15-PrepTest 15 Explsjtaken.csoft.net/LSAT/Test Explanations/preptest15.pdf · 2016. 1. 28. · •...

KAPLAN LSAT PREP

LSAT

RELEASED TEST XVEXPLAINED

A Guide to the June, 1995 LSAT

KAPLANThe answer to the test question.

1995 Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, byphotostat, microfilm, xerography or any other means, or incorporated into anyinformation retrieval system, electronic or mechanical, without the written permissionof Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center Ltd.

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SECTION I:

READING COMPREHENSION

LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I

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PASSAGE 1—What Happened to the Dinosaurs?(Q. 1-7)

Topic and Scope: Dinosaur extinction; specifically, various different contemporarytheories for dinosaurs’ disappearance.

Purpose and Main Idea: The author spends most of the time explaining and touting thenewest of three theories (the “volcanic-eruption theory”) as to why the dinosaurs died out.Two earlier theories are described as well, but the author seems to have the mostconfidence in this new one.

Paragraph Structure: Each of the first three paragraphs is devoted to a thumbnaildescription of a theory: the “climatic theory” (¶1) that held sway until the 1980s; the“meteorite-impact theory” (¶2) popular in the ‘80s; and the “volcanic-eruption theory” (¶s3-4), which is supported by newly-discovered evidence in India. The introductorykeyword “Moreover” leads us to expect more information about the new theory, and that’sjust what we get: We learn that the evidence for the other two theories (the change in sealevel and the iridium deposits) supports, or at least is consistent with, the eruption theoryas well.

The Big Picture:

• Sometimes the LSAT writers throw you a real curve when a Reading Comp. sectionbegins—a really complex passage, or one that’s way beyond most everyone’s ken.Happily for the June, 1995 test takers, that wasn’t the case here. The passage’sstructure is as straightforward as can be, what with the theories and keyword“Moreover” clearly signaling the key shifts; and thanks to Jurassic Park, this ishardly a topic that most would find either unfamiliar or scary. On your LSAT, thetestmakers may not be so obliging. Just remember: At least one of those passageswill be of “low difficulty,” like this one, meaning that most people are expected to dowell on it. Find it, and attack it early in the section, even if it’s not printed first.

• Actually, the only examinees who screwed up were those who saw that the topic wasscience and, knee-jerk, hightailed it to another passage. A word to the wise: Evenscience passages can be manageable.

• Whenever the author describes several different points of view, take care to ascertainher views on them: Which, if any, does she especially favor? Here, it’s not too toughto detect the author’s enthusiasm for the volcano theory, but other passages may bemore challenging in this regard.


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The Questions:

1. (C)This choice is a nice paraphrase of information in ¶2, which describes the nuts and bolts ofthe “meteorite-impact theory.”

(A) Au contraire. Lines 5-9 demonstrate that the “climactic theory”—a theory that precededthe “meteorite-impact theory”—could account for the extinction of ocean species at theend of the Cretaceous era.

(B) refers to the details of the “volcanic-eruption theory,” a new theory intended to take theplace of the older “meteorite-impact theory” of the 1980s.

(D) Au contraire aussi. ¶1 says that researchers initially thought that the drop in sea levelthought to be behind the mass extinction episode at the end of the Cretaceous era was theresult of “noncatastrophic geological processes.”

(E) mistakenly attributes an element of the “volcanic-eruption theory” to the “meteorite-impact theory.”

• When a passage discusses several different theories or scenarios, be sure that you’reclear about the details of each—the questions will certainly test to see that you are.

2. (A)The depths of the Earth’s mantle are described in two places, line 28 and line 40, and wehope you kept reading past the first reference because the right answer is yielded by thesecond. Lines 40-41 are choice (A) almost word-for-word.

(B) Only the element iridium is described here, and in fact that’s an element that is presentin the mantle but rare on the Earth’s surface. (B) gets it all cockeyed.

(C) According to lines 27-28, the mantle is rather unstable, and we get no information as towhether things are more stable closer to the surface.

(D) The only reference to CO2 comes in line 24, before the mantle is even mentioned, andall we’re told is that it’s released with lava. Yes, the lava eruption is triggered by mantleinstability, but that’s a long way from what (D) is saying.

(E) As with (C), we’re given no comparison between the mantle and the upper regions.And, anyhow, the mantle (when heated by the core) becomes less dense in places, not“uniformly” so.

• Use key nouns in question stems to help locate answers. Simply skimming for theword “mantle” helps you figure out the only places where the right answer can befound. However, be careful...


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• ...because the first reference you find may not be the only or right one. Wheneveryou think you’ve located an answer, keep reading and searching a bit longer, to beon the safe side. Here, if you give up when you see line 28, you may become temptedby distortions in choices (B) and (E). But if you check further and light on line 40,your extra care pays off.

3. (D)Lines 39-43 say that the Earth’s mantle is rich in iridium, while its surface doesn’t havemuch of the stuff. Hence, we can infer that Cretaceous era lava (lava is just heated rockfrom the Earth’s interior) “was richer in iridium” than surface rock.

(A) is beyond the scope of the passage, which never compares Cretaceous era lava withmeteorites in terms of their respective carbon dioxide content.

(B) Au contraire. Lines 29-32 indicate that lava is no more dense than—and may well be lessdense than—the molten rock just above the Earth’s core.

(C) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the Earth’s climate was changed bymassive volcanic eruptions, not by the release of iridium hexaflouride, which was simply abyproduct of those eruptions.

(E) The “volcanic-eruption theory” states that Cretaceous era lava distributed iridiummore evenly on the Earth’s surface than meteorite impacts could have; it doesn’t, however,claim that the lava was richer in iridium than meteorites.

• Don’t be taken in by choices like (A), (B), (C) and (E) here, which seem plausible on afirst read through, but which actually distort the content of the text.

4. (A)What could be more of a slam dunk? If you pre-phrased an answer after reading thepassage but before reading the choices, it’s possible that you came up with (A) almostword-for-word.

(B), (C) “Attacking”? “Inadequacies”? The author isn’t critical of any of the theories. She’sjust reporting on which theories have held sway when. And (B)’s implication that morethan one theory was popular before the 1980s is just inaccurate, as line 10 makes clear.

(D) implies that the topic and scope of the passage focus on general principles of scientificinquiry, and the relationship between evidence and theories. But no “general assertion” ismade; this passage is, as noted above, a straightforward examination of dinosaur extinctiontheories, based largely on chronology.

(E) is a mess. No “skepticism” is confirmed, and the “view held prior to the 1980s” is butone of the three theories explained, not the highlight of the passage.


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• Many Reading Comp. questions are pretty easy, and many Reading Comp. wronganswers are pretty lame. Case in point. Even if you’re struggling with this section ingeneral, there will be questions that you can handle without much strain.

5. (D)This choice is an excellent paraphrase of the information contained in lines 42-47.

(A) is beyond the scope of the passage, which only discusses possible developments at theend of the Cretaceous era.

(B) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the increase in atmospheric iridium andthe drop in sea level were both caused by volcanic activity; there was no direct connectionbetween the drop in sea level and the rise in atmospheric iridium levels.

(C) Again, the extinction of ocean species at the end of the Cretaceous era, according to thevolcanic theory, was due to volcanic activity, not to rising levels of iridium in theatmosphere.

(E) The “volcanic-eruption theory” never claims that iridium is released into theatmosphere through “normal geological processes.” This last phrase is associated with the“climactic theory” discussed in ¶1.

• If a question stem points you to a particular set of lines or a particular paragraph, goback and reread the relevant text before endorsing any of the choices. Otherwise youmight fall for a choice that’s wrong for a very subtle reason—a reason that you mighthave missed on an initial reading of the passage.

6. (B)Lines 54-57 say that, according to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the gradual fall in sealevel was the result of the upward movement of diapirs toward the Earth’s surface.

(A) Lines 26-34 demonstrate that this theory makes assumptions about the temperature ofmolten rock just above the Earth’s core.

(C) is beyond the scope of the text, which doesn’t discuss episodes of mass extinctionbefore the one at the end of the Cretaceous era.

(D) While the “volcanic-eruption theory” explains the distribution of iridium on theEarth’s surface, it doesn’t try to explain either the relative scarcity of this element on theEarth’s surface or its relative abundance in meteorites.

(E) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” iridium should be distributed relativelyevenly in this layer of clay.

