How do you do SA Q's under timed conditions?

youbbyun

hey all,

i was wondering how top scorers do SA Q's under timed conditions? i've been realizing that SA questions take me WAY too long to do under timed conditions.

Do you do the short cut way -- where you identify the "new guy" in the premises, and the "new guy" in the conclusion, and just go hunt for an answer choice that has both "new guys"?

Or do you actually map out the logical chain, and try to find the area you need to bridge?

do you hand write the logic for SA questions, or do you just do it all in your head?

if you do it all in your head, how are you able to do that with certain SA questions that are very convoluted (both with grammar and logic), and have many conditional logic chains?

in other words, what's your thought process/strategy whenever you see a SA question under timed conditions?

thanks!!

Lucas Carter

As soon as I see the stem, I know that my job is to create a valid argument. As I go through the stimulus I must make the premise(s) 100% have to lead to the conclusion. Identifying the conclusion and premises is step #1. From there I ask myself how could I make the argument completely valid. Sometimes it is really easy, for example: Carbon Emissions are the single biggest threat to humanity, therefore efforts will be made to reduce them. The SA here would be that we will always make efforts to solve any threat to humanity.

I found that I picked up a ton of speed on SA questions just by revisiting the CC and thinking about what a SA is and how it must create a valid argument. The drills like these ones: https://7sage.com/lesson/quiz-on-finding-sufficient-assumptions-1-answers/, helped me feel a lot more comfortable with finding SAs quickly. Remember that only 1 Answer Choice will create a valid argument.

redshift

For easy SA questions, I do the logic in my head. Often times, on easy ones, you'll get something like:

If the bank closes late on Saturday, then they open early on Monday. The bank closed late last Saturday. Therefore, John will get bagels for the bank employees this Monday.

The correct answer might say:

(A) If John doesn't get bagels, then the bank doesn't open early on Monday.

My thought process when hitting answer choices goes like follows:

(1) I know that the bank closed late last Saturday, so they're opening early this Monday.
(2) I don't know why opening early this Monday means John will get bagels.
(3) It must be the case that if the bank opens early, John gets bagels.

(3) is the Sufficient Assumption. Now, it'd be nice if the LSAT gave this answer choice to us on a silver platter, but they often throw it in contrapositive form. So when I'm going through answer choices, I'll notice (A), and then quickly run a contrapositive. I see that it matches, select it, and move on.

For harder SA questions, I map out the logic. You get better at this stuff the longer you work at it. I had the luxury of taking formal logic in college, but it's definitely a different world to some. My advice would be to understand that formal logic is not regular human logic. It is it's own mathematical/philosophical field of study, one that people get literal PhD's from MIT and Princeton in. You have to treat it as a subject like Algebra. Learn the rules, learn the system, use it as a tool, but don't let it become a burden.

Louislepauvre

I don’t read the q stem first, so when I see that it’s an SA I generally have a good sense of how the argument made the jump. I quickly draw out the lawgic (but not always, sometimes you can just see it), figure out the answer, and then find it. This is pretty much an automatic/easy as hell question for me.