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Practice for the LSAT

Page 1 Questions

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is designed to measure skills considered essential for success in law school. It is a requirement for admission to most law schools. When it comes to the LSAT, practice makes perfect. You can start now by answering a few practice LSAT questions from the Law School Admission Council—the people who write the LSAT. There are two questions from each test section: Analytical Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension. After answering each question, you will be given an in-depth explanation behind the answer. If you want a unique opportunity to attend a workshop with an LSAT test developer, go to a Law School Forum!

Analytical Reasoning Question

Directions: The following question is based on a set of conditions. In answering the question, it may be useful to draw a rough diagram. Choose the response that most accurately and completely answers the question, and mark the corresponding answer choice.

A fire chief is determining the work schedules of five firefighters: Fuentes, Graber, Howell, Iman, and Jackson. The schedule must meet the following conditions:

Except for Saturday and Sunday, when none of them works, exactly one of the firefighters works each day.
None of the firefighters can work more than two days per week.
No firefighter works on two consecutive days.
Fuentes never works later in the week than Jackson.
If Howell works, then Graber must work on the following day.

1. If Fuentes works two days during the week and Jackson works on Thursday, which one of the following statements could be true?

Very good! The correct answer is B.

This is considered an item of "middle difficulty"—57 percent of test takers answered it correctly.

Explanation

This question asks the test taker to determine which of the options could be true if, in addition to what is given in the passage, Fuentes works two days during the week and Jackson works on Thursday. As with many passages that deal with ordering relations, a chart or table is useful to keep track of possibilities. The information that Jackson works on Thursday may be represented as follows (letters under the days of the week are the initials of the firefighters):

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday


J

Fuentes works two days a week, and from conditions 3 and 4 it follows that Fuentes must work on Monday and Wednesday (since Fuentes has to work only on days before the day Jackson works, and since working on either Monday and Tuesday or on Tuesday and Wednesday would violate the condition that no one works on consecutive days). This is represented below:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
F F J

From this we can immediately eliminate options (A), (D), and (E). Fuentes does not work on Tuesday for the reasons given earlier, which eliminates (A). Fuentes works on Wednesday, and since the first condition tells us that exactly one firefighter works on each day, no one else can work on Wednesday, eliminating options (D) and (E). This leaves only options (B) and (C) as viable selections.

(C) is incorrect. To see this, suppose Howell works on Tuesday. According to the last condition, if Howell works, Graber must work on the following day, in this case on Wednesday. Using the same reasoning by which we eliminated (D) and (E) above, Graber cannot work on Wednesday, and thus Howell cannot work on Tuesday.

(B) is the correct response, as the acceptable table below verifies:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
F G F J I

The correct answer is B.

Explanation

This question asks the test taker to determine which of the options could be true if, in addition to what is given in the passage, Fuentes works two days during the week and Jackson works on Thursday. As with many passages that deal with ordering relations, a chart or table is useful to keep track of possibilities. The information that Jackson works on Thursday may be represented as follows (letters under the days of the week are the initials of the firefighters):

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday


J

Fuentes works two days a week, and from conditions 3 and 4 it follows that Fuentes must work on Monday and Wednesday (since Fuentes has to work only on days before the day Jackson works, and since working on either Monday and Tuesday or on Tuesday and Wednesday would violate the condition that no one works on consecutive days). This is represented below:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
F F J

From this we can immediately eliminate options (A), (D), and (E). Fuentes does not work on Tuesday for the reasons given earlier, which eliminates (A). Fuentes works on Wednesday, and since the first condition tells us that exactly one firefighter works on each day, no one else can work on Wednesday, eliminating options (D) and (E). This leaves only options (B) and (C) as viable selections.

(C) is incorrect. To see this, suppose Howell works on Tuesday. According to the last condition, if Howell works, Graber must work on the following day, in this case on Wednesday. Using the same reasoning by which we eliminated (D) and (E) above, Graber cannot work on Wednesday, and thus Howell cannot work on Tuesday.

(B) is the correct response, as the acceptable table below verifies:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
F G F J I

This is considered an item of "middle difficulty"—57 percent of test takers answered it correctly.