• When most of the questions in a set focus on one theory or issue or scenario, use theknowledge that you’ve acquired in answering the easier questions to help you withthe tougher ones.


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7. (B)The “volcanic-eruption theory” claims that volcanic activity caused the climactic changesthat resulted in the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous era. If similarvolcanic activity had occurred at other times, but had not resulted in climactic changes,then we’d have to think twice about whether this theory is in fact on the right track.

(A) The “volcanic-eruption theory” claims that iridium hexaflouride comes from theEarth’s interior. Hence, the theory wouldn’t be called into question if meteorites werefound to have only minor quantities of the stuff. If anything, this evidence would tend tostrengthen the theory.

(C) The existence of other episodes of mass extinction would have no bearing on the“volcanic-eruption theory,” which (so far as we know, anyway) concerns only the massextinction at the end of the Cretaceous era.

(D) The “volcanic-eruption theory” doesn’t deny that meteorites hit the Earth at the end ofthe Cretaceous era; it simply claims that, however frequent these impacts may have been,they can’t account for the physical evidence associated with the mass extinction at the endof this era.

(E) If marine species are in fact more vulnerable to sudden changes in sea level than togradual changes, this fact would in no way undermine the notion that they could’vesuccumbed to a gradual change at the end of the Cretaceous era, as the “volcanic-eruptiontheory” suggests.

• In Strengthen/Weaken questions, be sure that you’re clear about whether you’rebeing asked to find the choice that strengthens or weakens the theory, scenario, etc.Why? Because you can be sure that if you’re asked, say, to find the choice thatstrengthens the theory or scenario, there’ll be wrong choices that weaken it, and vice-versa.


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PASSAGE 2—Women and Folklore(Q. 8-15)

Topic and Scope: Folklore studies; specifically, a recent shift in interest to womenfolklorists.

Purpose and Main Idea: The author sets out to provide evidence as to the increasedinterest in women folklorists. While the passage begins with a description of another shift—to “the folk” (performers) and away from just “the lore” (stories)—notice that the authornever gets back to that until ¶4. The bulk of his interest is women performers.

Paragraph Structure: ¶1 lays out the topic, scope, and shifts described above, and ¶2provides specifics as to the shift to interest in women: a specific element of what’s been truein folklore “until recently” (compare line 2 to line 13), and a specific example of how thingsare different.

¶3 first takes us back a century—to show that this interest in women folklorists isn’t uniqueto the present day—and then highlights the content, pros, and cons of two contemporarystudies of two women folklorists. ¶4’s focus is defined by lines 52-53—brief speculation asto the potential “result[s] of this line of study”—both the increased emphasis on womenand the interest in “the folk” rather than just “the lore.”

The Big Picture:

• Early on you should listen keenly for keywords that hint at overall structure. Here,for instance, “It has become...a truism...until recently” clearly tells you that, in theauthor’s mind, that truism no longer holds. Figure out the truism and you have theauthor’s p.o.v. in the bag!

• You must listen for, recognize, and interpret keywords throughout your reading, ofcourse, not just at the beginning.

• Many students reported some initial confusion as to what “the lore was often morestudied than the folk” meant. LSAT authors will often toss in a figure of speech likethis—simply to see whether it throws you! Of course, the author immediately adds“That is,” (line 3)—indicating that the phrase is about to be redefined. (And, ofcourse, this is all something of a curve, because the author spends more time on therole of women than on the folk vs. lore stuff anyhow.)

• Always remember: If a difficult phrase or concept is important enough, the authorwill define it more clearly for you before too long. (And if it’s not important, whocares what it means?)


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The Questions:

8. (E)This choice nicely captures the author’s topic, scope, and purpose.

(A) According to lines 7-9, folk performers, as opposed to just their works, began to getattention from the early 1970s. The increased emphasis on women, the text implies, is aneven more recent phenomenon. Besides, the precise date when scholars first began to giveattention to the contributions of women folklorists is a mere detail.

(B) nicely sums up the gist of ¶4, but certainly doesn’t qualify as the passage’s main point.

(C) Lines 38-48 indicate that recent works about women folklorists don’t focus primarilyon the “the problems of repertoire analysis.”

(D) The text claims that folklore studies have shifted from an almost exclusive emphasis onfolklore itself to an interest in the people who transmit it. (D) makes a quite different claim.

• In global questions, you’ve got to look for the choice that comes to grips with theentire passage. Steer clear of choices that focus on individual details or ¶s.

9. (E)¶2’s purpose, as noted above, is to provide examples of the new trend toward focusing onwomen in folklore studies, and the author asserts that The Dynamics of Folklore is a “telling”example—“perhaps more telling,” even, than several recent studies in which women arecentral.

(A) What’s “too soon to tell” is the extent of the shift (line 18-20), but the author has no suchreservations as to whether women are coming to the forefront.

(B) Weigle & Farrer are looking backwards to traditional folklore collection, and TheDynamics is an example of the new trend, so the latter couldn’t possibly be there to “refute”the former. In any case, lines 18-21 act as a transitional sentence clearly separating the twodetails.

(C) Wrong ¶. Repertoire analysis doesn’t show up until ¶3.

(D) may be highly tempting to less than careful readers, but ¶2 is solely about the newinterest in women folklorists. It sidesteps the “performer vs. material” distinction that’sraised in ¶s 1 and 4 and highlighted in (D).

• As you read, your favorite keywords should be Emphasis Keywords (like “Perhapsmore telling”), because they will always help you to differentiate what truly mattersto the author from the factual and the tangential.

• As often as not, a “purpose of a reference” question like this one is a “purpose of theparagraph” question. Remember what the paragraph in question is there for, andyou can usually get a quick point.


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10. (C)The folklorists mentioned in the last ¶ are concerned with studying folklore in its largercultural “context,” and in understanding the different ends to which it is put by men andwomen. The book in (C) reflects these two interests.

(A) overlooks the male/female distinction made by current folklore researchers.

(B) gets the male/female distinction right, but misses the cultural emphasis of currentscholarship.

(D) reflects the historical emphasis on the substance of folklore itself to the exclusion ofthose who transmit it.

(E) distorts a detail from the wrong ¶—¶1.

• In choices that ask you to go outside of the passage itself, look for the choice that isanalogous to or parallels the relevant information in the passage.

11. (B)This choice captures the essence of lines 7-10.

(A) Folklore research has recently been concentrating on the differences, not the similarities,in the ways that men and women use folklore.

(C) This choice distorts a detail from the wrong ¶—¶3.

(D) Au contraire. Folklore research has increasingly sought to place folklore in its propercultural context.

(E) Since the early 1970s, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in individuals whotransmit folklore.

• Note how you could have used the date (the 1970s) in the question stem to zero in onlines 7-10, where the answer to this question is to be found. In general, use whateverinformation the question stem gives you to focus your search for the correct answer.


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12. (A)Early folklorists, remember, concentrated on the folklore itself, and not on the people whotransmitted the stuff. Why? Because these folklorists felt that the performers were notcreative people who contributed to the material itself.

(B) is beyond the scope of the passage, which discusses scholarship about performers offolklore, not the views of the performers themselves.

(C) is also beyond the scope of the passage, which, again, focuses on scholarship about folkperformers. There’s no real discussion about folklore itself, let alone whether it underwentchange from generation to generation.

(D) distorts the gist of lines 13-18, which state that early folklorists tended to downplay thecontributions of women performers. That’s quite different from saying that early folkloriststhought that women didn’t have much of a role in transmitting folklore.

(E) The male/female distinction regarding the meaning of a piece of folklore was not onemade by early folklorists. This is a distinction made by contemporary scholars.

• The correct answer to any inference question will always stick very close to the spiritof the text. If you have to work very hard to endorse a choice, it’s probably wrong.

13. (A)Before the early 1970s, folklorists studied folklore but paid no attention to the people whowere involved in transmitting it. Likewise, the anthropologist in (A) studies “implements”(i.e., tools) but pays no attention to the people who used those implements.

(B)-(E) None of these choices reflects the basic pattern of pre-1970s scholarship on folklore:an emphasis on a “cultural product” combined with a lack of interest in those who actually“use” the product.

• Note how this question probes the exact same issue as the previous question. It’squite common on LSAT Reading Comp. for two or three questions in a set to dealwith the same issue; so be on the lookout for connections among questions. Useyour answers to the easier questions to help you solve the tougher ones.


