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Was PT 61 LR easier than most or was it just me finally catching on?

Nicolena. wrote:Was PT 61 LR easier than most or was it just me finally catching on?

I thought that about PT 60 and then PT 62 came lol

Then, 65 came, then 67, then 70. LOL

Fianna13 wrote:Then, 65 came, then 67, then 70. LOL

hows 70 compared to 69

Can we infer that because 70 was harder that 71 will give us a break?

Edit: This was sarcasm. Lol. But a nice heads up about LR being tricky.

Nicolena. wrote:Can we infer that because 70 was harder that 71 will give us a break?

lol no. Not just because we know that would be flawed reasoning, but also no since 70 being harder is debatable. A ton of TLS people that took 70 on test day scored 170+, I was amazed at how many TLSrs reported 170+ when Oct scores were released. It seemed like a higher volume of reported 170+ scores on TLS than usual, but of course that's just my perception from posts I read the week scores were released so it's far from being a scientifically valid sample! lol

I predict 71 will have some tricky LR questions with cause and effect reasoning that have good trap answers which sound like they point to an alternative cause on first read but actually don't and/or don't relate to the real flaw in the reasoning. LSAC has been doing this in recent tests to trick people that believe whenever there is anything about cause and effect in an argument the CR will always be about an alternate cause. The bobo the doll question on the June 2013 test is one of many good recent examples of questions on newer tests that are much more tricky with CE reasoning along with a trap answer that sounds like a simple alternative cause that would weaken but really isn't. There are more examples in most of the other tests from the last few years too! Be aware, LSAC has recently and purposely made some changes to make many cause and effect argument questions much more tricky than before in some different ways that don't always follow the common predictable patterns that they mostly did before.

Jeffort wrote:

Nicolena. wrote:Can we infer that because 70 was harder that 71 will give us a break?

lol no. Not just because we know that would be flawed reasoning, but also no since 70 being harder is debatable. A ton of TLS people that took 70 on test day scored 170+, I was amazed at how many TLSrs reported 170+ when Oct scores were released. It seemed like a higher volume of reported 170+ scores on TLS than usual, but of course that's just my perception from posts I read the week scores were released so it's far from being a scientifically valid sample! lol

I predict 71 will have some tricky LR questions with cause and effect reasoning that have good trap answers which sound like they point to an alternative cause on first read but actually don't and/or don't relate to the real flaw in the reasoning. LSAC has been doing this in recent tests to trick people that believe whenever there is anything about cause and effect in an argument the CR will always be about an alternate cause. The bobo the doll question on the June 2013 test is one of many good recent examples of questions on newer tests that are much more tricky with CE reasoning along with a trap answer that sounds like a simple alternative cause that would weaken but really isn't. There are more examples in most of the other tests from the last few years too! Be aware, LSAC has recently and purposely made some changes to make many cause and effect argument questions much more tricky than before in some different ways that don't always follow the common predictable patterns that they mostly did before.

Sure. I'm fairly certain the same applies to the classic conditional reasoning flaws, so mistaking sufficient for necessary or vice-versa. 70 has a question like that; #3 on one of the sections.

Otunga wrote:

Jeffort wrote:

Nicolena. wrote:Can we infer that because 70 was harder that 71 will give us a break?

lol no. Not just because we know that would be flawed reasoning, but also no since 70 being harder is debatable. A ton of TLS people that took 70 on test day scored 170+, I was amazed at how many TLSrs reported 170+ when Oct scores were released. It seemed like a higher volume of reported 170+ scores on TLS than usual, but of course that's just my perception from posts I read the week scores were released so it's far from being a scientifically valid sample! lol

I predict 71 will have some tricky LR questions with cause and effect reasoning that have good trap answers which sound like they point to an alternative cause on first read but actually don't and/or don't relate to the real flaw in the reasoning. LSAC has been doing this in recent tests to trick people that believe whenever there is anything about cause and effect in an argument the CR will always be about an alternate cause. The bobo the doll question on the June 2013 test is one of many good recent examples of questions on newer tests that are much more tricky with CE reasoning along with a trap answer that sounds like a simple alternative cause that would weaken but really isn't. There are more examples in most of the other tests from the last few years too! Be aware, LSAC has recently and purposely made some changes to make many cause and effect argument questions much more tricky than before in some different ways that don't always follow the common predictable patterns that they mostly did before.

