Should I cancel my score (blacken extra ovals)?

yichen29

Hi everyone, I am posting because I recognized that I had actually blacken 29 ovals for the reading section and I am wondering whether I should cancel my score. Given that there were only 25 questions in the reading section, I must have repeatedly blacken several ovals. However, I cannot recall whether I made this dreadful marking mistake early on or not, but I feel like my entire response for RC is misplaced and the worst scenario is that I may score nothing for my RC section.

I am extremely anxious right now because the September exam is my fifth and also the final shot. I took my first exam last year and canceled the grade because RC smashed me. I score in the lower 150 twice and my highest score is 158 so far. I was hoping to use the September exam to boost up my score and get application done, but now all I want to do is to cancel my score...

Do you have any suggestion? Should I cancel this time and apply with the 158? Or should I keep it and retake in November? If I decided not to cancel this time, will a extremely low score hurt my overall application? Thanks so much and any help is appreciated!

cgracia12

You've taken the LSAT 5 times? What is your goal score?

I am curious to know if you've applied to schools before and if that had any impact on your admissions. I just took the September LSAT for my 3rd time, and I'm wondering if I should cancel as well.

Bamboosprout

Oh no! My condolences. The dreaded scantron errors of nightmares. I suppose it all depends on how early you made your first error in that section, but since you don't know that, with 4 extra ovals, it seems pretty bad. I believe the LSAC does not accommodate scantron errors and will count them as wrong.
Given such uncertainty, it really doesn't seem like this decision really matters. I cannot imagine schools caring if you have one low outlier due to a mechanical error, as long as you can explain it to them, but it certainly doesn't look good. If you're pretty certain that the error is early, then you should probably cancel it. Sorry if this isn't useful advice.
All that really matters now is your target score, and how to reach it by November. Look forward, and focus on the present, and don't get stuck in the past. A good November score can make all past errors forgivable.

samantha.ashley92

I would say cancel. There is no benefit to having a score potentially in the 140s on your record when you have a 158 on there. You probably filled in a whole page's worth of bubbles twice to get an extra 4 questions bubbled in. I mean, statistically, you'll get 20ish% of your answers right... but I'm assuming you hoped to do better than that. I'm really sorry this happened to you.

yichen29

@cgracia12 My targeted score is high 160s. I was planning to apply during the 2018 cycle but decided to postpone a year so no, I haven't apply for any school. I have heard bad things about taking the test for multiple time, but I feel like a high score can compensate for that.

yichen29

@Bamboosprout @samantha.ashley92 Thank you for your advice! Having an extremely low score on my record may indeed not look good, so I think I will just go ahead and cancel it.

gkoebel1

Unless I'm reading something wrong here, are you saying the reading section only had 25 questions ? I only had one RC on my exam and it had 27 questions.

quora123

The RC had 27, not 25 questions. So it may not be that bad. Sorry to hear of your experience. It's terrible after all that effort.

eRetaker

This is like the perfect example of the 0.0001% of the time where a cancellation is justified.

yichen29

@gkoebel1 @quoracles A friend who also took the test told me there were 25 questions, so I assumed that was true. 27 questions sounds better.

yichen29

@eRetakere This is literally my first time making a scantron mistake and it's on my test day.