If you have acceptable school options in your area that will work for your family and that a 164 is viable at, then I suggest you start applying and evaluate from there. The goal here is to get that career moving. Unless another 4 points is genuinely critical to making that happen (and at your age and just-getting-started family situation, you can probably move around if needed to find a school that fits), I think you may be close enough to land this. If it turns out not to work yet, then push for those last couple points left in the tank and try again.

Agreed.

I think I may be one of the people you're mentioning as disappointed in their score while still scoring 'significantly higher' than some, based on a prior discussion I responded to. Maybe I should explain, because I don't want anyone to feel what it sounds like you were perhaps feeling.

Everyone is in a different place, with different constraints. I scored too low to viably apply at the only two schools in my state (which have remarkeably high LSAT medians), and due to family circumstances, moving isn't an option. Based on my GPA from 20 years ago, for this path to work I needed to score high enough to be a splitter or super splitter. I did not achieve that, and I really, really thought I could. Given my age and the state of my industry, I'm not sure that 2027 will make sense either. I have to evaluate my options, and even with a high score, I may be out of rope here.

So... a score that for others would be a great path forward is, for me, a door closed. It's a good score in isolation, but I wasn't taking the test for self affirmation and it's just not good enough for the circumstances I'm in.

The point is that comparison is misguided as everyone's circumstances are totally different. I hope that discussion didn't hurt or discourage anyone else, as it wasn't intended to. You honestly, truly don't need a 180 to succeed in life. Don't get caught up in trying to beat all your peers... you just need a path that you can keep moving forward along, and you absolutely can from where you're at! This test is famously hard and terribly stressful (And I know stress, as I've worked in television for twenty years as my career, including many experiences as an on-set supervisor making hard decisions on the fly). This test is absurd and awful and I genuinely congratulate anyone who fights their way through it and even improves in it, whatever the stupid score is.

Good work... you genuinely should feel proud and excited of improvement and progress.

Best of luck to you in the future.

Nice work. That's a massive improvement and you should be really proud of yourself.

I can't see any logic at all to cancelling it. If you cancel it, it doesn't just disappear as if you never sat the test. It remains visible that you took the test and the result just shows as 'cancelled'. In that case the only assumption a school can make is that you did poorly. But you didn't do poorly, in fact you scored something close to the 90th percentile! Why cancel that and leave them guessing what that score was? I don't see it as helpful in any way.

To me, cancelling would only make sense for a circumstance where you just plain bombed horrifically for whatever reason. I would suggest that you just be transparent and hope for future improvement. It's what I'm going to have to do myself: my cold diagnostic was a 168, my recent prep tests averaged 174, and I scored a 167... worst score I've had in months. That stings a lot, but it's not something I can improve by cancelling.

I just had the same experience. Cold diagnostic of 168, recent prep tests as high as 178, recent average 174. I only needed to pull off something above a 170. Instead, I ended up with a 167 on the April LSAT. It definitely stings. Hugely discouraging, as this closes the only two doors that were viable for me (I have a kid at a critical life stage, and it would be selfish to move out of state to chase law schools, but the only two schools in my state have surprisingly high LSAT medians and I have a low GPA from years ago to overcome).

Sorry it happened to you too. Like you, I'm also signed up for June and am not sure what to do differently.

First, though, I wouldn't consider doing the June test at home. I personally had problems with the at-home writing section that caused it to get rejected and left me hugely stressed and rushed. Frankly, even if it's a more comfortable environment, I think the risk is just too high on the LSAT itself. There seem to be a lot of problems and they know that; that's likely part of why they're discarding at-home testing. I think you just have to hope that, having done it once, some of the inherent stress of the testing environment is lessened the second time.

I also see no reason to discard the score. I'm going to keep mine, even though I'm crushed by it. If law schools couldn't see that you'd discarded a score (if the April LSAT simply disappeared entirely from your history) then perhaps it would make sense. But that's not how it works. Since schools can see that you sat the LSAT and chose to discard it, I just don't see how it's helpful at all in our situation. If they see a sat test with a discarded result, of course the only possible assumption is that you didn't score well. In fact, even if it's a huge disappointment and (like me) perhaps not good enough for your needs... it's still a 91st percentile result. As schools only really care about the highest score (that's the only thing that affects their rankings), it seems to me that you might just as well leave it alone, be transparent, and just aim at a higher score in June. The only benefit I can see to discarding a score and having that discard visible to the schools would be in circumstances a lot lower than what we both delivered.

