In the last 6 months of my prep I went from scoring in the low 170’s to the middle 170’s (174 on test day, 176 on retake).

You’re in the 1 question 1 point territory and so you’ll need to miss no more than 1-2 LR questions with consistent scores from RC and LG to get to the middle of the 170’s. I wholeheartedly second @ on Inference

You need to get curve breaker questions. To do that you need to recognize which questions are curvebreaker and which ones aren’t. Part of the process of recognizing the above is what I call "time knowledge". You’re good enough at this now where I bet you can do a LR question in (40sec. I was the same way and used it to my advantage. On test day, if I couldn’t complete a question in approximately that amount of time or less I skipped the question. (I think I ended up skipping about 3-5 questions between 2 LR sections). As @ on Inference said, you’ll finish the section in 26-28 minutes and then you have 7-9 minutes for the 3 or 4 really tough questions. That’s where you need to spend your time.(/p)

You might also find that when you’re scoring in the 170’s and a LR question doesn’t seem immediately “solveable” many times it’s not becuase it’s a actually a harder question (it’s not curve breaker, but because you misread the stimulus or your brain is stuck on a one-track thought process). When that happens a you can “reset” by skipping and revisiting. Practice this and see if over the course of 5-10 tests your score doesn’t climb 3—6 points.

Hi OP,

I was in the exact same boat as you were last November with two lsat score's, the higher being a 172, and questions about retaking (although my GPA was about .2 lower than yours).

I retook. I got above a 175 and I got big money at CCN (which I took). You will most likely be paying sticker at CC with your numbers, if you retake and score well (which I'm sure you can because you only need like 3 more questions or whatever) you'll win big. Don't leave the money on the table, in my opinion, retaking made the difference, it could very well do the same for you.

P.S I only took like 3 more practice tests because I already knew all the material so I just had to display confidence in the test room and keep my brain LSAT active until test day. It worked.

I don’t know your life and so what i’m about to say may be of limited use to you. I just looked at Vandy’s employment numbers for 2016 here.

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/vanderbilt/sals/

The short of it, in 2016 approximately 37.5 percent of Vanderbilt grads made more than 120K and at least a quarter made 160K or more. I’m not sure what mid-market firms were paying in 2016 but i know I was less than New York which was at 160. So maybe a quarter of the class goes to market paying firms. I would bet you more than anything half of those firms are split between Atlanta, and Texas and the other half are in New York, with an outlier here or there. I say this becuase of Vandy’s Geography and the size of the NY legal market.

So that’s the rub. Randomized, A quarter chance making the grades to interview for big law and hoping someone in California likes you enough to hire you. But getting a job in California is gonna be tough besides the grades (a limited pie, which everyone will compete with you for) you have approximately 14 schools big law firms (ie market paying) hire their summer classes from first, and Vanderbilt’s OCS probably has minimal contacts with California recruiters and hiring partners. Think about it. Kirkland (or insert Big Firm here) isn’t going to fly to Vanderbilt to find 8 summer hires for it’s 80 person LA office when it can go to any one of HYSCCN, Berkeley, UCLA, or USC or even a local school like Loyola. I would think the same logic applies to WUSTL. For what’s it worth, I was at a workshop with Kirkland’s hiring partner in LA and he said he looked for “smart enough kids” (whatever that means) with a “personality” who are hard workers. When asked how he measured these things he said, grades/school attended, recommendations from partners he knew and worked with in Kirkland’’s LA office and where they went to school (this hiring partner went to Yale and grew up in Chicagoland), and lastly by trying to fill up summer classes with students at schools Kirkland had relationships with in other cities.

Anecdotally, I’m at Columbia and we get a ton of California people here every year thinking it’s a “portable” degree, and every year people in the bottom 3/4 of of the class only bid California and they get 12 interviews 4 callbacks and 0 offers. Then OCS does its thing, consoles them and helps them mass mail. California is tough becuase it’s not a big market for Big Law (compared to NY), and for what Big Law there is it tends to skew towards IP (not sure if you have a science background.

