Do retakes matter? Forum

[altoid99]

How does one search for people who took the LSAT more than once on LSN? When I select 'only' for "multiple lsat" on the user search page, I only find one person from this cycle.

[thewaves]

Just from the 2012-2013 cycle, I think schools that penalize retakes are re-thinking their strategies in order to fill their classes with 170+ applicants. Just an observation; I would be curious to see the statistics for this cycle alone.

[RetakeFrenzy]

How does one search for people who took the LSAT more than once on LSN? When I select 'only' for "multiple lsat" on the user search page, I only find one person from this cycle.

I think most people simply report their highest scores on LSN.

[jmjm]

Schools w/ No Statistical Difference Between Retakers and Non-Retakers - Penn, GULC, Northwestern, UVA, Yale, Michigan, and Duke

Schools Where Retakers Faired Worse - Columbia, Berkeley, Cornell, NYU, Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago

Harvard - Retakers are 31% less likely to be admitted.

interesting data! Both y and h have red as well as green smudges. is the reason H retakers are 31% less likely vs Y is that the red smudges in H are bigger?

It's also possible that retake may still hold positive effect in small pockets of gpa lsat range symbolized by green smudges

[LSATSCORES2012]

Schools w/ No Statistical Difference Between Retakers and Non-Retakers - Penn, GULC, Northwestern, UVA, Yale, Michigan, and Duke

Schools Where Retakers Faired Worse - Columbia, Berkeley, Cornell, NYU, Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago

Harvard - Retakers are 31% less likely to be admitted.

interesting data! Both y and h have red as well as green smudges. is the reason H retakers are 31% less likely vs Y is that the red smudges in H are bigger?

It's also possible that retake may still hold positive effect in small pockets of gpa lsat range symbolized by green smudges

I think a lot of the green is probably due to small sample sizes/random statistical fluctuations. I'm not 100% sure on the 31% thing, but what I look for graphically is whether or not there is a lot more red than green, and, more importantly, whether there is any obvious pattern to the red. If you look at NYU's graph, for example, it's clear that they are actively implementing some sort of strategy for dealing with retakers.

[jmjm]

The north-east (close to 4.0/180) tips of most graphs is red and green is scattered somewhere inside these graphs. doesn't it mean that amongst perfect gpa/lsat candidates, if a candidate's very high lsat was due to a retake then her chances are not as good as who's not a retaker? i am assuming the x-axis is lsat and the y-axis is gpa.

This also means that these schools have rejected some candidates with close to perfect gpa/lsat due to it being a retake notwithstanding a very high lsat retake score.

Nyu barely has any green. Possibly nyu is counting retake as a negative (red in the interior portion of the graph). But if nyu was doing so, then it'd be reflected across the board of gpa/lsat datapoints instead of being reflected only in some pockets.

[LSATSCORES2012]

Nyu barely has any green. Possibly nyu is counting retake as a negative (red in the interior portion of the graph). But if nyu was doing so, then it'd be reflected across the board of gpa/lsat datapoints instead of being reflected only in some pockets.

It actually looks to me like it's clearly affecting borderline candidates at NYU but not candidates with high LSAT scores.

And regarding the top right hand corner of the graphs, I can't explain it except to say that there's a small sample size in that region of the graph, so it probably doesn't mean much.

[sublime]

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[gottago]

deleted

[jmjm]

how does 31% @ H mean that a retake doesn't matter @ H (which is the same as saying NYU is the only school where it matters).

Not sure how it does't matter at H since all the high gpa/lsat combos have a lot of red. Only in the borderline accepted candidates is there some green, which Is still less in overall quantity than red. A possible explanation could be that green candidates are the ones who had strong softs, which prompted them to retake improving their score, providing them an edge over others.

How many retakers were reapplcants is an additional consideration depending on whether a reapp, other things being equal, matters in H decision