Would my bubbling strategy be considered misconduct or an irregularity by a test administrator?

mshina90394

Hello,

First, I should note that I currently alternate between bubbling after each page and bubbling after circling all of my answers in the test booklet, depending on how confident I feel about the previous 5-10 questions I answered. During timed PTs, I've noticed that I occasionally lose track of which question I'm supposed to be bubbling and make an error that I then have to spend additional time fixing as I finish double checking everything.

Throughout high school and college, whenever I took timed multiple choice tests, I developed a strategy of writing down my answer in a larger size on the left side of each question's answer choices. When it was time to start bubbling answers on the scantron, this allowed me to instantly see the answer for each question and easily memorize the next sequence of answers for the 3-5 questions on every page. I found it to be much more efficient and accurate than tracking the circled answer for each question and going back and forth between the test and scantron.

I never had a professor suspect me of helping someone else cheat (most likely because the multiple versions of an exam were strategically distributed, so copying my answers would be pointless) nor question me about the purpose of annotating my answers like this. Because I am very comfortable with the aforementioned bubbling strategy, I think it would help me keep better track of the question I'm bubbling and significantly reduce the time I spend bubbling answers. Obviously, I want to be sure that I am allowed to do this on test day. After looking at the "Misconduct and Irregularities" page on the LSAC's website, it specifies that "copying or sharing information, or any other form of cheating, on the LSAT" is considered a misconduct/irregularity. I have been unable to find a clear-cut answer about whether a test administrator would assume my bubbling strategy to be some type of cheating. Could such a strategy be considered to be a form of "copying" or "sharing information" by a test administrator or be flagged for some other reason by the LSAC? . If anyone could help clarify this for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!
Matt

Sprinkles

I do this too! I don't think it would break any rules because everyone will be having different sections to work on even though it's the same test technically. For example, your first section may be an experimental logic game while the person next to you may have RC as their first section. There's simply no benefit in anyone looking at another person's test for answers lol

Sprinkles

Also, I did this for the Feb 2016 LSAT and the proctor had no issue. I think you should be fine.

mshina90394

@montaha.rizeq

Thank you so much! It's good to know someone else does this and had no problems doing it during a real LSAT administration. I figured it wouldn't be a problem because of the reasons you mentioned, just wanted to be sure. I think the extra minute or two it saves will definitely improve my performance on the typical "brick wall" questions that I save for the end.

Sprinkles

@mshina90394 said:
I think the extra minute or two it saves will definitely improve my performance on the typical "brick wall" questions that I save for the end.

For sure! I have a really bad problem with skipping lines accidentally and that's the last thing I'd want to do on my LSAT bubble sheet. This method that I just recently adopted during my last year of undergrad has helped me immensely. As a history major, I was barely exposed to using scantrons and filling in a large amount of bubbles for answers lol all of our tests consisted of writing writing and more writing...it wasn't until I minored in sociology that I began using scantrons again for exams.