Good Advice Is Hard To Come By

You want to go to law school and we want to help! Why? Because we want you to be the next Atticus Finch! (And your mom called and asked us to give you some advice – and it’s so hard to say no to such a sweet lady). If you have a low score, we can help! But what if you’re done with the LSAT and all you got is a low score and a lousy t-shirt?

We’d love to give you a bunch of admissions advice, but we won’t. That’s not what we’re great at. MY mother said to do one thing and do that thing incredibly well, (and it better not involve gambling, professional wrestling, or reality TV). So, don’t listen to us – instead read some stuff read by people who know more than we do about Law School Admissions. Here’s Ann Levine’s take on low LSAT scores (how low is low?), as well as some ideas about transferring up. I think/hope neither of these will apply to many of you, but for those of you on the fringe of the score spectrum, these are some good ideas  – though, studying and re-taking the LSAT may also be smart!

Listen to your mother, and Ann.

The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) has put a new policy in place that benefits LSAT takers.  Starting with the upcoming (June 6^th ) exam, LSAT takers now have the option to withdraw their registration up until midnight (EST) the day before the exam (i.e. June 5^th).

Prior to the implementation of this new rule, students were required to decide if they wanted to withdraw from the test before the Test Date Change Deadline– which was usually about three weeks before the test date–leaving little leeway for those who remained unsure about their readiness during the last few weeks of their prep programs.This policy was especially unfair to those students who encountered unforeseen life events that hindered their ability to take the exam.Now students may withdraw their registration without the worry of having an “absence” on their future score reports, which can sometimes be interpreted negatively by admissions councilors.

It should be noted that students who wish to transfer their registration fee still need to postpone their exam registration before the Test Date Change Deadline in order to retain the money they have paid.

Rule Equivalency Questions are Meant to be Broken

The LSAT is a funny beast. On the one hand it stays very consistent – it’s still paper and pencil, still given simply four times per year, and still requires a number two pencil. But, on the other hand, it keeps throwing us small curve balls, small changes in what it asks of us. And these changes happen in every section: Logical Reasoning no longer has multiple questions about one stimulus, Reading Comprehension now has comparative passages, and Logic Games, around the year 2000, entered the Modern Era (read the intro to our Logic Game Strategy Guide to learn what that is). Excitingly, there’s a new Logic Games curve. It’s the introduction of a new question type – Rule Equivalency questions.

If you’ve taken one of the more recent LSATs, you might remember a question that asks something like “Which of the following, if substituted for the rule that . . . would have the same effect . . .” Some of these were quite easy, some were rather tricky, and they were all novel.

If you have already learned the basics of each of the games, take a look at our White Paper on this new question type.