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Related Discussions
Is it certain that law schools only take highest LSAT score?
stephgmeister
Alum Member
I'm pretty sure law schools take the highest score out of the LSAT's taken, but would anyone know if this is true or how to find out? Does it depend on the school?
Comments
Depends on the school. Last I checked though, only Yale was the school that still considered all the scores.
What @"Alex Divine" said
Yes. They consider them all but the highest will be what counts 9/10 times.
They see all your scores from the last 5 years. The reason the top score carries such overwhelming weight is because that's all they report to USN&WR for their ranking. So a 151/162/170 applicant is the same as a 169/170 applicant as far as the rankings are concerned. Of course, they are not concerned with their rankings to the total exclusion of other factors, but at the end of a day, rankings win the day. A dean who gets a bump in the rankings has job security. A dean that puts together a better class of students resulting in a drop in the rankings does not.
Well said! Makes perfect sense
Yeah, @"Cant Get Right" got it right (never get tired of saying that). Top score is king because of the rankings. Even schools like NYU that claim to average LSAT scores, do not actually seem to do this in practice (or at least not to any noticeable degree), as evidenced by lawschoolnumbers.com. Averaging LSAT scores would put NYU at a huge disadvantage against its peers. For example, it would reject someone with a 151 and a 175 (because of the 163 average) and lose that person to Columbia, which would scoop up that top scorer and boost its own ranking.
Spivey posted this a little while ago on the June LSAT forum on TLS
"GL everyone. Just remember unless you are taking for this current cycle, there is really no pressure for next. Schools only care about the high score. So its like some proffer saying you have 4 exams throughout the semester but only the high one counts for your entire grade -- and this is the first test. Be strong!"
I'm not huge on Spivey actually. I worked with them and @"david.busis" both, and the essays I wrote with David were far superior.
I didn't know what I was doing at first, so I just wrote a bad draft in order to get something started. It was horrible and I knew it, but that's okay. Sometimes you just need to get something down on paper. With my Spivey consultant, we polished that essay. They took what I gave them and gave me notes on how to make it better. After several rounds of that, there were no more notes which meant it was finished.
The process with David was entirely different. David knew that the initial draft was fundamentally flawed and that it needed structural and thematic overhauling--not polishing. He wanted to know more. He asked questions. He saw that there was a much bigger story and that my initial draft had missed the point. I ended up giving David a 10 page monstrosity, lol. That was great because I really was able to pour my heart into it. It was my story, not my PS. From that, David was able to pull out the real narrative. And then I wrote the first draft of my PS. And then we polished it over subsequent drafts.
What was merely the fine tuning with David had been the entire process with Spivey.
Sorry, I know this is a bit off topic from OP, but of the many many mistakes I made throughout all this, this one cost me $3k. So I can't really go back and correct that like most of my LSAT mistakes, lol. If you've got the resources to burn that kind of money on Spivey then go for it. For the 10% of admissions consulting that is not essay editing, they're fine. If you're like me and that represents a significant financial burden though, keep away.
I had an eerily similar experience that cost me $3k as well...
@"Cant Get Right" Thank you for sharing your story. I was really impressed by @"david.busis" during his webinars. When people give him their PS topic, he does not just tell them how to write a good essay on that topic. He goes much deeper and asks them about other things they could write about, interesting experiences, and huge moments in their life. He really digs deep and finds the most interesting story that person has to share. At the start of his webinar, Busis quotes someone (can't remember who) that said something like "even if you just lived a single day, you would have an amazing story to tell." Even if we think we don't have interesting lives, the reality is that we do (or at least one interesting experience). Busis helps us see that. I am sorry you had to spend so much money, but I am happy you got solid help in the end.
Also, @"david.busis" if you are reading this, hopefully this makes up for my joke on the other thread.
I revere Spivey and his crew for the statistics and free admissions help/info they give on TLS, twitter, and reddit. I would probably not use them for personal statement stuff because it's insanely expensive and you don't really know what you're getting. Off topic, but that's my $.02 in defense of Spivey.
@Freddy_D Yeah, Spivey has some great insight into the admissions process, which has helped me a lot. It is just important to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of different services.