Pt 50-60 September Crew. Enter Here Forum

[Blumpbeef]

52

-14/166

Pretty disappointing.

-4 on Logic Games is a good trend, but not nearly where I want to be. I also don't get why I am having so much trouble with RCs lately.

[Adjudicator]

I'm still upset about PT57. Grading that one was like getting sucker-punched in the gut. Either I'm just having a bad day, or this test is massively more difficult than PT56. I went from -3, 179 on #56 to -7, 174 on #57.

Can anyone tell me what to expect on PT58?

[Jack Smirks]

PT 57 was tough, dinosaurs, fractals and the 1st args. killed me.

[Blumpbeef]

58 is much nicer than 57.

1st args

args?

[Jack Smirks]

58 is much nicer than 57.

1st args

args?

Yeah the first L.R. section.

[Adjudicator]

58 is much nicer than 57.

1st args

args?

Yeah the first L.R. section.

Oddly, I felt much better about the 2nd LR section compared to the 1st, but in the end I missed 2 on both of them. Oh well.

I just hope I do better on 58-60.

[Blumpbeef]

52

-14/166

Pretty disappointing.

-4 on Logic Games is a good trend, but not nearly where I want to be. I also don't get why I am having so much trouble with RCs lately.

Misgrade, I actually got a -13/167. Totally satisfied now.

[DrackedaryMaster]

FINALLY! After 43 PT's and 86 LR Sections, I finally, finally, got my first -0 on an LR Section on LR2 of PT57. Ended up with a 171 91/101 (-2LG, -5LR -0LR!!! -3RC).

Okay, now somebody bring me back down to Earth and tell me LR2 was unusually easy. I was going a lot faster and tried to use my knowledge gained from my misses on PT59 to work. Maybe it's just me, but there appears to be a lot more MBT/Strongly Support Q's on the later LR tests.

LG (#13, #20) - Maybe next time I'll pay more attention to the word "Except". Saved Dinos for last, had 13 minutes to finish it so wasn't too bad.

LR (#12, #15, #19, #24, #25) - Have to review these more later

LR (-0) Saved #14 and the PRs that required diagramming until the very end. I had 5 minutes leftover, which is very rare for me, normally I finish just before time ends.

RC (#12, #18, #25) - Can somebody explain #12, why go down the lines of reference instead of up? 18 is a stupid miss because D is way way too general. That makes the RC on 57, 58, and 60 way easier than 59. I will throw up huge chunks if I ever have to encounter another Noguchi passage again.

[Cromartie]

PT 56 is history.

LG (Exp) -3

Not sure which PT this was from, but I got all 3 mistakes in the game with the 8 runners and X and Y relay teams. I am really concerned about the drop in my LG performance. I think I will have to drill this extensively in the remaining 2 weeks.

LG -2

Seriously, LG is becoming a major concern for me. Ran out of time in the last game and guessed the last 2 questions wrong.

LR1 -1

Damn psychotherapist and talk show question. Changed from E (correct) to C.

LR 2 -0

That's more like it. No. 21 (ballroom dancing revival) gave me some fits, but managed to pick the right one.

RC -0

Had to finish the last passage in 6 minutes, but managed to escape unscathed. I was literally squirming in my seat from the time the proctor called the last 5 minutes (was still in the middle of reading the passage at that point) up until the end. Talk about pressure-packed.

Overall 97/179

Good to be able to bounce back after Wednesday night's disaster. It was also my first time to take a 5-section test. PT 57 on Wednesday night.

[Hedwig]

I just did PT 56 as well, and got the same score! Only mine was 97 raw, 179 scaled, with -0LG, -2LR, -1LR, -0RC. My experimental was also LG, -0.

I need to do some focused review on LR. Both questions I had it narrowed down to 2, and picked the wrong answer. Argh. My problem has become over thinking.

Relieved with the distribution of scores here. I've managed to consistently get between -0 and -1 on games sections, and I'm working on keeping that up. I found one of the games difficult but managed to finish with enough time left to basically go through every question quickly again.

Reading Comprehension was thankfully -0. When I get questions wrong on RC, I reallllly don't like that.

It also seems like 97 is my comfortable raw score. 95 is my average raw score for the past 10 tests and 176 is my average scaled score.

