CALI's Pre-Law Blog

3 Aug, 2006

The New LSAT Score Reporting Policy

Posted by AustinGroothuis 12:22 | Permalink | comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) | Pre-Law Discussions, LSAT

A while back, Professor Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog reported the new policy regarding law schools' reporting of LSAT scores to the ABA. Whereas the ABA previously required that law schools report the average LSAT score of an applicant, the ABA now allows the schools to report the highest score of an applicant.

Some are touting this as a wonderful move. Accepted Admissions Almanac gushes, "I also agree with Daniel Solove of Concuring Opinions that this would be a "terrific policy change." I'm not so sure...

Some Thoughts
To me it's a clear rich get richer sort of deal. Because of rankings, schools are going to report the highest score of an applicant. While law schools may consider any lower test scores during the admissions decision, schools can certainly disregard lower scores with little consequence to the school itself. Therefore, a pretty big incentive exists for an applicant to take the exam three times and hope for a high score.

I can see a situation in which an incoming student with plenty of money and time to spare who is scoring, say, in the 150's on practice LSAT exams taking the exam three times and scoring, for example, 150, 155, and a outlier 170. Explain to me again how reporting, in this case, the 170 or any other possible outlier high score, is less "arbitrary" than the previous averaging policy? The end result is that test takers with the time and money to spend on retaking the test are at a huge advantage over those who lack the time or money retake the test.

Who else gets richer?
Clear incentives to take the LSAT the max amount of times?...The LSAC, administrators of the LSAT, must be thrilled. LSAT preparation companies, who are likely to sell more books and prep courses also must love this.

Protection Against "Bad Days"?
I realize this new policy was put in place to avoid the penalty for those who have a "bad test day." But I'm not sure why it's better acknowledge those in the opposite extreme, the fluke test. But let's look at what the previous policy meant for students' decisions to retake the LSAT.

Under the previous policy, if the applicant scored below what she believed to be her abilities (and test takers know this as much as they take practice tests), it was worth the time and effort to retake the LSAT because there would likely be an improvement. And if the first score was truly a bad day score, the applicant could take the LSAT two more times to get that average up. Additionally (and most importantly), under the previous policy if an applicant scored at or above what the applicant believed to be indicative of his/her abilities there was a disincentive to retake the test because a lower score would hurt the applicant.

The result with the old policy was that applicants decided whether to retake the LSAT based at least somewhat on their abilities. If an applicant scored according to what he believed was his abilities or higher, the applicant was more likely to keep that score because he had to consider the fact that a lower score would hurt him/her. So scores probably better reflected the student's abilities.

With the new policy, there is little reason not to take LSAT repeatedly no matter what, even if an applicant scores exactly what she thinks she is capable of. The result is an increased likelihood of a fluke high score on one of the three tests, thereby increasing the chance an applicant will be judged on that higher score.

As much as the previous policy may have hurt test takers' bad days, at least the bad days could be somewhat mitigated with the averaging of the scores. Not to mention, students who were hurt because of a bad LSAT day and had to attend a lesser school as a result could transfer to a better school if the higher scores were truly indicative of their abilities in law school. On the contrary, the new policy of giving more credence to fluke high scores is worse than acknowledging bad day scores because:

1) Even if the test taker knows a certain score is representative of his abilities (or even a overly representative) there is little reason not to play again and hope for an even bigger score.
2) Fluke score students could end up at a school at which they may not be able to cut it and possibly flunk out. Whereas bad test day students may end up at a school for which they are overqualified (in which case the student has a shot at transferring up and out) and bad day scores can mitigate by retaking and averaging out.
3) The people who can't afford to take the test more than once are at a distinct disadvantage because they don't have that extra shot at at the unlikely high score whereas a student who can afford it can retake and further prepare for the LSAT regardless of how indicative the first test was of his/her abilities.

Advice for LSAT takers
No matter what you are scoring in practice or scored previously, unless you know your score will get you accepted at a top school of your choice, take the LSAT the max amount of times and hope to hit the lottery one time if you can afford to.

Unless someone has an argument against this that I am missing, I don't see the disadvantage. Schools are now less likely to be deterred by low LSAT scores. If you don't have the money or time to take the LSAT repeatedly, then I guess you are out of luck.