To add fuel to the embers, when you graduate in 2021 (or whenever) who knows what the economy will look like. ( I bet you few who went to law school in 2006 thought about what would happen if the economy tanked). If I were you, I would think long and hard about sending an application to other California schools. I’m sure with numbers good enough to get the scholarship packages you received, you’ll get in, and most likely in at some places with a full ride. My guess is since it’s late in the cycle and deans are desperate for numbers you can get an unconditional full ride at some California schools.

I would also think long and hard if you go to WUSTL or Vanderbilt how you would feel working for a firm like Polsinelli or Burr Foreman, respectively. For many who go to those schools that’s nearly the best outcome one can expect (which is great when you really think about it becuase making 125K in Birmingham is like making 275K in NYC when you consider real purchasing power).

Just some things to think about before you end up spending the equivalent of a mortgage and possibly find yourself with a degree that’s not helping you get where you want to be in life.

I agree with Alex Divine. The other nice thing about skipping is that is allows your brain to do a "soft reset" and get a "fresh pair of eyes" on the question when you come back to it. You'd be amazed how much question difficultly is the mind's inability to parse through dense language or miss one key indicator word (such words are negations or causal in nature).

Also, the knowledge that you "finished" the section with 3 questions left between #'s 8-22 and have 6+ minutes on the clock is like steroids for your confidence. You get this huge amount of adrenaline and I'm sure it's probably similar in nature to what counter-terrorism guys who charge into a building with precise training and take out the bad guys like clockwork feel as they breach the room. I'm pretty sure that's part of what allowed me to go only -1 in LR on test day. So, skip for the win.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but if your LSAT is below Notre Dame's median and your GPA is as well your chances of acceptance are small.

Not sure if it’s too late but big law at either of those schools is worse than a coin flip. If you’re set on LA and you want big law you might do better with UCLA, USC, Loyola, or another California school.

Hi,

The doctor in the stimulus claims that it's wrong for researchers to keep their work hidden because not sharing the results of that work could lead to unnecessary human suffering. The word because is not explicitly mentioned in the stimulus but it has the same logical structure as if it were.

So that gets us clear about what's going on and when we paraphrase in real time I'm thinking about an answer choice that says something like "when medical researchers cause unnecessary harm it's wrong".

C gives us that paraphrase. If the sharing of information could prevent unnecessary suffering then medical researchers should not keep it hidden. "Should not" isn't the exact same thing as moral wrongness, but it's close enough and none of the answer choices except B even get close to claiming something about wrongness.

You can get rid of B because the stimulus talks about preventing unnecessary suffering. That's distinct from the duty to prevent any suffering at all (which is what B talks about).

Hope this helps.

I used the complete package (the one including scholarship negotiation). The consultant and I went through all of my materials and helped me make my application stronger beyond the numbers.

I should also add that while I applied for need based aid, given my family's financial situation, it's extremely doubtful I qualified for need based aid. In fact, one of my CCN was explicitly merit only.

I used Spivey consulting services. I bit the bullet financially because I wanted a consultant to make my app stronger for scholarship consideration. I got BIG money at CCN. I had a 174 lsat and a 3.74 GPA. So I expected to get into CCN but I didn't expect to get as much money as I did (Especiallt from CC). Read into that what you will. For what's it's worth, every other T14 I got into threw good money at me too (but my no means did I get into all of the T14). Where I did get in, I got scholarship.

Don't cancel: here's why.

You're probably going to retake anyhow to be competitive for the lower T14.

That means you'll need your third take (obviously)

The highest score is what counts, trust me. I had a friend last cycle get a 167, X (cancel), and then a 177. He only applied to one law school and got in (Harvard took him). He was white had basically zero extracricculars and also had a GPA below a 3.7 in a soft major from a mediocre school (my alma mater).

