Self-study
Hello everyone, recently I was diagnosed with ADHD and as such, I've been considering the possibility of taking the exam in June with timing accommodations. I know personally that I've always struggled with timing during standardized testing since childhood, and even in admissions exams like the SAT in high school. However, I hear a lot of successful applicants with ADHD forgo accommodations altogether and score high, so I'd hate to be an outlier. My concern is that I already have 2 attempts without accommodations under my belt, and the last thing I want is a potentially higher score marred on Law School Applications by the fact that I may have taken the easy way out via accommodations. So my question in particular are for those who decided to take the LSAT with Accommodations, did they negatively impact your admissions process by any means?
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3 comments
Chiming in from the admissions perspective!
@Dibble - It's alright to have accommodations. It is! Promise! LSAC got their pants absolutely sued off of them about 10-12 years ago for being too stringent on granting accommodations that they should have because of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So this has been around for a while. Additionally, law schools are required by the ADA to grant accommodations on testing during law school. So you aren't doing anything that you wouldn't be doing in law school anyway.
And let me put this to you in another way - there is no universe in which it's better to get a lower score by taking the test in harder conditions ("I know my LSAT is below your median but I did it with one hand literally tied behind my back!") then getting a higher score with accommodations.
Last note - if you do get accommodations and do score significantly higher than your previous tests (and I'll set that benchmark at like a 6-7+ point increase), just write a quick note on your addenda to explain the score increase. It's totally alright!
As far as I am aware, LSAC does not share accommodation info with schools so it should have no impact on your admissions process. That being said, if you were to voluntarily share that information whether in essays or interviews, that would of course change things. Even then, I doubt they would care that much. It's a legitimate test option given by LSAC meant for people similar to you, not some easy way out.