#score release

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I’ve gotten my LSAT score back

We are certainly in the final moments of 2018 — if this year were an LSAT, we are solidly in the Writing Sample portion of the exam, which means we’re mostly just phoning it in and thinking about how hard we’re going to party tonight. But before we close the metaphorical test booklet of the year that was two thousand and eighteen, let’s get contemplative. Believe it or not, this LSAT blog has some stuff to say about the LSAT.

Last week, we spilled a lot of digital ink about the LSAT in 2018, paying special attention to what was on the five exams administered over the course of this year. Today, we’re going to cover the things that weren’t on the LSAT. Today, we’ll give a recap of all the LSAT news that came out over 2018.

And this year had more LSAT news than … maybe any year ever? The LSAT will undergo many changes in 2019, and so we spent much of 2018 scrambling to make sense of the myriad announcements LSAC and others made about the forthcoming changes to the test. Some announcements were a big deal, others were minor blips, but all augured changes to the test in 2019. So let’s review all the LSAT news from 2018 that was fit to print … or post. You get the idea. Let’s go!

A July 2018 LSAT is Announced

In a January announcement, LSAC released a selfie.* A coy smile, its partner supportively grasping its shoulder, its hands gently cupping its slightly-more-rotund-than-usual abdomen … we all knew what this photo meant. LSAC was expecting. It was with child.** And in July 2018, LSAC would give birth to this brand new LSAT, bringing the number of LSATs administered this calendar year to five.

*Technically, it released an updated LSAT schedule on Twitter.

**The child in this rapidly devolving metaphor being, of course, a new LSAT.

The Score Release Date Got a Little Less Stressful

The modern LSAT turned 27 this year. But — as anyone who has seen their temples grey and their bodies ripen into a slack, soft mush as they study for an LSAT that is approaching improbably quickly knows — time moves pretty fast when you’re studying for this test. So the LSAT ages, if not quite in dog years, at least much more quickly than we do. So in 2018, the LSAT was really entering a wizened middle age. And as it reached this maturity, the test lost some of that DGAF spunk of its youth, and began to mellow out and make some common sense solutions to issues that have historically plagued test takers.

The first of these changes came via an early March announcement. The LSAC CEO personally addressed test takers, letting them know that LSAC was making the score release process a little less stressful. LSAC used to release test takers’ scores basically whenever it felt like it … usually a week or so before the announced score release. So test takers would spend a few weeks following the exam as an frazzled ball of nerves, constantly checking their emails and LSAC accounts to see if the scores were released early, on a whim. In March, LSAC announced that it would stop doing that, and would instead release the scores on the promised release date. Now, it didn’t do a great job of keeping that promise, at least early on, but this promise was the step in the right direction.

It’s Now Harder to “Accidentally” Cancel Your Score

Another student-friendly change to the test came quickly after that, when LSAC announced that it was “simplifying” its score cancellation policy. Apparently, there were a bunch of test takers out there who weren’t the best at following directions and would accidentally check the box on their test booklets that cancels their score when they actually … whoopsie … didn’t want to cancel their score. LSAC threw these test takers a proverbial bone when it announced that for future exams, test takers would have to cancel their scores using their online account, hopefully limiting those accidental cancellations.

LSAC Made Good After Screwing Up the Score Release/Registration Dates in July and September

Even with all the calendar and scheduling apps available to me, I still screw up my schedule all the time. So I sympathized with LSAC when it too made a scheduling blunder. But I was still pretty mad, on behalf of my students. After opening registration for the brand new July LSAT, we realized that the last day to register for the subsequent September exam was the same day as the July exam. Which meant that if test takers didn’t feel great after the July exam,* they would have at most a couple hours to decide whether they should drop $190** on the September test. And this was after LSAC created a similar scheduling issue for June and July test takers.

But fortunately, LSAC cleaned up this mess. LSAC announced that anyone who signed up for the July and September exams could get a full refund of their registration fee to the September test if they were happy with their July score once that came out (and June test takers who signed up for July could get the same refund if they were satisfied with their June score). As we wrote at the time, “Who says LSAC can’t be nice sometimes?”

*A feeling shared by pretty much all test takers, regardless of the LSAT.

**A fee that was raised in 2018, to add insult to injury.

The LSAT, for Better or Worse, Fended Off Major Challenges from the GRE and GMAT

Why was LSAC being especially cool this year? Did it finally find that special someone? Did it begin talking to a professional? Meditating? Did it adopt a loving pet and start prominently displaying a bumper sticker on its midsized sedan that reads, “Who Rescued Who [sic]?”

Maybe. But a perhaps more like explanation is that LSAC was feeling the pressure from the GRE and GMAT, as more and more law schools announced that they would accept applicants who took those tests in lieu of the LSAT. In fact, for a minute there it looked like the American Bar Association would drop a rule that made the LSAT the default test for law school applicants. But a year of playing nice was apparently enough for the ABA to keep that rule, further entrenching the LSAT as the king of law school admissions exams.

