Most Strongly Supported LSAT Blogs

Since some crazy folks have started circulating rumors about the Logic Games on the LSAT becoming more difficult over the last year or so, I thought it might be appropriate to outline some brutal deductions.

Say hello to the final game from the September 2009 LSAT. In order to get through this game in less than an hour (and not slice your wrists in the process), some crucial deductions were needed.

Let’s take a look (the subject of the game has been slightly altered):

A young princess (not literally) is selecting friends to invite to her big Sweet 16 bash. She must invite at least three friends from among the following seven: Harriett, Liza, Margaret, Penelope, Sigourney, Tabitha, and Wilma. The birthday girl’s parents have placed the following restrictions on the invitations that can go out:

Doesn’t sound too bad, right? This is one of the basic and very common type of games on the LSAT. It involves selecting one group from a larger group. Feeling good, feeling strong, here comes the rules:
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Shakespeare had it all wrong. For aspiring and motivated LSAT students, there is a different question that dominates their consciousness, especially during the early part of their studies: to diagram or not to diagram?

Diagramming is a term that has been coined for actually taking the time to map out the logic involved in a logical reasoning question. For instance, the sentence “If Shakespeare wanted to be understood, he would have written in plain English” can be diagrammed as: SU→PE. The idea is that the diagram can help students to understand the logic of the statement and to ultimately find the correct answer choice. However, this new step tends to bring much frustration for students when they first begin to practice it.

This is indicative of a difficulty most students confront when studying for the LSAT. When you begin to formalize your studies (most notably if you take a prep course), the first thing that we do for you is that we make the test more complicated. When you first take a practice test, you just do things your way. Unfortunately, your way does not work (hence the 132 score and the overwhelming desire to drink).

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