#2 - Board member: The J Foundation, a philanthropic

[LSAT student]

Hello,

I narrowed my choices down to B and C and ended up picking B. I diagrammed the stimulus as follows.

Receive grant Resulting work will not contain material detrimental to J Foundation's reputation

Contrapositve: Resulting work contains material detrimental to J Foundation's reputation Will not receive grant

I can see how B is not correct, but I ruled out C because I thought that "foundation's" made it too broad. Why is that not too broad here, and what would the stimulus have to say for answer choice B to be correct?

[Frank Peter]

Hi LSAT Student,

With regard to conditional reasoning on the LSAT, I often tell my students to be weary of over-applying it. It's along the lines of the old saying that when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To me, this stimulus doesn't have any obvious indicators that it's something you should be diagramming. Granted, sometimes a stimulus will require you to diagram parts of it and won't use the typical sufficient/necessary indicators. But, in the LR section, the earlier questions tend to be easier - I wouldn't expect any conditional reasoning curve balls this early in the section. Your mileage may vary, but it's a good guiding principle.

I can see that you're reading answer choice (C) very closely, which is great, but it sounds like you might be thinking about this a little too rigidly. The stimulus talks about a specific Foundation, and then the correct answer choice talks about "a foundation." It might seems slightly more abstract than the stimulus, but is fair game on the LSAT. We should always be reading very closely, but that doesn't mean that the answer choice always has to conform 1:1 to the stimulus. A reference to something specific in the stimulus and then an answer choice that speaks more generally isn't inherently problematic as long as the other aspect of the answer choice are in line with what we're looking for.

[JDDS0220]

Hello!

I was curious how I should understand "on the condition" part.

J gave you this grant on the condition that your resulting work not contain any material detrimental to the J's reputation

To me, it seems like it should be a bi-conditional sentence.
something like: Grant not detrimental to J's reputation

or should it be a just necessary condition?

Thank you

[Jeremy Press]

Hi JDDS,

Interesting question! The condition can only be construed as necessary in this stimulus. That's because they don't tell us that it was the sole condition of getting/maintaining the grant.

Think of it this way. What do I know? I know that if this person was going to get the grant, they had to promise not to put material detrimental to the foundation in their resulting work. And if they were going to maintain the grant, they had to follow through on that promise. The condition was necessary to getting and maintaining the grant.

But I can't construe that condition as sufficient, because I don't know whether there were other things the person had to do in order to get (or maintain) the grant. In fact, the stimulus makes me think that condition was probably not sufficient, because it later refers to the "conditions" (plural) under which the grant was made.

I hope this helps!