Question for test takers who have done bad Forum

AfrocentricAsian · Post by **AfrocentricAsian** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 2:53 pm

When leaving the test, was it all a blur? I pretty much freezed during it and can't remember certain lr questions. I know I did bad, but don't know how bad and I'd rather cancel than receive a terrible score.

WhyYaCryin · Post by **WhyYaCryin** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:05 pm

Unless you're trying to get into Yale or something, I wouldn't cancel - even if you think you bombed it. Even if there's a very small chance that you didn't do as poorly as you thought you should keep it. You should check out the June waiters thread and look at the pages where people got their scores and you'll see that a bunch of people were pleasantly surprised. Again, unless you are aiming for yale/stanford or the like, it doesn't hurt too much to have a bad score on your report.

gatesome · Post by **gatesome** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:06 pm

*poorly

IMO only cancel if you did poorly because you couldn't finish/got sick and guessed RANDOMLY on 15+ questions.

AfrocentricAsian · Post by **AfrocentricAsian** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:18 pm

Thanks for the correction.... .

I knew I wasn't going to reach my target score today as the highest I'be ever scored was within 2 points of it. Factoring in the fact that I feel as if I bombed, I don't believe there is any benefit in receiving the score.... I can deal with my score being 10 points lower than normal, but 20 points is demoralizing and I'd rather not have law schools see it...

lymenheimer · Post by **lymenheimer** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:35 pm

AfrocentricAsian wrote:Thanks for the correction.... .

I knew I wasn't going to reach my target score today as the highest I'be ever scored was within 2 points of it. Factoring in the fact that I feel as if I bombed, I don't believe there is any benefit in receiving the score.... I can deal with my score being 10 points lower than normal, but 20 points is demoralizing and I'd rather not have law schools see it...

Yea. Feel free to cancel your 176. Don't ask the question if you're not gonna bother listening to the people on this thread. Nobody is gonna help you justify your stupid decision to cancel your score except for in the circumstances already stated.

Phoenix97 · Post by **Phoenix97** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:29 pm

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lymenheimer · Post by **lymenheimer** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 9:09 pm

Phoenix97 wrote:
lymenheimer wrote: Yea. Feel free to cancel your 176. Don't ask the question if you're not gonna bother listening to the people on this thread. Nobody is gonna help you justify your stupid decision to cancel your score except for in the circumstances already stated.
What is wrong with you? What makes you think it is okay to speak down to people like that? Even if it is well-meaning constructive criticism, you come across so rude and belligerent in many of your responses.

Maybe you should put the LSAT aside for a bit and pick up a few how-to guides on the basics of effective communication and human decency.

I stand by my words. If he's not gonna listen to these people then there's no sense in posing a question to them. And if he'd read around, he would know that nobody is going to help him justify his decision. But lol k bro.

Edit: just realized who you were. lol at anything you can gather about my posting from like 10 posts that are deliberately rude out of my multi-hundred post history. As well as your personal vendetta against me because I said one thing in a post of yours.

PatriotP74 · Post by **PatriotP74** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 10:45 pm

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AfrocentricAsian · Post by **AfrocentricAsian** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 11:22 pm

I guessed on about 5 questions a section besides the experimental LG. I couldn't even process the reading comprehension passages. I didn't put any effort into the writing portion either (I knew it was a bust and was contemplating cancelling the test right there). Watch didn't start on the first section and it was downhill from there. My average score was around a 161, I'm pretty sure that I will receive a lower score than my diagnostic. Nerves got the best of me. I'm at an indecision-I don't want a 140 permanently on my record. I hope this makes sense. This isn't a should I cancel thread, it's a thread to scale how people felt leaving the test center when they scored lower than their average.

Talarose · Post by **Talarose** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:01 am

Like everyone has already stated above and in the 10,000 other, "should I cancel?" threads, I'd as well advise against it.
1. Unless you are going to Yale, or any other school that states specifically otherwise, multiple scores have no effect and they only take the top score. Period.

2. Cancelling means you are going to have to explain yourself and that looks worse on your part than getting a 140 then retaking with a 165. It's better to have to explain yourself with a positive like, yes I studied my butt off, this is how dedicated I am to getting a 20+ point increase, rather than, well I cancelled because I THINK I didn't do good, I kind of freaked out and zoned out. No.

AfrocentricAsian wrote:I guessed on about 5 questions a section besides the experimental LG. I couldn't even process the reading comprehension passages. I didn't put any effort into the writing portion either (I knew it was a bust and was contemplating cancelling the test right there). Watch didn't start on the first section and it was downhill from there. My average score was around a 161, I'm pretty sure that I will receive a lower score than my diagnostic. Nerves got the best of me. I'm at an indecision- I don't want a 140 permanently on my record. I hope this makes sense. This isn't a should I cancel thread, it's a thread to scale how people felt leaving the test center when they scored lower than their average.

This will not make a difference. I promise. Don't think of it as a delinquency on your record because it's not. As long as you improve, there's no harm.

McJimJam · Post by **McJimJam** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:07 am

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mephistofeles · Post by **mephistofeles** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:29 am

WhyYaCryin wrote:Unless you're trying to get into Yale or something, I wouldn't cancel - even if you think you bombed it. Even if there's a very small chance that you didn't do as poorly as you thought you should keep it. You should check out the June waiters thread and look at the pages where people got their scores and you'll see that a bunch of people were pleasantly surprised. Again, unless you are aiming for yale/stanford or the like, it doesn't hurt too much to have a bad score on your report.