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14. (D)According to the last ¶ of the text, current folklore scholarship is concerned with analyzingthe links between specific pieces of folklore and the larger society from which it emerged.Hence, “context” here refers to the “environment” and “circumstances” surrounding apiece of folklore.

(A), (C), and (E) are all beyond the scope of the passage, which doesn’t deal either with theinternal relationships among different parts of a piece of folklore or with the connectionbetween folklore and physical locale.

(B) The text doesn’t delve into the issue of successive interpretations of the same piece offolklore by different scholars.

• “Vocabulary-in-context” questions are uncommon on the LSAT, but you may seeone on test day. If you do, read the lines around the word or phrase in question toget a sense of how it’s used in the text.

15. (B)Abraham’s book is “notable” (line 43) but “unfortunately” (line 46) lacks a key element, andthat amounts to less than 100% endorsement.

(A) The “approval” cannot be “wholehearted” given lines 46-48.

(C), (D), and (E) all ignore the reference to Abraham’s book being “notable.” (Moreover,they’re all so close in meaning that it’s almost impossible to choose among them.)

• When two or more choices are functionally identical, none of them can be correct,because the right answer must be categorically correct and the other fourcategorically wrong.


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PASSAGE 3—Pocock and Political Discourse(Q. 16-21)

Topic and Scope: Pocock’s approach to political discourse; specifically, his use oflinguistic analysis to interpret the political discourse of the past.

Purpose and Main Idea: The author’s purpose is to describe and critique Pocock’smethodology. His specific main idea is that Pocock’s methodology is a valuable tool forunderstanding past political discourse, even if it doesn’t fully explain each and everyhistorical document.

Paragraph Structure: ¶1 describes Pocock’s basic methodology and compares it(favorably) to traditional methods of interpreting political texts of the past. ¶2 describesPocock’s work: how he has applied his methodology to investigate “civic humanism” ineighteenth-century England.

¶3 continues the discussion of Pocock’s work, noting that his analysis of political discoursein eighteenth-century America doesn’t ring as true as his analysis of English politicaldiscourse. Nevertheless, the author ends the passage by saying that, although Pocock’swork isn’t entirely on the mark, his methodology is certainly on the right track.

The Big Picture:

• The passage begins unpromisingly. Take the opening sentence, for instance: Manyexaminees’ heads were swimming as early as line 7. Note, too, the sleight-of-hand interms of topic and scope: Pocock disappears from the passage until line 22, yet turnsout to be the central figure. This kind of thing is very rare in LSAT passages. Andthe passage stays about as difficult as it begins.

• The answer, of course, is to get a lot of mileage out of the other three passages—which do turn out to be more manageable—and try to budget your time so that youend up having more than the average 8 mins. or so when you finally take thispassage on.


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The Questions:

16. (C)This choice neatly captures the author’s topic, scope, and purpose; and it clearly echoesthe last sentence of the passage in its critical approval of Pocock’s work.

(A), (B) “Civic humanism” (A) and “eighteenth-century political texts” (B) are certainlyprominent aspects of this passage. But the main focus of this text is on Pocock’smethodology and its application to eighteenth-century political texts. Yet neither of thesechoices even mentions Pocock.

(D) concentrates on a detail that emerges only in ¶3.

(E) plays on a detail in ¶1.

• The answer to many questions in a Reading Comp. question set often ties intoinformation at the end of the passage. So, a word of advice: Don’t just skim over thelast sentences of the passage on the assumption that they don’t contain importantinformation.

17. (C)The association of English whigs and “a vocabulary of economic progress” is explicitlymade in lines 32-34, but this passage is so dense that you are perhaps to be forgiven if youmissed it.

(A) Tempting if your outside associations of Jefferson label him as a populist or“progressive,” but we’re specifically told that, to Pocock, Jefferson echoed Tory vocabulary(lines 42-45). The author disagrees, of course, but the focus of the question is Pocock’s view.

(B) To make this choice work you have to go to way too much trouble. Once you hearPocock label Jefferson a closet Tory (lines 42-45), you have to assume that Jefferson’sopponents, the Federalists, were therefore closet Whigs, and then assume that theFederalists must therefore have adopted the Whig political vocabulary mentioned aparagraph ago. Yikes! Far less risky to grab the explicit right answer in lines 32-34.

(D), (E) Au contraire. The Tories are cited as the antithesis of the Whigs, and the rurallandowners are identified with the former. Both groups’ vocabulary, inferably, is that “ofpublic spirit and self-sufficiency” (lines 29-30), not “economic progress.”

• This is a rare LSAT question in that we are asked to do little more than locate adetail. Why is it rare? Because it’s usually so easy to find an explicit reference thatthey don’t waste a question on it. Why do we get one here? Because this passage isunusually impenetrable, so quickly finding anything specific in it is evidence ofskill. Nothing happens by accident in the creation of an LSAT.


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18. (D)To the author, “Pocock’s ideas have proved fertile” (lines 39-40), and thus it is fitting “toapplaud the historian [that’s Pocock, in case you have fallen asleep by the end] who” (lines59-60) while not 100% successful, has made political vocabularies a vital topic. Theauthor’s attitude, then, is much more positive than negative.

(A) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong. “Fruitful” is positive enough as a characterization of one ofPocock’s key assumptions, but “cant” (line 39) is Namier speaking of political language inthe 1700s, and is way too negative to ascribe to the author as a judgment on Pocock.

(B) “Sharp” is positive, but as used here it describes a “contrast’ (line 16), not acharacteristic of Pocock. And “elitist” at line 46 is Jefferson’s characterization of EnglishTories.

(C) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong, but in reverse order. “Controversial” is applied to some ofPocock’s theories, but the “naiveté” is that of the theorists who preceded Pocock.

(E) “Importance” sounds okay, but in line 55 it’s used in connection with differenteighteenth-century political vocabularies, not Pocock. “Simply” doesn’t have eitherpositive or negative overtones.

• If you kept in mind the author’s generally positive attitude toward Pocock’s work,you should have zeroed in on choice (D) rather quickly.

19. (B)This choice nicely paraphrases the author’s criticism (lines 17-21) of the method of politicalanalysis used in the 1950s.

(A) The keyword “while” (line 13) indicates that the author contrasts the assumptions ofthe 1950s with the way literary historians derive the meaning of a political text.

(C) is beyond the scope of the passage, which never suggests that political texts can be“read in...different ways” depending on one’s philosophic bent.

(D) This is an assumption made by Pocock, not analysts of the 1950s.

(E) The author is critical of the 1950s methodology for assuming that historical knowledgewasn’t relevant to the interpretation of documents.

• Whenever you’re given a line number in the question stem, the answer to thequestion will be in the lines around that number. Don’t endorse any choice thatstrays too far from the relevant portion of text.


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20. (D)In lines 41-54, the author argues that Pocock erred in applying the same “linguisticdichotomy” to both England and America. What works for England, the author asserts,doesn’t necessarily work for America.

(A) is beyond the scope of the passage. Pocock concerns himself with political discourseonly.

(B) It’s the author, not Pocock, who “denigrates” the role of analytic philosophers inanalyzing political texts.

(C), (E) The author wholeheartedly endorses Pocock’s interpretation of eighteenth-centurypolitical discourse in England.

• This is an excellent example of why it’s important to keep track of the gist of eachparagraph of the passage. If you remembered that the author critiques Pocock onlyin the last paragraph, you could have gone straight there and quickly discovered that(D) is correct.

21. (A)¶1 describes Pocock’s basic method of studying political discourse; ¶s 2 and 3 describe theapplication of this method to the cases of eighteenth-century England and America; and ¶3evaluates the merits of Pocock’s method in light of its application to these cases. (A)reflects this sequence.

(B) The author has reservations about Pocock’s work, and he states them after apresentation of the evidence.

(C) What hypothesis? This passage describes and evaluates a scholarly mode of inquiry.

(D) The author does evaluate Pocock’s work and does suggest a future direction forresearch, but this choice says nothing about all of the description of Pocock’s work.

(E) What comparisons and contrasts? What categories of evaluation? What framework?

• If you’ve got a good grasp of the structure and purpose of the passage, questionswith abstract-sounding answer choices won’t be difficult to decipher.


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PASSAGE 4—Black Economic Progress(Q. 22-27)

Topic and Scope: Black economic progress; specifically, the effects civil rights laws andeducational opportunities have had on Black economic progress.

Purpose and Main Idea: The author’s purpose is to counter an argument regarding Blackeconomic progress. Her specific main idea is that civil rights laws, not increasededucational opportunities, account for recent Black economic progress.