LSAC Got With the Times and Allowed Cell Phones in Some Test Centers

If you’ve taken the LSAT or have perused the incredibly long and complex list of “Test Center Admissions Requirements” on LSAC’s website (both of which I do more than what would be considered to be “healthy” or “normal”), you’ll know that cell phones are strictly verboten in LSAT test centers. Despite the fact that we do almost everything with those devices — including, for many, coordinating our rides to and from the test center — LSAC wants you to leave your phone at home. Or, if you’re using your phone to hail a ride share service to get you home … maybe in a bush near the test center?

LSAC seemed to recognize that this policy inconveniences many test takers. It offered a few September test takers the chance to try out a new cell phone “pilot program,” in which test takers were allowed to bring their cell phones into their test center, provided they turned the phones off and placed them into an LSAC-provided “lockbox” (shout out to Al Gore jokes from the year 2000). We haven’t heard any updates on how this program went, or whether LSAC’ll offer this service to future test takers, so this is a story we’ll track into 2019.

The LSAT Will Officially Go Digital in September 2019

The biggest announcement of them all came at near the end of 2018. After teasing us for years that the LSAT would make the switch from the traditional pencil-and-paper exam to a digital format used by pretty much every other graduate entrance exam … LSAC finally announced that the September 2019 LSAT would be digital.

Since the announcement of the digital test in October, LSAC has filled in some the details on how the switch from analog to digital will go. The digital exams will be given on Microsoft Surface Go tablets, there will be programs to allow test takers to get comfortable with the digital format before next September, and, best of all, the Writing Sample will be administered at home.

The July 2019 Test Will Be a Freebie (Aside from the Sign Up Fee, Of Course)

Finally, there was a bit of weird announcement with respect to the July 2019 test. Technically speaking, it’ll be the first digital LSAT. Except only half of the test takers will be given the test in its digital format. The other half will be given the traditional paper-and-pencil format. And test takers won’t know whether they’re getting the new or old format until test day.

This, apparently, is consistent with “best testing practices,” but it’s also consistent with “no one’s going to sign up for this.” So to sweeten the pot, LSAC announced that it would allow July test takers to get an early preview of their score, and then decide whether they’d like to keep or cancel the score. Which is maybe the most generous thing the typically miserly LSAC has ever done. Here’s to more of these kinds of announcements in 2019.

The end of 2019 fast approaching. If 2019 were an LSAT, we’d have just finished making our frantic, final answer selections in the fifth section, and would now be listening to the proctor drone on about some final instructions before being dismissed. Which is to say that our minds would be drifting away from the LSAT and towards how much we’re going to celebrate finishing the test. But before we let our minds drift away from 2019 and towards our New Year’s Eve celebrations, we thought it’d be appropriate to reflect on all the changes to the LSAT this year brought.

In fact, there were so many changes this year. You could argue that the LSAT changed more this year than it had in its entire twenty-eight-year run since taking its modern form in 1991. The number of LSATs administered in 2019 increased dramatically. The test went digital in July. There was a major change to one of the sections of the test — OK, it was just the Writing section, but still. With so many changes to the LSAT in 2019, let’s take a trip through the year to review just how much this exam changed.

January 2019

Even back in January we knew 2019 would bring a ton of changes to the LSAT, but LSAC threw a curveball at us by announcing that they’d be changing the way the LSAT Writing section was administered. LSAC said it would remove the Writing section from test day in June, allowing test takers to take the section at home, on their own computer.

Later that month, the January LSAT was administered. Although it was one of the “nondisclosed” tests that don’t get released — so we never got an in-depth look at it — we learned a few things about the exam. Most agreed that the Logic Games section was the most difficult, made difficult by some hard-to-parse rules. As it turned out, that would be a recurring theme this year — the games given in 2019 would be a little trickier than usual. Read more about the January 2019 LSAT and test takers’ reactions here:

January 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction January 2019 Post-LSAT Carnival

February 2019

This was an unusually quiet February, LSAT-wise, since the typical February exam was pushed to March in 2019. Scores for the January LSAT were released on Valentine’s Day, of all days … and that was about it. Without much LSAT content to feast on, we honored Valentine’s Day by making some LSAT-themed cards and Valentine’s Day logic games, and honored Presidents’ Day by doing a deep dive our favorite facts about presidents who were lawyers.