PT 57 with the infamous dinosaurs is coming up next! I'm debating between leaving it for last since I know it's notorious, or doing it in order because if we get a weird dino like game on the test, I'm not going to know of its notoriety, so it's not like I'd be able to skip it just from looking at it. But then again once I'd tried it and thought it was horrible, I might have skipped it anyways. Hum. Who knows.

[schrute13]

LR - 1
Question no. 1 - wtf??? - chose C instead of D. I am still not convinced that retirees do not constitute a representative sample since they were employees at one time or another.

I hate first questions that aren't duh questions, and this one was one of them. But if the company is boasting that it still treats its employees well, then it can't rely on a group that has long left its employment as proof that they still treat employees well today.

RC -0
Struggled a bit with the group think passage, but all others were very manageable.

I found the groupthink passage a little difficult too, and made both my mistakes there. Wordiness abound in those questions.

I see your point, but I'm still not completely convinced. The executive is not saying that the company "still" treats employees fairly; just that the company treats employees fairly (construed to mean in general terms). Hence, people who have actually worked at the company can certainly speak to the fairness/unfairness of the way employees are treated there. Additionally, we can't necessarily conclude that "retirees" refer only to employees who left the company a long time ago...what if they had just retired last week or even yesterday? But I guess one can argue that D is better than each of the other 4 choices.

Any thoughts on LR2 no. 4? I chose E instead of D. I eliminated D because Ray is not saying that there is only one possible cause for the trunk's popping open. In fact, he does not suggest any cause at all. He simply says that contrary to what Cynthia says, the trunk's opening could not have been due to the car hitting a pothole. This appears to be more in line with E rather than D. To further support my contention, let's try negating D and say that Ray acknowledges that the popping of the trunk could have been caused by many different things. Even if this were true, Ray's argument still stands. For instance, Ray could say that a gnome hiding in the trunk could have popped it open on one of the previous occasions, a spring/locking mechanism could have snapped on another occasion, etc. And then, he could claim that this time around, it was the gnome or the spring, or some other thing that caused the trunk to pop open, and not the pothole. So, he successfully denies Cynthia's claim while at the same time acknowledging that the event could have been caused by any of a number of different things.

In other news, I did the LG from Superprep B tonight and got destroyed. -5 total, -4 on the circular table game alone. I now wonder what the odds might be that a circular game shows up in the October test...

Hey so I'm new to the TLS forum, but I'm also working on PTs 50-60 now (it's a little late, i know, i'm only up to 54 and the LSAT is like 2 weeks away) and i just finished 54 so i thought i'd weigh in on LR2 no. 4. The way i interpreted Ray's argument is that an event (trunk popping open) couldn't have been caused by something (pothole) because the last few times the event happened, there was no pothole. I think what's most telling is that that's the ONLY basis for his argument, the fact that the last couple of times the trunk popped open, it was not caused by a pothole and BECAUSE each time Cynthia's trunk popped open previously it was not caused by a pothole, this time it COULD NOT have been caused by a pothole. He doesn't seem to take into account that different things can cause the same event at different times, that even though the last couple of times the trunk popped open because of gnomes or faulty springs, this time, that same event could have been caused by a completely different thing like a pothole. I think the key word in answer choice is "many": Ray doesn't understand that one event can have almost an infinite number of causes. Even though that event wasn't caused by a certain thing in the past (pothole), it can be caused be caused by that thing in the future because many different things, even things you've never thought of or seen before, can cause one event. I realize this isn't very clear, but hopefully it helps and if not, it probably doesn't matter because it seems like you're doing pretty well anyway!

[2014]

I'm still upset about PT57. Grading that one was like getting sucker-punched in the gut. Either I'm just having a bad day, or this test is massively more difficult than PT56. I went from -3, 179 on #56 to -7, 174 on #57.

Can anyone tell me what to expect on PT58?

I did one point worse on 57 than 58. The LG was the difference, it turned out to be 1 point harder for me on 58, but that was because of stupid mistakes. Overall they are comparable.

[Adjudicator]

PT 57 with the infamous dinosaurs is coming up next! I'm debating between leaving it for last since I know it's notorious, or doing it in order because if we get a weird dino like game on the test, I'm not going to know of its notoriety, so it's not like I'd be able to skip it just from looking at it. But then again once I'd tried it and thought it was horrible, I might have skipped it anyways. Hum. Who knows.

