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When considering your June score...
...be sure to take into account upcoming medians, not last year's posted numbers.
With June score release a few days away, a lot of you will soon be agonizing over whether your score is "good enough" for applications in September, or a retake is warranted. Just a quick reminder that you are heading into another unpredictable cycle, and last year's numbers are not reliable. Example: Cornell is currently sitting at medians of 168/3.86, however their average admit for the closing cycle is 172/3.89 based on self reported applicant data. Columbia is holding a 172/3.82 and admitted an average of 174/3.86. Of course this doesn't mean that everyone (or even anyone) will be jumping 2-4 LSAT points, but there is good reason to believe that in general, medians are going up. Whether schools will see the jump this year as anomalous and stick to maintaining last years medians, or see it as sustainable and try to maintain or even better their new medians I have no idea... conjecture welcome, but I think its reasonable to assume like any cycle that if higher numbers appear achievable, they will target them.
You guys are in a weird timeframe right now where incoming class medians have yet to be released, and IMO its best to play it safe and continue to prep if there is any doubt that your score puts a target school/scholarship outcome comfortably within range. That may sound pessimistic, but you do not want to end up like people this cycle who thought they were good to go and are now looking at joining you for another cycle. There is no shortage of them at every score range. Between now and August-ish (school releases) to December (509 release) median releases, I would not want to see anyone lose valuable prep time and suddenly realize they are behind the curve. If you think you have it in you to do better, my recommendation is to play it safe and keep grinding. You can always stop if you decide it's not feasible/worthwhile.
Contrasting opinions welcome... I'd love to see a discussion to provide everyone with a range of opinions to help with the decision making.
Also good luck on Wednesday... no matter what happens, you all are rockstars.
Comments
Id be curious what self-reported medians had been in previous years so that the comparison is apples to apples. Would make sense that people who are going to go through the trouble of self reporting may be more high-strung or have better scores. Who knows.
I fully agree that we should expect and plan for medians to rise, particularly in the top 50 or so schools. Not only was there a dramatic rise in high LSAT scores this last cycle, and an overall rise in the number of candidates but the US News and World report also included debt levels for graduates last year which contributed to dramatic rise and fall of some schools in the rankings. For schools that rose in the rankings you can bet that they want to stay there and likely keep climbing and for schools that went down in the rankings they were absolutely targeting higher LSAT score students to try to climb back to previous positions.
That being said self reported data is both a small and incomplete sample size as well as dramatically skewed towards the most successful of students. This is similar to looking at Reddit's LSAT forum and thinking almost everyone is targeting and scoring in the 170 range or looking at the admissions page on Reddit and thinking those people are truly representative of most people applying to law school. Thankfully, neither of these things are true.
I will be curious to see how both example school's data ultimately pans out but I would think ( and hope) that a 4 point increase in LSAT is unlikely for Cornell but that a 1-2 point increase is highly likely and potential applicants should be considering this when applying this upcoming cycle. I would also think in watching law school data that many earlier applicants in this upcoming cycle's will be applicants who either didn't get offers or didn't get offers that they wanted last cycle. And there is no doubt that there were some wild outcomes last cycle- I remember seeing someone with a 4.0/ 3.8 that didn't get a penny for scholarship money to T-14, people with mid and high 170 scores with zero offers or only offers from safety schools.
But it isn't quite as depressing as it sounds. I know of one school that has actually reported their data for last cycle ( this was quoted in a newspaper) and that is Notre Dame. Their median went up by one point. I also know that Emory was targeting a rise back in the rankings by trying to raise their median by two points and while they had many applicants it looked more like their median was going to be raised by one point and 2 points was more of a possibility rather than certainty.
The point of this post ,however, about not resting on your laurels for those who have not exhausted their LSAT takes still holds. I think it would be a fair estimate to add 2 points to each median of schools you are targeting and then try to think about how that factors into your application decision. While of course applying in September is ideal, taking the August or October exams are still plenty early enough in the cycle. Just don't go the opposite way and chase that high score so long you don't end up applying until next February or so- in that case it would be better to wait until the next cycle.
And best of luck to everyone receiving their scores on Wednesday! As a community we will celebrate with those who achieve success but lets also not forget about our friends and study buddies who are still on this long journey. If anyone needs to talk after finding out their results please feel free to reach out!
Concur with everything else but yeah, it was fucking scary... I saw and talked to a ridiculous number of 17highs and near-to-over 4.0's that got killed out there. I read the app of a 180/3.8 that only got into UT with exactly zero dollars, and didn't see anything (in my extremely amateur opinion) that would have warranted getting shut out of the T14.
Medians generally (and expectedly) come in lower than self reported average admits, but you can check it on LSD as well. Just change the dropdown to the previous cycle. But yeah... assume the data is skewed, but its the best we've got.
I don't really see the median scores coming down with all the high-scoring hold-overs who will be reapplying in the upcoming cycles. LSAT needs to restructure the test or something to re-establish the curve, but the caveat is that they can't do that since it'll screw over all of the previous scores.
ugh. What a fucking headache. LSAT really fucked up with the pandemic and 3-section format.
LR, arguably the most important section in regards to testing for a law skillset go reduced to 1/3 as compared to 1/2 of the exam, and the smaller number of questions creates a greater margin of error for people to guess their way to a higher score than they're used to. Scores can vary by 8~ points in the 75 section format, which I really hate.