RC & LR Difficulty

[frankm007]

When you guys talk about the increased difficulty of RC and LR in recent exams do you mean the arguments and readings are wordier, harder to understand? Answers are harder to distinguish? Because the structure has to be the same, you still look for the same things...yes?

[sarmstrong806]

The structure is the same, but as you said the questions are harder to take apart and the answer choices are more difficult to pick from

You can notice the trend in taking preptests, but if you do all of them and nail down the basic techniques it shouldn't be that much of a problem

[withj]

I can't stress this piece of advice more urgently:

Order PrepTests 43-46 from LSAC. Those are:

June 2004
Oct. 2004
Dec. 2004
June 2005

They're all practically identical in number and distribution of questions, and they show, I believe, the increasing level of LR and RC difficulty (though more RC than LR), and the increasing easiness of games.

You can't order the February 2005 test, but that's the one I took, and it was a near carbon-copy of the other ones.

27 RC
26 LR
25 LR
22 AR

If October 2005 follows the trend, you'll see:

3 pretty straightforward RC passages, followed by an unforgiving one (Bach in FEB, legal theory in JUNE);

3 pretty straightforward games, followed by a very difficult one (for me, anyway; those who are great at games had no trouble with any of the games from the past few tests.)

LR sections that lull you with relatively easy questions early, then throw a bunch of dense, wordy ones in near the end, sprinkled with thorny parallel and formal logic questions.

More than anything else: Beware of the RC. It took a chunk out of my butt in February, and it hurt alot of high scorers in June, too.

[prefuse73]

Since LSAT is curved anyway, shouldn't the rising difficulty of the test have no effect on the scores? Just wondering.