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I seem to have a weakness with MBT Qs, and especially if the stimulus is posed in some pseudo/hidden formal logic form, where is not obvious (i.e., contrapositive),

mostly due to I think, I cant seem to have a good grasp in pre-phrasing an appropriate answer, so I fall into all sort of traps with wrong A.Cs

Anyone with similar problems or strategies in conquering this?

jimmierock wrote:I seem to have a weakness with MBT Qs, and especially if the stimulus is posed in some pseudo/hidden formal logic form, where is not obvious (i.e., contrapositive),

mostly due to I think, I cant seem to have a good grasp in pre-phrasing an appropriate answer, so I fall into all sort of traps with wrong A.Cs

Anyone with similar problems or strategies in conquering this?

Couple things:

1. A contrapositive argument for SHOULD be obvious. Yes, there are some trickier than others, but generally speaking if you are able to diagram well, you can notice necessary conditions being presented, and then being negated. If you are not recognizing this with ease, you need to practice on diagramming, key words and all that before you can be comfortable with Must Be Trues.

2. Prephrasing for Must Be Trues makes little sense. They can ask you anything they want about that stimulus, there is no real way to predict what it will be (except for some where the stimulus is simply A--->B ~B...) Just make sure you are comfortable with the information, have a proper diagram (if it is a diagramming one) and compare the answer choices to what you know. Watch out for quantifiers and mistaken reversals/negations and anything out of scope (usually based on new information, or by being too general).

If I had to guess, as I already mentioned it's prob a lack of feeling totally comfortable with sufficient necessary and everything it entails.

Powerscore's chapter on what they call "formal logic" (it's not) is pretty good for this sort of thing. It gives you a diagramming method for "some," "most," etc. and shows you what inferences are valid. Parsing through those relationships without writing them out can be difficult for Q15+, so it's important to have a diagramming method memorized and in your back pocket.

That stuff goes much deeper than sufficient or necessary assumptions, though. If you're having trouble with either of those, review the relevant chapters in Manhattan/Powerscore/whatever you use, and drill SA and NA regularly until you are very comfortable.

Pay attention to the strength of an answer choice, particularly for mss questions. Words like "most" or "all" are likely to trash an answer even if everything else is good.