This post was written by Emily Madan, a Manhattan Prep LSAT instructor.

You spent so much time studying, analyzing, and reviewing. It all comes down to one day and one three-digit score. The pressure to perform your best is intense, so now the question is: Should you keep or cancel your score? Let’s dive into the questions you’re asking yourself and what factors should influence your decision.

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Was this your reaction when you saw your LSAT score? Yes? Keep reading.

Every time LSAT scores are released, there are thousands of test-takers who are less than satisfied with their results. Luckily, you are allowed to take the LSAT again — you may actually take the exam up to three times in any two year period. Unluckily for those with unsatisfactory scores, the decision as to whether it is worth it (or even a good idea) to retake is hardly a straightforward one. Enter the Manhattan LSAT Retake Manifesto.

In the coming paragraphs, we hope to address all of the concerns that a potential LSAT retaker may have – in fact, should have – before deciding what their next course of action is.

Initial Considerations

Let’s start with a dose of reality. Most people see very little improvement in their LSAT score after retaking (an average of roughly two points for folks who scored between 150 and 167 the first time), and some actually see a decrease in their score. Take a look at the below chart for some analysis of the success of 2010-2011 ‘retakers’ with various initial scores:

*Data courtesy of LSAC.org’s 2010-2011 “repeater” statistics (pdf).

The most important take away from this data is the marginal nature of the score increases that repeat LSAT takers tend to achieve. This is simply an average, though, so by no means am I saying that substantial score increases are impossible to achieve when retaking the LSAT. There may have been very legitimate circumstances that applied to your first attempt at the LSAT that prevented you from realizing your full potential.

When considering a retake, it is important to make an honest assessment of your efforts the first time around. Here are the important questions you must ask yourself in order to avoid becoming the next sad repeater statistic:

Did I study like hell the first time I took the exam?

There are a large number of test takers who underestimate the beast that is the LSAT. The LSAT is a very difficult exam, and in taking it you should assume you are competing with the upper quartile of college students nationwide. If you approached your LSAT prep with the same fervor as your SAT prep, you’re in trouble. That would be the equivalent of jogging two miles a day to train for a marathon. Simply put, you should ask yourself whether you underestimated this test. If your answer is yes, you are a prime candidate for a retake. If your answer is no, you did not underestimate the LSAT and really did study like hell the first time, read on.

Did I have a “bad day” when I took the exam?

When we say “bad day” here, we’re referring to everything from the completely and totally disastrous, to the mildly distracting. First, the completely disastrous: if Murphy’s Law inconveniently applied itself to your test day experience, you should have a good sense of this and how it negatively affected your score. Were you late for your exam? Did you get very sick that weekend? Did a motorcycle gang decide to ride up and down the street your test center was located on during the Logic Games section? Was there a guy nervously tapping his foot on your chair throughout the test? Did the proctor flirt with you during the break and totally mess with your concentration? Were you abducted by Aliens during the break? If your answer is yes, hopefully you had the foresight to “cancel” (most extra terrestrials should have had internet access you could use), and are rightly plotting your course toward the next exam date.

Unlike the completely disastrous scenarios, slight distractions are more likely to rear their ugly heads again in future test implementations. If you found yourself slightly distracted on test day, you need to decide whether or not you believe you can overcome similar scenarios in the future. Was it really your neighbor tapping his or her pencil on their desk that destroyed your focus, or are you predisposed to test anxiety? Identifying whether truly external and unpredictable factors negatively affected your test experience is a crucial component to your retake decision. It can be unnerving to take such a high stakes test in a tense room full of prospective lawyers, but unfortunately that is part of the game day experience.

I prepped really hard, but did I prep long enough?

The LSAT is one of the harder or the hardest standardized exam that many people ever face. The skills it assesses are not only learned in 3 months of prep—they’re gained through a decade of rigorous high school and college courses. That’s not to say that someone who spent college staring at the bottom of a beer mug can’t do well on the LSAT, but it does mean that it may take some people longer than the usual 3-4 months to get to their best score. Tips and tricks can get you only a few points, really hitting your top means cleaning up and speeding up your thinking—and that’s not done in a weekend workshop!

I prepped really hard, but did I prep smart?

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume that you put in an earnest effort in prepping for your first LSAT, things went more or less OK for you on test day (no abductions, no illnesses), and you’re simply wondering if there’s hope of a score increase for you the next time around. The question to ask yourself now is: was that effort I put in to studying for the LSAT my first time around the best use of my time? In other words (and more to the point) did my LSAT prep suck?