Paragraph Structure: ¶s 1 and 2 are descriptive in nature. ¶1 outlines the relevant civilrights laws, while ¶2 explains the “continuous change” hypothesis, which argues that Blackeconomic progress should be attributed to improved educational opportunities ratherthan civil rights laws.

¶s 3 and 4, to the contrary, are argumentative in nature. In ¶3, the author cites severalreasons to explain why educational opportunities can’t account for Black economicprogress. In ¶4, she claims that the economic progress made by Blacks since the mid-1960sis directly attributable to the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.

The Big Picture:

• Not a promising place to begin work on the Reading Comp. section. Why? Theauthor’s voice doesn’t enter the picture until ¶3. The first couple of ¶s bombard youwith a lot of detail without giving you any clear signals about where the passage isheaded. In general, it’s best to work first on passages where topic, scope, andauthorial purpose are clear early on. These passages lend themselves to scoringquick and easy points.

• When a passage contains a lot of details, it’s easy to get bogged down in them. Don’tlet this happen to you on test day. Remember, you’re only going to get questionedabout one or two details. As you read through the passage, move past detailsquickly, noting where they appear, so that you can look them up easily should youhave to.

The Questions:

22. (E)Title VII prohibits all employers “from making employment decisions on the basis of race.”Executive Order 11,246, on the other hand, concerns only government contractors. In otherwords, Title VII “governs hiring practices in a wider variety of workplaces.”

(A), (B) It’s Executive Order 11,246 that calls for monitoring employers to ensure minorityrepresentation (A) and deals with government contractors (B).

(C) and (D) are beyond the scope of the passage, which never brings up the issues of wagediscrimination (C) or minority representation in government (D).


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• If you reread ¶1, this question yields a quick and easy point. If you try to answer ona vague recollection of the text, you can quickly lose that point. If you’re unsureabout a detail, reread, reread, reread!

23. (B)Lines 30-32 state that, in the mid-1940s, Blacks were catching up to Whites in amount ofschooling, but were not yet equal. (B) makes precisely the same point in a different way.

(A), (C), and (D) are all beyond the scope of the passage. There’s no mention of Whiteschool expenditures (A), Black or White school curriculums (B), or the general quality ofWhite schools (D).

(E) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong. Lines 34-35 say that teachers at Black schools did experience wageincreases in the mid-1940s, but we aren’t told whether wages increased at a greater or lesserrate than wages for teachers at White schools.

• In inference questions, it’s common to find choices that address issues that thepassage doesn’t discuss. Make sure that the choice you endorse is in fact dealt within the text.

24. (C)The author’s specific main idea, as we’ve already mentioned, is that Black economicprogress should be attributed to civil rights legislation, not to better educationalopportunities. In making this argument, she rebuts the “continuous change” hypothesis,which asserts just the opposite.

(A) The author contends that the “continuous change” hypothesis is incorrect, not that it’sincomplete.

(B), (D) The author does indeed discuss both the “impact of education” (B) and “Blackeconomic progress before and after the 1960s” (D), but these are mere details intended tosupport her larger argument.

(E) The author provides her own perspective about the factors behind Black economicprogress, not the “current view.”

• A simple “verb scan” eliminates choices (B) and (D), because this passage isargumentative, not descriptive. A “verb scan” can often be very helpful in narrowingdown the choices in global questions.


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25. (C)This choice neatly summarizes the essence of lines 12-16.

(A), (D), (E) All we’re told about continuity theorists is that they don’t believe thatlegislation accounts for recent Black economic progress; we aren’t told anything regardingtheir general attitude about legislation’s effects on discrimination.

(B) Continuity theorists claim that Blacks have made progress in education, but they don’tascribe this progress to the law.

• Correct choices will always stick close to the spirit of the text. If you have to gothrough a lot of mental gymnastics to justify a choice, look for another choice.

26. (A)This concession is sandwiched between information intended to bolster the claim that civilrights laws have contributed to Black economic progress. Hence, its meant to strengthenthat claim by explaining away a possible objection to it.

(B) The only cause of Black economic progress that the author cites is civil rightslegislation.

(C), (D) The author concedes nothing to the continuity theorists (C). Nor does she alter herargument in light of their hypothesis (D).

(E) This is scope of the entire passage, not just the lines that come after 60.

• When a question asks about the why of a detail, read the lines around the detail itselfto get a sense of the context in which it appears. This is the key to understandingwhy the author put the detail in the text.

27. (D)The “continuous change” hypothesis claims that Black economic progress is unrelated togovernment actions. Similarly, (D) features a scenario in which progress is made withoutgovernment assistance.

(A), (B), (C), (E) In each of these scenarios, a problem is solved through governmentintervention.

• If one choice differs from the rest in a fundamental way, it’s a good bet that it’s thecorrect answer.

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SECTION II:

LOGICAL REASONING

LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II

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1. (A)By providing a rationale for prohibiting an otherwise legal activity—namely, harm towhich others must be exposed—(A) justifies Walter’s recommendation for the airlines.Smoking is that otherwise legal activity, and the nonsmokers on a plane are the “others”who can’t avoid harm.

(B) “Only if” is the tipoff here. Walter’s purpose isn’t to describe a precondition for a banon smoking, but to recommend a ban in one specific situation. Even if (B) matched up wellto every element of Walter’s argument—which it doesn’t, because the reference to “mostsituations” has no connection to what Walter says—(B) still wouldn’t justify his proposal,but would simply establish a condition necessary for a smoking ban.

(C) The “legal activity” would have to be smoking, but how would one “modify” it? Byusing a cigarette holder? C’mon.

(D) is a justification for keeping smokers out of planes, not for keeping planes free ofsmoke.

(E) is a justification for making an activity, presumably smoking, “legal in all situations.”This one is way off.

• A “principle” question is generally nothing more than a matter of matching up thetopic, scope, and terms of the argument to the choices.

• In such questions, be sure to translate carefully the abstract elements of the answerchoices to the specific elements of the stimulus.

2. (D)“. . . your challenge is ineffectual, since you are simply jealous. . . .” Those nine words areall you need to answer this “logical flaw” question, and having read them you should havejumped to the choices and grabbed (D). One is never permitted to rebut an opponent bycriticizing his or her personality, character, or motives. Doing so is called an ad hominemattack, but LSAC doesn’t expect you to know the Latin term; (D) is how the testmakerstypically word it.

(A) The chemist restates no claim, and the use of the Evidence Keyword “since” establishesthat he does offer evidence. It’s not effective evidence, but it’s evidence nonetheless.

(B) is only tempting if you decide that since the physicist believes that “measurements andcalculations are inaccurate,” the chemist must believe that they are accurate. But as we’venoted, the chemist disagrees with the physicist on personal grounds, not on the grounds ofaccuracy.

(C) Nope, in this context “solve” has only one meaning: to locate the answer to a problem.

(E) To “rest on a contradiction” means to base your argument on two premises that cannotboth be true. The chemist does contradict, or take issue with, the physicist, but there are noconflicting premises within the chemist’s argument.


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• An accusation of personal attack is often made in LSAT answer choices when thequestion is “What’s the flaw?” Select it only if the speaker does, in fact, slam his/heropponent. If there’s no personal attack, the speaker is committing some other flaw.

3. (E)The argument proposes a cause-and-effect relationship: Because ulcer patients possessedthis bacteria strain, and someone accidentally ingested the strain and got his first ulcer,therefore the strain probably brings on ulcers. Hard to prove, but easy to rebut: If one wereto find test subjects who possess the bacteria strain but no ulcer, that would certainly tossthe theory out the window, wouldn’t it? Now, (E) found no such test subjects out of a largesample: Many people without ulcers were examined and no traces of the bacteria strainwere found. Hence, (E) supports the reasoning by short-circuiting a major possibleexception.

Think of it in formal logic terms. The stimulus essentially argues that “If you have thebacteria strain, then you’ll get an ulcer,” the contrapositive of which is “If you don’t havean ulcer, then you won’t have the bacteria strain.” And there they are in (E), 2,000 peoplewho fit that definition—no ulcer, and no bacteria either.

(A) A secondary disease is outside the scope of an investigation of whether a particularcause results in a particular effect.

(B) The stimulus doesn’t argue that the bacteria causes only ulcers, so the presence orabsence of other ailments is irrelevant.

