Hey 7sagers,

First of - hope this personal learning story of mine helps.

I still think I am in my early stages of studying. I feel like I see a huge improvement in LR and LG. However, RC is still my worst section thus far. It takes me sometimes 14 + mins to do one passage, which sucks. Reason being my reading speed was to slow. I was focussed on annotating and really trying to remember the nitty gritty details. However, I analyzed my approach, why I got questions wrong and made a few changes. Here they are:

Note taking: From reading a bunch of online stuff, watching webinars, etc. - note taking in my opinion is off two types: 1) to help you UNDERSTAND the passage 2) to help you find things in the passage quickly. For the second one (finding things in the passage quickly) - it requires you to have your note symbols down solid + forces you to note take A LOT. I tried this second method in great detail - but I felt it really did not help me much + wasted more time. Reason being that it forces you to go back to the passage back way to often when most RC questions in my opinion are not designed for that. From what I have read and heard dozen times from JY - RC is about big picture. Unless a question refers to specific line - then go back to it. If not, going back to the passage to analyze your notes is a MAJOR TIME SINK. Again this is based upon my learning styles, might be different for others. Now, I focus more on understanding when reading a passage. Meaning - I won't circle/underline/etc. a lot - rather after a reading few sentences, pause and make some connections in my head and move forward. I felt this cut down my overall passage time by 4 mins + gave me a strong understanding of the passage. This does not mean I do not annotate - it just forces me to be more selective with the process.

Reading by going at the flow of your pencil: It helps me having my pencil underneath the word and leading my reading pace, whereas just reading without doing that. I am not sure if it helps others but I feel it sort of helps me go at my "own" speed when reading.

Choosing Questions to Tackle: As JY has mentioned before in LG - to go about the game by choosing question types that are more restrictive and allow you to attack the game in a more efficient manner. For example, do a must be true question in LG before a could be true question. Similarly, I felt in RC, certain questions are set up in the same manner. For example, before I read the passage I take 15 seconds to number my questions in the way I will attack them. Usually I go about in this manner: 1) Main Point of the Passage 2) Primary Purpose of the author/ Primary purpose of a certain paragraph 3) Questions that refer to specific lines in the passage 4) Inference & Most Strongly supported. Usually I go about in this manner b/c the Inference/MSS questions are usually time sinks and challenge your understanding of the passage. This will allow you to continuously get the "low hanging fruit" in each passage + enable you to use more time on questions that actually need it.

Wrong Answers always have the same Clues - Just got to quickly find them: This can be said again for most of LR answer choices, however I feel this pattern is a lot more obvious in RC. Common tricks I see in RC is strengthening words (for example: something is the "best" - usually that's a detail in a passage I would circle and not BIG Picture understanding), comparison between two things (for example: Person A will know more than Person B), wrong viewpoint (for example: the question specifically asks about the author's viewpoint, whereas the answer choice states a critics viewpoint).

Right now my goal in RC before going to timed actual sections is to get from 10-11 minutes (which I am currently at) down to 9 mins and under. Hopefully by the time I finish all the problem sets in RC I get to that. Wish me luck and I hope this helps you all!

Cheers!

I couldn't find any discussion about what to do in my situation, so here's a post:

I've taken 3 actual tests, done the CC twice, and have taken every available PT at least once. I've also completed all the powerscore books, and the LSAT trainer. I've BRed 180 before and PT at about 170, but can't see to get higher. I think it has a lot to do with my reading speed, which is really slow (max = ~250words/minute), which forces me to be overly aggressive. I think I did average on the Sept test, but still want to be prepared to take the Nov test. I have about 6 weeks left. What do you guys think I should do now? Anyone currently or previously in a similar situation have advice on how to improve, and what to do?

I plan to redo a PT a week, watch some live PTs, record myself doing a few sections, do some confidence drills, and focus on the hardest question types. What do you guys think?

is anyone able to explain why E is the correct AC?

