167, cancel, June 2012 retake - How will adcoms view this? Forum

[lsat2011]

I got a 167 on the Oct 2011 LSAT and I'm hoping to get into HYS. I will probably cancel my December retake and work for a year and take the LSAT again in June. My GPA is well above the 75% percentile for all three schools and I have solid recs and softs.

How much harm have I done to my application?

Thanks!

[Opie]

I don't know the answer to your question exactly, but most schools only consider the top score. If you didn't TOTALLY bomb, I wouldn't cancel. There's a chance you did better even if you don't feel you did (unless you know for a fact that you left enough blank to make it impossible to do better).

I don't really know HYS very well since I have no shot there, so get better advice than I can give. I would probably just see how you did.

[cutecarmel]

You can get into a lot of really good schools with a 167. How sure are you that you didn't improve? A lot of people panic and end up doing fine.

[Gail]

I get why you're nervous. HYS are just different, they don't need to worry about the rankings or the numbers, so they might average (actually, I think that their official policy isn't to average, but only Yale has admitted such).

HYS might be out of reach for that reason alone, but then again it might not. You'd need to ask someone more intelligent than me because I'm certainly not good enough to get into HYS (about the same with not insignificant amount of studying ). There are some Harvard students here, so hopefully one of them can give a better answer.

[American_in_China]

Get a high 170s and they won't care.
Anyways, it just shows that you're informed and are working hard to achieve a high score. I'd write an addendum if you think there are any outside factors that contributed to you doing badly on the last test.

[Take Two]

It depends. If you blow the lsat out of the water your next time around and score in the high 170s the prevailing theory is that it's not really going to matter THAT much that you have a lower score in your past. However, if you only do a little better, especially within the range of your current score band, its not really going to help you that much.

Ultimately you are never going to know why the admission committees decide the way they do on a particular applicant so just put yourself in the best position you can and what will be will be.