LSAT 140s Advice

[Legallyanxious]

Hi all, 

So, I just got my October LSAT results back and scored below 150. I am registered to take the November LSAT and am aiming for a 157 (Ihate the LSAT) and am terrified that I won't get accepted anywhere because of my poor LSAT score. Currently, I have submitted applications at every Ontario school, UNB, DAL, UofA, UVIC, and TRU. I have a fantastic L2/B3 GPA (3.9 average), a strong personal statement, and really good references and ECs. 

Can anyone get in below a 150? Or can other factors make up for this? 

[CleanHands]

It's pretty safe to assume that you will not be getting accepted anywhere in Canada until you improve your LSAT score.

[Lawstudents20202020]

The bad news, is that score won't cut it. The good news is you have a ton of room for improvement. Below 150 means that is something fundamentally wrong with your approach. You are going to want to really dig into how you tackle the exam and see what you can change for better results.

[Monophobia]

Sign up for the January test as well. Don't bank on getting a much higher score so soon. If you get your desired score in November, great. You can refund the January LSAT fee after you get your November score back. But if not, you still have January to fall back on.

Not to pile on here, but a stellar cGPA won't make up for that score let alone a good L2/B3, let alone softs. Barring some very exceptional cases, undergrads applying to law school have practically the same ECs. I would be skeptical of any undergrad who calls their softs "strong" or "really good". Besides that, softs usually have quite a marginal effect on your application. You can't rely on them to mitigate poor stats. Nothing beats GPA and LSAT. 

Best of luck.

[Legallyanxious]

7 hours ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

The bad news, is that score won't cut it. The good news is you have a ton of room for improvement. Below 150 means that is something fundamentally wrong with your approach. You are going to want to really dig into how you tackle the exam and see what you can change for better results.

I just don't know what I've been doing wrong. I've been studying for the test a little over a year and my untimed sections are near perfect, even untimed scores I am still hitting high 150s. But at this point I've run out of official preptests and have no idea what I'm doing wrong in my approach

[Lawstudents20202020]

Untimed answers are irrelevant, the timing is an essential part of that test. What are your timed scores like? 

Below 150 means you are answering less than half the test correctly. Saying I'm not sure where I'm going wrong isn't going to get you where you need to be. You need to be highly critical and brutally honest with yourself as to why your scores drop once the time component is added. 

[Legallyanxious]

3 minutes ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

Untimed answers are irrelevant, the timing is an essential part of that test. What are your timed scores like? 

Below 150 means you are answering less than half the test correctly. Saying I'm not sure where I'm going wrong isn't going to get you where you need to be. You need to be highly critical and brutally honest with yourself as to why your scores drop once the time component is added. 

151-153. On my practice tests I do better than the actual LSAT. also do you know of any online PTs other than Lawhub? I've done all of them, or should I keep practicing and cycling through old ones? 

[scooter]

3 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

also do you know of any online PTs other than Lawhub?

Lawhub is the official LSAC database - it contains every past LSAT 

Also at this point I would recommend seeking the help of a tutor

[Legallyanxious]

18 minutes ago, scooter said:

Lawhub is the official LSAC database - it contains every past LSAT 

Also at this point I would recommend seeking the help of a tutor

Ive had a tutor, made progress with her and honestly improved my score and she said I understand the LSAT I just dont know why my test-taking is fucked. Also, is it bad to redo tests after a break of it?  like to recycle old tests?

[Legallyanxious]

2 hours ago, scooter said:

Lawhub is the official LSAC database - it contains every past LSAT 

Also at this point I would recommend seeking the help of a tutor

also is it still possible to be accepted into law school if I take a later LSAT like in January or February even?

[TheDevilIKnow]

2 hours ago, Legallyanxious said:

also is it still possible to be accepted into law school if I take a later LSAT like in January or February even?

This varies by school. I recommend looking closely. When I applied (several years ago, so my info is outdated), it seemed about half of schools would consider the January LSAT. I think only one or two considered February. So it may be a possibility but, in the meantime, focus on that November test!

[Apple]

I’m going to be brutally honest with you as I think you need that.
 

If your tutor told you that you understand the test, I don’t think that was correct. You don’t understand the test if you’re scoring this low. 
 

