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Is cancelled LSAT score (during or within 6 days of test per LSAC req) considered during admission decision? It isn't clear to me from LSAC webpage (http://www.lsac.org/jd/lsat/lsat-cancellation.asp) if a cancelled score be counted as something for averaging with any scored lsat score or if it would be simply ignored by admissions.

Do hys consider the average or the highest lsat score?

What are they going to average the cancellation as? It certainly looks better than a score that's substantially below where your retake is (152, 174 is worse than Canc./174), but it still isn't ideal. I wouldn't recommend cancelling unless you know for a fact that you bombed it (mis-bubbling, running out of time, blowing a game, etc.). Some of my best PT scores have been on tests where I felt like I did horribly.

HYS report the highest like everyone else, but it does seem that re-takers don't fair quite as well as their numbers at some of the T14. A lot of that data is questionable though, as we are just going off LSN profiles. I can't imagine it would make too much of a difference, regardless. Write a convincing LSAT addendum, and crush your re-take.

No one truly averages scores anymore. Top schools like Harvard will sometimes weigh a lower score or look at it, but its not nearly as significant as it used to be. Declining applications have precluded the ability to act so choice-y about the provenance of median-establishing numbers.

Your score cancellation is worth a quick addendum, but just dominate a retake and it shouldn't impact your cycle.

jbagelboy wrote:Your score cancellation is worth a quick addendum, but just dominate a retake and it shouldn't impact your cycle.

And I would probably skip the addendum unless there was a specific reason for it (illness, accident on the way to the LSAT, etc...).

Thanks. Í read on this forum or hls website that H averages scores. What if someone has 168 and 174 as opposed to a single 172? Or for 165 and 175 vs 170. A 175 adds strong weight to a positive outcome from h whereas 170 does not.
I am not sure how predictable decisions would be for these numbers.

jmjm wrote:Thanks. Í read on this forum or hls website that H averages scores. What if someone has 168 and 174 as opposed to a single 172? Or for 165 and 175 vs 170. A 175 adds strong weight to a positive outcome from h whereas 170 does not.
I am not sure how predictable decisions would be for these numbers.

Ignore old law school websites. they have some outdated stuff on there.

your examples are too extreme; in these cases I would go with the highest score as your predictor. I think if you have like 167 -> 175 vs a single first take 174, Harvard will prefer the 174, but this is a rare comparison. What's most important is that you look at the median of your target school. If you are over that median LSAT, then the rest is fluff

RhymesLikeDimes wrote:(mis-bubbling, running out of time, blowing a game, etc.)

Even then. I blew a game and ran out of time and still got a 175. It's difficult to judge how you did right after the test.

jbagelboy wrote: Ignore old law school websites. they have some outdated stuff on there.

Thanks for the useful info. An approximation of the 167->175 vs single take 174 example may not be that rare at H considering over 6k applications. Possibly there's no consensus about this issue as this tls link says something different, http://www.top-law-schools.com/retaking-the-lsat.html
It looks like the LS admission process may not be so much of numbers game after all as tls would have one believe.
Aren't the school websites usually up to date in regards with such matters because adcom must get questioned about it a lot during school visits

jmjm wrote:It looks like the LS admission process may not be so much of numbers game after all as tls would have one believe.

This is a ridiculous sentiment. We think it's a numbers game exactly to the extent to which it is a numbers game based on LSN statistics. It's not a question of whether those percentages apply to any given applicant, it's simply a question of which side of the percentage line the applicant will fall. It's as though we are taking a class together where the syllabus says our grade will be determined 85% by our scores on the multiple choice tests and 15% by a subjective written paper, and the teacher can make exceptions either way as she chooses. Some people will try to be the teacher's pet and some people will work really hard on that paper, but at the end of the day the ones who did best on those multiple choice tests will still be most likely to get an "A" in the class.

TripTrip wrote:

jmjm wrote:It looks like the LS admission process may not be so much of numbers game after all as tls would have one believe.

