LSAT blues
In my 27-year career as a student*, I must have taken approximately 4,527 standardized tests. All of my scores have looked more or less like this:
READING COMPREHENSION/LANGUAGE: Quite high percentile
LOGIC/REASONING: Reasonably high percentile
MATH-RELATED ITEMS: -2 percentile
Seriously. I took the ACT as a junior, and did well enough on the first two areas to get a full scholarship**. I did badly enough in the last area to have to take six extra hours of remedial college algebra***. The GRE, which I took ten years later, wasn’t all that much different. First two areas: good enough to get into Ph.D. programs. Math: low enough to drag the cumulative score and my test-taking self esteem down to a barely-grad-school worthy level. I was so thrilled that it was the last standardized test I would ever ever ever have to take for the rest of my life. No more, not never.
So, of course, I signed up to take the LSAT in June. (Never say never.) This happened for several reasons: 1) I really enjoyed my copyright law class last fall, and went into law-school-withdrawal after it was over, 2) my research area is in a bizarre intersection of rhetoric and law, and 3) I am susceptible to career suggestions that will likely drive me batshit insane. But I figured hey, it’s a standardized test, and I’ve always done well enough on those, and this one doesn’t have any math! And sure, my really smart Law professors told me it’s totally impossible and everything, but no math! Maybe I’ll even study for it****!
So I cracked open the LSAT book my friend G. gave me as a gesture of support last Christmas and look the diagnostic test. And Oh My Lord, I sucked. It’s theoretically not possible to fail the LSAT, but it is definitely possible to scrape the bottom. Logistics demand that if I’m going to go to law school, I’m going to have to do it here, and the UMN Law School is among the top 20 in the country. They have Standards. And there’s no replacing an LSAT score — every one of yours is reported each time.
Being generally intelligent is not enough for this exam. Now I understand why people like my Law mentor, who is one of the most brilliant women I know and who regularly flies to Europe to consult on international copyright issues, spent so much time and money on preparation books and courses and tutors and whatnot. She warned me about this, but I was too busy breaking my ankle and worrying about the semester to take it into account at the time. And I should have, because this is absolutely the most impossible thing I’ve ever seen. No math makes no never mind in my case. So I studied in May, interspersed with procrastination. Study, procrastinate, rinse, repeat. The material is all the things my students complain about: long, and hard, and boring. I have no inherent ability for it.
And studying turned out to not be enough. Two days before the exam, it became abundantly clear that I was woefully unprepared. So I rescheduled for the October 1 exam date, and I have now plunked down $1200 for an LSAT prep course that starts Monday. This disgruntles me in a number of ways: I don’t really have $1200 to spare at the moment, I don’t want to go to school in the summer or feel like I’m adding six weeks to my fall semester, I don’t want to have to alter my travel plans. I just don’t wanna. But I do want to go to law school, and so here I am.
*Because I started Montessori when I was 2.
**Which I then proceeded to lose, but that’s an entirely different story.
***As a capstone on my career of remedial high school math. One bright spot, however, was the Arkansas Rising Junior exam, which all college juniors are required to take. I had no idea how to do almost any of the math questions, and so made skull designs out of the dots on the Scantron sheet. I got a certificate for one of the most outstanding math scores out of that year’s testing group.
****I have never studied for any standardized test. There are two reasons: pure laziness, and the fact that I somehow I got it in my head that studying for this sort of test is cheating. I have no idea where I got that from.
Comments
I'm sorry. That just sucks. Good luck when it comes down to it.
Posted by: michelle | July 8, 2005 7:48 PM
Krista
Don't be too sure that you're not prepared. I felt the same way before I took the LSAT, and I got a good enough score that I was offered a 75% scholarship to one law school, with application fee waived. I didn't end up pursuing it, ultimately, because uprooting & moving to Lansing, MI wasn't in the financial cards (nor was the $550 reserve-your-place-in-class fee).
Short version--I didn't find the LSAT all that different from the GRE (and I've taken that twice, ten years apart). If you felt fairly comfortable taking the GRE general, you should probably be fine for the LSAT.
Posted by: Chris | July 8, 2005 8:06 PM
Thanks!
It’s the logic problem questions that kill me every time. They’re too much like math, and I get angry and impatient and start skipping steps and things go to hell pretty quickly. I'm pretty good at reading comprehension (because after three years of studying French postmodernism and two years of reading copyright law, none of the test texts faze me) and the general reasoning questions are fine, but that long logic section (which counts for quite a bit) is just impossible. I’ve been thinking that I’d do fine working with my Big Book O' LSAT, but I cannot motivate myself to work on that section alone. I need the structure and lectures of a course.
Posted by: Krista | July 8, 2005 8:50 PM
You're a Montessori product too? How long did you go? I went K-2nd. Loved it!
Posted by: Anna M. | July 8, 2005 9:44 PM
I was probably in Montessori about a year, since I had to be pulled out when I was diagnosed with spinal meningitis. I don't remember much of it.
Posted by: Krista | July 9, 2005 11:58 AM
I took the GRE twice, five years apart. Math score stayed pretty much the same, but language went from quite high down to reasonably high, and logic went from reasonably high to quite high. And in an odd bit of synchronicity, my cousin with an anthro degree and my friend with classics and LIS degrees have both decided to put off taking the LSAT from June until October: sounds like there's a lot of law-schooling going around.
Good luck!
Posted by: Mike | July 10, 2005 5:25 PM
When I was in grad school back in that day, I took the LSAT in order to be able to teach the Kaplan LSAT course. In that epoch, the law course cost around $500. If Kaplan's pay has risen commensurately with the price, it might still be a source of extra income to recoup that investment, if nothing else ;)
Posted by: tom | July 11, 2005 7:02 AM
Are there any law schools that one does not need the LSAT to be considered for admissions?
Posted by: Leslie | October 15, 2005 4:27 PM
Not as far as I know. The LSAT is pretty much standard for law admissions.
Posted by: Krista | October 15, 2005 8:59 PM
what is the recourse aside from the $1200 lsat prep course to drive my marks up? i am atrocious at standardized tests but once i took the diagnostic, realized that LSAT and inevitably law school is a pipe dream with the horrible scores i got. any tips and tricks so as to not be a COMPLETE idiot?
Posted by: failure | October 18, 2006 7:35 PM
Really, taking the course was the best thing I did. There's a very specific kind of logic required for the LSAT, and they'll teach it to you there. And you'll do practice problems and take practice tests until you drop. I raised my score about 40 points that way.
View the $1200 as an investment in your future. Or if it’s really just too much to come up with, then go to the bookstore and get one of the big, thick prep books that come with a CD. Work your way through it consistently. Really. Do a little every day.
And rest assured that you're probably not stupid. You're just not used to thinking the way the test wants you to think.
Posted by: Krista | October 19, 2006 3:03 PM
How did you ultimately do on the LSATs? I'm going through the same process and am about to cry because my score doesn't seem to be going up (I'm in a Kaplan course)... I don't know if I should postpone until October or take it now to see how I do... I'm a bit scared! Any advice for me? Thanks.
Posted by: G | May 29, 2007 6:59 PM
I did OK. Taking the course raised my score about 30 points. Good enough for a mid-level law school, not technically high enough for the top 20 school I wanted. Ultimately, they said they'd still let me in because of my other accomplishments in combination with a reasonably good score, but I declined.
Everytime you take the LSAT, it counts. If you re-take, then your scores will be averaged. So take that into consideration... waiting until October might not be a bad thing.
Posted by: Krista | May 29, 2007 7:53 PM