What the Flaw is wrong?

Comments

• eesLSAT2017 Alum Member

  November 2017 59 karma

  I found a huge improvement when I quit trying to find the specific flaw and simply started by reading the stim and identifying what was wrong, then going to the answers to find it there. Fit the answers to the prepphrase!
• Waiting For Grey Day Alum Member

  November 2017 323 karma

  I second @eesLSAT2017. You absolutely must prephrase or at least have a simple, clear idea of what the F (clever title, btw) is going on.

  I like to think of flaw questions like going for a dangerous dive, without any scuba diving gears whatsoever. You glance over the water, make sure you know what you are going after, get in there and get the F out quickly!

  But in all seriousness, flaw questions really just take practice. Once you expose yourself to as many flaw types as possible, you'll get better.
• btate87 Alum Member

  November 2017 782 karma

  One strategy that has worked for me if I dont have a clear picture after the first read is to go through again and rephrase/paraphrase every sentence/clause as I go; keep pushing new information back on what you've already rephrased - this includes rearranging pieces of the argument so the conclusion is at the end.
• dcfaulcon66 Free Trial Member

  November 2017 16 karma

  Thanks guys, now I am at 77% which is about 2% off of the average. I think by taking your advice and doing more PT I can get close to 80% come test day.
• FerdaFresh Alum Member

  November 2017 edited November 2017 561 karma

  I'll throw another tidbit in here. If you've noticed, the wording of flaw ACs tends to be more mumbo-jumbo-esque than other questions' ACs. I reckon LSAC does this because most people can see the flaw in the stimulus, so they use complicated wording in the answer choices to make people lose points. There's a couple takeaways you can get from this.

  (1) when you come across an answer choice that sounds like it was written by a 90 year old Rhodes Scholar philosopher, skip over it and read the simpler ones. Spending half a minute trying to unpack that bad boy may be a trap time-sink that you don't need. It may be the right answer, but it'd probably be easier AND quicker getting to it by POE than trying to understand what it's saying.

  (2) I've noticed a pretty strong trend that these esoteric answer choices tend to actually be the right ones for flaw questions in the upper third of the test (e.g. questions 18-25). I've seen a couple where that's not the case, but -- for the most part -- the wordy ACs are the right ones. I started taking mental note of this awhile ago (at least for pre-70s LSATS; I haven't done many from the 70s series yet)!

  I really hope that helps
• Leah M B Alum Member ⭐

  November 2017 8392 karma

  Sometimes I realized it helps me to almost process it backwards. I'll usually read the stimulus and vaguely identify the flaw (e.g. not representative group) but with knowing that there could be something else as well so you don't get too set on finding a match in the ACs. Then when reading ACs, almost like a principle question, I'll process what the AC is saying and whether or not it actually fixes a problem in the stimulus. A lot of times ACs are just sort of miscellaneous things that when applied to the stimulus are just kind of neither here nor there. So that's my ultimate test, applying the AC to the stimulus to see if it corrects an issue.