Almost everyone has trouble correctly eliminating LSAT answer choice. Most people ask the wrong questions.

What do I mean by “asking a question” about the answer choices? I’ll use an example from logic games. Imagine a “Must be True question”.

During a lesson, I often hear my students say out loud “could this be true?”. It’s a terrible question to ask.

The right question to ask is: “Could this be false“? If the answer could be false, then it’s wrong. It it can’t be false, then it must be true. Asking if something could be true adds no information.

I’ll explain with a real world example. Which one of the following must be true about the sky:

A. It’s cloudy
B. It’s not cloudy
C. It’s dark.
D. It’s bright.
E. It’s blue (during the day)

What happens if you ask “could this be true?”. Each answer can be true! The sky can be cloudy, or not cloudy, or bright and sunny, or dark at night. The question failed to eliminate any answer.

If you ask “could this be false?”, then the answer to A-D is “yes”, but the answer to E is “no”.  E is correct, the sky is blue.

You should ask a question that will eliminate any wrong answer. The right question will be different, depending on the type of question.

Update: If you liked this article, I now have a free five part email course with more info about getting a good LSAT score: http://lsathacks.com/email-course/

As for asking the right question, you can review the free explanations I’ve written here: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/

The questions show you my thought process, and what criteria to use to choose/eliminate answers.