Non LSAT standardized test score for WL's? Forum

[Cupidity]

Alright, I'm on about 9WL's, FML. And there are two that I would really like to get off, unfortunately my grades have gone down slightly and I've done nothing else this year that is noteworthy. However, I recently took the major field test for Political Science which is a standardized test taken by about 10k students a year, and I got 99% percentile.....could I include this in an OCI, or will they not even care?

[270910]

They wouldn't care at all. They hate even using the LSAT and being slaves to the rankings system. You'll look actively bad if you try to woo them with more standardized testing.

[chanchito]

I don't see how it could hurt to mention it.

[epyon]

It could hurt to mention it if your LSAT score isn't comparably high because it would add evidence suggesting that you are otherwise a good test taker, yet for some reason didn't do as well on the test meant to measure law school aptitude (which would understandably raise questions in the file reader's mind regarding why you, as an apparently good test taker, didn't perform as well on their targeted exam...obviously, this doesn't look good for you). In effect, if your LSAT score isn't comparable to your performance on this standardized test, and especially if your GPA isn't comparable to your LSAT test performance, you would be making the reverse argument of what students with a history of poor testing make when they submit their old SAT/ACT scores to argue that they have a history of standardized testing that has thus far been unpredictive of their (high) performance in the classroom. Adcomms aren't looking to standardized tests to think, "Oh yeah, this guy is actually smart in some realm of intelligence," which is why you have never read of an admissions dean or director suggesting that they accept an outside test score besides the LSAT to reassure them that you are in "smart" according some particular definition of intelligence; they want to know that you are intelligent in the areas that are purported to be relevant to first year law school performance -- the aptitude measured by the LSAT. By removing a confound that Deans of Admission like Dean Tom of Berkeley explicitly recognize in their TLS interviews --that they look at whether a student's low LSAT may be attributable in some measure to simply being a poor test taker, which must be backed up by past SATs, for example -- the OP could be hurting, rather than helping, him/herself.

[CanadianWolf]

Agree with epyon's post.