Handscoring? I think I bubbled wrong

1_2_aletsgoblue

Hi friends.

I was pretty surprised by my score yesterday. I scored somewhere between 3 and 5 points lower than I was expecting to score, very close to my first score despite beating the low 160s plateau in my recent practice tests.

I've been thinking through what could have possibly happened--I felt extremely good about LG, and I felt about normal with the rest, even with one slightly easier-than-normal LR section.

I remembered that when I logged onto the forums afterwards, I heard people talking about one real LR section with 26 questions. I didn't remember 26; I remembered 25. I figured I just misremembered. But I know I finished every section, and I'm wondering now if maybe that was an indication that I bubbled the last few ACs on the wrong lines. It almost perfectly explains the scoring discrepancy between what I expected and what I got. I was typically falling around -3 or -4 on each LR section and -6 on RC, with LG at -0 to -2 depending mostly on whether I finished. I finished LG on January's test, so a -14 or -13 seemed like a reasonable expectation. Misbubbling 22-26, for instance--which is around where I remember skipping a question--would get me from -13/-14 raw to around -18/-19 raw, which is exactly the difference between what I expected and what I got.

Is this something a handscorer would check for? Would they be willing/able to discern the difference and credit me the incorrect bubbles? Or am I screwed? Want to know before I spend the extra $100. Anyone have insight to share?

sakox010

@1_2_aletsgoblue said:
Hi friends.

I was pretty surprised by my score yesterday. I scored somewhere between 3 and 5 points lower than I was expecting to score, very close to my first score despite beating the low 160s plateau in my recent practice tests.

I've been thinking through what could have possibly happened--I felt extremely good about LG, and I felt about normal with the rest, even with one slightly easier-than-normal LR section.

I remembered that when I logged onto the forums afterwards, I heard people talking about one real LR section with 26 questions. I didn't remember 26; I remembered 25. I figured I just misremembered. But I know I finished every section, and I'm wondering now if maybe that was an indication that I bubbled the last few ACs on the wrong lines. It almost perfectly explains the scoring discrepancy between what I expected and what I got. I was typically falling around -3 or -4 on each LR section and -6 on RC, with LG at -0 to -2 depending mostly on whether I finished. I finished LG on January's test, so a -14 or -13 seemed like a reasonable expectation. Misbubbling 22-26, for instance--which is around where I remember skipping a question--would get me from -13/-14 raw to around -18/-19 raw, which is exactly the difference between what I expected and what I got.

Is this something a handscorer would check for? Would they be willing/able to discern the difference and credit me the incorrect bubbles? Or am I screwed? Want to know before I spend the extra $100. Anyone have insight to share?

https://www.studyusa.com/en/blog/1179/should-i-have-my-lsat-hand-scored

Check this out.

I don't have any direct experience with this, but based on what you've said, it sounds like most likely you skipped bubbling in a question, so that your answer choice for Q22 was marked in the bubble for Q21, Q23 in bubble for Q22, and so on.

The article mentions handscoring for issues like not sufficiently erasing, not sufficiently bubbling, and unintentional marks. It also mentions if you had skipped a line, and your answer for Q21 was in the bubble for Q22, Q23 was in the bubble for Q24, and so on, then you may be in luck. However, this sounds like the opposite of your issue.

https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/scoring/handscoring

In red, the LSAC tab for handscoring says, "Please Note: LSAC will not handscore answers recorded in the test book." This would explain why you might be in luck if you skipped a line - since all of the answer choices are filled in. But if you skipped bubbling in an answer, it seems problematic to try and determine which question you really skipped, since they don't rely on your test book. Maybe you skipped bubbling question 20, but the argument could be made that you just didn't fill in question 26.

Again, I don't have any direct experience with this, but if the first scenario I described is what you think happened, then I think you're probably out of luck.