To cancel or not to cancel...

K-Magnet

Wouldn't it be wonderful to know the score you received and THEN decide if you want to cancel or not?

I turn to my fellow 7sagers for any sage wisdom...

Background: I took the LSAT on Saturday in London. The testing conditions were fine & the building was actually pretty swank. For the last two weeks, however, I have been very sick. I have either bronchitis or the beginning of pneumonia & was prescribed medication for pneumonia (and an inhaler for breathing during my coughing bouts!). I was a bit paranoid about disturbing other people during the test itself so I held all my coughs and tissue-blowing until the breaks. After the test, someone even said "so you were the person who was dying behind me" haha.

Despite being sick, I had adrenaline on my side & was devoting all my energy to concentration. Section 1 kicked my ass. It was LR, and I am comfortable with LR normally... but I found myself jumping around on questions and in a time panic mode. I kept reading and re-reading.

Sections 2, 3, and 4 were all fine -- I flew through them. After the first section, I was resolved to do better & was hoping that I would have 3 LRs and the first was an experimental. By Section 5, I realized I didn't have an LR experimental and that brought me down a little bit.. but I still pushed forward and this section was fine as well.

So the question is... how much could my illness & my Section 1 performance have affected my score? I think objectively, Section 1 was definitely the hardest section of the test. But I am finding it very difficult to assess how many I might have had wrong for this section. And even though I thought all of the other sections were OK, I could be misconstruing these!

The problem with re-taking is that it would possibly be a long time before I could take the LSAT again.

I also worry about the schools that average scores, rather than taking the highest score.

Thoughts?

LeBisondeMist

I wouldn't cancel. Even if you weren't sick, you'd likely think you didn't do as well as you could have. Considering that most schools don't look at multiple scores, I wouldn't worry about cancelling. If you're looking at a school that averages, you could always write an addendum.

K-Magnet

Thanks for your suggestion @LeBisondeMist !

harrismegan

I'm in the same boat as you. Wondering if I should cancel because of a horrendous first section... but the rest I felt like I did fine??

K-Magnet

What are you leaning more towards @harrismegan ?

harrismegan

I think I'm going to stick it out. Only one of the schools I applied to take the average of all your LSATs, and this will be my first one. I don't think I bombed it, but I don't know if it'll be compleeeetely representative of my ability. However, the schools I applied to only require a 159-160 with my GPA, so I don't know if I'm too worried. Hopefully it went well enough!

jdawg113

pretty sure only like 2 schools actually take the avg despite what they say (though Im no admin)

ddakjiking

I'd be willing to make a safe bet that only the top of the schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford will consider all your scores.

K-Magnet

And that's the worry @licknee10 -- I'd love to aim for those very schools! Harvard updated their policy to include acceptance of the highest scores. But other policies are more ambiguous.