March 2019

A lot of LSAT- and law school-related news came out in March. We learned that the students of Southern California law school Western State would not be getting their student loan disbursements, which augured the potential closing of that school (it, in a surprise twist, would get sold to Westcliff University and started classes for enrolled students in August). The 2019-2020 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings dropped. And then the March 2019 LSAT was administered. Like January, it was also the first of its kind. Also like January, it was a nondisclosed test, so we never got an extensive look at it. Based on student murmurs, it seemed like the game about the improbably named towns of Quandaryville and Pleasantville was the most difficult part of the test. Read more here:

March 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction March 2019 Post-LSAT Carnival

April 2019

April didn’t exactly shower us with LSAT or law school news. Scores were released for the March exam … and that was about it. We were all excited for the Game of Thrones premiere, so we wrote about LSAT lessons learned from that series. Say what you will about that series’s wet fart of a final season, but at least we got some pearls of wisdom and LSAT content out of it.

May 2019

With switch to the digital LSAT looming, LSAC put some free practice exams in the digital format on its website. We weren’t terribly impressed with the initial interface, though LSAC did eventually make some changes to make it more user friendly. We also did our part to prepare students for the digital LSAT by distinguishing the facts from the fictions about the format change and giving some advice on how to do the online version of the LSAT Writing section.

June 2019

June — which marks the technical beginning of the non-Gregorian LSAT “year” (running from June 1 to May 31, according to LSAC) — saw the first major changes to the LSAT in 2019. For the June test, LSAC officially removed the LSAT Writing section from test day, allowing June test takers to do the section at the time of their choice from the comfort of their homes. When that change came, we tried out the new version of the Writing section, and gave it a very positive review.

If you still have to complete the Writing section, one tip: follow the directions of the security portion of the exam very carefully. After speaking with many test takers, the biggest issue they had with the new version of the exam is getting their LSAT Writing response rejected because there was some “testing irregularity” — read: they didn’t follow the directions entirely. Now, we really doubt that anyone is trying to cheat on the unscored Writing section. Still, for whatever reason, there are a ton of hoops and ladders you’ll have to jump through to do the at-home-version of the section. It’s not a big deal if you get your response is rejected — you’ll just have to do the Writing section again. But to avoid that hassle, make sure to follow all the directions as closely as you can.

The June LSAT was also the last paper-and-pencil version of the test, so technophobic pre-law students signed up in droves to take it. The June exam was administered on the third of the month and, despite having one more question than most LSATs, was generally considered to be a “fair” test, although many complained that the Reading Comprehension section was quite difficult. Fortunately for us, June exams are “disclosed,” so a copy of the test was made public once the scores were released. After we took a look at the June exam, we agreed that the Reading Comp was quite frustrating. Read more about that exam here:

June 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction An In-Depth Look at the June 2019 LSAT

With the unveiling of the digital LSAT in July, we also spent some time preparing our readers for that format switch. We discussed how to get prepared for the digital test, and how to do Reading Comp on the digital test, since marking up the passage with a pencil was no longer possible.

July 2019

July is when things got really crazy for the LSAT. The July LSAT, based on announcements made in 2018, was going to be a totally unique test administration. For one, it would be the test day that LSAC finally unveiled the digital test. However, LSAC would only be administering the digital test to about half of people taking the test. The other half would be given the traditional paper-and-pencil test. And test takers wouldn’t know which version of the test they were getting until test day. This was done so LSAC could conduct a comparative study on the two versions of the test, to make sure that test takers weren’t performing dramatically better on one version of the test. As a reward for being human guinea pigs in LSAC’s studies, July test takers got an unprecedented perk — they could elect to cancel their scores after seeing their score and retake the test for free. Perhaps unsurprisingly, about half of all July test takers took LSAC up on that offer.

The administration of the digital LSAT went, on balance, fairly smoothly. However, there were definitely a few reported hiccups. Many test takers noted that they found it difficult to see their screens clearly under the glare of overhead lights. Many also claimed that the provided stylus made it slightly cumbersome to highlight or underline text or select answer choices. Several test centers experienced significant delays as proctors worked to make the tablets functional. And there were a couple of test centers that had to cancel the test altogether. These issues would, unfortunately, be a recurring theme at test administrations for the rest of the year.

As for the July test itself, most agreed that it was a fairly difficult exam, with a few brutal passages and some very tough games. Read more about the July exam here:

July 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction

August 2019

With all the madness June and July wrought, August was a calmer month for LSAT and law school news. We finally got all the data about last year’s law school admissions cycle, which we summarized here (and will also summarize here: the number of applicants are up overall, but the number of applicants with good LSAT scores has remained steady or even decreased for certain score bands, so having a great LSAT score is still a huge competitive advantage). And in preparation for the first all-digital LSAT in September, we made a comprehensive guide on digital LSAT strategies and updated our test center review page.

And on August 28th, scores from the July exam were finally released. As we discussed above, almost half of all July test takers canceled their score.