I did the games in the order they were presented, for the reason that you state. I thought saving it for last based on its notoriety would be an unfair psychological advantage that I won't have on the real test, so I just attacked it. It is pretty tough but I think you'll be up to the challenge.

I'm really interested to see how you do on 57. I got the same score on 56 as you did, but 57 was rather frustrating in comparison.

[Cromartie]

I just did PT 56 as well, and got the same score! Only mine was 97 raw, 179 scaled, with -0LG, -2LR, -1LR, -0RC. My experimental was also LG, -0.

I need to do some focused review on LR. Both questions I had it narrowed down to 2, and picked the wrong answer. Argh. My problem has become over thinking.

Relieved with the distribution of scores here. I've managed to consistently get between -0 and -1 on games sections, and I'm working on keeping that up. I found one of the games difficult but managed to finish with enough time left to basically go through every question quickly again.

Reading Comprehension was thankfully -0. When I get questions wrong on RC, I reallllly don't like that.

It also seems like 97 is my comfortable raw score. 95 is my average raw score for the past 10 tests and 176 is my average scaled score.

PT 57 with the infamous dinosaurs is coming up next! I'm debating between leaving it for last since I know it's notorious, or doing it in order because if we get a weird dino like game on the test, I'm not going to know of its notoriety, so it's not like I'd be able to skip it just from looking at it. But then again once I'd tried it and thought it was horrible, I might have skipped it anyways. Hum. Who knows.

Congrats on PT 56 and good luck on PT 57. 2 more weeks to go! Btw, you're from Canada, right? Are you familiar with the TV show "Intelligence"? It's a Canadian show and is set in Vancouver. I came across in on Netflix last Friday night, and I have become completely hooked. Went through the entire season 1 Friday night and yesterday, and I'm now on episode 3 of season 2. It's one of the best shows ever... wire-to-wire action in each episode.

[DrackedaryMaster]

PT56 Brought me back to reality in LR . Oh, well it was nice while it lasted.
(-0LG, -6LR, -4LR, -2RC). 169

In both LR sections, I appeared to collapse at the end, although there were some difficult Q’s (difficult as in for me) on the last part of LR1. That and some stupid mistakes involving overlooking the stimulus.

LR1
#9 (I had a difficult time telling the difference between B/C)
#16 (When I went back and was about to grade, realized I f*ed this one up, but left it as is since you can’t change anything after time anyway)
#21 (Really struggled with this one because I couldn’t associate Tania’s position on biases with her first sentence. Never got a full grasp of this disagreement)
#22 (Had a hard time getting around the wording on this one)
#23 (Chose the decoy answer. I guess I should have attempted to diagram this?)
#24 (This was another hard one to grasp, at least for me. Talk about back loading a section)

LR2
#10 (Here’s another one I realized I f*ed up when I was about to grade. Had to leave it though)
#22 (My memory must have failed me on this one and #23, since it’s there in the middle of the stimulus)
#23 (Yet another Q I realized while grading I screwed up noticing the whole “high humidity” after the fact. FML)
#25 (You have to be kidding me. I really must just like giving points away or something. Maybe I should have just stopped at question 20 on both LRs

RC
#13 - I spent 10 minutes on this passage and this was the last of two Qs I couldn’t find quickly enough so I guessed and moved on
#15 - See response to #13. Thankfully the other three passages weren’t bad.

[Blumpbeef]

#54

Another terrible overall score.

LR1 - Dropped the ball., -4. I usually do better than that.
LR2 - Better. -1. I found these easier and I finished with 5 minutes to spare. I think that drilling the Cambridge hardest LR questions has been paying off, at least in terms of speed. Hopefully my LR1 score was anomalous and unique.

LG - By far my best ever. -1. The best I had ever gotten before was around -4 or so. I even finished 2 minutes early.

So it's all looking good so far. Missed a couple questions on LR that I probably shouldn't have missed, but I'm on track to get a solid score.

But then,

RC. -7. WTF?


-13/167

I think part of it is that I was anticipating the cake walk passage to be difficult, and so I spent a little too much time on it, then got smacked by that damn group think passage. Still, there is no reason for RC to be causing me this much trouble. It never has in the past. I don't get it.

[xqhp82]

can someone here help me with #21(game 4) from the LG section of PT56? I picked the right answer but upon reviewing I also found that (A) seems to work.

If Morningside includes Q and V, the combination can either be

M: QV
F: T
H: SR

or

F: S
M: VQ
H: RT

So why is A incorrect? Am I missing an important inference somewhere?