Let’s face it, there are many, many options out there for preparing for the LSAT. It could be that you signed up for the first course that caught your eye (or perhaps the cheapest available option), and it simply did not work for you. A sub par instructor on an exam like the LSAT can make all the difference. At Manhattan LSAT, we firmly believe that the second most important factor in one’s LSAT prep, after their own hard work, is the quality of the instruction and the materials that they use to study. Finding a better prep program (or a more effective way to study) can occasionally be the missing piece of the puzzle.

If you studied on your own, perhaps you lacked the structure necessary to really maximize your study time.  We have seen countless examples of structure alone being a “make or break” factor in one’s LSAT prep. Working through the quality material in the order that a 99th percentile professional LSAT tutor/curriculum developer has put together can make a significant impact on the result of that work put in. For some people, maybe you just need to take a class (or a different class, if you took one that didn’t work for you) to sharpen up on the skills necessary to dominate the exam.

Whatever your situation may be, do not think that you can continue to study for your next LSAT the same way that you studied for your initial test and receive greater results – provided you did put indeed put in the effort that first time. Doing so is the definition of insanity!

The Next Things to Consider

Admissions Policies of Your Target Law School

So you’ve taken the LSAT, did not cancel, and are not 100% satisfied with your score. You have reflected on what happened on test day, as well as on your LSAT prep. You’re convinced you have a higher score in you. Does that mean you should register today for the next exam administration? Not quite. You need to think about the schools that you’re trying to get in to, and what their policies on multiple LSAT scores are.

Earlier this year we did some research on what top law schools admission policies pertaining to multiple LSAT scores are. Four of the top ten (from US News and World Report’s 2010 rankings) said they would consider only the highest LSAT score on an applicant’s score report. Two schools said they would take an average, and four considered their review of applications to be a “holistic” approach (whatever that means – it’s a safe assumption is that they would consider more than just your top score).

Knowing the policies of the schools you are applying to is a crucial consideration in your retake decision. If your top two schools are only considering your highest LSAT score, you might be more inclined to have another go at the exam. If you’re looking at schools that consider an average, you’ll want to seriously evaluate whether or not external factors ruined your first test – or whether there are tangible fixes that you can make to your prep this time around, as coming in with a lower score could damage your chances of admission.

Your Timeline

If you are applying for admission to law school for the fall of a given year, you will need to have taken the LSAT satisfactorily by December of the prior calendar year at the latest. The February LSAT is too late to use on an application to law school if you intend to start later that same year.

Do you have enough time to take the LSAT again? A thorough LSAT prep takes 3-5 months. If you are realizing in the middle of October that you did not optimize your LSAT prep the first time around (or perhaps completely underestimated it), will the six weeks remaining until the December test give you enough time to really dive in?

All things considered, what should I do?!

You’ve done a frank assessment of what went wrong for you during your unsatisfactory LSAT(s). You’ve evaluated your prior LSAT prep, the policies of the schools you will be applying to, and your admissions timeline, but you’re still not sure what to do. Here is our over simplified recommendation:

Retake if…

If tangible, identifiable factors contributed to your unsatisfactory initial score(s), you are in a solid position for a retake, provided that there is still time. Valid examples of these factors are:

• Freak happenings on test day (ie. late to the exam, sickness, proctor from hell)
• Lack of preparation
• Poor preparation

Do not retake if…

• You don’t have time to work hard on your prep.
• You re-study but are still doing about as well as you did on timed PTs before the first LSAT you took
• You have no idea what went wrong leading up to/during your unsatisfactory exam

As we saw in the re-take score table above, most students score only marginally better when retaking the LSAT. As hard as it may be to come to grips with, there does come a point in time when one needs to leave well enough alone, and move on to the next phase of getting in to law school (applications) – or reevaluate one’s plans completely.

Often we see students frustrated by stagnant scores after months and months of quality LSAT prep. The leading cause of this is typically fundamental issues with their reading and/or language skills. There is no doubt that the LSAT rewards people who can read dense material quickly. Conversely, the test can be brutal for very bright students who are not strong readers and/or are not native English speakers. For these students, the root of their problems may not be something that can be addressed in a few months time.

Here’s a little flowchart we put together once upon a time to illustrate some of the points we’ve made. This should be taken with a grain of salt, but not too much.

I hope you found this exercise helpful. As always, if you have any questions, shoot them over to us at StudentServices@manhattanprep.com/lsat/. Happy studying!

Was this your reaction when you saw your LSAT score? Yes? Keep reading.

Each time LSAC releases LSAT scores, there are thousands of test-takers who are less than satisfied with their results. Luckily for those folks, you are allowed to take the LSAT up to three times in any two year period. Unluckily for them, the decision as to whether a retake is “worth it” is hardly a straightforward one. Enter the Manhattan LSAT Retake Manifesto.