Admin note: edited title

Hi Everybody,

I have a pretty dumb question for all you 7Sagers out there....

So I know what a median is (I think) - half of the applicants accepted had stats above that number and and half had stats below that number. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

If you have the median LSAT and GPA for a particular school, should you feel pretty good about getting accepted to that school or should you feel more like you have a 50/50 shot? Now I know acceptance depends on other soft factors - work experience, personal statement, LORs, etc., but I am pretty average when it comes to those things. I have 3 years work experience as a paralegal, I am not a URM, my essays and LORs will be well written but won't have anything absolutely incredibly special to say.

I feel like I make most my mistakes on LR because I'm rushing too much and don't catch the little details/nuances in the question stem. When I do BR, I usually get these rushed questions right. Anyone have any advice on how to tackle this?

Hello all !

Long time lurker, first time poster.

As the title suggests, I want to take the LSAT but I don't know when nor how I should given the time constraints that I have.

Here's my situation :

Im a canadian student in my 2nd year of undergrad, studying full time and working part time and trying to find a way to study effectively for the LSAT.

I intend to finish my bachelor's degree in 4 years instead of 3 to maintain my gpa and because of my EC's ( where I live a bachelor's degree is 3 instead of 4 years, considering we have a pre-college school ).

The last rule of this LG question is that I need to apply to my desired law school either next year, or after my 4th year.

I bought the powerscore bibles & practice books. I intend on studying them 5-7 hours a week for the next 7 months. Then, my plan is to study full time the whole summer 35-40 hrs a week to take the september LSAT. I will be getting the LSAT ultimate course from 7sage.

My cold diagnostic was 148 ( 12 LG, 33 LR, 12 RC ). Yes, RC just killed me. Last summer, I focused only my reading comprehension skills for 1 month of part time studying and I increased my score to 154.

Do you guys think this is a good study schedule ?

Thanks in advance for reading through this insecure mess and thank you all for being part of this great community.

Hi everyone,

I'm having a very difficult time finding the answer to these sort of questions. I completely understand the Premises and the conclusion. I'm able to break down the prompt very well.

My issue comes in when I start reading the answer choices and nothing seems to click. Normally I'll look at the answer choices and the ones that are wrong I can pick out easily. But, for these I just see words on a page that just don't make sense to me.

How do I engage these questions?

P.S. I've watched the webinar and it still doesn't fix my problem, I feel like it's very broad and very little explanation now how to view these in a different light. Again, that's just my opinion.

Depending on the school, the students and faculties sometimes talk about clerkship as if they're a really big deal. All I understand about them is that they're prestigious and competitive, and can offer a unique experience. Schools like Cornell seem to pride themselves on it, and use it as a point of advertisement. I am a fan of Cornell, but more for their international law specializations. Other schools like UVA also focus heavily on clerkship. Other schools almost completely gloss over it, even though they have high clerkship placement, like UPenn, Columbia, or UChic. Does anyone here know why clerkship can be such a big deal?

Hi, I just got two acceptance from u of Miami and Georgia state law. I never even been two cities. Just for school wise, where shall I go? Thinking to focus in M and A

Does JY have any lessons on comparative RC passages and how to approach them? I just cannot find any at the moment and thought maybe it was just me. Not sure though lol.

Hey everyone, This post is intended to be an overview of how the sufficient/necessary flaw appears on the LSAT and how we can develop a system of attack for the questions on which the sufficient/necessary flaw appears. I have collected my approach to these questions to 1 single thread.

I want to build on an analogy here that we all might not be entirely familiar with. It is rooted in my understand of the philosophical principle of Occam’s Razor. Suppose your car won’t start and you need to get to work. In an effort to solve this problem, you start deducing what is wrong with the car on the simplest grounds first: you check to make sure the car is not out of gas. We start here prior to checking more elaborate/expensive and time consuming problems: like replacing the transmission, because why potentially waste time with the more elaborate problems if the issue can be solved by appeal to something much simpler?

