LSAT Score Cancellations

"How do you decide whether to cancel your score, assuming that the LSAT does not go well for you on test day, or you think it didn't go well?"

How do we know? It's not always easy to tell. Especially when you are so close to the problem that you have tunnel vision and you can't see straight. Once you walk out of the LSAT your brain is going to be fried. If you've done a 5-section exam, or maybe even gone really nuts and done a 6-section exam, you know what that feels like. After the LSAT, you're not in the best situation to make an evaluation of where you stand.

So for that reason, don't make any sudden moves. You don't need to cancel your score right away. You've got six calendar days from the day of the exam to cancel your score, and there is no benefit to canceling the day of or the next day vs three days later.

You will always have the chance to come back later with a fresh perspective and see where you stand. So for that reason, I would say, first of all, just don't do anything drastic in the moment. What you can do is take a reasoned assessment of how the test went, and I want you to walk through the following questions.

First of all, were you fully prepared? Did you do everything that you reasonably could have done? Or did you suddenly realize that for the past 2-3 months, you've been doing everything wrong. You've been working out of some awful, off-the-shelf prep book that doesn't even use real LSAT questions.

If that's the book you've been using, and it was using fake questions, then yes, you've been doing it wrong. You could probably improve your score drastically by taking a wholly different course of prep.

But if, on the other hand, you've been prepping in a reasonably solid way, you've been using well-reviewed LSAT materials from trusted sources, you've been using actual LSAT problems, and you've been getting advice from people that you consider to be experts.

Maybe you've even been taking their courses or using their study plans and you found that it just fell apart for you for one vague reason or another.

Now, let’s define "fall apart." Is it that you suddenly forgot everything and were at a loss for the entire 35 minutes per section? Or is it that you encountered a couple of difficult problems and weren't entirely sure how to handle them? If you just have this vague sense of dread because you didn't answer everything 100% correctly, then you probably shouldn't. 

Maybe you could take a couple of days and think, “It might not have gone perfectly. Maybe it's a couple of points lower than I wanted, but...honestly, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how it went.” If that's the case for you, then I wouldn't cancel.

The reason is, there are many people who have gotten great scores, but they had that vague sense of dread right afterwards. And it's because the test is scary. Your adrenaline is running, your heart's racing, and that fight or flight kicks in and it feels like it was 10 hours of agony.

And then it also feels like it went by in the flash of an instant, all at the same time. And you walk out of there sweaty and drained. That's the situation that everyone's in. Even when it doesn't count and it's just a practice run, then it can still happen. It's normal, but if that's all you're feeling, I would keep the score. For more, I've got an entire LSAT Unplugged playlist focused on LSAT Test Day prep here -----> and several articles on LSAT Test Day prep here -----> Free Stuff | YouTube | Podcast | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Books | Courses