Getting lots of 'easiest' LRs wrong but 'harder' LRs right.

Lia Liu

I just took PT 59. In the PT scorer it says that section 2 LR is "easiest" and section 3 is "harder". I got 50% accuracy on section 2 but 84% accuracy on section 3. If I can fix this problem my score would probably be a lot better. My weaknesses are MSS and Flaw questions (could be that section 2 had more of these types). How do you guys approach Flaw and MSS? I feel like there's some connection I'm not making.

EuripidesFan

Hey I just took practice test 59 myself. Section 2 was DEFINITELY harder. As further confirmation of this, you could see on Manhattan LSAT's LR forum that the vast majority of inquiries and posts pertained to section 2 and not 3. Also I'm quite sure that PT 59, with an unusual 14 point curve, featured harder than normal LR questions since the other sections, in my opinion, were of average difficulty.

As for how to approach Flaw, one good way to assess your skills is to see whether you are accurately spotting the flaw b4 you even get to the answer choices. If you are not able to do this for the vast majority of flaw questions, you haven't attained a sufficient level of familiarity with this question type to systematically attack it. I would suggest you review the 7sage lessons that pertain to identifying flaws in order to get better.

MSS is basically a mind twist that is meant to confuse and intimidate you (at least the harder ones). Almost always the correct answer is one that accurately combines premises within the stimulus to arrive at a supported conclusion. They mainly try to trick you by providing tempting, but ultimately unsupported, answer choices. You should maintain a strict standard when it comes to these questions of what can be directly inferable from logically combining the premises in the stimulus. By the way this method works for even the most difficult of MSS questions. The correct answer choice will of course be more subtle, but will not contradict anything in the stimulus and will always follow logically from what is already given.

Lia Liu

Hey, thanks for your input! I'll try your suggestions for review.

Alan Cheuk-2

Whoops... That was totally my fault

I fixed it now so the section difficulty estimates are much more accurate.