Most Strongly Supported Forum

[ltowns1]

Does anyone have any advice for Most Strongly Supported questions? I get the difference between MSS and MBT questions, but I'm still struggling with MSS question's to some degree. Ironically, I'm beginning to get better on almost all other question types for some reason in the LR section. I know the answers can be proven in the stimulus, but it's not clicking as much as I would like it to, and as we all know the LSAT can make an answer choice seem completely wrong, even though it's correct.

[Bilka]

One thing that really helped me with MSS questions was being aware of the language used.

Words that the LSAT likes to use and to be wary of in MSS questions: most efficient, best, only, all, any, most, strong adjectives etc.
You should be asking yourself "are any of those words, in context, provable/supported?"

They will usually combine two ideas in the stimulus to push out a MSS answer choice.

[BPlaura]

As Bilka said, you can frequently rule out incorrect answers because they are too strong to be supported by the stimulus. Answer choices that say most, frequently, often, etc., should automatically make you more skeptical (though that's not, by itself, a reason to eliminate the answer choice).

The flip-side is that you should pay attention to strong language in the stimulus, because that type of language can lead to stronger conclusions. For instance, in PT52 S3 Q23, the correct answer is very strong, but the stimulus explicitly states that a dense colony of the bacteria can survive indefinitely, so such a strong statement is clearly supported by the stimulus.

[Rexdan]

One thing that really helped me with MSS questions was being aware of the language used.

Words that the LSAT likes to use and to be wary of in MSS questions: most efficient, best, only, all, any, most, strong adjectives etc.
You should be asking yourself "are any of those words, in context, provable/supported?"

They will usually combine two ideas in the stimulus to push out a MSS answer choice.

^This.

You can think of it as making an LG inference. Get two or more ideas and link 'em up. For nearly any LR question where the stimulus has a lot of conditionals, or information (and if it's particularly dense), I map it out with variables and then refer to my map when I'm looking at the AC's. With this method, I'm able to answer questions of this type fairly quickly.

And example of it having a good amount of information is "most doctors are professionals and most professionals are intelligent; inference is that some doctors are intelligent."

Hope that helps.

EDIT: As BPlaura said, also pay attention to the language. If the stimulus has what I call "beat around the bush" words (some, close to, etc.), then be wary of absolute words in the AC's.

[ltowns1]

Thanks everybody.

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[Rexdan]

One thing that really helped me with MSS questions was being aware of the language used.

Words that the LSAT likes to use and to be wary of in MSS questions: most efficient, best, only, all, any, most, strong adjectives etc.
You should be asking yourself "are any of those words, in context, provable/supported?"

They will usually combine two ideas in the stimulus to push out a MSS answer choice.

^This.

You can think of it as making an LG inference. Get two or more ideas and link 'em up. For nearly any LR question where the stimulus has a lot of conditionals, or information (and if it's particularly dense), I map it out with variables and then refer to my map when I'm looking at the AC's. With this method, I'm able to answer questions of this type fairly quickly.

And example of it having a good amount of information is "most doctors are professionals and most professionals are intelligent; inference is that some doctors are intelligent."

Hope that helps.

EDIT: As BPlaura said, also pay attention to the language. If the stimulus has what I call "beat around the bush" words (some, close to, etc.), then be wary of absolute words in the AC's.

And "most" and "some" conditionals are actually both "some bi-conditionals". So we can make the additional inferences that some professionals are doctors and some people who are intelligent are doctors.

^This is TCR.