The Official June 2016 Study Group Forum

[Mikey]

174 today on PT 63.

LR -1
LG -0
LR -3
RC -2

RC was still a struggle. I was fairly confident in my answers, which seemed to sort of pay off, but not nearly as confident as one should be!!! The struggle continues.

Yo, you're a beast. Wish I were PTing in the 170's.

Thanks, we'll all get there! I'm trusting in the process... we'll see if it pays off on D-Day.

To be completely honest, I think you will do great in June. I've been seeing all of your PT scores and you do so well. When did you start studying?

I started seriously studying sometime in the middle of January, after a couple of months of doodling and mentally preparing myself to lock in for 5 months. Not to get sappy, but I really do believe you, me, and the others in this thread strike me as the type of people who are capable of harnessing motivation and nailing this test this year. Hard work works!

You, Beenoparte, I like the way you think.

I feel like there is a tightly know group of us in this thread; I am genuinely excited to see how we all do.

Y'all are seriously my motivation. Most of my friends/family really don't get it because they haven't done it - so their ability to relate is really difficult. It's nice to know there are other people out there in the same boat!

Yeah, same here. I have no one to speak to about this stuff besides people on here. I speak about the test at times with family/friends but they don't understand the amount of dedication that is needed for it.

[Pozzo]

A logical equivalent to answer A is: "In at least one case, standard personality tests will detect birth-order effects on personality, if the effects exists."

This reading of A is something I disagree with and is the issue. I read it as "always" in place of "in at least one case". e.g. when one says X will do Y, strictly speaking it means, if one had an instance of X, then it will do Y, in other words, it's guaranteed to do y.

That's fair. The wording is a bit convoluted, but we can negate the original in a couple of other ways that are equally fatal to the argument:

Most straightforward is, "Standard personality tests will not detect at least some..." (It's not just that there are some they will not detect. They will not detect at least some. The lowest "at least some" possible is one, so by saying it won't detect at least some, we're saying it won't detect any.)

Or, "It is not the case that standard personality tests will detect at least some..." (Again, the tests will not detect "at least some," which is the same as detecting none.)

Either is equivalent of saying that these tests will never detect the effects. And if that is the case, then the argument falls apart because these tests are an entirely unreliable indicator of the existence of the effects, and the fact that these tests don't pick up on the effects has no bearing on whether or not they do exist.

[StopLawying]

The Atlantic, Economist, or The New Yorker
Which one of these 3 do you feel is best to read on train/free time to help with reading comp?

[pleadthafif]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

[Mint-Berry_Crunch]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

suh dude

[pleadthafif]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

suh dude

hai

[proteinshake]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

suh dude

hai

hello

[Mint-Berry_Crunch]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

suh dude

hai

hello

Hola

[Mikey]

Think I'm going to crack open LR bible tonight for a YOLO retake.

suh dude

hai

hello

Hola

.iH

[YupSports]

The Atlantic, Economist, or The New Yorker
Which one of these 3 do you feel is best to read on train/free time to help with reading comp?

My vote is the Economist.

I'm into that stuff and it is still dense.

I would also recommend Scientific American for some good science material.

If you want a wide range of stories (idk about the density) check out Monocle.

[ayylmao]

The Atlantic, Economist, or The New Yorker
Which one of these 3 do you feel is best to read on train/free time to help with reading comp?

The Economist is closest to RC passages in terms of style. Not sure it's so dense though; the facts are generally presented clearly and relatively concisely. I think the New Yorker uses more complex language, which is good to train with, but is more roundabout in style than the very direct prose of the Economist.

[appind]

the issue is not the negation, it's what A actually means. if we take A to mean different things, we arrive at different negations.
if A is: "tests will detect some birth effects on personality", then it's by construction ambiguous. i read it as "test (always) detect some birth effects on personality" because of the definitive "will".

the cited examples using "it is not the case"/not do not address this issue because they implicitly assume that A is "tests (sometimes) will detect some birth effects on personality". if one assumes A to be such, then one arrives at the cited negations: "tests will never detect some birth effects on personality" and "it's not the case that tests sometimes will detect some birth effects on personailty". both of these mean that there is no instance when tests will be able to detect at least some birth effects on personality, and so these two negations break the argument. but note that one is arriving at these negations whose meaning we understand breaks the argument, by assuming that implicit in A is "sometimes" instead of "always". if one replaces the implicit "sometimes" with "always" as shown in the last para, then no matter how you negate it, one would arrive at a negation that doesn't break the argument. this is my read but the definitive use of "will" shows a guarantee. this means that in "X will do Y" one can be sure that any instance of an entity of form X always does Y.
it's the meaning of what one is negating and of the result of negation that matters, not how one negates it, as long as one understands what it is doing.

