Accommodations - my experience explained

Markmark

Hi, in a former post I mentioned I did receive accommodations for the LSAT. A lot of people had questions and I hope to address some of those here by explaining my process for requesting.

To give some background, I'm an Army veteran with years of back and neck issues as well as an anxiety disorder stemming from on the job stuff as well as ADHD. When taking the test I would have panic attacks where I'd stop breathing, often I'd have neck spasms and have to stop what I was doing, and I'd just have a hard time staying focused. After the Nov 2019 test I decided to apply for accommodations.

The LSAC was super helpful and courteous. I had to make sure I had official diagnoses for each condition, I filled out the 3 forms for requesting accommodations from LSAC, and I had a doctor verify that each condition actually existed and I wasn't lying. There seemed to be some lack of clarity when I spoke with LSAC reps on who qualified as a "doctor," sometimes a social worker qualified and other times a medical doctor was required. In the end I had a PhD psychologist sign off on mine.

The LSAC was extremely courteous and kind through the whole process and very responsive. They worked with me to ensure I was able to "demonstrate my full aptitude" for the test, something that's written pretty clearly in the accommodations application. When I took the Flex I felt everything had been done so that my limiting conditions had been minimized to a very acceptable degree.

Caveat: The accommodations were NOT a silver bullet!!! This is so important to emphasize. First, your 2.5 hour test becomes a 5 hour test. This is a huge difference!!
Lastly, additional time isn't going to compensate for lack of knowledge or lack or timing strategies. @"Cant Get Right" mentioned in a webinar of his that some of his students' scores went down after being granted additional time.

Hope this helped!

Rowe2020

I had a good experience as well. I didn't ask for much, and I have a decade of documentation. Once they had all my documentation they were very helpful.