By canceling you won't be able to review your performance. This is what's most important. You now have another real data point to work with. You can't replicate the psychological conditions Pting quite the way you'll expirence it during the real thing. Use this as a way to review what happened and then improve.

You might be surprised with your performance and you can't know with a cancel.

Bottom line, nobody cares about low LSAT's vs cancels anymore since the ABA doesn't make schools average. Every single school is incentivised to take a candidate with a 141, 152, 169 over a candidate with a 168; this is despire the fact that the 168 scorer was obviously better prepared and according to LSAC there's no stastically distinguishable difference in rhe candidates abilities. Just get a high score (once!)

Perhaps it's nothing, but some have speculated that the meta-reason "A" was chosen on those "super-hard" flaw questions is because test takers are unsure about what's really going on on the stimulus and, unfortunatly, use the answer choice to glean insight. The thinking goes, if test takers have the deer in the headlights look, most will skim over A and never really come back to consider it. Perhaps this does happen, perhaps to doesn't.

In either case, the surest way to solve flaw questions is to determine what the stimulus's author fails to consider or takes for granted. Once that's known, flaw questions become easily solvable.

Hi, I thought I'd chime in.

I took 66 "fresh" Prs from September of 2015 until December of 2016. And I also retook 19Pts over the same period. I took the December 2016 test and scored a 174 (1.5 points below my average dead for my last 12 tests).

Every single thing I learned in those PTs was helpful (including PTs from the early to mid 1990's)

The but if you don't have the kind of time I did, the important thing to remember is that one should always emphasis quality over quantity.

Hope that helps.

@ said:

If you are not a URM, you will likely not be admitted to HLS. Even with a unique resume, great softs, and work experience, your LSAT is just too low. If you really want H, retake and aim for the 173 range and your chances will be much better.

If you are a URM you definitely have a chance. Though, still, it seems like a 168 is the magic AA URM number for H students with GPAs in your range.

Unfortunately, your time management skills not allowing for sufficient LSAT prep isn't going to make admissions personal forgive your lower LSAT. Also, your resume is not all that unique when compared to many top applicants. I played varsity Basketball, was student body president, and graduated top of my class. I also have spent most of the past 2 years working on wall street and still admissions consultants and others have told me my softs and resume are average at best.

With the HYS applicant we're talking Rhodes scholar's, non profit work, and interning on presidential campaigns. Hate to be the bearer of bad news.... Just the way it is.

Good news is there is no reason you can't retake to get that LSAT where it needs to be with your GPA. If it's really what you want, then go for it. Ask yourself why H though? Is there a specific reason or just the prestige and name?

I'm going to second Alex here. He's right. I will say that's there's strong anecdotal evidence that Rhodes, Marshall, and Gates scholars as well as Olympians (better if you medal) and things like the Hesimann trophy do give applicants a boost beyond numbers. There may additionally be others sorts of soft factorsthat are sufficient for such a bump, but those I mentioned are certainly sufficient.

The thing with softs is 1) most are not actually uncommon among high achievers and 2) it's difficult to distinguish those opportunities that are granted to the applicant based on merit from those that are granted from socio-economic factors. In actually, every opportunity probably has a mix of each but then as an admissions officer you have to ask yourself how can you pass judgment on how 22 year old chose to invest themselves? Value would have to play some sort of role and that's not something any admissions process that purports to objectively compare candidates wants.

Safest bet is to have a strong LSAT and excellent grades as well.

Just be patient with yourself OP and do the time. The LSAT score will come. You've done big things before. You should be able to do this too. Mentality is more than half the battle.

These should be of some use to you. They're what helped me make the final push to the 175 range.

http://lsatters.com/forums/topic/where-to-start-again

http://lsatters.com/forums/topic/advice-on-extreme-drilling-for-top-scorers/

When were planning on starting law school? I'm just curious.

