The Correct Answer Choice vs. The Contender
You ever narrow it down to two answer choices in Logical Reasoning, you pick one…and it turns out to be other one?
Here is the (very, very) bad news: If a student is constantly making this mistake, it is a strong indication that they don’t know how to navigate the answer choices in LR questions on a very basic/fundamental level. This should concern you not only because fundamental weaknesses and mistakes will plague everything else that you do, but also because they tend to be things that we do habitually, which means they are difficult to change. As you know, habits are hard to break…
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Here is the good news (with some additional bad news sprinkled on top…because it’s the LSAT): The way to fix this problem is actually pretty straightforward and easy to grasp. You should be able to overcome this challenge as long as you have enough time to make the adjustment. You will need a decent amount of time because what you need to fix is a force of habit. If you just started studying for the LSAT, nothing you do may be habitual yet, so focus on doing it the correct way. If you’ve been doing LSAT questions/PTs for a long time, this might be more challenging.
Here is the solution: You need to focus on what makes an answer choice wrong, not what makes it right. This might seem counter-intuitive because what it means in essence is that you should not be looking for the correct answer when you’re considering the multiple choices. If you look for the correct answer, you’ll be looking for what’s right about an answer choice. Well, guess what? You know that other answer choice — the “contender” — that you keep narrowing it down to along with the credited response? It’s got a lot of stuff “right” about it. In fact, everything about it is right…except for that one thing that makes it wrong. All wrong answer choices have at least one thing that makes them wrong. Every wrong answer choice has some (identifiable) component in it, some language that you can point to as a reason for why it’s wrong.
If an answer choice is a tiny bit wrong, it is completely wrong.
If you’re not looking for what’s wrong about an answer choice, you’re falling into a very common trap the LSAT sets for test takers. This can be an especially easy mistake to make on questions where they try to camouflage the right things about the correct answer, which means you are more likely to first find things that are “right” about the contender than you are to find them in the correct answer.
Look for what’s wrong!
