Accounting for semester breaks during my undergraduate, cancelled LSAT test..

jennybbbbb

Is it necessary to account for semester breaks during my undergraduate studies? Do I need to provide an explanation?

Do I need to explain my cancelled LSAT test?
I have really bad anxiety but I haven't seen a doctor about it. Do I need to mention this is why I cancelled the score.

inactive

Bumping this to the top

Leah M B

Hey there - can you give a little more info on what you mean by semester breaks? If you mean like, spring break or winter break, no. Summers, you should definitely list if you were working or doing an internship or anything. If you mean that you took an entire semester off, yes you most likely would want to write an addendum but might depend on the reasons why.

As for the canceled LSAT, no I don't think you need to explain it. Schools know that scores are canceled for any number of reasons (you were sick on test day, problem at the test center, etc). I would definitely advise you not to cancel another one though - 2 cancels would probably need some explaining.

Hope that helps, if you give a little more information on the semester breaks, we could probably give more advice!

jennybbbbb

@"Leah M B" said:
Hey there - can you give a little more info on what you mean by semester breaks? If you mean like, spring break or winter break, no. Summers, you should definitely list if you were working or doing an internship or anything. If you mean that you took an entire semester off, yes you most likely would want to write an addendum but might depend on the reasons why.

As for the canceled LSAT, no I don't think you need to explain it. Schools know that scores are canceled for any number of reasons (you were sick on test day, problem at the test center, etc). I would definitely advise you not to cancel another one though - 2 cancels would probably need some explaining.

Hope that helps, if you give a little more information on the semester breaks, we could probably give more advice!

Hey! Thank you!

I took a semester off once to study for the LSAT, which was the LSAT that I cancelled, but I was still working with my mom and also volunteering during that time off.

The other time I was close to finishing my degree and just had one class left so I decided to work and focus on my extracurriculars.

Not sure if I would have to account for those on my application.

samantha.ashley92

Hey! I take accelerated classes, and have done part-time terms randomly over the past two years. I do plan on explaining this so that it doesn't seem like I won't be able to handle a full course load in law school. I know it's not the same, but if you have semester breaks, they may wonder why you needed to take time off. I just think that it won't hurt to explain. I wouldn't give a reason for a score cancellation because I'm not convinced it matters to them. I mean, if you had a kid tapping a pencil the whole time, I would probably explain that... but that's about it. They will know and understand that for some reason you weren't able to give it your best effort. As for both of these issues, I know that anxiety can make you want to have everything look perfect. For me, I have just had to accept that my path wasn't the standard one... which I think of as the "perfect" one. (Well, I'm still working on it.) Keep in mind that admissions committees are made up of humans who actually understand that things don't always go as planned.

Anyway, I would highly recommend seeing a therapist to get some tools to calm yourself down both in general and during the exam. I have had pretty bad anxiety for a decade, and I don't know what I would have done without learning a few anxiety management techniques. I hope that what I said didn't seem too all over the place. I have been awake for entirely too long now. If you want to talk about this further feel free to send me a message.