how do schools see a score, cancel? (no retake after cancel) Forum

[senorhosh]

So i have a score already. I'm planning on june retake. if i take june but feel i didn't do well & i cancel, how will schools view that? would an absent look better?, Im not taking oct for sure, and im not sure if I'll be ready for june.

[lederhosen]

.

[d0rklord]

If you take the test and cancel, it will show up as a cancel AND it will count towards your 3 tests in 2 years.

If you do not show up, it will show up as "absent."

You have until midnight the night before the test, so until June 10 11:59p.m. to WITHDRAW and that will show NOTHING on your record.

I hope this helped

[99.9luft]

If you take the test and cancel, it will show up as a cancel AND it will count towards your 3 tests in 2 years.

If you do not show up, it will show up as "absent."

You have until midnight the night before the test, so until June 10 11:59p.m. to WITHDRAW and that will show NOTHING on your record.

I hope this helped

TITCR

[Micdiddy]

If you take the test and cancel, it will show up as a cancel AND it will count towards your 3 tests in 2 years.

If you do not show up, it will show up as "absent."

You have until midnight the night before the test, so until June 10 11:59p.m. to WITHDRAW and that will show NOTHING on your record.

I hope this helped

TITCR

"This is the correct response"????

I've never seen that acronym before, but I think my guess is solid, amirite?

[JJDancer]

If you take the test and cancel, it will show up as a cancel AND it will count towards your 3 tests in 2 years.

If you do not show up, it will show up as "absent."

You have until midnight the night before the test, so until June 10 11:59p.m. to WITHDRAW and that will show NOTHING on your record.

I hope this helped

TITCR

"This is the correct response"????

I've never seen that acronym before, but I think my guess is solid, amirite?

Yes, this is a very common acronym on TLS.

[Jeffort]

So i have a score already. I'm planning on june retake. if i take june but feel i didn't do well & i cancel, how will schools view that? would an absent look better?, Im not taking oct for sure, and im not sure if I'll be ready for june.

If by the day before the test you are not ready for whatever reason, exercise the 'withdraw your registration' option. You just have to go online into your LSAC account to do it and it only takes a couple of minutes. You have until 11:59pm ET the day before the administration to do that if you decide you are not ready to take the test the next day.

DO NOT flake out, do nothing, not show up and end up with an absent on your score record!

Given the options now available, if you pull an 'absent' under the current rules and regulations, it screams FLAKE to admission committees that will review your applications when you apply. That is bad and will hurt your admission chances.

[Tiago Splitter]

Given the options now available, if you pull an 'absent' under the current rules and regulations, it screams FLAKE to admission committees that will review your applications when you apply. That is bad and will hurt your admission chances.

Hyperbole much? Good God Jeffort.

[zanzbar]

Given the options now available, if you pull an 'absent' under the current rules and regulations, it screams FLAKE to admission committees that will review your applications when you apply. That is bad and will hurt your admission chances.

I took an absence on Dec 2011 and it didn't affect my cycle.

[bp shinners]

Given the options now available, if you pull an 'absent' under the current rules and regulations, it screams FLAKE to admission committees that will review your applications when you apply. That is bad and will hurt your admission chances.

I took an absence on Dec 2011 and it didn't affect my cycle.

Just because you got into places you expected doesn't mean that it had no effect on your cycle.

While Jeffort definitely used language to imply a huge negative on your record, he was getting across a good point. An absence, with today's rules, looks bad on your application. Is it going to kill your chances? No. But why have any negative on your record if all it takes to not have it is a phone call the night before the exam?

In short, absences look bad. They're easy to avoid. Avoid them.

[d0rklord]

Given the options now available, if you pull an 'absent' under the current rules and regulations, it screams FLAKE to admission committees that will review your applications when you apply. That is bad and will hurt your admission chances.

I took an absence on Dec 2011 and it didn't affect my cycle.

Just because you got into places you expected doesn't mean that it had no effect on your cycle.

While Jeffort definitely used language to imply a huge negative on your record, he was getting across a good point. An absence, with today's rules, looks bad on your application. Is it going to kill your chances? No. But why have any negative on your record if all it takes to not have it is a phone call the night before the exam?

In short, absences look bad. They're easy to avoid. Avoid them.

You don't even have to telephone in, if you're that lazy!!! It's easier... Log into your LSAC account and literally with two clicks, you can withdraw! (If I can do it, anyone can!... O.O)

[Jeffort]

I suppose I should have used the word 'can' instead of 'will' and provided more context for my statement since it's unlikely that people now preparing for the LSAT and planning to apply to law school are aware of significant things about the history of many past years/cycles.

Up until a few years ago LSAC policy allowed people to reschedule their LSAT test date up to two days AFTER the administration for a small fee if they didn't show up for the test and nothing would show up on the LSAT score report schools receive. That was the way it was for many years.

