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Got a Golden ticket (violation ticket) during the June 2013 LSAT. It was my first time taking the test, I was pretty nervous and landed on the wrong section when I flipped my test booklet after section 1. I was not paying attention on the top of the page, really stupid mistake and I am still boggled on how I can mess up over something like this. My brain was basically just telling me that Im gonna run out of time so I better answer the first question I see on the page. Anyway, the instructor caught me about 10 seconds into the time and marked me up for answering the wrong section. She wrote a report on me and gave me the bright piece of golden ticket. It is safe to say I bombed the entire test because I was just freaking out the whole time, wondering what is going to happen to me and how this would affect my law school admission. As if the test itself was not already stressful enough.

Yeah that was just a terrible day. Pretty much broke down when I got home, and I dont cry easily.

I wonder what is gonna happen to me if LSAC finds me 'guilty'. I would definitely try my best to defend myself, but this is seriously not something I am looking forward to this summer.

I guess it is not too late to consider grad school.

This sounds like a bizarro version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Like a version where you don't want a golden ticket and you don't get to go to a chocolate factory.

Story sounds suspect. If you landed on section 3 or 4 after opening your textbook, then you have been marking down your answers incorrectly for section 2 on your Scranton.
they probably saw you marking section 3 on your Scantron, then put together what you were trying to do.


If it was an honest mistake, you would have guessed section 2, but they probably caught you by your Scantron.

^ OP said that he was working on the section maybe 10 seconds before they caught him. And yes, my mind immediately went to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I read the title.

Misread that time part.

That sucks, OP. I've heard about people flipping through sections and never getting caught, but never heard of doing work on the wrong section. Not sure how you're going to fight it, since it's your word vs the LSAT proctor.

tiguangna wrote:Got a Golden ticket (violation ticket) during the June 2013 LSAT. It was my first time taking the test, I was pretty nervous and landed on the wrong section when I flipped my test booklet after section 1. I was not paying attention on the top of the page, really stupid mistake and I am still boggled on how I can mess up over something like this. My brain was basically just telling me that Im gonna run out of time so I better answer the first question I see on the page. Anyway, the instructor caught me about 10 seconds into the time and marked me up for answering the wrong section. She wrote a report on me and gave me the bright piece of golden ticket. It is safe to say I bombed the entire test because I was just freaking out the whole time, wondering what is going to happen to me and how this would affect my law school admission. As if the test itself was not already stressful enough.

Yeah that was just a terrible day. Pretty much broke down when I got home, and I dont cry easily.

I wonder what is gonna happen to me if LSAC finds me 'guilty'. I would definitely try my best to defend myself, but this is seriously not something I am looking forward to this summer.

I guess it is not too late to consider grad school.

Good.

Sounds like OP finished a section early and worked ahead.

OP here

Maybe I should clarify the timing of what happened: section 1 finished. I was barely able to finish it before proctor said 'times up'. I stopped then proctor said 'go to the next section and begin' and thats what the screw up happened. I flipped the page, or in my case PAGES, the same time as everbody else and started reading the wrong section. Heck, I have not even bubbled in ANYTHING yet,as Ive said it was still barely a few seconds into the time and she just caught me reading the wrong section. I had to scramble to section 2, pretty much losing a few seconds into the right section. If she didnt stop me I wouldve bubbled in section 2 for the answers in another section. Proctor was not 'watching my scantron', there was nothing on it but section 1 answers which I finished with everyone else.

Shouldve known i would have doubters in a law school forum lol.

Why is everyone second guessing the OP? What reason would she have to lie to randoms on the internet when asking for advice on this?

Post removed.

tiguangna wrote:OP here

Maybe I should clarify the timing of what happened: section 1 finished. I was barely able to finish it before proctor said 'times up'. I stopped then proctor said 'go to the next section and begin' and thats what the screw up happened. I flipped the page, or in my case PAGES, the same time as everbody else and started reading the wrong section. Heck, I have not even bubbled in ANYTHING yet,as Ive said it was still barely a few seconds into the time and she just caught me reading the wrong section. I had to scramble to section 2, pretty much losing a few seconds into the right section. If she didnt stop me I wouldve bubbled in section 2 for the answers in another section. Proctor was not 'watching my scantron', there was nothing on it but section 1 answers which I finished with everyone else.

Shouldve known i would have doubters in a law school forum lol.