[DrackedaryMaster]

can someone here help me with #21(game 4) from the LG section of PT56? I picked the right answer but upon reviewing I also found that (A) seems to work.

If Morningside includes Q and V, the combination can either be

M: QV
F: T
H: SR

or

F: S
M: VQ
H: RT

So why is A incorrect? Am I missing an important inference somewhere?

Looks like the LSAC is causing you to see ghosts too. Take a look at the last rule S>=V and compare that to your first drawing.
The possibilities then are:

F: S M: QV H: RT
or
M: Q V S| F: R/T or H: T/R in either F or H

[xqhp82]

Looks like the LSAC is causing you to see ghosts too. Take a look at the last rule S>=V and compare that to your first drawing.
The possibilities then are:

F: S M: QV H: RT
or
M: Q V S| F: R/T or H: T/R in either F or H

Thanks. haha yeah i definitely do see ghosts all the time, but this one is probably my bad, i misinterpreted the last rule as a S=V or V_S/S_V rather than S>=V. luckily this serious mistake didn't destroy my whole game.

[DreamShake]

Just finished PT 60.
94/99=176
-0 LG (exp), -0 LR, -2 LG, -1 LR, -3 RC (ugh).

Frustrating mistakes. I'm still trying (somewhat vainly) to turn my sleep schedule around, and I feel like the lack of sleep has been knocking me down 2-3 points on my recent PT's. All but one mistake (RC #7) were due to stupid misreads/not being thorough. This is the second time in a row I've missed the last (and fairly easy) question on the test. The only positive is that I finished the real LG section in time despite mis-diagramming two entire games and having to redo them. I guess it's also a positive that I found the mulch game a breeze...gives me hope that whatever weird game appears on 61 won't throw me off too much.

[Sandro]

taking PT 53 today. 170+ here I come, I can feel it.

[aesis]

Weird day today.
Ate two itty bitty granola bars and nearly died from (extended) summer heat to get to the library this morning.
Didn't have time to do a warm-up.

But no excuses!
PT 55
LR -3/-3
RC -3
LG -0
91 --> 172

Annoyed, and will be focusing on tightening LR a bit and SLAMMING RC. I'm so tired of not getting -1/-0 RC sections. Wish I were consistently pushing 175 again leading up to Test Day.

[eliekedourie]

Took JUN07 after work today. Pretty disappointed.

LG -1. The one error I made was careless and stupid. I have a hard time getting through LG without making 1 dumb error. It's frustrating.
LR1 -1. OK. Happy with this result.
LR2 -2. Not great but not bad.
RC -3. This was a real pain in the ass. I missed 2 on the IP passage and one on the comparative passage for which I had initially recorded the right answer and only changed it after my review. A dumb error.

93 raw. 171 scaled.

These -8 curves are giving me a hard time. I seem to get -7 and -8s on these a lot while getting -3 or -4 on tests with more generous curves. Not sure why this is.

[Sinra]

I'm going to be drilling RC like mad. I feel like it's key.

PT 53
RC -4 (dammit!)
LR -3
LG -0
LR -1
LR exp -2
92 raw
173 scaled

Feeling better. At least I didn't get another 90 raw, haha. Missed my goal by 2 points!

I took 53 today

LR1 -2
LR2 -3
RC -3
LG -1 (dammit why can't I get 0 every time!!!)

91/172.

However, I had a hell of a time with the common law passage. I am still sort of confused about what the hell it was about. Is that the one that gave you trouble as well? Or was it spread out?

[eliekedourie]

Took PT 52 today after work. Really disappointed with my most recent performances.

Exp. LG -1.
LR1 -2. Fine with this. Not extatic.
LG -3. 2 of these three wrong answers were due to me misreading an important word in the questions. Really dumb.
LR2 -1. Happy about this.
RC -4. I have had real trouble with the RC recently. I'm overthinking answer choices. My gut is right, but I try to think about ways the LSAT is trying to trick me and I end up wasting time and psyching myself out of the right answer. This happened with 3 of the 4 wrong answers on this section.

I'm going to try to go with my gut a bit more in RC. I'm also going to take better care to underline important words in LG questions. I've done this in LR and it's completely solved my periodic problem with misreading a question.

Have any of you had any of the same RC problems I've had recently? What's helped you?