We do this all the time in our daily lives and I will submit, we should do this on various aspects of the LSAT: start with the simplest explanation of the problem on flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary flaw in an effort to save time. If that simplest explanation does not appear, move on to the next description. I might not be the first to apply this system to a problem, but this is the process I use:

1.Identify the “form” in which the argument has taken. This step is a convergence of several skills outlined in 7Sage’s core curriculum. From recognizing conclusion/premise indicators, to properly translating conditional statements, here is where our drills pay off. Extract from the argument both the conditional statement and what the author of that argument does with that conditional statement, here is where the flaw usually occurs.

Drill tip: any time we have a flaw question and our author is using conditional language, alarm bells should be ringing, for our chances of landing in sufficient/necessary territory have increased (although this is not a “silver bullet” it is a decent place to start.)

Drill tip 2: I want to place here a skill I have been thinking about a ton lately for my retake. My tutor calls this skill: following the thread of the argument. Following the thread is granting the argument a certain amount of leeway when we read it. Constantly taking the sentence we just read and trying to see how it relates to the sentence we are reading is following the thread of the argument. Among other things, we are looking for possible negations of certain terms that might not be readily apparent. Take for instance PT 43-2-12, “center of the universe” is essentially negated by the concept of “revolves around a star in the outskirts of the galaxy.” The concept of “center of the universe” implies that it is not in the “outskirts.” Negations can be hidden in the argument in this manner. Note here that there is some debate whether this question is really a sufficient/necessary flaw but I believe it illustrates the point I am trying to communicate fairly well, look out for innovative and clever ways the argument negates terms in the conditional statement, this can happen on several fronts, but a great way to be on top of these possible ways is to “follow the thread” of the argument sentence by sentence.

The sufficient/necessary flaw takes two general forms that encompass the vast majority of sufficient/necessary flaws:

Form 1:

We are given:

A---->B

We are told we have a specific ~A

We conclude we have a specific ~B

Note here: that we are given the ~A in the premise of the author’s argument and are given the ~B in the conclusion of the author’s argument. With this structure, the LSAT writers are telling us that the premise functions like the sufficient condition and that the conclusion functions like the necessary condition. this is an insight that I found helpful when I first noticed it.

Examples:

Pt 45-1-13

Pt 37-4-22

Pt 40-1-14

Pt 23-3-17

Pt 27-4-7

Pt 11-2-9

Form 2:

We are given A---->B

We are told we have a specific B

We conclude we have a specific A

Examples:

Pt 24-2-23

Pt 13-2-26

Pt 22-2-25

Pt 39-4-15

Note here that these are not exhaustive lists. So this is our first step, get a grasp on the form of the argument.

Drill tip: note here that the only question I have been able to find in which we are asked to tell the difference between these two forms is: Pt 51-1-20, in which answer choices (B) and (E) contain the sufficient/necessary flaw, but in different forms. Here we are choosing the form that mirrors our stimulus. Know these forms! Knowing the form in front of us is the first step to describing that form with an answer choice.

2.Once we have the entire “form” in front of us, we move on to the question of how a description of the flaw might appear. In the easiest way available: we scan the answer choices for the words sufficient/necessary. This is the analog to checking if our car is out of gas, if we have found a description of our problem that uses the words sufficient/necessary correctly: choose it and move on, congrats, you’ve answered this question in 40 seconds.

Drill tip: the LSAT writers are aware of this surface level approach to questions, occasionally, they will plant a misdescription of the sufficient/necessary flaw. For an example of this, please see: PT 75-1-12 answer choice (B),in which is using our words that we need, but is describing valid logic! Yes, the test writers are this petty. This is not the only question ever to contain a trap like this, so it begs the question of knowing how to describe a sufficient/necessary flaw beyond the buzz words sufficient/necessary. At this juncture, with some back of the envelope calculations, I believe with the first two steps, we are looking at getting 30-35% of flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary conflation correct. What I mean by this is that many flaw questions that contain the sufficient/necessary conflation that we have understood due to our application of step 1 will describe it using those words. This is merely noticing the reappearing elements to the question and describing it.