(C) Even if we accept that one can learn about human diseases from studying otheranimals—a notion that comes from without the stimulus, not from within—the absence ofulcers in (C) would weaken the case for the causal agent, not strengthen it.

(D) appeals to an expert’s authority. Phooey. Experts can be wrong.

• To strengthen an argument doesn’t mean to prove it. It means to strengthen theconnection between evidence and conclusion. One way to do so, as in Question 3here, is to counter a possible objection to that connection.

• LSAT wrong answers often appeal to authority. Never choose answers like (D)—unless, of course, the stimulus argument is appealing to authority and you’re askedfor the logical flaw.

4. (D)The stimulus conclusion—to which we seek a parallel—is hypothetical: Should one of thesetest subjects own a pet, he or she would have a lower average blood pressure. The evidence?Lowered blood pressure apparently caused by petting animals. (D) has it right. (D) usesthe relaxing caused by a short boat ride in the same way that the stimulus uses the lowerblood pressure caused by animal petting: as evidence for the hypothesis that ownership ofan object (a boat and a pet, respectively) would cause a general improvement of the trait(relaxing and lower b.p., respectively).


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(A) is only superficially similar to the stimulus. Its evidence lacks the sense of one actionhaving a particular effect on one limited group of people, and its conclusion fails to allegethat ownership of an object would have a greater effect.

(B),(C) Each errs by focusing on a policy recommendation—retaining a car and dumpingcertain plants, respectively. The stimulus never recommends anything; it predicts whatwould happen (lower blood pressure) if the test subjects owned a pet.

(E), like (A), may be tempting because of its hypothetical conclusion. But in the stimulus,petting an animal and owning a pet are two different things—which is in fact the root of theflawed logic: Since they are different things, one cannot assume that the salutary effectcaused by petting an animal would be repeated, let alone intensified, by pet ownership.But (E)’s one coat vs. two coats lacks that difference. Two coats of paint probably wouldmake for a whiter fence.

• Your #1 tactic in Parallel Reasoning questions should always be to explore the natureof the evidence and conclusion. What kind of conclusion is drawn, and what kind ofevidence used?

5. (A)This discrepancy (or “paradox”) hinges on the definition of “best bill collector.” How canhe be the best if his collection rate is the worst? Maybe you were able to predict the answerand maybe you weren’t, but we hope you recognized it as soon as you saw it: The reasonhis collection rate is so bad is that he’s assigned to the hardest-core cases—as would befitthe best employee in the firm.

(B) is akin to (D) back in Question 3. What Young’s co-workers think of him is as irrelevantto this paradox as the expertise of the stomach researcher is to the cause of ulcers.

(C) deepens the paradox, by suggesting that his crummy rate of collections is in fact hisnorm.

(D) is laughably irrelevant—though if you chose (D) you’re probably not laughing. We’renot told whether Young’s credit dept. job involved collections, and if it did, whetherYoung was good or bad at it. Not that any of that would make any difference to hisperformance at this job.

(E) Length of tenure is irrelevant too, having nothing to do with Young’s collection ratebelying his status as the best collector.

• A paradox usually emerges when the arguer makes a faulty assumption. Identify thatassumption and you usually will have resolved the paradox. And speaking ofassumptions. . . .


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6. (B)The author sees a bit of a paradox here: Ancient primates, such as the one whose jawbonewas found in Namibia, lived in dense forests, yet today Namibia is dry and treeless. Toresolve this paradox, the author concludes that Namibia’s landscape must have changedover the centuries, but that assumes that that ape did, in fact, live in or near Namibia—choice (B). If it didn’t—if it wandered into Namibia far from its forested homeland andthereupon expired, or if perhaps the jawbone was blown by the wind or carried bysomeone to that spot—then Namibia’s terrain need not have changed at all. Since (B), iffalse, would weaken the argument, it is a necessary assumption.

(A) Modern apes are outside the scope of this argument. It’s modern Namibian terrain andancient apes that are at issue.

(C) Certainly the author believes that at least one ape—the one whose jawbone wasfound—lived in Namibia between 10 and 15 million years ago. But apes prior to 15 millionyears ago are outside the scope.

(D) Why apes lived in dense forests may or may not have anything to do with their diet.And (D), like (A), errs by mentioning modern apes.

(E) provides an explanation as to how the change in Namibian terrain might have takenplace, but it’s far from the only possible one. In any event the author is arguing aboutwhether the change occurred, not how.

• Always use the Kaplan “Denial Test” to confirm whether you have indeed chosen anecessary assumption. Note that the Denial Test is described above, beginning withthe words “If it didn’t. . . .”

7. (B)Is job-related stress the #1 workplace problem? Our author concludes no, it’s not, becausemost workers complain about boredom, not job stress. But if stress and boredom aresomehow related, then there’s no contradiction, and that’s essentially what we get in (B). (B)implies that workers who explicitly complain about boredom are implicitlydemonstrating signs of stress; hence the two go hand in hand; hence stress is probably the#1 problem.

(A),(D),(E) Non-complaining workers are outside the scope here, since the issue is “What’sthe most serious workplace problem?,” and the source of the evidence is those who aremaking their complaints known. Workers who are relatively happy, for whatever reason,aren’t part of this debate.

(C) doesn’t discuss complainers, either—just responders. And the “recentness” ofresponses has nothing to do with the argument.


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• Keep an eye out for an argument whose flaw is that the author assumes anopposition between X and Y without sufficient evidence; by showing that X and Ycan coexist, you will have weakened the argument. (Here, the author assumes thatworkers cannot be complaining about boredom and stress simultaneously. But theycan!)

8. (A)Keywords are the key to structure, and structure is the key to figuring out this author’sconclusion quickly.

A yes/no question is posed: Should the government stop trying to figure out how muchtoxin is O.K. in our food? Three potent Keywords govern what’s left, starting with “Onlyif,” which as always signals a necessary condition—necessary, that is, for a Yes answer to thequestion. “However” signals a contrast—i.e. a statement that that necessary condition hasnot been fulfilled. And “furthermore” is a Continuation Keyword, which means “more ofthe same.” Feel free to read more deeply into the stimulus if you like, but the sheerstructure leads to only one conclusion: A condition necessary for abandoning thegovernment’s efforts has not been met, hence the government should not abandon itsefforts—choice (A). (Note that (A) substitutes “should continue” for “should notabandon”—a common testmaker tactic.)

(B) is the “Only if” clause—the condition necessary, in the author’s view, for thegovernment to abandon its efforts.

(C) is a very close paraphrase of the “However” clause—a piece of evidence suggestingthat the necessary condition has not been met.

(D) is an equally close paraphrase of the “Furthermore” clause—more evidence.

(E) cannot be the author’s conclusion, because the issue is not “Are the government’sdetection methods refined enough?”; no evidence either way is provided. (E) is amisreading of the very last clause of the stimulus. Inferably the author would probablyapprove of the government’s raising “the threshold of detection,” but only because of herconclusion that detection needs to continue. . . which brings us back to (A).

• The techniques outlined in the explanation above are well worth your studying andadopting for virtually every LR stimulus: (1) Put the key issue or conclusion intoyour own words; (2) notice the Keywords that govern the structure; and (3) thinkthrough what each Keyword portends. That’s critical reading! You’ve heard aboutthese techniques throughout your Kaplan course; perhaps seeing them worked outhere will prove helpful. And notice how similar this one is to Question 11, below.


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9. (E)The stimulus for this inference question is more complex than most, but all four wronganswers are arguably more obvious than most, so perhaps it balances out.

Over a quarter-century of labor-saving technologies, we’re told, workers have been able toproduce goods (“output”) a lot faster, with the potential result that a worker could put infewer hours and get more leisure time. However, there has not been correspondence: Theaverage output per hour has grown twice as fast as the average worker’s leisure time. (E)follows from that last sentence: If the average worker is producing goods a lot faster butisn’t working a lot fewer hours, then he must be producing more per week than he did aquarter century ago, prior to the introduction of all those technologies.

Don’t see it? Check out the lameness of the other four choices:

(A) Nothing is ever said about workers’ spending habits or abilities.

(B) Job creation is never mentioned.

(C) The percentage of all persons who work is never even alluded to.

(D) “Anticipated” by whom? Nothing is mentioned about what was in people’s minds 25years ago. (And even if “anticipated” is read as a paraphrase of “potentially,” all we’re toldis that the number of hours worked was potentially smaller and the number of leisurehours potentially greater. Nothing about output expectations whatsoever.)

