Sept. 2014 LSAT (Preptest 73) Question Discussion Forum

[HRomanus]

Missed the damn crayfish question (my S4 LR2 #15) and still don't understand the reasoning. I understand that A is logical within the sense that it means there is still water for the larvae, but it seems counterintuitive that this would help them survive because the only place they would be able to grow is inside the homes of their predators.

I think the big thing to note is that we're told (second sentence) that the larvae can survive only in water.

So, when the other parts of the wetland dry up, 100% of larvae in those dry areas die.

Thus, even if they're predated (this sounds like something tweens do) heavily, if any of them at all survive the predation, then the population is healthier than it would be in all those dried up areas.

Does that help?

It does, and unfortunately that's the thought process I went through on the question. I finished early enough to spend a good 2-3 minutes on this one alone and it frustrated the hell out of me. It seemed too contradictory to say the larvae survive in the homes of the predators - but as you and others have pointed out, the logic is there. Thank you!

[gatesome]

My game 4 setup:

http://i57.tinypic.com/33k42hg.jpg

I thought question 21 was interesting ... answer buried five inferences deep.

http://i61.tinypic.com/n2of2x.jpg

[Wieters]

Why was this test deceptively hard? Was there a weird game, hard RC?

The test didn't have any OMGWTF questions/games, but the level of difficulty was consistent throughout.

I also found that on LR, there was a disproportionate amount of questions where I was choosing an answer because the other four didn't work, even though my choice itself wasn't what I had anticipated or thought fit really well.

[BillsFan9907]

Why was this test deceptively hard? Was there a weird game, hard RC?

The test didn't have any OMGWTF questions/games, but the level of difficulty was consistent throughout.

I also found that on LR, there was a disproportionate amount of questions where I was choosing an answer because the other four didn't work, even though my choice itself wasn't what I had anticipated or thought fit really well.

Yes, this test relied heavily on strong POE skills. If you didn't get those skills, you did relatively poorly on this test. I was able to pull off a 177, so it wasn't so bad.

[xhe02]

Can someone explain Q24 of the first LR ?
Cant figure it out despite have been staring at the question for hours

[xhe02]

Also Q10 of the 2nd LR. can't decide between d and e

[Ron (PowerScore)]

Hey there, XHE!

In response to your question about LR1 Q24, I'll start by pointing out that this is a Resolve the Paradox question. The best way to handle these questions is to keep the prephrase process very simple. First, identify what the surprising situation is. Then, your prephrase is that the correct answer choice will tell you what caused that surprising situation to occur.

Here, for example, the surprising situation is that although nearly all of the city's concertgoers have a strong preference for wider seats and better acoustics in the concert hall -- changes that they know can't be accomplished by simply modifying the hall rather than tearing it down -- most of them do not want to tear down the existing hall and replace it with one that has the features they want.

Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will tell us what caused the concertgoers to take this position. What is it that caused them to say that they don't want the concert hall torn down, even though they can't get the seats or the acoustics they want in that building?

But don't make the mistake of thinking you have to be creative and come up with the reasons yourself! That's a huge time waster, and trying to come up with a specific scenario is just as likely to frustrate you in the answer choices when you don't see it tested. Instead, just go through the answer choices and ask yourself for each one, "is this something that would cause the concertgoers to say they don't want the existing hall torn down."

Answer choice (D), the correct answer choice, does just this. In this well-publicized plan (meaning there's a decent chance the concertgoers would know about it), the concertgoers can get the wider seats and better acoustics they're asking for, but still use the existing structure for another purpose, a public auditorium. So, there's no need to tear down the concert hall. And this lack of a need to tear down the concert hall would tend to cause the concertgoers to say that it should not be torn down.

None of the other answer choices accomplish this same task, of providing something that would cause the concertgoers to oppose tearing down the concert hall.

What do you think?

Ron

[ChemEng1642]

Unrelated to the questions - but I just re-read my essay and it's pretty bad. Already found 2 grammatical errors and some words are barely legible

[The Avatar]

Is it recommended that now we read all the answer choices in the LR section of Lsat since this test especially relied on a heavy process of elimination?

[GreenTee]

Is it recommended that now we read all the answer choices in the LR section of Lsat since this test especially relied on a heavy process of elimination?