This is a ridiculous sentiment. We think it's a numbers game exactly to the extent to which it is a numbers game based on LSN statistics. It's not a question of whether those percentages apply to any given applicant, it's simply a question of which side of the percentage line the applicant will fall. It's as though we are taking a class together where the syllabus says our grade will be determined 85% by our scores on the multiple choice tests and 15% by a subjective written paper, and the teacher can make exceptions either way as she chooses. Some people will try to be the teacher's pet and some people will work really hard on that paper, but at the end of the day the ones who did best on those multiple choice tests will still be most likely to get an "A" in the class.

I actually like this analogy so TYFT. Except that no reputable challenging college classes have multiple choice exams, but that's besides the point

jbagelboy wrote:no reputable challenging college classes have multiple choice exams

Going to a reputable college counts only inside that 15%. I aced plenty of multiple choice exams in my senior year of UG.

TripTrip wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:no reputable challenging college classes have multiple choice exams

Going to a reputable college counts only inside that 15%. I aced plenty of multiple choice exams in my senior year of UG.

lol fuck me man. I only had one class with a multiple choice exam all of college, freshmen year. It was my only "A+" in a course from the only professor I had who would give an "A+". Ohhh if only I knew law school admissions were so rigid. In perspective, the stupidity of my academic decisions was legendary

jbagelboy wrote:

TripTrip wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:no reputable challenging college classes have multiple choice exams

Going to a reputable college counts only inside that 15%. I aced plenty of multiple choice exams in my senior year of UG.

lol fuck me man. I only had one class with a multiple choice exam all of college, freshmen year. It was my only "A+" in a course from the only professor I had who would give an "A+". Ohhh if only I knew law school admissions were so rigid. In perspective, the stupidity of my academic decisions was legendary

To be fair, though, the classes I had with no tests and no exams (all papers with no time limit) were definitely easier in my opinion to solidify that "A" because I could demonstrate my mastery of the subject matter without worrying about nitpicky questions.

TripTrip wrote:

jmjm wrote:It looks like the LS admission process may not be so much of numbers game after all as tls would have one believe.

This is a ridiculous sentiment. We think it's a numbers game exactly to the extent to which it is a numbers game based on LSN statistics. It's not a question of whether those percentages apply to any given applicant, it's simply a question of which side of the percentage line the applicant will fall. It's as though we are taking a class together where the syllabus says our grade will be determined 85% by our scores on the multiple choice tests and 15% by a subjective written paper, and the teacher can make exceptions either way as she chooses. Some people will try to be the teacher's pet and some people will work really hard on that paper, but at the end of the day the ones who did best on those multiple choice tests will still be most likely to get an "A" in the class.

This analogy helps, tyft. However, isn't the precise extent to which it's a numbers game unpredictable apriori because it extrapolates previous data, in this instance LSN stats, that has year-to-year dynamism. In other words, it's not clear if someone could predict beforehand with a reasonable certainty x such that x% of h admission is lsat/gpa based and 100-x% rec/essays/softs based. And if this 100-x % is a non-insignificant number, then it raises the question of distribution amongst rec, essays, and ECs etc.
I recall there was an non urm admit on the h forum with lsat 5+ below 25% for the school.

jmjm wrote:However, isn't the precise extent to which it's a numbers game unpredictable apriori because it extrapolates previous data, in this instance LSN stats, that has year-to-year dynamism.

But the stats don't change significantly from year to year. That's what makes them so powerful. We search mylsn including multiple years to get a bigger sample size, but with a broad enough range the stats stay roughly the same from one year to the next.

jmjm wrote:In other words, it's not clear if someone could predict beforehand with a reasonable certainty x such that x% of h admission is lsat/gpa based and 100-x% rec/essays/softs based. And if this 100-x % is a non-insignificant number, then it raises the question of distribution amongst rec, essays, and ECs etc.
I recall there was an non urm admit on the h forum with lsat 5+ below 25% for the school.

I think we're missing the point of the data here. When I say that a 175/4.0 has a 93% change of getting in based on past data, I know that 93% of previous applicants with similar numbers got in and 7% didn't. Those 7% will obviously tell you that there are soft factors to admission, because otherwise they would have gotten in. Same goes for the flip side for the applicants with a 7% chance of getting in: 7% of them will get in and will tell you that the admissions process is totally soft-based, just look at their cycle. Now say that we have 200 applicants and they fall into these two categories. 14 are telling you it's all about softs, but 186 had the experience which would have been exactly predicted by their numbers. Welcome to TLS.