Sherlock Holmes had it right: When all other possibilities have been eliminated, what’s left,however implausible, must be the truth.

• Never assume that an inference must combine all, or even most, of the statements inthe stimulus. Quite often—as here—the correct answer is just a rewrite orconsequence of one complex sentence.

10. (C)Yet another paradox. A bunch of ancient Asian communities stopped hunting-and-gathering and started cultivating their food. Their diet and health went to blazes comparedto the old days, and yet they never went back to hunting-and-gathering. How come? Pre-phrasing an answer might be tough, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the archaeologicalterminology, but we hope that your search of the choices yielded (C) reasonably readily.If, as (C) suggests, there were just too many people to make hunting-and-gathering viable,why indeed would those ancient Asians go back to it, notwithstanding their dietaryproblems?

(A), if anything, would provide a reason for the Asians to resume hunting-and-gathering—to grab all that wild flora and fauna.

(B)’s contrast of stored vs. fresh foods has nothing to do with the argument at hand, and inany case describes something that hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists had in common,which doesn’t do the job.


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(D) rather comically implies that the Asians failed to return to hunting-and-gathering inorder to keep up with the Joneses elsewhere in the world. Huh?

(E) seems to imply that ancient Asians chose agriculture over hunting-and-gatheringbecause the former burned more calories and hence would make them buff up. But thatmakes no sense: Remember that the agricultural peoples had a terrible diet and bad healthcompared with the old hunter/gatherers. Concern for their well being would seem tomandate returning to the old ways—which they failed to do. So (E), if anything, deepensthe paradox.

• Speculating about what the right answer might look like, contain, or be is a goodhabit, but don’t take it to extremes. If nothing comes to you right away, don’t standstill. Move briskly to the choices and assess them in whatever order strikes you aseasiest.

11. (E)Just like Q. 8, this one begins with a question that the author is apparently going to attemptto answer. There are only three possibilities allowed by the author to begin an article withthe phrase “in a surprise development”: the development was a surprise to the journalistalone, the development was a surprise to some other person, and the development was asurprise to people in general. In each case, the author says that the set phrase isinappropriate. The argument’s conclusion, therefore, is (E): In no case is it a goodjournalistic practice to begin a paragraph with the phrase “in a surprise development.”

(A) and (B) The journalist never describes circumstances in which it is appropriate to usethe phrase “in a surprise development.”

(C) Although the author does describe three distinct sorts of circumstances in which thephrase is used, that’s not his conclusion; he makes that distinction in order to help himarrive at his conclusion, that in no circumstances is it appropriate to use the phrase.

(D) This is way off; the author never discusses what’s permissible in summing up a story; heonly considers the phrase “in a surprise development” as an introduction, and even therehe finds it wanting.

• A wrong choice can be wrong for more than one reason; (D) for instance, besidesintroducing the idea of a summation, doesn’t deal with the specific phrase “in asurprise development,” which is what the author is interested in, but instead speaksof the practice of making the general point that a development is a surprise, which isa very different thing. This is a great example of a scope shift.

• The more logically a stimulus is organized, the easier it is to answer the question.This is a dream stimulus: it begins with the question the argument is supposed toanswer, which immediately tells you what the conclusion is going to be about. Itproceeds to an orderly examination of all the possible cases that might bear on thequestion, complete with Keywords and Keyword phrases (“the one remainingpossibility”).


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12. (C)Despite the technical jargon, this stimulus is actually made up of a bunch of formal logicstatements. Take the third sentence: If X (yellow to black), then either Y (polypyrroles formon zeolites) or Z (polypyrroles form in zeolites). The last sentence tells us that X occurred(yellow to black), but Y didn’t. From this we can deduce that Z must have occurred:polypyrroles formed from pyrroles inside the zeolite. The second sentence tells us thatwhen polypyrroles form inside the zeolites, they form in delicate chains. Therefore, we caninfer (C): some of the pyrroles in which the zeolite was submerged formed intopolypyrrole chains.

(A) The stimulus says that the zeolite was “free of any pyrrole” before it was submerged,so (A) is impossible.

(B) Since the polypyrroles must have formed in and not on the zeolite, they must havebeen formed as chains, not lumps.

(D) There’s no reason why some pyrrole couldn’t attach itself to the zeolite; all we know isthat no polypyrroles formed from pyrroles on the zeolite.

(E) Since the polypyrroles formed inside the zeolite, we know some pyrroles reached thezeolite’s inner channels; we have absolutely no reason to infer that only a “little” did so.

• Don’t try to swallow this whole stimulus at one gulp. Read it quickly first to get thestructure. Once you understand that the stimulus gives us a general descriptionfollowed by a specific case, the whole picture becomes much easier to understand --you see how the general rules about zeolites and pyrroles relate to the specific case,and the individual facts fall into a pattern.

• You don’t need to know anything about polypyrroles and zeolites; it doesn’t evenmatter if there are no such things. All you need to do is understand the relationshipsbetween the objects, which in this case take the form of familiar formal logicconditions.

13. (E)The author says that the pedigree standards applied to working dogs ignore those genetictraits that allow the dogs to serve the purpose for which they were originally bred; as aresult, those practical traits may be lost. She decides that the standards set by pedigreeorganizations for working dogs should include the ability to do the work for which theywere intended. We’re looking for a principle that supports this conclusion. (E) says thatorganizations that set standards for activities or “products” (and presumably pedigreedogs fit this designation) should ensure that they can serve their original purposes; i.e.according to (E), the author is right and pedigree organizations should ensure that“working” dogs are still able to work.

(A) talks about the sort of standards organizations should not set, but it doesn’t justify theauthor’s conclusion about what standards pedigree organizations should set.


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(B) The author isn’t in favor of enforcing those standards currently in effect, but favorssetting new standards.

(C) argues that organizations should see that their standards are met; the author is attackingthe prior question of what sort of standards should be set in the first place.

(D) The author doesn’t favor standards requiring working ability because today’spedigree dogs will actually be required to work; she argues in favor of the standardsbecause they reflect the original purpose of the breeds.

• Before you look at the choices, see if you can follow the author’s reasoningyourself—how does she move from what is to what should be? Here you might say:Why does the author think standards should require working ability? What does theauthor say about working ability? Well, it’s the reason for which working dogs wereoriginally developed, and it’s in danger of being lost. So the author thinks it’simportant to keep the original purpose . . . therefore, (E) stands out as the rightanswer.

14. (B)The author is attempting to establish the conclusion that standards set by pedigreeorganizations for working dogs should require working ability. The phrase “certain traitslike herding ability risk being lost among pedigreed dogs” is intended to support thisconclusion. The phrase itself is supported, since it occurs at the end of a chain of reasoning:Pedigree organizations don’t specify work traits among their standards; breeders onlymaintain traits specified by pedigree organizations; traits not maintained by breeders riskbeing lost; therefore work traits like herding ability risk being lost. As (B) says, the phrase isa “subsidiary” conclusion; that is, it’s a conclusion drawn on the way to the mainconclusion.

(A) On the contrary—as we’ve seen, it’s supported by several pieces of evidence.

(C) Far from acknowledging a possible objection to the author’s proposal, the phrase statesthe main reason for the author’s proposal.

(D) is dead wrong. The argument accepts the claim that traits like herding ability risk beinglost; the author’s proposal is intended to avert this very real danger.

(E) No earlier claim depends on the phrase; rather, the phrase is supported by earlier claims,and in turn gives support to the conclusion.

• Keep an eye on Keywords; the “since” in the second-to-last sentence tells you thatthe phrase in question appears as a conclusion, which points to (B) and rules out (A).

• In order to understand where any given phrase fits in an argument, you have tounderstand how the argument as a whole works. Hopefully, you figured this out enroute to answering Q. 13, in which case Q. 14 shouldn’t take very long.


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15. (C)You may not have been able to pre-phrase this “strongly-supported conclusion,” buthopefully choice (C) made sense to you upon evaluation. The arthritis medication worksby inhibiting the functioning of the hormone that causes pain and swelling. However, thehormone doesn’t only cause pain and swelling in cases of rheumatoid arthritis; it’s alsonormally activated in response to injury and infection. It therefore seems reasonable tosuppose that the medication would inhibit the normal action of the hormone in response toan injury. This in turn supports (C)’s contention that a person taking the medication mightsustain a joint injury and, because of a lack of the pain and swelling that normallyaccompany such an injury, be unaware of it.