[Mikey]

Gonna try to squeeze in a LG or RC section in today in between all of my papers and studying for this upcoming week, booooo!

[somewhatferal]

PT 55, 175 (-2 LR, -2 RC, -1 LG)

Stupid mistakes, stupid mistakes. Gah. I always use a LG as a fifth section during PT's. Maybe I should switch to LR or RC.

[nerdylsat]

PT 55, 175 (-2 LR, -2 RC, -1 LG)

Stupid mistakes, stupid mistakes. Gah. I always use a LG as a fifth section during PT's. Maybe I should switch to LR or RC.

Out of curiosity and on behalf of many others here, care to tell us how you got so good?

Did you have a high diagnostic, or did you somehow train to this level?

Congrats anyways!

[YupSports]

Slight change in study plans:

Going to be putting in two weeks of deep LG drilling and week of RC drilling.

Then 3 PTs a week until test time, 62 - 77 (may toggle this a bit as needed).

[YupSports]

PT 55, 175 (-2 LR, -2 RC, -1 LG)

Stupid mistakes, stupid mistakes. Gah. I always use a LG as a fifth section during PT's. Maybe I should switch to LR or RC.

Out of curiosity and on behalf of many others here, care to tell us how you got so good?

Did you have a high diagnostic, or did you somehow train to this level?

Congrats anyways!

Yes, please - do share!

[somewhatferal]

I wish I could be more help. I don't think my preparation is replicable. I'm older, and I have essentially been doing tasks similar to the LR and RC sections as a job for the past six years. I wasn't very good at the LG section when I first started, but just becoming familiar with types of games has helped me out a lot. I don't recommend PowerScore or 7Sage's methods because I think they waste too much time (I have seen some 7Sage videos where he draws four different diagrams to figure out all of the possibilities. I think this wastes way too much time!)

Sorry, I know this is a "study group" thread. I shouldn't just post my results if I don't have anything helpful to say.

[appind]

drilled some questions from each section yesterday.

taking pt-18 as a full PT today, hoping for some improvement

[Mikey]

I wish I could be more help. I don't think my preparation is replicable. I'm older, and I have essentially been doing tasks similar to the LR and RC sections as a job for the past six years. I wasn't very good at the LG section when I first started, but just becoming familiar with types of games has helped me out a lot. I don't recommend PowerScore or 7Sage's methods because I think they waste too much time (I have seen some 7Sage videos where he draws four different diagrams to figure out all of the possibilities. I think this wastes way too much time!)

Sorry, I know this is a "study group" thread. I shouldn't just post my results if I don't have anything helpful to say.

Don't think of it like that, keep sharing your progress no matter what, it's motivation!
Also out of curiosity, why do you say that diagramming multiple possibilities is a waste of time? Do you usually just let the questions guide your diagramming?

[carasrook]

ughghhggh i just dropped 4 points below my average for my 5-section pt today. i hate when this happens - it totally kills my confidence and makes me rethink everything

[Mikey]

ughghhggh i just dropped 4 points below my average for my 5-section pt today. i hate when this happens - it totally kills my confidence and makes me rethink everything

Same! I went -11 on a LR section today! I was completely shocked even after BR since my average per LR section is -4 to -6. May have been the fact that I've been studying for exams and doing papers all weekend, so maybe fatigue?

[gonavy!]

Hey guys

I've been studying for about two months, slowly inching up to 161 a few days ago from my cold diagnostic of 154. I took a PT today and scored 155.
This is the 5th PT I've taken and I've been blind reviewing each of them. Should I stop taking PTs and focus on my study materials (currently using 7sage and Lsat trainer..have the bibles but haven't used them yet)? Or should I continue to make PTs part of my routine despite the regression?
Fresh PTs are obviously a finite resource but I also know I should try to train myself for test day conditions. Looking to take my first test in June and then again in October. Thanks for the advice

[appind]

on break during the PT.

had a super hard lg with unexpected games that I barely finished.

[appind]

just finished pt-18.

LG -5!!
LR1 -4
RC -3
LR2 -2

169

the lg was crazy and had two very unusual games g3 and g4. it was hard to understand what g4 was about, but it's possible that with a couple more minutes i might have done much better on the lg. plan to do warmup next time as i didn't do anywarmup and it showed during LG as the first section. LR1 felt hard and i was very slow. somehow first 15 questions take me about 21 minutes. i felt i would miss more in rc than what the score showed. felt pretty good about lr2 so not sure where the 2 misses came from. will be reviewing this over the week.