I tend to do better at NA than SA?

LSAT Determined

Hello,

For some odd reason, I am having trouble with mastering sufficient assumption questions, despite watching explanation videos. However, I tend to perform very well on necessary assumption questions--it seems much easier to me. Do any have advice or tips or strategies that help get SA questions right consistently. I'm tired of skipping over SA questions because they hurt my score

runiggyrun

From my (limited) experience, it seems like the sufficient assumption questions fall into a couple of categories: some have a chain of conditionals and the correct answer will "pull the trigger" on the whole chain. The trouble with these is that the correct answer seems obvious, or looks like repeating part of the stimulus. Like: "unions will go on strike unless they get payraises. To give payraises, we have to sell subsidiaries. Therefore the subsidiaries will be sold". So NoStrike--->PayRaise-->SoldSubsidiaries. The correct answer was simply. "the unions will not go on strike". That triggers the chain that leads to subsidiaries being sold.
Another fairly common one is when there is a shift of terms between some of the premises and the conclusion and the Sufficient Assumption is the one that bridges that shift. Example: vague laws make it impossible to know if your actions actions are legal. Therefore if the laws are vague you can't feel secure. Correct answer bridges that shift between feeling secure and knowing that your actions are legal by saying "you cannot feel secure unless you can know if your actions are legal".
Although these two examples are based on actual questions, the questions on the exam are not usually boiled down like that, making it more challenging to see the key chain that needs triggering or the key shift that needs bridging. Additionally, the correct answers are often contrapositives of what you'd expect.
I think success with these questions comes from two things: first, knowing that you need to boil the stimulus and the answers down to the basics, and find the gap or the chain. Then do the same with the answers - strip them down to their barebones lawgic. And second, having a good grasp of conditional logic to accurately represent the relationships in the pared down stimulus AND in the answer choices. A lot of the incorrect answers will have some sort of illegal reversal of logic in them.

nye8870

@runiggyrun said:
A lot of the incorrect answers will have some sort of illegal reversal of logic in them.

And a lot of correct answers will be written in the contrapositive form :-)

lpadr009

this may be kind of a "basic" trick but i find it works 9 out of 10 times. Usually the correct SA answer will have a piece of the conclusion in it.