(A) There’s no evidence that the medication would repair cell damage that has alreadyoccurred; quite the contrary, since the only action ascribed to the medication is that ofinhibiting the functioning of the hormone.

(B) No mention of harmful side effects is made in the argument, so it’s impossible to knowwhether or not any side effects would be outweighed by benefits.

(D) We have no idea whether the hormone inhibited by the medication has anything to dowith diabetes or lupus, so there’s no reason to conclude that the medication would be ofany use in combating these diseases.

(E) On the contrary, we’d expect the medication to have some effect on any joint diseaseinvolving the production of the hormone that causes pain and swelling. We don’t knowthat there are any other such diseases besides rheumatoid arthritis, but we certainly can’tconclude that there aren’t.

• Medicine is a common topic on the Logical Reasoning section and “side effect”choices, like (B), are very common on medical questions. Unless the stimulusspecifically mentions side effects, you can’t assume anything about them. (By thesame token, the author isn’t entitled to assume anything about side effects either;sometimes on a Weaken the Argument question a choice will bring up the fact thatthe author has overlooked the possibility of side effects.)

• Pay attention to the formality, or lack thereof, of the question stem. They’re justlooking for a choice that is “strongly supported” here; the correct answer need not beas strict as a logical inference that absolutely must be true. Notice how the correctanswer is nicely qualified by the word “could.”


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16. (E)The author has concluded that for the amaryllis plant, going dormant is a positive thing,and that therefore an amaryllis plant’s owner should actually induce dormancy in his plant.But the evidence doesn’t support this; it seems much more likely that going dormant issimply the amaryllis plant’s defense against the drought that occurs in its natural habitat. Ifso, then without a drought there’s probably no need for a period of dormancy. As (E)recognizes, the author assumes that there’s more to dormancy than a defensive reaction,that the dormancy confers some other positive benefit on amaryllis plants.

(A), (B) The author only speaks of amaryllis plants, and so need not assume anything aboutother plants or how other plants compare to amaryllis plants.

(C) The author never specified when water should be withheld from amaryllis plants keptas houseplants, only that it should be done at some time each year to induce dormancy.The lack of specificity in the argument regarding the time frame for withholding waterkills this one.

(D) Although the author believes dormancy is good for amaryllis plants, he needn’tassume that the only thing that could go wrong with an amaryllis plant is too short a periodof dormancy.

• An assumption is something that’s necessary to establish the conclusion; therefore,it can’t go beyond the scope of that conclusion. You can quickly reject (A) and (B)because they broaden the scope of the argument from amaryllis plants, the author’sonly interest, to other kinds of plants, about which the author says nothing.

17. (D)The author accepts the theory that yawning is most powerfully triggered by seeingsomeone else yawn because 1) a lot of people believe the theory today and 2) according to“historians of popular culture” people all over the world have commonly believed thetheory. That’s not a very convincing argument; we’d like to have something more thanwidespread belief to fall back on. That’s the flaw (D) points out; the argument relies onopinion, whereas the question under consideration—“what triggers yawning?”—is ascientific, or factual question, the answer to which needs to be supported by substantivefactual evidence.

(A) The author doesn’t indulge in circular argumentation—his evidence, albeit weak, iscertainly different from his conclusion.

(B) The author never defines “historians of popular culture,” but there’s no reason tosuppose that popular beliefs about yawning are outside their area of expertise.

(C) The author refers to common popular belief; he makes no reference to particular cases,either typical or atypical.

(E) The author concludes that seeing other people yawn is the “most irresistible” cause ofyawning; he never claims, or assumes, that it’s the only cause of yawning.


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• Whenever you see a reference to “popular” or “commonly-held” belief on the LSAT,it’s a good bet that the belief is being set up to take a fall. A good argument is notsupposed to rely on common opinion, but rather on logic.

18. (B)The stimulus in this Parallel Reasoning question is so formal in nature that it can be boileddown to algebra:

All A are B (All gourmet cooks enjoy variety).

No B is C (No one who enjoys variety prefers bland food).

Therefore, no C is A (or if you prefer, All C are not A, same difference: The conclusion isthat gourmet cooks and preferrers of bland food have nothing in common).

In correct choice (B), Huang Collection paintings are A, abstract paintings are B, andpaintings included in next week’s auction are C, and if you plug those terms into thealgebra above, you’ll see that (B) functions identically. Here’s how the wrong choices playout:

(A) All A are B. All B are C. Therefore, all A are C. This is the classic Aristotelian deductivesyllogism, by the way. The sheer absence of a negative or “not” term means that you couldhave rejected (A) right away.

(C) All A are B. No A is C. Therefore, no C is B. Note the second premise’s subtle shift awayfrom the original.

(D) All A are B. No C is B. (So far so good, actually. Remember that No B is C is the sameas No C is B. They’re reversible.) Therefore, no B is C. (Oops; close but no cigar.)

(E) All A are B. . . . and here algebra falls short, because the remainder of (E) brings incomplex terms like prices in general, adequate reflection of price, true value, and nextweek’s auction. Because (E) is not as strictly written as the stimulus, it, like (A), can bequickly rejected.

• Parallel Reasoning questions that lend themselves to an algebraic approach don’tcome along all that often. Most are like Q. 4 in this section and Qs. 13 and 22 in theother Logical Reasoning section, written less formally and hence not amenable to analgebraic treatment. When algebra can work, it’s a great time saver.

• A reminder: In formal logic, “No” statements (e.g. No B are C) and “Some”statements (e.g. Some X are Y) are reversible—it doesn’t matter in which order youmention the terms. Come up with a few real-life examples of each and you’ll see thatthat’s so. But we cannot reverse All statements or If/Then statements and expect themto remain true. The LSAT tests that key distinction often.


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19. (A)Because no one witnessed the meeting between the minister and the opposition partyleader except for the minister’s aide, the author concludes that it must have been theminister’s aide who provided the information that brought the minister down, rather than apolitical enemy of the minister. Does this make sense? After all, the opposition leader wasat the meeting too; mightn’t he or she have given the information to the newspapers? As (A)points out, the evidence provided by the author, makes a competing conclusion—that theopposition leader spilled the beans—just as likely as the author’s conclusion.

(B) The author never states that the chain of events was inevitable; that is, he never assumesthat, once the information from the secret meeting was released, it was inevitable that theminister be brought down.

(C) The author never discusses any “different occasion”; both evidence and conclusionconcern this particular finance minister and this secret meeting.

(D) The evidence is entirely relevant to the point at issue, which is “who was responsiblefor bringing the finance minister down?”

(E) The evidence is that the effect (the minister’s downfall) was impossible without theaction (giving the information to the newspaper). This means that the latter was necessaryfor the former; the author never treats the evidence of the action as though it was sufficientto bring about the effect.

• The descriptions of the flaw are all very abstract and general. Because it can be timeconsuming in such cases to compare each choice to the stimulus argument, it’s wiseto read the argument carefully enough to have a good idea of the flaw beforeattacking the choices. Pre-phrasing something as simple as “Hey! What about theopposition party leader?” can be an enormous help.

20. (A)Evans discounts those critics who dismiss him and his poetry, because he says theythemselves are not true poets and only a true poet can function as a critic of poetry. Whydoes he say that they’re not true poets? He’s read their poetry and doesn’t think much ofit—it doesn’t “convey genuine poetic creativity,” as true poetry should. He’s relying on hisown judgment of poetry; therefore, he’s assumes that he’s a fit judge of poetry and poeticcreativity, and according to his own criteria, he must also be assuming that he is a truepoet. As (A) points out, he’s assuming exactly what he set out to prove, that the critics arewrong and he’s a true poet.

(B) Evans never assumes or implies that everyone is either a poet or a critic. All she says isthat if you’re not one, you can’t be the other.

(C) Evans never implies that a poet’s standing can be judged independently of his or herpoetry; in fact, the criteria given for a true poet is one whose works conveys genuine poeticcreativity.


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(D) Far from making an absolute distinction between critics and poets, the author says thatonly true poets can function as critics of poetry.

(E) On the contrary, true poets would be in a position to criticize their own work.

• It’s always important to understand what sort of evidence the author uses, especiallyon questions that ask you to critique the author’s logic. Our evidence here is ageneral principle (about who is entitled to judge poetry) and the author’s opinionabout how the principle applies to his critics. You should always be suspicious of anopinion as evidence. Ask yourself: How well grounded is the opinion? Howqualified is the person (or persons) holding the opinion?

