vent incoming about a tiny error reflective of a bigger issue
Y’all, I can’t with LSAC.
I took the test in January and still have to do the writing portion (no issue there). On my LSAC profile, they say I can “check it’s status” (instead of its). Tiny, insignificant grammar mistake that harms no one. I'm not judging the individual who wrote it. I'm calling out the institution that has notoriously shoddy communication with its users, responsible for playing a huge part of our law school applications and futures.
I've been breathing the LSAT for over a year, trained by them to pay attention to the smallest details. We've all come across questions where it feels like they're just trolling us with that level of scrutiny. Clearly, they're more than capable of being attentive. But they can't be bothered to make it part of their ethos to treat us with anywhere close to the kind of care they demand of us.
Another example of their bad communication: removing the comp passage from RC with zero announcement (edit: for some tests, not all), failing to update their website about this permanent change beforehand, and then updating it with a typo only after someone reached out. And that’s not even getting into my separate beef with LSAC CAS and their monopoly on the admissions process, which, for the record, they’re currently being sued over.
I know we all hate on the test writers, but honestly, I’m not mad at them. Apparently some (many?) of them are recent philosophy PhDs, and jobs are rough out there. I agree with those who say it's a well-made test. This is about the people in charge of a high-stakes admissions platform who can't be bothered to place communication with test takers on their list of priorities. I'd probably have more chill if the difference between a 95th percentile score and “perfect” didn't mean thousands of dollars in scholarships.
Phew. Thank you for reading my rant. Getting off my soapbox now.
@HannaWallace Sorry for the confusion and thanks for bringing that up. Only some people had the comp passage removed. I took it remotely so maybe it was mostly those people, I'm not sure. There are some discussions about it on other forums online. If you look at the official LSAC website, it now says: "A Reading Comprehension section will include either 3 or 4 single reading passages, and either one or no comparative reading passages."
I'm sorry you had that experience, it must have been frustrating. God forbid we get some oxygen during an hours-long intense cognitive performance.
I haven't actually run into any major problems with LSAC personally (to clarify, I'm just dragging my feet on doing the arg writing portion but there's no issue on their end). I was just looking around on my profile and noticed that typo and it was the last straw for me, lol. But yeah, the ratio of power over our lives to respectful treatment is pretty abysmal. (Which is unfortunately not uncommon for people/institutions in power, but that's another soapbox.) It really does feel like their attitude is "what are you going to do about it." It makes me respect the efforts of people putting pressure on top law schools to follow suit of other schools accepting other standardized tests (not that they're necessarily better, but it makes for a fairer system, in my opinion). That's one long-term solution, at least. We wont see it, but I have hope for the future! Best of luck to you on your journey.