Difficulty of RC in June 2018 exam?

[AnnaC659]

Hello Manhattanprep,

I am wondering if the RC for recent LSATs are easier than some of those in PT 1-20.

I recently have gone through under timed condition, 5-section PT 79 - 82. In some of them the dummy RC was drawn from earlier (PT 1-20) tests. What I noticed was, despite the fact that I have done AND reviewed the passages from those earlier exams, I still struggled to get through them in 35 minutes and got a number of questions wrong. But for the actual passages in the PT79 -82, especially 82, I had no problem getting through the readings/questions on time and with accuracy.

So I am wondering if the RC sessions are increasingly getting easier? If you have any stats on the trend in level of difficulty over the years, it would be great to know.

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

I think the consensus among those of us sad enough to have sampled scores of tests is that modern RC is getting harder! So ... teach me your ways, Master.

It's probably just that tests in the 1-20 were so long ago that the voice of the test feels very different. I think that RC in the 70's and 80's is generally harder than RC in the 40s and 50s, for example.

My take on it is that correct answers were more provable before. Correct answers on modern tests are often more gist-y and involve us sometimes adding in more common sense / outside knowledge than I'm used to. But it could be that you respond better to that type holistic RC section, and I respond better to a fact-finding research RC section.

But no, there are no stats on when it was harder or easier, because there's not really a way to objectively record difficulty. The tests are pretty much written to ensure that people are ending up with roughly the same number of correct answers from test to test.

Some tests have a harder than usual Games section and an easier than usual RC section. Others have the reverse. So difficulty is constantly wavering, somewhat subjective, and intended to be held constant over the long run by LSAT.