3.So we have reached step three. We have a handle on the form of the argument and we know that the author has committed the sufficient/necessary flaw. We also don’t see the words sufficient/necessary used in the answer choices as a way of describing the flaw in front of us. So at this point, we are going to need and are going to have to deploy an understanding of what makes the sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning. In service of this point I recommend three things: Mr. Ping’s individual explanations of questions contained in the various packages available for purchase on 7Sage, Douglas Walton’s book: “Informal Logic, A Pragmatic Approach” and an analysis of the answer choices the LSAT provides us with as credited responses to these questions. Lets take a look at a problem that contains the sufficient/necessary flaw in which we have to describe the flaw by reference to precisely how the reasoning is flawed rather than the use of buzzwords.

PT 37-4-22

Here we are given:

Irish stone--->very old

Premise: we have a particular ~Irish stone

Therefore we conclude that have a particular ~very old stone

Note here that we have to know that Scotland is not Ireland in order to draw this implied negation of our A term. I think we can rely on the fact that the terms are not literally the same here, rather than geographical knowledge. This is an example of ”following the thread” of the argument.

So this is the sufficient/necessary flaw, form 1. We are given A-->B, we say we don’t have an A, therefore we conclude we don’t have a B.

Here we are going to see two hurdles that the test writers throw our way: referential phrasing and what I call the fourth wall. Now, if you have read this far, bear with me for a moment! I promise this will be of value to you.

Quite often with sufficient/necessary flaws, our author is going to take the actual conditional statement that we translated correctly, reverse it and then run some sort of operation on that reversed (flawed) interpretation of the conditional statement.

So we are told if Irish stone then very old. This is the correct interaptation.

Our author takes that conditional statement and reads it as:

If very old then Irish stone

Our author then takes that wrong conditional statement and runs the contrapostive on it.

~Irish stone

Therefore

~Very old

This is what answer choice (E) is describing:

“Takes the fact that all members of a group [Irish stones] have a certain property [very old] to mean that the only thing with that property [very old] are members of that group [Irish stones].”

This answer choice says:

takes Irish stones---->very old

to mean

Very old---->Irish stones

This is where the flaw occurs, when the author has mistranslated the initial conditional statement. At that point the author runs the contrapostive on this wrong conditional statement. Now this is weird, we are essentially engaging with what the author has erroneously translated and ran away with.

So this “fourth wall” of analysis is where we will move to if the words sufficient/necessary are not present in the answer choices. Lets take a look at another example:

Pt 23-3-17

Here we are given:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

We say that we have evidence that punishment does not deter

Therefore we conclude that punishment is never justified

Again, take a look at answer choice (C)

The author has mistaken

“Being sufficient to justify punishment [deters] to be necessary to justify punishment.”

The author has taken:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

To mean

If punishment justified then punishment deters

The author then runs the contrapositive on that mistaken translation of the conditional statement.

Step 3 is about finding how the author might have messed up the conditional statement we were given and that we correctly translated. In the above example the author has taken

Deter---->justified

To mean

Justified------>deter

At this juncture, it doesn't matter what operation the author of the argument takes, it will still be wrong, because the statement is translated wrong.

Here is the heart of what makes a sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning: sufficient conditions do not operate the same way as necessary conditions. Lets look at another example to engrain this intuitively:

If something is a dog then it is a mammal

Dog---->Mammal

My neighbor has a cat (not dog)

Therefore my neighbor doesn’t have a mammal

Depriving a necessary condition of its sufficient element does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the necessary element [mammal]. This is covered in the core curriculum. Depriving “mammal” above of something that is sufficient to produce it doesn’t mean we don’t have a mammal in front of us. Something else could be sufficient to produce mammal: cat, gerbil etc.