Is this a serious question?

Yes, you should obviously read all of the answer choices.

[GreenTee]

Unrelated to the questions - but I just re-read my essay and it's pretty bad. Already found 2 grammatical errors and some words are barely legible

I spent a lot of time correcting stylistic and grammatical errors/word choice after I finished writing, but rather than crossing out like we're supposed to, I made liberal use of my eraser.
So basically my entire writing sample is an illegible mess of scribbled letters stacked on top of other scribbled letters.

[ChemEng1642]

Unrelated to the questions - but I just re-read my essay and it's pretty bad. Already found 2 grammatical errors and some words are barely legible

I spent a lot of time correcting stylistic and grammatical errors/word choice after I finished writing, but rather than crossing out like we're supposed to, I made liberal use of my eraser.
So basically my entire writing sample is an illegible mess of scribbled letters stacked on top of other scribbled letters.

Haha I had a lot of that too

Good thing it doesn't matter!

...right?

[xhe02]

Hey there, XHE!

In response to your question about LR1 Q24, I'll start by pointing out that this is a Resolve the Paradox question. The best way to handle these questions is to keep the prephrase process very simple. First, identify what the surprising situation is. Then, your prephrase is that the correct answer choice will tell you what caused that surprising situation to occur.

Here, for example, the surprising situation is that although nearly all of the city's concertgoers have a strong preference for wider seats and better acoustics in the concert hall -- changes that they know can't be accomplished by simply modifying the hall rather than tearing it down -- most of them do not want to tear down the existing hall and replace it with one that has the features they want.

Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will tell us what caused the concertgoers to take this position. What is it that caused them to say that they don't want the concert hall torn down, even though they can't get the seats or the acoustics they want in that building?

But don't make the mistake of thinking you have to be creative and come up with the reasons yourself! That's a huge time waster, and trying to come up with a specific scenario is just as likely to frustrate you in the answer choices when you don't see it tested. Instead, just go through the answer choices and ask yourself for each one, "is this something that would cause the concertgoers to say they don't want the existing hall torn down."

Answer choice (D), the correct answer choice, does just this. In this well-publicized plan (meaning there's a decent chance the concertgoers would know about it), the concertgoers can get the wider seats and better acoustics they're asking for, but still use the existing structure for another purpose, a public auditorium. So, there's no need to tear down the concert hall. And this lack of a need to tear down the concert hall would tend to cause the concertgoers to say that it should not be torn down.

None of the other answer choices accomplish this same task, of providing something that would cause the concertgoers to oppose tearing down the concert hall.

What do you think?

Ron

Thank you! This is really helpful!

[LDC423]

PT73 is now on Cambridge LSAT.

I'll start off with LR, Q14. Please let me know if my reasoning is solid.

I was down to A and B. I originally read A as saying "takes for granted sales would be EVEN lower if the campaign weren't done." On second glance, I realized it was saying "takes for granted that sales would be lower even if the campaign was not done."

To me, this seems like a cause and effect argument in which it is suggested that the other viewed the campaign as the sole cause of the bad situation. The author doesn't go that far, however. For certain, he is committed to the claim that the campaign is ineffective. There are some implications that he MIGHT think it is a causal factor in the poor sales. The connection is not entirely clear. Even if, however, this is true, there are absolutely no grounds for holding the author thinks that the campaign was the ONLY cause.


I saw B as doing one of two things depending on how strong you wanted to read the causal implication:


1) Assuming that the author makes a commitment to a causal argument, B eliminates it. Campaign was not a cause.
2) Assuming that the author did not go so far as to make a commitment, B leaves open the possibility that there is so much negative pressure on sales, that perhaps the campaign is making it such that the sales have not fallen as much as the otherwise would have.

I feel much better about interpretation 1.

I went through the exact same thought process as you did. However now that I am looking at it again I see the problem. The conclusion is not stating that LRG should not have launched the campaign, rather it is stating that the launched campaign was ill-conceived. Just because Sales went down does not mean the campaign was ill conceived is the flaw.
The main difference between A and B is A talks about if there is or is not a campaign, while B talks about the existence of such a campaign (which there was) and how good or bad (ill conceived it was)

I think.

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.