At this point you really need to take a comprehensive review of what you have been doing. You’ll need to backtrack a lot to get to the bottom of things. You need to learn each question type and learn the method to apply to them. Then you need to practice this method, not the pursuit of getting the right answer. Pursue application of the correct method. The method is what will allow you to move through the test fast as your independent reasoning skills aren’t cutting it. People have provided useful advice already and unless you’re willing to accept it then I don’t think you’ll see improvement. Go get a tutor who will teach you a methodological approach to questions and engage in timed testing. 

[Yogurt Baron]

9 hours ago, Legallyanxious said:

is it bad to redo tests after a break of it?  like to recycle old tests?

Is it "bad"? No. But it's pointless. If you've already taken a test, done poorly, and found out what the right answers are (even if you just skimmed the right answers and don't consciously remember what they are), retaking a test where you've already wrestled with the questions and seen the answers is not analogous to taking a new one. I mean, it's obviously not - it's so obviously not as to be concerning that you would even ask. It becomes a test of "how much you've subconsciously memorized".

Look, I love that Apple's idea of "brutally honest" is to say "you need to learn how to take the test". My idea is of "brutally honest" is this:

Not everyone is good at everything. Doesn't mean you're stupid. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. Different people have different aptitudes. I've got disability stuff going on and can barely stand up. I'd love to play professional basketball. My options are:
A. keep doing what I'm doing and hope for the best.

B. hire a basketball tutor to teach me the fundamentals of basketball

C. realize I'm not good at this thing and go find a thing I'm good at.

Of course B is a better option than A, in that A is definitely not working for you and never can, while B does work for some people sometimes. But there's got to come a point at which you start to think about C.

[Dghoul]

On the topic of redoing tests, I think it depends on the section. Redoing LG is helpful. I had trouble with LG at the start, and I spent the majority of my prep time on it. What I find is redoing them almost always makes me feel like they are new questions, except for the few misc-type questions. (not redoing them right away, but after a few week or days at least) I can say with confidence redoing games helped me.

Redoing RC and LR is not as helpful as LG. However, I won't say they are completely pointless. I think if you take a longer break or have refined your knowledge of the test then they are worth redoing too. Even if they don't feel completely fresh they may enhance your understanding and build confidence.

That is, of course, provided you want to keep pursuing it and have the time and effort to invest.

[Legallyanxious]

59 minutes ago, Dghoul said:

On the topic of redoing tests, I think it depends on the section. Redoing LG is helpful. I had trouble with LG at the start, and I spent the majority of my prep time on it. What I find is redoing them almost always makes me feel like they are new questions, except for the few misc-type questions. (not redoing them right away, but after a few week or days at least) I can say with confidence redoing games helped me.

Redoing RC and LR is not as helpful as LG. However, I won't say they are completely pointless. I think if you take a longer break or have refined your knowledge of the test then they are worth redoing too. Even if they don't feel completely fresh they may enhance your understanding and build confidence.

That is, of course, provided you want to keep pursuing it and have the time and effort to invest.

thank you for being one of the only understanding people on this thread lol. I am not giving up on getting into law school and doing well on the LSAT and yeah I definitely think that continuing to practice games will be helpful and I will get there. Thank you

[CleanHands]

27 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you for being one of the only understanding people on this thread lol.

At the very least, people who said you don't understand the LSAT aren't being mean. You should very much hope that you don't understand the LSAT; that's a fixable issue (to a degree). The alternative is that you do intellectually understand the LSAT but your processing speed is not good enough for what is deliberately designed to be a speeded test, and that would make improvement significantly more difficult (if not impossible). And it's a speeded test for a reason; the legal field involves very high volumes of work and the need to be able to process things quickly.

I'll leave it at that since there's no point kicking you when you're down, but I do want to emphasize that doing more of the same practice that clearly hasn't been working (and that you've done a ton of already) is pointless, and instead you need to figure out whether there are critical aspects of the LSAT you haven't been grasping, and what it means if that actually isn't the case.

