Top Law Schools

I am drilling on inference questions right now (BY FAR my worst LR section from my diagnostic) and I am really struggling with how to efficiently make sense of questions that look like this:

Out of everyone that studies for the LSAT, most use TLS. Some of these TLSers use Manhattan, whereas some others use only Powerscore. Other people do not use TLS, but just as often rely on the Manhattan method or Blueprint. Only a few take the LSAT without studying at all. Nonetheless, a majority of the people that take the LSAT score below a 155.

This is a parody of PT33, S3, Q8 but I routinely get these questions wrong. I simply cannot wrap my head around them. What do you guys suggest?

WaltGrace83 wrote:I am drilling on inference questions right now (BY FAR my worst LR section from my diagnostic) and I am really struggling with how to efficiently make sense of questions that look like this:

Out of everyone that studies for the LSAT, most use TLS. Some of these TLSers use Manhattan, whereas some others use only Powerscore. Other people do not use TLS, but just as often rely on the Manhattan method or Blueprint. Only a few take the LSAT without studying at all. Nonetheless, a majority of the people that take the LSAT score below a 155.

This is a parody of PT33, S3, Q8 but I routinely get these questions wrong. I simply cannot wrap my head around them. What do you guys suggest?

On this question, you just need to spot the application of this rule: If most As are Bs and if most As are Cs, then at least some Bs are Cs. From your scenario, I can infer that some people who use TLS score below a 155.

The whole point of a stimulus like that is to give you more information than you can retain by the time you get to the answer choices. You're not going to read that stimulus once and master all the ins and outs of it. Don't try to.

Instead, the way to answer such a question is to read the stimulus once with an effort to absorb as much of it as you can without being disturbed by the fact that you didn't retain it all, and read the answer choices really critically. If you do that, you'll be able to pick off answer choices that are absurd or seem like a stretch, and hone in on (and confirm) the one that's provable in the stimulus. If a stimulus says that 'some people are A and some are B, but all are C,' you have to be able to see an answer choice that says 'most people are B' and immediately eliminate it.

On the question that you referenced, answer choices B, C, D, and E can all be easily eliminated, but answer choice A should have stood out as being obviously provable. Read the first and last sentence of the stimulus again. Most people invest in the stock market without doing any research of their own. A majority of investors in the stock market make a profit. So if most investors are A (don't do research of their own) and most investors are B (make a profit), at least some investors are A and B (making a profit in the stock market and not doing research on their own). If 6/10 people get As and 7/10 of those same people are smart, then you know that at least some smart people get As.

You see now that you don't have to wrap your head around the entire wordy stimulus. You just have to be able to absorb a good deal of what you've read and be able to check the answer choices against the stimulus.

WaltGrace83 wrote:I am drilling on inference questions right now (BY FAR my worst LR section from my diagnostic) and I am really struggling with how to efficiently make sense of questions that look like this:

Out of everyone that studies for the LSAT, most use TLS. Some of these TLSers use Manhattan, whereas some others use only Powerscore. Other people do not use TLS, but just as often rely on the Manhattan method or Blueprint. Only a few take the LSAT without studying at all. Nonetheless, a majority of the people that take the LSAT score below a 155.

This is a parody of PT33, S3, Q8 but I routinely get these questions wrong. I simply cannot wrap my head around them. What do you guys suggest?

Is it sad that I knew exactly what question you were talking about before you even mentioned that it was a parody?

For that question, it's testing your knowledge of quantifiers and how to combine them. The only statements that matter to the correct answer choice are the first and last ones - you can't combine two some statements; you can't combine a most and some statement. So all you're left with are the two most statements.

So, to recap, it's definitely testing your knowledge of quantifier combinations, but also your ability to see what information is important. Here, most of the information was too weak to allow you to draw an inference, so you could safely ignore it.