In the coming paragraphs, we hope to address all of the concerns that a potential LSAT retaker may have – or really should have – before deciding what their next course of action is.

Initial Considerations

Let’s start with a dose of reality. Most people see very little improvement in their LSAT score after retaking (an average of roughly two points for folks who scored between 150 and 167 the first time), and some even see a decrease in their score. Take a look at the below chart for some analysis of the success of 2010-2011 ‘retakers’ with various initial scores:

*Data courtesy of LSAC.org’s 2010-2011 “repeater” statistics (pdf).

The most important take away from this data is the marginal nature of the score increases that repeat LSAT takers tend to achieve. Just because something is unlikely, however, does not make it impossible, especially when there are some repeaters scoring worse, telling us that some people do significantly better than the 2 or so point average increase. Furthermore, there are very legitimate circumstances that may have applied to your first attempt at the LSAT that prevented you from realizing your full potential.

Check back on Monday for Part 2.  There are many pages more of the LSAT Retake Manifesto to come.

It's over!! It's all over!!

As we lay the October 2011 LSAT to rest, it is important that we remember the legacy it will leave behind. We mustn’t forget the blood, sweat, and tears that went into preparing for this exam. Hopefully, you’re coming off of Saturday’s exam feeling content with your performance. If that’s how it went for you – congratulations! I hope you celebrated properly, and cannot wait to hear about your results.

As for the rest of you, who didn’t quite skip out of the exam center whistling “Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah“, all is not lost! If you’re certain things did not go well for you on Saturday, you ought a cancel your score (if you haven’t done so already, today is the last day!). And luckily, December is not too late – you can still get in to law school in the Fall 2012 using your scores from the December 2011 LSAT!

What’s important is for you to recognize what’sholding you back from achieving your LSAT goals, and then to do something about it. Here are three common reasons why you might not be seeing the results you wanted:

1)  You underestimated the beast that is the LSAT.  You knew the LSAT was hard, but you had no idea just how much time and energy was necessary to adequately prepare for the exam. –We see this often—students who expect that a few hours of homework and studying each week will be sufficient for maximizing their potential on this test. Unfortunately, for most people it takes much more than that. Set your sites on the December exam with your expectations adjusted.

2) I just can’t seem to get over the hump on the ___________ section.  This is natural. Often students who have been studying for a while start to have a few sections of the exam really “click” for them, while one or two sections remain  problem areas. You should embrace this opportunity to hone in on your weak areas and really address what’s holding you back (note: if you’re struggling with Logic Games, consider trying our Logic Games Intensive Course).

3) You prepped hard, but not smart. At Manhattan LSAT, we’re big proponents of self-study. Maybe you’ve been studying on your own, but have never really had a structured approach. This is one of the major advantages of our Self Study program: it gives you structure.  It tells you what to focus on, when to focus on it, and how to channel your efforts on a particular question type or exam section. If you’ve chosen to do it yourself, be sure to add some sort of structure.  Our Self Study program comes with a syllabus and course recordings, ensuring that you have a very structured plan of attack.

For those of you who are going to continue the LSAT battle from now until the December exam, perhaps we can help.  We’re offering a free, live online review of the October exam and have an lsat class beginning October 17^th that will prepare you for the December test.

There's got to be a better way to decide whether or not to retake the LSAT

If you took the LSAT on June 6^th and were less than pleased with the outcome, then consider attending our free online review of the exam next Monday night (7/11) at 8pm EST.  Two of our instructors will be breaking down some of the harder questions from the exam and offering advice on whether or not retaking in October is a good choice for you.

Speaking of ‘the great retake debate’, here are a few questions you should ask yourself as you begin to make your retake considerations:

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Good question! As most everyone knows, many law schools are only honoring your top LSAT score.  This tends to be more true as you descend the rankings, but there are also top-tier schools that claim to do this as well.  I just attended a conference of pre-law advisors and admissions officers and learned that there is a lot of variety in approaches to applications.  Some turn a blind eye to the problematic score, others try to figure out the “story” behind the multiple tests. One interesting fact is how little people generally improve between tests.  While we’re clearly going to benefit from those who look at their LSAT score and decide they should have taken a course, for the majority of folks, they only improve a few points.  To break that re-take score barrier, unless you either really did not prepare for your first test or you had a panic attack (or horrible proctor and testing experience), you’re going to have to dig deep.  Whatever you did to prepare the first time did not work! Some issues to consider once you receive your score: Read more