During that long era, other than being in a coma or having given up on seeking law school admission, it was easy for admission committees to make a reasonable negative inference about applicants with an ABSENT on the score report. The person flaked out on something important even though the negative mark was easy to avoid with a phone call and/or fax.

A few years ago LSAC changed the policy so that the drop dead deadline to avoid having anything about a test date one registered for (a reported score, score cancelled, or absent) was about two and a half weeks before the administration.

Under those rules, if one did not either cancel their test registration or reschedule the test date by the deadline, one of those three things would appear on the score report schools receive, leaving students in a bind about what to do if something popped up close to test day or they weren't prepared or whatever.

Given the rule that limits people from taking the test more than three times in a two year time window, many people that were not hitting their target score range shortly before an administration opted to be absent rather than take it, cancel the score and use one of their three chances and others were absent due to various life circumstances that popped up shortly before test day (sick, family emergency, work demands, etc.).

Due to the ~2.5 weeks before test day deadlines and all the various reasons that could have caused a test taker to not show up and take the test the day they were registered for, admission committees could not form any reasonable inferences about applicants with an absent on their record aside from a voluntarily supplied addendum. They received tons of them, many of them filled with lame excuses. Largely due to that and the LSAC rules in place at the time that were a significant cause of the trend, admission committees largely just ignored/didn't take much consideration of ABSENT on CAS reports when evaluating applicants and making decisions.

Since LSAC is an organization that is made up of member law schools and designed to serve them for LS admission purposes, they respond to requests and concerns of LSs that are members of the council.

I think that makes it reasonable to believe that the recent policy change allowing students to withdraw a registration to take the LSAT up to midnight the day before the test without anything showing up about it in a CAS report and without it using up one of the three times to take the test in two years, plus the consolidation of LSAC now being solely in charge of making discretionary exceptions to the three times in two years rule to cut down on serial test takers that were treating taking the LSAT as if it is a roulette wheel or slot machine were the result of feedback and requests from law schools.

Given that context, pulling an absent now, especially the first time a person is registered to take the test under the new set of policies, can again be reasonably interpreted and judged by admission committees as a negative factor about applicants when reviewing applications and making admission decisions since it is again reasonable to infer or at least suspect FLAKE from the mark.

Since the withdraw registration option is less than a year old, a previous ABSENT mark is probably not a big deal in the current cycle that is wrapping up and may be looked past next cycle depending on the test date it was for, but I think it will again become a more significant negative factor in future cycles, starting with the cycle to begin LS in 2013 if it is from a 2012 or later administration.

That's my take on it.

In short form ABSENT = looks bad in your application and will be taken into account.

[Tiago Splitter]

I suppose I should have used the word 'can' instead of 'will'

...

In short form ABSENT = looks bad in your application and will be taken into account.

We've all spent plenty of time looking into this stuff and the consensus is that adcomms care about two things above all else: LSDAS GPA and the highest LSAT score. Why should we suddenly amend that to include a test day absence? If a 175/3.9 applicant has an absent on their record (either because they got in a car accident on the way to the testing center or because they drank too much the night before) the absent will be ignored.

[Jeffort]

I suppose I should have used the word 'can' instead of 'will'

...

In short form ABSENT = looks bad in your application and will be taken into account.

We've all spent plenty of time looking into this stuff and the consensus is that adcomms care about two things above all else: LSDAS GPA and the highest LSAT score. Why should we suddenly amend that to include a test day absence? If a 175/3.9 applicant has an absent on their record (either because they got in a car accident on the way to the testing center or because they drank too much the night before) the absent will be ignored.

Of course, the two most significant factors are LSDAS GPA and LSAT score, there is no dispute about that. A hypothetical applicant with a 3.9 & 175 will likely get accepted by several T1 schools even with an absent on record, no dispute about that either.

However, applicants with a similar near perfect numbers profile are only a very small proportion of the applicant pool, even to T1 schools. T1 & T14 schools reject applicants with near perfect numbers of either or even both every year for various reasons given the number of candidates they have to choose from and many other factors.

Even with the big decline in number of people taking the LSAT and volume of applicants, there is still not a shortage of qualified applicants within the schools numbers ranges of both GPA and LSAT for them to choose from to build a class of qualified students, even if they have to slightly shrink entering class size temporarily to do it. The top schools are looking to put together classes of capable students that will perform well over time and succeed in ways that make the school look good later.

Most applicants do not have a near perfect GPA and near perfect LSAT score. It is those people (splitters with a bad or mediocre GPA or crap previous LSAT score on record) that an absent on record will likely affect more if they are shooting for T1 because the ultimate question those admission committees are trying to predict an answer to when making decisions is "Can and will this person do well in our law school and succeed?"

One of my points is that for applicants with marginal numbers for the schools they apply to (especially with the highly ranked schools), a recent 'absent' on record can and will most likely hurt admission chances.