I sure hope so, since I'm trying it at 46.

I don’t have an answer. Just wanted to let you know I’m in the same boat. Hang in there.

This is pretty common, I think. You’re internalizing new ways of thinking and they’re not fitting well yet, slowing you down and causing second-guessing. It’s like breaking in a new pair of shoes: it hurts at first, and the benefit is only apparent once they’re fully natural for you.

If it’s any encouragement at all, looking at your graph it actually appears like you have an upward trend in LR. Your grade changes seem to be driven largely by fluctuations in the RC score more than you actually getting worse at anything. To me, it looks like you’re improving.

This was already said, but I'll just say it too.

From what I have been told by authoritative sources, it's almost entirely about the medians. Your application is judged on 3 things: LSAT median, GPA median, and your life story. You fall into one of three categories: 'high/high' (above both medians), 'high/low' (above one, below the other), and 'low/low' (below both). 'Close' doesn't count for much: if the median is a 168 and you come in with a 167... then you're categorically a 'low', unfortunately. And it's pretty much the categories that count. If the school is admitting a class of 100 students, then the top 50 in each median category are there to establish (and protect) the sacred median, since that defines the school's rankings. The bottom fifty would be there because they're protecting the other median, or they have something special to add to the class (work experience in a field that would make you a unicorn in law, life experience that would look good when highlighted in the alumni magazine, Dad's a senator, they just like the cut of your jib, whatever). Basically, the admissions officers try to balance who they let in to produce what they consider a great class cohort while first and foremost protecting the medians; candidates from all three groups are admitted, but if you're a 'low/low' you need to be really interesting in other ways. High/high status is likely a green light unless your story disqualifies you in some way, high/low status and a strong story has a very good shot.

With that said, I don't think you need to worry so much right now. With your GPA, you can't be a high/high (neither can I, and not for any cool reasons like being an NCAA athlete!), but you can still be a high/low by just beating any school's median by a single point. 157 is not nothing! It's a solid diagnostic score that would already beat median at a lot of schools, and you still have plenty of time to improve it. I don't see any reason to suppose you won't. And remember (except for scholarship consideration), all you have to be is a point above that school's median to fit into that high/low status and become a real candidate for them. I think it's way too early to panic.

If they claim it's a "known issue" then that implies that SOMETHING is broken on their end. Whether that breakdown affects EVERYONE or just you (or a small subset of people that you happened to end up in because of who knows what software/hardware/network stuff) is unknown. I think I'd keep troubleshooting; if it's not affecting everyone then maybe you can find a configuration that would work for to get you connected too.

Some stuff I'd investigate:

I'd look into what your network is like between the Macbook and the internet. If the on-the-computer stuff isn't helping, the problem may lie in the network itself. Try connecting from another network (if you've been doing it at home then try instead to connect at work, or the library, or at school, or a friend's house, or all of them!) That will give you some data to work with (if it doesn't work anywhere, it's either on their side or it's your computer. If it works on one of them, it's NOT their side and it's not your computer. Make sure to chart it out with lawgic and consider contrapositives, since this is the LSAT). Any network level firewalls, proxies, or DNS settings may be contributing to the issue. Depending on what network you're on, fixing some of those may not be in your control and you'd have to find someplace else to connect from.

If swapping networks a time or do doesn't show any change in the behavior, then the issue presumably lies in the computer (or their "known issue" is really big). This means the same sorts of test: try a friend's computer and see if you get a different result. If your trials indicate that it appears to definitely be your computer, consider creating a new login on the MacBook (so that no weird preference or past Chrome installation junk might be a problem) or even go nuclear by completely resetting the Macbook to like-new condition.

Good luck. I'm actually considering buying a clean mac mini for the test, just because I'm enough of a nerd that I'm pretty sure all the security stuff I've played around with on my computer/network will DEFINITELY put me in the same spot you're at. At least your computer is portable, so you can easily experiment. If you can find a friend's computer to try on, that would be a huge diagnostic as well.

I agree. The point of the diagnostic is to establish a baseline of your raw, initial capability so that you can know where to focus your training. If it’s not going to discourage you or anything like that, seems best to do it immediately.