If you have an LSAT score below a 176, with the way the U.S. News rankings work there is never disadvantage to retaking in the context of application strength. The only real costs are time and money. You could score a 132 for your next take and Penn will stil take you over Joe Smith with a 3.7 and a 168 all else being equal. It's really mostly all about the numbers. And the highest number is what counts. What looks better than a 169 to law school admission committees? A 169, and a17X. Bottom line though, you have a 169 at minimum.

I'm unsure what you mean by saying that schools will take notice of your section performance? Unlike the MCAT schools don't have access to your section scores nor is there any indication that they'd care if they did. It would be extremely easy to give applicants section percentiles but they don't, probably for the reason that it's superfluous and unuseful to evaluate candidates.

So I don't see any downside to retaking unless of course you'd rather use the time for something else or spend the 200 bucks or whatever elsewhere.

Retake, score higher, and then go to the school of your choice or draw scholarship money for the win.

I was thinking more about value and what's that means to most people. I've come to believe that you can benefit on the whole from attending an institution where the median LSAT is a 156. But the value it provides has to be valuable for you. If you would be happy with the median outcome for the median cost of attendance minus your opportunity cost I think you should attend.

But one way to think could be thag the bigger picture here is this: it's relatively easier for the vast majority of people (particularly 19-25 year olds) to pick up 8 more points or whatever and move from say a 158 to a 166 on the LSAT and attend a place like William & Mary for a much for favorable cost than it is to save an extra 125K to put towards tuition. I might even go so far as to say that if you can save 125K faster than jump 8 points on the lsat (when you're in the middle or bottom of the curve) that you shouldn't go to law school at all, depending on your goals and how much you like your life of course.

I can't comment about the work expirence aspect as I'm not qualified to say, but as for another score, it won't matter what you score. You have a 170, minimum. You can thank U.S. News ranking for that. No, you're probably not really any better or worse than someone with a 169 or 171, respectively, but Law Schools just care about the points. The people behind them are secondary considerations.

Right now you're sittin' pretty and you have nothing to loose by retaking. I'd say 3+ more points you're very cometitive for HS and Y might look at you strongly too. Best of luck to you!

I agree with In my own tutoring expirence being

@ said:

I think foolproofing Logic Games and generously skipping on LR makes a 160 reasonable for anyone. Missing 26 questions gives you the freedom to miss every single difficult question in LR (18 questions between both sections based on this data https://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/lr_individual-question-difficulty.cfm) plus another 8 questions on RC.

Worst case scenario, let's say you foolproof LG but still get -3. If you randomly guess the same letter for all the "difficult" LR questions, you should get 3.6 of them correct. Conservatively, let's say you get 3 so you're -15 between both LRs. You can then still get eight questions wrong on RC, which is more than reasonable after basic prep with passage structure.

The bottom line is that once you foolproof LG, there are enough points on the test to earn a 160 without getting any difficult questions correct. Become very comfortable with the basics in LR and RC, and you won't need mastery to get a good score: passable understanding of these will be adequate for the 160s.

THIS!!!

Additionally, in my own tutoring expirence I think students below that threshold generally receive big gains by being able to quickly identify argument conclusions and argument support for those conclusions.

I don't mean to be negative. Just understand that what you do now can really help or hurt you for a long time to come.

Just because,

I wholely agree with Alex Divine. He knows what's he's talking about here. A lot of choices about law schools are going to come down to values and marginal cost vs marginal benefit type analysis. Wherever you fall on that curve is is to you but keep he larger picture in mind:

Law school is very expensive. The value of many law schools is dubious when the expected return is (probably) much less than most people think.

Law school will be very competitive. Your peers will be as smart as you, nearly as smart as you, or smarter than you and most people are just waiting for you to slip so then can capatilize on your failure. Welcome to the curve.

Doing well in law school requires a different skill set than in undergraduate studies. While they overlap in some respects, in many ways they don't. For example, in undergraduate education testing mainly ascertains your ability to recall factual knowledge. It rarely asks you to use that knowldege and reason about new problems. As such it's very difficult to know how you'll stack up. That makes transferring a possible options but not something you can really count on. You'll most likely be graduating from the school at which you maltriculate.

