Differences between US/Canada and Australian June LSATs? Forum

[Marita]

Hey guys, I was curious as to whether any of you know if there are differences between the June 2010 LSATs they administer in Canada/US vs. Australia? The reason I ask is because the June exam in Canada is on June 7th right? And the one in Australia is around June 27th. So I'm assuming they must use a completely different test, because clearly friends from abroad could tell the Aussies what is on the LSAT, or what types of questions to prep for.

So, I'm wondering if there are any usual known differences in difficulty between the two, or whether the calculation incorporating difficulty of the test is different for those students taking it in Aus. because there would be less people taking taking the Aus. version than say the US version. Thoughts?

[abbas123]

they will be completely different exams. doesnt matter whether one exam is "harder" than another b/c the LSAT is scaled.

[Marita]

But will the scales be different because I assume there will be less people in Australia taking that particular LSAT test? Or do they lump all June 2010 takers together to scale it? And if they scale it only considering the Australian takers then if you do well you'd be really high on the curve, and therefore it would be better to take it in Australia than the US, right? Or am I completely misunderstanding how this scaling thing works?

[tomwatts]

You're completely misunderstanding the scale. It's equated, not curved. They come up with the scale ahead of time based on other test-takers' performances on those very questions when those questions are experimental. They scale each test form separately.

There's no advantage to taking one LSAT over another. They're all the same. That's what equating does.

[abbas123]

yeah bc if it was curved, there would be an incentive for ppl to do this to each other

[Marita]

Aaaahaaa, that makes so much more sense now! OK, well, I think I'll still be taking it in Aus before going back to Canada, however it totally negates my "Yay, I have a possible advantage due to being all the way on the other side of the world!" Bah. Thanks for explaining that though guys!

[HiLine]

I am curious which exam will be released then.

[abbas123]

the june north america test will be released, but exams outside north america aren't released. scroll to bottom:

http://lsac.org/LSAT/lsat-score.asp#disclosure