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About six weeks after you take the LSAT, Law Services will send you a report
with your score. The report explains how to interpret your score, but in
general, here's how it works. You receive a "raw" score that is converted to
a "scaled" score of between 120 and 180, depending on the difficulty of the
LSAT you took. Your scaled score is grouped into something called a "score
band", which is a statistical grouping of your scaled score plus or minus
three points with a 68% level of confidence. This means, for example, that a
person with a scaled score of 150 will score between 147 and 153 about 68%
of the time. Note that this score band is not an absolute predictor of what
your LSAT score will be should you choose to take the test again. It is
simply a statistical ranking of your scaled score based upon probabilities
compiled by Law Services. Depending on the circumstances, you might do worse
than three points lower, or better than three points higher. The average
LSAT scaled score is around 151, and more than 50% score between 145 and
159. A scaled score of 160 to 165 puts you in very good company, and you are
in an elite group with a scaled score of 166 or better. Your scaled score
will be ranked in a percentile, which is the percentage of test takers that
you outscored. For example, a 75th percentile score means that you outscored
75% of the test takers, and that 25% outscored you. On the LSAT, a handful
of correct answers can make a huge percentile difference. The difference
between the 50th percentile and the 75th percentile is around three
questions per section; the difference between the 90th and the 95th
percentiles is less than two questions per section.
If you get your LSAT score and you are disappointed with it, try not to
get discouraged. Think back on your test preparation and test taking
techniques. Perhaps you did not put enough quality effort into preparing.
You may have had a bad experience taking the test. If you were sick, or you
were distracted by personal problems, you may not have been able to give
your best effort. Of course, some people just tend to do poorly on
standardized tests.
If you find fault with your studying or test taking methods, or you were
having a bad day on the day of the test, retake it. If your score is low but
not a disaster, and if you are sure you gave it your best effort, then maybe
you need to rethink your choices of law schools. Remember, your goal is to
get into law school. Sure, you'd like to get into a great law school, but
you must to be realistic about where your LSAT score can take you. If you
have to settle for what was initially your second, third or fourth choice of
law schools, do it. Once you get into an ABA-approved law school, then work
hard and do what is expected of you. You'll get a fine legal education.
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