Law is a very elitist profession. No other profession (to my knowledge) has such an oversized opinion about where you completed your graduate studies. Pedigree is most things in law. And for every Fred Bartlit there are countless others who never even get their foot in the door. That doesn't mean that you can't make meaningful contributions if you attend one of the many good institutions that provide quality legal education and happen not to be ranked in the T14. But it does mean that you should be smart about how you spend your money and the kinds employment a median student at your institution can reasonable expect to acquire. This is critical when an institution like Baylor (sorry Baylor) charges as much as Yale.

As for the last thing on my mind, it seems to me that a lot of people think that any LAST score around a 175 or so coupled with a GPA around a 3.8 or so will net you a full ride at a lower T14. While I can't disprove this, my own expirence says this is not the case. I had just below those numbers (174, 3.74) and I got no full rides. Although, I did get several half rides or more. I checked LSN and found for people who had anything below a 176 and a 3.88 full rides were nearly non-existant, and even for people with those numbers or above it was relatively rare. So while LSN certainly isn't dispositive I don't think the T14 gives out as many free rides as people might think. (You might have, say, 50 between the Levys, Mordicais, Havrvey-Cross-Dillard's, Hamiltons, Darrows, Ruby's, and whatever other named full-ride fellowships there are).

You might find this helpful:

http://lsatters.com/forums/topic/advice-on-extreme-drilling-for-top-scorers/

I was in your boat once. I got a 168 on June 2016 and was able to score a 174 in December of the same year. I only self studied, so the good news is that it's not impossible. (For what's it's worth my friend/study buddy had the same issue over that same interval of time and went from a 167 to a 177, so it's not an uncommon problem and I'm not just some unicorn either).

Really, the hard fact of the matter is you're going to have to move from excellent (96 percentile or whatever) to exceptional (99+ percentile). That requires being nearly perfect at everything.

The first step to understanding how to get there goes something like this: every high scorer is exactly alike in the ways that matter, every low(er) scorer differs in unique ways. (The Anna Karenina principle). You really need to hone on your weaknessness and eliminate them with extreme prejudice. This is the same advice at all score levels ( -_-) but it's much harder when you're scoring at your level because your weaknesses )1 aren't obvious, and 2) May not be evident to you as actual weaknesses. I recommend bringing your reading skills to the next level by always reading for structure , honing your reasoning by focusing on the argument core (I use the "takes for granted" or "fails to consider" tools for that) and methodically drilling your weaknessnes so you can simply your thought process to pick up momentum and precious time to use on the most difficult questions.

This link should also help for more specifics:

http://lsatters.com/forums/topic/advice-on-extreme-drilling-for-top-scorers/

If you have any other questions feel free to PM me. Also, best of luck on that Ruby and the Windy City! ?

So I have some expirence with this. Hopefully what I say can be useful. My first take was 6 points below my 7Sage analytics average over 60 tests. My second take was 2 points below that average and my last take was dead average. It's difficult to recreate the pressure of test day and actual conditions. If you struggle with pressure perhaps try and take in the actual room where you'll be sitting for the exam (if that's even possible) and have a friend come and time you (they can work on homework or whatever).

Only you can know if retaking is right. If you would be very happy to go to schools you could get into with your numbers retaking could be avoided. But I did because 1) LSAT is the name of the game for admissions and 2) scholarship money.

If you do decide to retake I would recommend working through PTs 5-50 if you have not already taken those. And retake are actually really helpful. You just need to realize the purpose is to understand the test not to have a niceness clean score at the end whereby you can feel proud of yourself. When I retook I have myself 28 & 1/2 minutes per section and usually waited no less than a month between seeing questions and retaking. The time constraint definitely moved the difficulty scale and made me work for it.

PM me if you have any concerns.