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Thanks for the help!

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Retaking and taking a year off will help your application immensely. A higher score, which you can certainly achieve considering your self-admitted lack of serious preparation, and year of work experience under your belt will only make you a more attractive candidate. Like previous poster said, depending on how you do, you might be able to ED and get into Northwestern which is known to value work experience and hand out full rides to ED candidates. You'd need 170+ for sure though. Good luck.

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retaking23 wrote:Retaking and taking a year off will help your application immensely. A higher score, which you can certainly achieve considering your self-admitted lack of serious preparation, and year of work experience under your belt will only make you a more attractive candidate. Like previous poster said, depending on how you do, you might be able to ED and get into Northwestern which is known to value work experience and hand out full rides to ED candidates. You'd need 170+ for sure though. Good luck.

OP is not getting NU ED with a 180.

Thank you for the tips, I guess my remaining question is "Is there a penalty in the admissions process for the 2016 cycle if I were to apply this cycle?" I have everything done except my personal statement, with so little left to do and the willingness to spend a couple hundred dollars on the chance of being happy with an offer somewhere is there a downside to applying?

There's no penalty but it's a waste of time. Your gets are gonna be shit and your softs won't change that.

i cannot think of a single option that is available to someone with your numbers that could possibly be considered good
absolute best case scenario is sticker/near-sticker at a strong regional or $$$ at a toilet
options that are both almost hilariously bad

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Everyone here is correct. Forget this cycle - no matter how tempting it is - and go rip the next LSAT.