Assumptions and a peculiar pattern

jowens7317

Okay let me just start from the start. My cold diagnostic was a 145 (June 2007). Since then I've studied for about a month and a half taking a PT scoring a 149 (December 2012) and a PT today scoring a 155 (PrepTest A from SuperPrep). I've seen improvements in just about every category except assumption questions in which I've scored in order of PrepTests, 0/3 (0%), 2/3 (66% guessed correct answers), and 1/5 (20%). I've been through the Logical Reasoning Bible and my assumption question scores still just aren't there; any tips on improving them? Also a peculiar thing is that my flaw in the reasoning questions went from a 6/8 (75%) on PT2 to a 2/7 (28%) on PT3. Are these drastic fluctuations normal especially to begin with considering I'm only on my third PT?

Pacifico

This is really way too little to go on. What have you used to prep? Are you just brute forcing through the test or did you learn about it first? A month and a half is really not a lot of time to absorb all the necessary information to improve dramatically and I think that is borne out by your scores.

Not sure which type of assumption questions you're talking about though it looks like it doesn't matter given that your scores are generally evidence of a lack of understanding of the dynamics of the test.

My advice is to grab a 7Sage package if you can, or a copy of The LSAT Trainer, and then start fresh and don't take any PTs until you have really developed a healthy understanding of what you're being tested on.

Good luck and feel free to ask us anything!

jowens7317

@Pacifico I've been using the bibles and 7sage for mostly LG. It's just those two categories that really aren't clicking logical reasoning wise but I'll definitely drill them until I get them down pat

Cant Get Right

Powerscore is particularly weak on Assumptions. I never did get it while I was using the bibles. You just need a new approach. Grab the Trainer or even better a 7Sage starter pack. Forget everything you know about assumptions and start over.

Nicole Hopkins

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Forget everything you know about assumptions and start over.

Perhaps ... forget everything you've assumed about assumptions ...

cal6005

I'm sorry in advance because this first part is slightly irrelevant to your question, but I thought PrepTest A was super easy (compared to every other PT I took) and in my opinion, it does not reflect what you should expect to see on a newer test. But I'm sure you plan on taking many more PTs, so no worries! I'm probably just bitter because I got an abnormally great score on PT A and it gave me false hope for a bit:)

I agree with everyone here that the LSAT Trainer is a great resource for logical reasoning. For me, the way I remembered how to look at assumption questions was:

Necessary Assumption: What must be true if the information in the stimulus is true? You can test the answers with the negation test (if you negate an answer choice and it contradicts the argument, then it is a necessary/required assumption)

Sufficient Assumption: What must be true in order for the argument in the stimulus to be valid? The correct answer, if added as a premise to the argument, will make it logically valid.

To be honest though, I didn't know the difference between sufficient and necessary assumption questions until I read the LSAT Trainer. I highly recommend working through it, especially for understanding the different challenges that each question type presents.