So what schools say that they average LSAT scores? Only yale and stanford? When you say "the like" I am thinking Harvard, but their website states otherwise explicitly. Columbia is a little vague about it, and I am not sure what it actually means - since it says "ABA only requires us to report the highest score, but we consider all scores" - consider, huh?

WhyYaCryin · Post by **WhyYaCryin** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:06 am

mephistofeles wrote: So what schools say that they average LSAT scores? Only yale and stanford? When you say "the like" I am thinking Harvard, but their website states otherwise explicitly. Columbia is a little vague about it, and I am not sure what it actually means - since it says "ABA only requires us to report the highest score, but we consider all scores" - consider, huh?

http://www.top-law-schools.com/retaking-the-lsat.html

If you look at that link most schools are organized into Takes highest, Averages, Holistic, or No response. The amount of schools that say they take the highest score is greater than those that average it out, take a holistic approach AND the ones who didn't respond. Combined. I believe that list is a little old and even more schools have shifted in the direction of saying they take the highest score.

Another thing is that it's one thing to say that you take a holistic approach and an entirely different one to do it. Some schools do this to encourage applicants to apply thinking they'll have a chance when they really don't, which keeps the admit percentage down - a good thing for the school. Schools also have little incentive to look at averages when the numbers they report to the ABA only include students' highest scores.

And to the OP, as others have said I hope you can see that it doesn't really matter if you have that 140 on your profile. Yeah, it's not uncommon to feel like you did poorly especially if you guess on a good amount of Qs. There's always December. Whether you think you did poorly because of nerves or lack of preparation just prepare harder - focus on your weaknesses, buy the powerscore bibles, do a bunch of PTs, etc. The test is pretty learnable. Try to get your average even higher than it is now so that if you did poorly it'll be "Oh man I think I'll have a 163 on my record, should I cancel?", rather than a 140.

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:24 pm

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whacka · Post by **whacka** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:26 pm

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Mack.Hambleton · Post by **Mack.Hambleton** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:28 pm

I knew I had fucked up my first test a bit but didn't cancel just to see how I did and review mistakes

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:32 pm

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whacka · Post by **whacka** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:34 pm

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FloridaCoastalorbust · Post by **FloridaCoastalorbust** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:53 pm

That a cancel would to adcomms look worse than a 140 if on your second test you got a high score is conjecture. There's nothing I've read to prove this. So a decision to cancel shouldn't be based on what adcomms would think of a low score versus a cancel, but other factors.

FWIW I cancelled my first time and my fourth time. Look at my LSN profile to see how that affected me.

PatriotP74 · Post by **PatriotP74** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 2:31 pm

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AfrocentricAsian · Post by **AfrocentricAsian** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 3:12 pm

PatriotP74 wrote:
AfrocentricAsian wrote:I guessed on about 5 questions a section besides the experimental LG. I couldn't even process the reading comprehension passages. I didn't put any effort into the writing portion either (I knew it was a bust and was contemplating cancelling the test right there). Watch didn't start on the first section and it was downhill from there. My average score was around a 161, I'm pretty sure that I will receive a lower score than my diagnostic. Nerves got the best of me. I'm at an indecision-I don't want a 140 permanently on my record. I hope this makes sense. This isn't a should I cancel thread, it's a thread to scale how people felt leaving the test center when they scored lower than their average.

Absolutely no way you could know this when you answered every question.

In the end it is up to you

Yea, I know. Just wanted responses from people who felt that way when leaving the test and their score, upon arrival, vindicated their feelings.

Phoenix97 · Post by **Phoenix97** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 3:31 pm

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PatriotP74 · Post by **PatriotP74** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 3:58 pm

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ms9 · Post by **ms9** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 4:40 pm

I have blogged about this very thing:

http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/should ... sat-score/

mephistofeles · Post by **mephistofeles** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:21 pm

WhyYaCryin wrote:
mephistofeles wrote: So what schools say that they average LSAT scores? Only yale and stanford? When you say "the like" I am thinking Harvard, but their website states otherwise explicitly. Columbia is a little vague about it, and I am not sure what it actually means - since it says "ABA only requires us to report the highest score, but we consider all scores" - consider, huh?
http://www.top-law-schools.com/retaking-the-lsat.html

If you look at that link most schools are organized into Takes highest, Averages, Holistic, or No response. The amount of schools that say they take the highest score is greater than those that average it out, take a holistic approach AND the ones who didn't respond. Combined. I believe that list is a little old and even more schools have shifted in the direction of saying they take the highest score.

Another thing is that it's one thing to say that you take a holistic approach and an entirely different one to do it. Some schools do this to encourage applicants to apply thinking they'll have a chance when they really don't, which keeps the admit percentage down - a good thing for the school. Schools also have little incentive to look at averages when the numbers they report to the ABA only include students' highest scores.

And to the OP, as others have said I hope you can see that it doesn't really matter if you have that 140 on your profile. Yeah, it's not uncommon to feel like you did poorly especially if you guess on a good amount of Qs. There's always December. Whether you think you did poorly because of nerves or lack of preparation just prepare harder - focus on your weaknesses, buy the powerscore bibles, do a bunch of PTs, etc. The test is pretty learnable. Try to get your average even higher than it is now so that if you did poorly it'll be "Oh man I think I'll have a 163 on my record, should I cancel?", rather than a 140.

Thanks for the link. However, I think it is very dated. For instance, I spotted at least half a dozen errors. To name one, Harvard did not say that it would take the average of your scores, and it explicitly says that it will only look at the highest. So this is probably... does anyone have a new one?