I apologize. It sounds like your proctor is an ahole.

tiguangna wrote:Got a Golden ticket (violation ticket) during the June 2013 LSAT. It was my first time taking the test, I was pretty nervous and landed on the wrong section when I flipped my test booklet after section 1. I was not paying attention on the top of the page, really stupid mistake and I am still boggled on how I can mess up over something like this. My brain was basically just telling me that Im gonna run out of time so I better answer the first question I see on the page. Anyway, the instructor caught me about 10 seconds into the time and marked me up for answering the wrong section. She wrote a report on me and gave me the bright piece of golden ticket. It is safe to say I bombed the entire test because I was just freaking out the whole time, wondering what is going to happen to me and how this would affect my law school admission. As if the test itself was not already stressful enough.

Yeah that was just a terrible day. Pretty much broke down when I got home, and I dont cry easily.

I wonder what is gonna happen to me if LSAC finds me 'guilty'. I would definitely try my best to defend myself, but this is seriously not something I am looking forward to this summer.

I guess it is not too late to consider grad school.

What does the notice list as your options to deal with it and what does it say will happen in terms of process/procedures? Does the notice contain any notes from the proctor/what the proctor says you did?

Given that what you described arguably can be viewed as a split second unintended/innocent pages of the test booklet stuck together/page flipping mistake you should present your side of the story/defense to LSAC at least to make it clear that no cheating was intended, attempted or committed before LSAC decides what action to take. The notice should contain instructions about the process and how to address the situation to defend yourself. Without your side of the story LSAC only has what the proctor wrote down to go on, which may not be the same as your version or complete.

You definitely want to prevent a testing misconduct finding from being put on your LSAC report if you can, or at least get it so that the details of it are clear to show you weren't caught in the act of cheating or trying to cheat since law schools frown on dishonesty big time.

I've heard of situations where students have been written up by a proctor and after investigating LSAC decided not to put a misconduct finding on the students record when it was something really trivial/an innocent mistake along with an overzealous proctor. No guarantee that LSAC will forgive you with your situation, but to stand a good chance of at least not getting a 'cheater' scarlet letter put on your record you should defend yourself properly. When a misconduct finding is put into a persons record it contains a description/details of the incident you were cited for that law schools receive with your scores. There is a world of difference between getting caught red handed intentionally cheating vs. accidentally flipping to and looking at the wrong page for the first ~10 seconds of a section, so if it is going to be reported to schools you at least want the true facts known about what exactly you did, which in this case is arguably no big deal. However, you better have a good believable excuse for how and why your finger accidentally flipped several pages that were enough to skip an entire section instead of just one page since to skip an entire section you had to have flipped at least four pages instead of just one.

When submitting a defense/explanation, keep in mind that LSAC does investigate all misconduct reports before taking final action, meaning that LSAC would probably talk to the proctor that wrote the report to let him/her respond to your version of what occurred in order to get to the truth. If you claim that the pages were stuck together and all flipped with one move of your finger, that better be the truth rather than the proctor having seen you flip pages multiple times before section 3 showed at the top of the page.

Good Luck.

From what I understand from reading the policy though, LSAC doesn't care about the intent behind the action.

tiguangna wrote:Got a Golden ticket

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoL5KoLgeII

..

OP, you done fucked up.

tiguangna wrote:OP here

Maybe I should clarify the timing of what happened: section 1 finished. I was barely able to finish it before proctor said 'times up'. I stopped then proctor said 'go to the next section and begin' and thats what the screw up happened. I flipped the page, or in my case PAGES, the same time as everbody else and started reading the wrong section. Heck, I have not even bubbled in ANYTHING yet,as Ive said it was still barely a few seconds into the time and she just caught me reading the wrong section. I had to scramble to section 2, pretty much losing a few seconds into the right section. If she didnt stop me I wouldve bubbled in section 2 for the answers in another section. Proctor was not 'watching my scantron', there was nothing on it but section 1 answers which I finished with everyone else.

Shouldve known i would have doubters in a law school forum lol.

I'm really the only person who thinks this is curious? If OP finished at the last second, they were likely on the last page of the section. Those pages are thin; at the end of the section, they would have been required to just pull that one flimsy page across to open up the next section. I think most of us would notice if we grabbed multiple pages and were suddenly halfway through the test booklet. And OP, do you start randomly in the middle of sections, or do you start on the first page of a section? If you do start on the first page of the section, you would have unconsciously (or consciously) made note of the section header at the top before starting (not the section number, just the little paragraph with instructions for the section and the number of questions above it). You just coincidentally grabbed a hunk of pages and opened it up to exactly the first page of section 3? Interesting. =\

I unfortunately don't have any advice for you; hopefully LSAC will believe you and give you a minimal penalty. If you felt that your test was completely thrown off by this experience though, you probably should have cancelled.

You should try drilling various page flipping techniques; the Cambridge bundles tend to get a lot of lip service on TLS. I don't know if they organize it by type in this case, but it could still be helpful.

OP, did you cancel your score?