Now, saying my neighbor does not have a mammal, allows us to draw the conclusion that my neighbor does not have a dog, for (as we all know) depriving a sufficient element (dog) of its necessary condition (mammal) allows us to say we don’t have the sufficient condition, because we don’t have the thing necessary for having that sufficient condition.

Operationally, sufficient and necessary conditions hold different powers for our conditional statement. On sufficient and necessary flaws, the author of the argument (usually through a mistranslation of the initial conditional statement) has granted the sufficient element the powers of the necessary element.

So, if we are given:

A----->B

and the argument says we have a particular ~A

therefore we conclude we have a particular ~B

The argument might be erroneously taking A---->B to mean B---->A

Similarly, if we are given:

A---->B

And the argument says we have a B

Therefore the argument says we have an A

The argument might be erroneously taking A----->B to mean B----->A

There are a finite number of ways in which the LSAT describes how this flaw has taken place and I have found it helpful to look at the flaw the way we do in step 3 as my main method of cutting through the haze of referential phrasing on many of these answer choices, because quite often the heavily referential phrasing answer choices to sufficient necessary flaws will be saying just this: that our author has taken A---->B to mean B---->A. If we know that the author has misinterpreted the conditional statement to mean something that it doesn’t, we can get a grasp on a majority of the ways in which it is described not using the words sufficient/necessary. It has been my experience, that with some back of the envelope calculations, an application of steps 1-3 will net us the form and description of 85-90% of sufficient/necessary flaw questions.

I hope this approach helps:

I will monitor this thread for additional questions and will be adding a part two in the coming weeks.

David

*full disclosure, I'm not sure if there is anyone else out there that approaches these questions like this. Any similarity is purely coincidental. I am also open for any correction you might see fit, we can make our approach stronger together as a community.

Edit 1: more specific elaboration in paragraph starting "There are a finite..."

I know during the actual LSAT, it'll be 5 sections. Does anyone know what JY recommends? If it's recommended to use 5, I'll just take a section from an earlier PT and add it in.

My maternal grandparents are from Spain. I have always checked off the European caucasian box, however on the UPenn law application the hispanic box explicitly includes Spain. Do the "hispanic/latino" options for other law schools also include Spain or is this just unique to Upenn?

Thank you!

When should you start focusing on studying with timing/timing questions for LR?

I know when you are doing the core lessons it is not recommended. However, if you are doing the problem sets, should you practice with 1:30 timer per question? I am just trying to figure out ways I can start helping myself prep in a manner to build that "internal clock" that is needed when doing timed sections in the future.

Any help would be much appreciated!

I'm using the basic 7sage in combination with powerscore bibles and workbooks. anyone doing the same? and which do you use first or in combination? kinda confused how to go about it for maximum benefit.

How do you commit how to solve a question that you got wrong to memory. For example, I always feel that I sometimes forget what I learned from blind reviewing when I apply it to a new prep test. Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I recently completed my 4 year tour of active duty in the military. I am considering joining the reserves to maintain some of my health care and retirement benefits, while earning a paycheck. If I were to join the reserves it would require a 1 weekend per month and 2 weeks a year work obligation. I am hesitant to do this before I apply to law school. Will admissions counselors look down on my application if they see that I am in the reserves? Joining the reserves means I could be called at any time to service regardless of my school/work obligations. Are law schools willing to work with students in the reserves? I know my prior years of active duty will look great on the resume and personal statement part of my application. Does anyone have any experience or know of someone doing this?

Apologies if theres another discussion that already covers this!

I finished the CC a while back and am planning on taking the January LSAT. I've noticed that my main area of weakness is with LG. Right now, i'm only getting each section about half right and I tend to run out of time for one game in each section. At this point I know I need to focus on fool--proofing LG but am wondering what the best strategy for this would be?