21. (E)Ouch!—one of the nastiest question stems we’ve come across in a long time. If there wasever a question worth blowing off temporarily strictly based on its stem, this is it. Be that asit may, let’s take the stem apart to see what they’re after here.

The correct choice will be able to serve as the premise of an argument against the claim,but it must be an argument that relies on the principle. So we’re not looking for somethingthat by itself weakens the claim, but rather the basis for an argument that, if based on theprinciple, would weaken the claim. Tricky, eh? According to the principle, if one claimsthat Country X lowered its taxes to serve the advantage of foreign companies, one mustshow how the foreign companies’ interests actually helped bring about the change; that is,one must show that the reason for the tariffs’ being lowered was the usefulness of thatcourse of action to foreign companies. Since we’re supposed to counter the claim thatCountry X’s tariffs were lowered in order to help foreign companies, we should thereforelook for a choice that weakens the connection between foreign companies and the changein policy. The best choice is (E); if there’s no evidence that foreign companies themselvesplayed a role in inducing the change then, according to the principle, it becomes muchmore difficult to explain the change by the fact that it served their interests.

(A) The principle says nothing about the interests of any second group, like consumers,being served, so (A) doesn’t apply to the principle.

(B) introduces new economic considerations like importers’ profits; the principle hadnothing to do with such things, only with who was responsible for inducing the change.

(C) discusses the short-term effects of the change on Country X; we’re only interested inwhether the change occurred in response to foreign interests.

(D) is better than (C) because at least it tells us about foreign companies, but it doesn’t tellus what we wanted to know—whether they helped bring about the change.

• This question was very likely tough and time consuming; you may decide to mark it,skip it, and come back to it later.


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• If you decided to go ahead with it, read the question thoroughly and understand itbefore you go on to the choices. If you took the time to understand what type ofchoice you were looking for, you could reject the wrong answers quickly bychecking them against the principle.

22. (E)The scientist discovers that in the tropics, migratory fish generally follow a migrationpattern that’s exactly the opposite of the pattern followed by fish in temperate zones: theymature in fresh water and spawn in the ocean. Does this disprove the scientist’s theory thatfood availability determines migration patterns? That’s impossible to know, unless weknow something about the food availability in the tropics—is there more or less foodavailable in the ocean? Unless we know the answer to (E), we don’t know whether the fishin the tropics are acting in accordance with the scientist’s theory or in violation of thattheory.

(A) completely ignores the issue of food availability which is the whole basis of the theory;the scientist said nothing about temperature, so (A) is irrelevant.

(B) introduces an irrelevant distinction; the scientist was interested in comparing the totalamount of nourishment available in the different places. The point is that fish need a lot ofnourishment when they mature and little when they spawn— it doesn’t matter what type offood they eat to get that nourishment.

(C) Because the scientist is talking about general migration patterns, it doesn’t matter ifthere are a few exceptions to the rule. Thus, if there were a species of fish with populationsin both areas, it wouldn’t make any difference to the theory whether the fish exhibited thesame or different migration patterns in the two different zones; what matters is what fish“generally” do.

(D) is pretty plainly irrelevant. The total number of species has nothing to do with the roleof food in determining migration patterns.

• Since you want to know whether the new information disproves the hypothesis,focus on the terms in the information and the hypothesis. The hypothesis tiesmigration patterns to food availability; the new information only discusses migrationpatterns. The correct choice must therefore establish whether there’s any linkbetween the new information and food availability.

• In a question like this, if you can’t decide whether one of the choices is relevant, tryanswering the question it poses in both the affirmative and the negative. Does itmake any obvious difference to the hypothesis if you answer the question “yes”rather than “no”? If it doesn’t, move on.


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23. (B)According to the author, computers can only solve problems by following some set ofmechanically applicable rules, and some problems just can’t be solved that way; it followstherefore that no computer can solve that type of problem. But the author takes this onestep further; she says that no computer will be able to do everything that some human mindcan do. She must be assuming that some human mind can do what she’s just shown nocomputer can do—that is, she assumes that some human mind (or “at least one” humanmind, as (B) says) can solve one of those problems that can’t be solved by following amechanically applicable set of rules.

(A) The author needs to establish that some non-mechanical problems are solvable byhumans; it wouldn’t help to assume that there’s some non-mechanical problem that’sUNsolvable by humans.

(C), (D) and (E) all make the same mistake. Since computers also have the ability to solveproblems by following mechanically applicable rules, human ability to solve suchproblems doesn’t show that humans can do something that computers can’t. It wouldn’thelp the author to assume that one such problem can be solved by every human (C), thatevery such problem (of a certain sub-type) is solvable by almost every human (D), or thatevery such problem is solvable by some human (E). We’re only interested in human abilityto solve problems that can’t be solved by following sets of mechanical rules.

• Remember your logical terms: “Some” means “at least one”; “no” means “not any,”“not one.”

• Be on the look out for inappropriate use of “some,” “every,” “many,” etc. in thechoices. When the stimulus speaks of “some human minds” you can be almostpositive that any choice that speaks of “every human mind” or even “almost everyhuman mind” is wrong. “Some” strictly means “at least one”; you can’t expand it. Bythe same token, choices that apply such terms where they don’t occur in the stimulus(“more than one” set of rules) should also be rejected.


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24. (A)The author is trying to demonstrate that the typical response given to the survey isambiguous. He does this by taking that typical response and applying it to the case of atheoretical representative individual. Take a 48-year old man who says he feels as he didwhen he was 36; at the age of 36, if he had made the same type of response that he does now,he would have claimed to have felt as he did when he was 27; and so forth. This is an oddturn of events. How did the author get from the group results to reapplying the typicalresponse over and over to a single person? As (A) says, the author projects from the surveyresponse to hypothetical responses made by a single individual; he looks at the responses theindividual would have made at an earlier age, and then another earlier age, and so on, anduses that to show that the current response is ambiguous.

(B) The author never discusses what would have been the “most reasonable” thing for therespondents to say.

(C) The example of the 48-year-old man isn’t used as a counterexample; it doesn’t show thatpeople really didn’t “almost unanimously” respond by saying that they felt 75% of theirreal age. Instead, the example is used to show that the response, which the author neverdoubts, is inherently ambiguous.

(D) The author doesn’t set up two opposed statements in direct contradiction of each otherand force us to choose one or the other; he’s simply interested in showing that it’s difficultto understand what one statement means.

(E) The author never speaks of “manipulation” on the part of the questioners.

• In order to understand the author’s “techniques of reasoning,” you’ve got tounderstand what purpose the reasoning is intended to serve; i.e. what the author istrying to prove. Here the author’s purpose is stated in the third sentence: he wants toshow there’s a problem in understanding the response. The hypothetical case of theIncredible Regressing Man is intended to show that.

LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III

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1. (B)The stimulus begins with a claim made by Shakespeare-philes, who feel that in England, atleast, Shakespeare’s work has been known and loved by all classes, not just the elite. Thekey phrase comes midway: “Skepticism about this claim is borne out by. . . .” Thisindicates that the author’s main point is to take issue with that claim. Meanwhile, thecounterevidence comes from only one period and source, the bound copies ofShakespeare from the early 1800’s that the author feels could not have been available toordinary folk. So (B) is correct in taking issue with the original claim, and has anappropriately narrow scope (“at some time in the past”).

(A) The issue here is ‘Who historically has revered Shakespeare (the elite or all classes?),’and not ‘How can you tell the elite apart from everyone else?’

(C) What aspects? What lack of appreciation today?

(D) goes too far. The evidence, as noted above, comes only from the 1800’s. The authorcannot be leading to a blanket statement that only the educated upper class has ever knownand loved Shakespeare.

(E) It’s not the elite who are skeptical but the author, and that skepticism is of the claimmade in sentence 1, not of whether Shakespeare in fact wrote worthy plays.

• The main point or conclusion must follow logically from the given evidence. Payclose attention to the topic and scope in hacking your way through the answerchoices.

• Don’t confuse the author’s attitude (in this case, skepticism) for the attitude of acharacter or group that appears in the stimulus.

2. (E)Even if only the educated rich of the early 1800’s could own and peruse the books that theauthor cites, who’s to say that everybody else couldn’t have known, studied, and lovedShakespeare by seeing his plays performed? The unwarranted assumption that peoplecould only get to know Shakespeare’s

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