurs had an oxygen isotope ratio in their bones that suggests that their CORES had roughly the same temperature as their LIMBS.

(P2) Today, cold-blooded animals have much warmer CORES than LIMBS.

(MC) Therefore, dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded.

Weaken

This argument assumes, among other things, that warm-blooded animals, unlike cold-blooded animals, do NOT have much warmer CORES than LIMBS, or some other temperature distribution that deviates even more from the dinosaurs'. To anticipate the right answer, I thus was expecting a weaking option targeting this assumption.

(A) Unlike cold-blooded animals, warm-blooded animals only have SLIGHTLY warmer CORES than LIMBS. This goes in the direction of my pre-phrase but is not very strong. Crucially, it remains more likely that dinosaurs were warm-blooded than that they were cold-blooded, just as the author claims. So this answer choice does not seem to actually weaken, even though it gets at the assumption that the author makes, and that I had identified as the weak point of their argument.

(B) Dinosaur fossils don't actually allow you to do the temperature inference described in (P1). This answer is very unusual in that it attacks a premise rather than the reasoning in the argument. Nevertheless, this answer choice definitely weakens, since it takes away the data about dinosaurs that the author presupposes. Keep this answer choice around but be vigilant; see if a less premise-focused answer choice is available.

(C) About oxygen generally. Does not seem to pertain to the argument.

(D) Body temperatures in small and large animals other than dinosaurs. Does not seem to connect directly to the argument; especially since the stimulus does not identify dinosaurs as either small or large.

(E) Warm-blooded animals are more active and use more oxygen than cold-blooded animals. This again does not seem to relate directly to the argument under consideration.

(C), (D), and (E) turn out to be largely unrelated to the argument in the stimulus, and (A) does not seem to weaken the inference made by the author. This leaves (B) as the only remaining answer choice, and thus (B) must be right.

Nevertheless, (B) feels very much uncomfortable and is unusual. (B) just straight up contradicts information that we get in the stimulus, rather than attacking the author's reasoning. It also seems unusual to have this sort of unexpected answer choice so early in the section; just expecting straightforward questions in (Q1)-(Q10) is too naive.

I originally chose (A) because I got too focused on my anticipation of how the right answer could look like, and thus I neglected (B). Nevertheless, a more careful examination of what (A) and (B) are actually saying would have allowed me to get this question right. I need to stay alert to the details of individual answers and compare them against each other; a more thorough examination between (A) and (B) would have allowed me to see that (A) does not in fact weaken and that (B)'s unusual character does not prevent it from being the right answer here. Read answer choices carefully, compare them against each other, and choose the one that has the fewest problems.

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone wanted to study together for the LSAT test for January?

Message me.

Best,

Tenzin

Hi everyone! Need some advice here- I took the April '23 LSAT and scored a 169. Took the summer off after graduating and am now back to studying for the Feb '24 LSAT.

For some background: when I 'took' PT 45 in pieces beginning of Oct (taking sections over a few days) I got a 172 (174 BR), now I'm back to PT'ing around high 160s. I've been alternating between drilling and taking sections - should I just stick to drilling? I feel like I have the potential but I'm getting a bit frustrated.

My latest PT was PT 86 (167, 169 BR). -2 LR, -1 LG (-0 BR), -5 RC (-4 BR), and -6 LR (-5 BR). I do have a tutor and we've been working on weaknesses but I want to make sure I'm making the most of my time outside those weekly meetings.

Right now my plan is to drill LR weaknesses (NA, PSAr, Streng, PSAa, SA, MC, Method, Weak, MBF - whew that feels like a lot!), drill LG weaknesses (InoSeq, GrpPure), and slow wayyyyyy down when doing/drilling RC.

Any recommendations or suggestions would be great - thank you!

I emailed inquiring help for logging in. I can log into the app just fine but online suddenly does not work for me. Can someone please tell me the email to send it to? I sent it to studentservice@7sage.com

Is that the correct address! I really need the bigger computer screen to help with games.

Thank you for the help!

I just started studying for my LSAT and finished 9 to 10 problem sets (MSS in LR). I'm feeling tired and making more mistakes as a result. Most are due to lack of attention to detail. I'd like to push through and finish the lesson, but I also feel like I am wasting my time (and valuable practice questions) if I keep doing practice questions while tired.

Is it better to keep practicing when tired, accepting I will make mistakes, or get some sleep and continue the next day?

Hi folks, wanted to get some thoughts from the 7Sage community on Miscellaneous Logic Games.

What are your thoughts/approaches to miscellaneous/non-conventional LGs? I was under the impression that the LSAC was moving away from them but was completely stumped by one on last January's LSAT and am worried we could see more in the future when I retake it.

Which Miscellaneous Logic Games are worth reviewing? Are there any that for sure won't make their way onto a future LSAT?

#help

Hey 7Sagers,

Exciting news! We've upgraded our testing platform to include the option to practice the newly structured August 2024 LSAT format (LR/LR/RC). Now, when you're taking a preptest, you can choose from the following versions:

We're thrilled to offer this enhancement to our platform, ensuring you have the most relevant and up-to-date tools for your LSAT prep no matter which version of the test you're targeting.

Warm regards,

The 7Sage Team

I took the November LSAT and scored a 155 after about 5-6 weeks of studying 3-4 hours a day, 5 days per week. Is it reasonable to think that I could raise my score to the 160s by the time the January test rolls around?

Hi all! I am taking the January LSAT, but I am wanting to submit my applications for fall 2024 now. Should I add an addendum that states that, especially if most law schools already have a section that allows me to indicate this?

Hi fellow 7Sagers!

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We will meet once per week for one hour. In addition to the instruction given during class time, I will also assign homework, drills and a study plan designed to support the weekly lessons and solidify key concepts. This class is ideal for anyone who wants a bit more structure and accountability as they work their way to their goal score.

We will meet on Saturdays starting on April 2nd. Class will convene via Zoom from 11am-noon EST and will continue until June 4th. The class is limited to TWELVE students, and sign-up is first-come, first served.

To sign up, visit this link: https://classic.7sage.com/7sage-lsat-live-class/

For any questions, feel free to comment below and I'll be sure to answer!

Trying out PrepTest B - Section 1 - Question 23 (Deep tillage is even more deleterious to the world's top soil supply than previously believed...) I understand why C is the right answer but I just can't seem to explain to myself why A isn't the right answer. Thoughts?

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [first set of words]"