Hi there - nice work!

I'm in a similar spot (August was first time out, scored a 173 [woot] and signed up for September). I'm pretty happy to burn the $222.

In my opinion, the risk/reward ratio is pretty heavily skewed towards the risk column for you.

If you score the same or lower then you have to cancel (plus half of your reasoning is that you already paid the money but you haven't paid the $45 yet so there is a point about lighting more money on fire) and adcoms can see that you did.

I have no idea to what degree that matters to them but I would have to imagine that walking up to the plate and scoring in the 99th and mic-dropping looks better than doing that and then having a "candidate cancel."

That said, maybe you get two more questions right, does it make a difference? Looking at the admissions data for them it suggests it doesnt, but applying early certainly seems to. If it were me (and assuming your other stats and softs are good) I would use the time and energy to work on your application and leave the LSAT.

What does your pre-law advisor think? Because again, I'm some rando on the internet that doesn't know anything so keep that in mind.

It wouldn't be a great experiment if you knew which one it was...