DC_Patent_Law wrote:I'm no guru at this but I'd try taking one of the later tests (e.g. PT 55) to gauge how you do in the newer LSATs. I was surprised by my score drop in LR. This may not happen to you but it might be good to get a metric that is closer to the current trend of tests. /2cents
This is absolutely true. People need to be aware that the new LR questions are much more difficult - "tricky" might be a better word - because they are much more literal in their attempts to use wording to throw people off. They contain subtleties that are much harder to detect and, thus, much harder to respond to when seeking correct answers.
The value of the older LR sections is that they are good practice for learning the "mechanics" pof seeking the correct answers. The logic itself has not changed, nor has the way the test-makers are using it. What is different is the more savvy way the stimuli are written, the wording/language, and the sentence structure(s). More often than in the past, conclusions and subsidiary conclusions are harder to detect. Scope shifts are now scope "re-shifts". Conclusions are more often burried or stated in long sentences, and formal logic is used more often.
In point-at-issue questions, the point of disagreement is less obvious in the language. Assumption questions are much more subtle because there are more topics to juggle in one paragraph. Strengthen and weaken questions now have two "trap" answers instead of just one (notice how it's pretty easy to narrow down to two answers on older tests but now you can only get it down to three with the same effort), and the central assumptions in those questions are harder to ascertain, making it harder to detect the right answer. All of this makes LR much more complicated. People who get 50-52 LR questions correct on older tests often find themselves missing 10-15 questions on the newer ones.
I would absolutely say that a person seeking a high score on the newer tests should devote equal time to LR and RC and slightly less time to LG (35%-35%-30%). You still want to practice LG a lot because one game will still be brutally hard on the newer tests. In the past, the formula was as follows: 1-easy, 1 medium difficult, and 2 difficult (with at least one, maybe both, being brutally hard). Now the formula is 1-2 easy ones, 1-2 medium difficult, and 1 (guaranteed) brutally hard game (ex: "Dinos"). That one brutally hard game, along with LR, makes the curve, whereas past curves were decided by LR and LG.
The newer tests are more "even"; you have to pay attention to everything, because you can't neglect RC anymore either.
