Most Strongly Supported - MSS

alicia.xx

Does anyone have any tips for MSS?

Everything I've read through just doesn't seem to click and I keep getting these type of questions wrong I'm aware that they are similar to MBT but with a lower degree of certainty needed.

keets993

Heyyy Alicia Florrick. It might be more helpful for people to give advice if there was a specific question that really tripped you up and why as well as where you are in prep (still in CC or PT-ing/Drilling).

In general, for MSS questions the answer choice is the only one that's supported by the stimulus. I'd suggest going to the question bank and picking out 10-15 MSS questions you haven't seen. Try spending time upfront with the stimulus, just reading, and without looking at answer choices try to come up with your own statements that you think are supported and why. Write down specifically what statement(s) from the stimulus support your own inference. Generally, with MSS, the tricky aspect is that people think that the stimulus is saying more than it actually is which is why the trap answer choices are attractive. Then, go to the answer choices and write down why you think the four wrong answer choices aren't supported [by the stimulus] and why the right one is. You want to be able to articulate why it's supported because of what the stimulus says and try not to let your real life biases creep in when evaluating answer choices. Hope that helps!

smartaone2

Hello Alicia. I just finished the MSS problem sets in the CC. A couple of tips that really helped me identify the correct answers were to ask myself, “Can I prove this?” “Why should I believe this?”
"Says who/where does it say that?” for each answer choice. I echo what @keets993 says as well. I began to paraphrase the stimulus in my own words then determine what I think the answer choice should be and type out "why" I believe that is the correct answer choice and type out "why" the other answer choices are incorrect. This made a world of difference for me. Hopefully these tips will help you out.

Pam Beesly

I think something really important when it comes to MSS is realizing that the answer shouldn't be too "strong." What I mean by that is some answer choices will say things like "all, never, always, etc." which are strong words that most times make claims that are not supported in the stimulus or go beyond the scope of the argument. The correct answers for MSS are usually subtle and don't add any new information. Hope this helps!

MindyKale

@"alicia.xx" Difficulties with MSS questions usually lie in these three things for me : 1) The stimuli for these questions aren't usually arguments. They are just facts. 2) The language used is composed of conditional statements and/or quantifiers(some,most) etc.
Given that, one way to eliminate answers is to eliminate all invalid inferences.
Like for example :
All bees are good dancers. Beyonce is the queen bee.
Valid inference we can make : Beyonce is a good dancer. Invalid inference Beyonce is the most exceptional dancer of them all.
The only valid inference we can make from a conditional statement is the contrapositive.
For quantifiers, there are lessons on valid inferences you can check.

Bamboosprout

Here's a dirty trick that I don't see anyone else talk about, probably because it doesn't work for everyone. But for me, it works wonders on some of the short and tricky ones. Negate the answer choices like you do for NA questions. If you have a good understanding of the core logic, you may be able to see that NA, MBT, and MSS are essentially the same things. They're all things that must be, or necessarily are, true. So just like with NAs, the right answer in MBT and MSS, when negated, should present a contradiction or exception, relative to the stimulus. You shouldn't use this unless you have no other options, though, since this takes up much more time and effort.