I've read some people say to do PT's 1-35 over and over again to fool--proof but i've also heard from others that the LG sections in those PT's are vastly different to newer PT's (and that those PT's might not be as useful).

I was wondering if anyone could give me some guidance on which PT's are the best to fool--proof?

I'm watching his RC reviews(PT 58+) and I noticed that his videos are unusually longer than the previous series...

Is it the first time he introduced the Low-Res/High-Res techniques and AB technique for comparative passages (and for the rest of PT58+) ???

P.S. I am VERY excited to listen to his detailed ver. reviews! : )

Hey guys,

I just had a general question regarding PT's. So if I wanted to take a 5 section PT, how would I go about adding another section to the PT? For example the PT's within the curriculum only have 4 sections in them and I was confused the other day because there is a 5 section proctor available but all of the PT's are only 4 sections. I don't know if I am asking a pretty obvious question but I couldn't figure out how to simulate 5 sections like i'll need to do test day. Thanks guys and any help is greatly appreciated!

Isn’t negating A=>B equals to A=>not B? If Luke goes to party, I will go as well. How to negate this conditional statement?

Good Afternoon, Everyone

I am having trouble figuring out how to structure excel sheets or charts of progress for the Fool proof LG method: by specific game type. I was wondering if anyone has any examples or suggestions.

Hey guys,

I’ve been practicing in/out games for a while and although I understand most of it, there are a few things that still confuse me enough to throw me off. Hopefully someone can help clear that up :)

I normally get confused with conditionals. For example:

I understand /A—>B is an either or rule so at least 1 has to be in. I would put a place holder in the in group to visualize that.

B—>\C is a not both rule so at least 1 has to be out, so I would put a placeholder in the out group.

I seem to get confused when there is either a chain or a biconditional.

Ie: /A—>B—>C ( I would usually put 2 placeholders for /A—>B and /A—>C ) I get confused when A is in because then b and c become floaters and the 2nd placeholder doesn’t necessarily need to be there.

Or

If I’m given a couple of rules and they happen to link up as a biconditional. I.e -pt 83 game 3

We have

/N—>R

N—>L

R—>M

L—>/R

before I link them up I would place my placeholders. 1 in the in group (/N—>R) and one in the out group (L—>/R)

After you link them however, L, N and R become a biconditional so we know LN Always together and R is alway apart.

When I compare this to my original placeholders, I’m not sure what happened lol

Any advice would be appreciated. Please let me know if you guys would like me to clarify anything :)

Thanks!

This may be a stupid question, but I can't find law school applications online for the two schools to which I most want to apply. 7sage recommends researching the applications to discover what questions I'll be asked and so I can prepare my essays - and I wholeheartedly agree - but I can't seem to find them anywhere. Can anyone help?

Hi 7sagers

I'm back. I took a 1-2 week break after the Sept LSAT.

I didn't log on to 7sage or look at any LSAT material.

Weirdly and strangely, I miss you guys. LOL From logging on everyday and doing PTs. Checking my work. Taking breaks and looking at the discussion board...and then just going MIA for 2 weeks, feels like forever.

My sept LSAT (first real LSAT) was rough. I was nervous and I found myself not 100% focusing on the test. But instead, sweating and thinking about the time. I'll be honest, I don't think I did that great.

I also didn't cancel my score because I wanted to see what I got wrong and learn from it. Another reason why is because 100% of the schools I'm looking at takes the highest grade.

It's be rough and really stressful. but there is nothing I can do now but prepare for the Nov LSAT.

I feel more confident as I know what the environment is like now. I will be back to studying next monday!

I'm excited....which is weird LOL. but I feel better. I know what to expect. I know the questions. I know the format.

I just feel better this time around! of course I still have the nerves because its the FREAKING LSAT! but...not as much.

I miss you guys! good luck to all.

BACK TO THE GRIND!