Sure. I'm fairly certain the same applies to the classic conditional reasoning flaws, so mistaking sufficient for necessary or vice-versa. 70 has a question like that; #3 on one of the sections.

Yeah, that's a tricky one with an awesome trap answer that is easily picked without hesitation while thinking it is 100% the CR beyond any doubt if you aren't careful and don't make sure to really analyze and consider the other answers to verify you aren't falling for a trap. The thing about that one that is different from past LSATs is that the trap describes the SN flaw incorrectly, giving you the opposite of the actual flaw. The trap describes incorrect reversal but the flaw is incorrect negation. They never used to do this in past LSAT history. With flawed method of reasoning questions where the flaw is conditional (incorrect reversal or incorrect negation), until very recently there was never more than one answer choice that described a conditional reasoning error, so as long as you knew the flaw was conditional it was safe to just pick the answer that obviously described conditional reasoning without taking the time to figure out whether it was describing IR or IN. They never used to give you two answers that both described a conditional reasoning error where you had to figure out which description was the correct one. That is very very new! Cudos LSAC!


It's easy to get suckered by good traps early in sections if you rush to judgment about an answer being correct and don't carefully consider contenders since its an early in the section normally easy question where you typically don't find really attractive trap answers.

Putting some really good/tricky attractive trap answers on a few normally easy questions early in an LR section also seems to be a rising recent trend. They also seem to be doing this by setting up things for very easy careless mistakes to be made that you won't even notice and will think you got the question correct without any noticeable trouble/difficulty making the final answer decision. An example of this on a recent test is a point of agreement question with a trap answer that would be correct if it were a point of disagreement question. That one is a question #2 or #3 in its section if memory serves. Tons of people got it wrong because they didn't read the stem carefully and just presumed it said 'disagree' since that's the more common question type with a two speaker stimulus, found what appeared to be the clear answer, thought it was easy, picked it and moved on without a bump in the road thinking they just got an easy point in under a minute from an intimidating looking stimulus that turned out to be easy to understand.

I've noticed various other little tricky things LSAC has been planting more often in earlier easier LR questions to pick-pocket points from careless test takers that are less careful/more cavalier with the first 10 due to overconfidence because of being used to them almost always being pretty straightforward without super good trap answers on almost all tests from years past. It's a nice little LSAC change-up to punish careless test takers that skip steps and/or don't fully consider all five choices on questions in the first 10 in order to save time by thinking that they are easier questions you can get away with not being extra-careful/thorough with by skipping over verification steps and/or steps to make sure you have good reasons to eliminate contenders.

It looks to me like deliberate LSAC attempts to punish students that purposely treat the first 10 with less care and skip analysis/verification steps to save time because it wasn't much of a problem on earlier test forms they used for PTs. As usual, the LSAT continues to evolve and change in little ways here and there with occasional unexpected exceptions to long standing patterns that people get used to during prep. That's part of how they separate the true high ability 170+ test takers from those that get into the mid/high 160s partly by memorizing common patterns and making some answer choice decisions based on pattern related educated guessing strategies/tricks instead of thorough logical analysis and understanding of exactly what is actually going on with the question. Some common and fairly well known pattern/trick answer choice selection/educated guessing strategies that worked for a long time to circumvent needing to do/be able to do the deep analysis and understanding of some hard questions to pick the CR for the right real logical reasons are now under attack by LSAC item writers on modern tests with some new ways they are constructing answer choices! Seriously they are!