Edited November 2, 2023 by CleanHands

[MyWifesBoyfriend]

17 minutes ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you for being one of the only understanding people on this thread lol. I am not giving up on getting into law school and doing well on the LSAT and yeah I definitely think that continuing to practice games will be helpful and I will get there. Thank you

I really enjoyed using AdeptLR for my practice in between practice test sessions. While no explanations are provided for each answer (this might have changed, it was new when I enrolled), it does tailor itself to questions you miss frequently for LR and RC or LG (latter two you must pay a bit more per month). It's relatively cheap too, I only paid like $50/mo for it, and I found typing my own reasons for wrong questions during drilling sessions helped me. Caveat, I didn't score too high (only a 166), but it was good for my full time work schedule where structured sessions were not always do-able.

With that being said, you're scoring below the 50th percentile, so drilling and timed/untimed sessions may be unhelpful. I'd recommend reading an introductory textbook to basic sentence logic as your issue seems more foundational. At lower than 150, you're going to want to focus on conditionals first. I also found the Loophole by Ellen Cassidy and her Powerful/Provable dichotomy super helpful for LR and RC questions - and the book is actually somewhat entertaining.

Last bit of advice - and my intent isn't to sound callous here - I'd recommend getting a new tutor. You're clearly smart given your GPA, but if your tutor is telling you that you understand test material when you're scoring in the 140s, it's time to stop wasting your money with them. 

[chaboywb]

13 hours ago, Legallyanxious said:

I just don't know what I've been doing wrong. I've been studying for the test a little over a year and my untimed sections are near perfect, even untimed scores I am still hitting high 150s. But at this point I've run out of official preptests and have no idea what I'm doing wrong in my approach

Can you clarify what you mean here? You say youre near perfect untimed but are hitting high 150s untimed - did you mean that timed is high 150s?

 

 

[Spinnaker]

1 hour ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you for being one of the only understanding people on this thread lol. I am not giving up on getting into law school and doing well on the LSAT and yeah I definitely think that continuing to practice games will be helpful and I will get there. Thank you

What is your section breakdown between LR, RC, and LG? (In other words, approximately how many questions are you getting wrong in each section and which is your weakest section?)

[Dghoul]

2 hours ago, Legallyanxious said:

thank you for being one of the only understanding people on this thread lol. I am not giving up on getting into law school and doing well on the LSAT and yeah I definitely think that continuing to practice games will be helpful and I will get there. Thank you

Well, people are not trying to be mean. We are all just providing honest opinions. And I agree with the evaluation that below 150 means there's some fundamental issue with your approach. And if you can provide a clear breakdown of your section scores maybe people can offer more advice.

[WiseGhost]

With a 3.9 B3, you're clearly smart. However, the LSAT does test for some skills which are important for law school and practice. I think other commenters aren't being mean, they're just suggesting that your strengths could lie in a field other than law. 

As a teen and young adult, my dream was to become a medical researcher. The problem was that while I enjoyed science, I have shit working memory and advanced math does not come naturally to me. There was a disconnect between what I wanted to do and what I was good at. Once I switched into a more social-science based program which fit my aptitudes, I was far happier. 

Some of these commenters are doomers. If you get even a low 150s LSAT score, you will likely be accepted at Windsor. A few more points will see you getting acceptances elsewhere. If law is something that you want to do, you will be able to become a lawyer. But law isn't such a uniquely great field that you shouldn't consider other options.

 

 

[Yogurt Baron]

Yeah, I didn't mean to be mean, and everyone but me has been super-kind, so I don't know what to tell you.

Look: when I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer because that was the only job I knew of where you got to wear a suit to work. I was a working-class kid who didn't even know of any other jobs. But really an overwhelming majority of people don't have the aptitudes to become lawyers, and I think it's actually a kindness to say, "If you don't have the aptitudes, that's okay - it doesn't make you less valid and doing well on this test is not your only path to a great career and great life." If it's mean to say that when a hundred people try to do something, half of them are going to be below average at it, and that by definition, not everyone can improve to the point of being above average at it, well, then, okay. If you'd prefer to think that math works such that 100% of people can squeeze themselves into the top 50% of something just by being sufficiently pure of heart, go do your thing.

[CleanHands]

1 hour ago, Yogurt Baron said:

If you'd prefer to think that math works such that 100% of people can squeeze themselves into the top 50% of something just by being sufficiently pure of heart, go do your thing.