September 2019

The LSAT became fully digital in September. Unless you were taking the exam outside of the U.S. and Canada or had special testing accommodations, you were taking the September exam on a tablet. And that’s how the LSATs would work for all subsequent tests, including the October and November tests held later in 2019. People who took the September test had some thoughts on how the newly digital test went. As on the July exam, most reports on the digital test were positive. It seems like most test takers prefer the digital test to the paper-and-pencil version, unless there’s a significant delay in starting the exam or malfunctioning hardware. Unfortunately, there continued to be a number of test takers who reported significant delays or malfunctioning hardware.

As for the content of the September test … it was a hard one. After the exam, test takers expressed a lot of frustration about the difficulty of the games and passages, with the most ire reserved for the so-called “flower game.” Since the September test was disclosed, we got to take a look at the test. And we agreed. It was definitely a hard one (though the difficulty of the “flower game,” we felt, was maybe a bit overstated). Anyway, read more about the September exam and test taker reactions here:

September 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction September 2019 Post-LSAT Carnival An In-Depth Look at the September 2019 LSAT

October 2019

In October, we got what was probably the most unexpected news about the LSAT of the year: the Logic Games section will maybe, one day, disappear. LSAC reached a settlement with a few blind test takers and, according to the statement released by those test takers’ attorney, the Logic Games section would be removed from the test within the next five years. However, according to LSAC’s statement on the matter, they promised only to research alternatives to the Logic Games section during the next five years. So who knows when or how that section is going to change. But this news was still shocking enough to make our resident LSAT nerd write an impassioned defense of logic games.

Outside of that news, the October LSAT came and went. The October test was another nondisclosed test, but according to test takers, it was another fairly difficult test. An unfortunate trend of 2019! Read more about the October exam here:

October 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction October 2019 Post-LSAT Carnival

November 2019

LSAC saw it fit to make one more change to the test in November. It made the surprise announcement that it would now release an applicant’s LSAT score to law schools before that applicant completed the at-home Writing section of that test. We noted how this shouldn’t change your approach to completing the Writing section or applying to law school, but this was still one last change to a test that got so thoroughly changed in 2019.

In addition to that announcement, there was the November LSAT, the last test of the calendar year 2019. Overall, the Logical Reasoning questions, Reading Comp passages, and logic games on the November test weren’t quite as difficult as those on the June or September tests. However, we felt the “curve” for November test was somewhat ungenerous. And, most concerningly, there were a lot of test center disasters for the November exam. Many test centers could not hold the LSAT as planned, so LSAT had to offer a make-up exam to affected test takers on December 8th. Read more about the November test here:

November 2019 LSAT Instant Reaction November 2019 Post-LSAT Carnival An In-Depth Look at the November 2019 LSAT

December 2019

After so many changes, surprise announcements, and trends to monitor throughout 2019, December has been a relatively quiet month. Though I suppose I shouldn’t speak so hastily — there are still two days left for LSAC to announce that the LSAT is now going back to the paper-and-pencil version of the exam, or it’s now going to be a dance recital, or that it’s going to merge with the GRE to form a super test. But, even if those final changes do not come to pass, 2019 has been a wild ride for those of us who have to take or teach the LSAT. Nevertheless, it’s been a pleasure being on this ride with you. We wish you a safe and happy New Year. All the LSAT News from 2018

November test takers, it finally happened this morning. As promised, the icons on your LSAC account turned gray, and then around 9 am Eastern Standard Time, the scores from the November LSAT began trickling out. Whether you waited for the email to arrive in your inbox, or obsessively refreshed your browser until the score doc appeared in your account, your score eventually manifested.

And given the holiday season we find ourselves in, we hope your score brought you good tidings and good cheer. If it did, our warmest congratulations go out to you. You are officially done with this chapter of your law school journey. Onwards to applications, and then admissions, and then financing and 1L and the job market and the bar … oh goodness, that’s all too much. Let’s take it one step at a time and celebrate today’s accomplishment.

If your score did not bring you the appropriate level of holiday cheer, that’s OK too! Remember, there’s are many other LSATs you can take. The next one you can still sign up for is the February 22 exam (deadline to register is Tuesday, January 7, 2020). But there will be exams to take in March and April and almost every month of 2020 as well. Rest assured that when you eventually apply to law school, they’ll make their decisions based on your highest score. So there’s no reason to let yourself be discouraged by one disappointing score.

As we do for every published exam, we’ll give our full rundown of this exam soon. But for now, we’ll give you a little preview on some of the more discussed parts of the exam. (We’ll be discussing, of course, the just-today-finally-released November 2019 exam, officially titled Prep Test 89. We won’t be discussing the make-up exams given on December 8th, which were apparently the February 2013 and February 2015 tests.)

Two parts of this exam really stood out to test takers: the so-called peptides passage and the country inspector game. So let’s chat about those. The peptides passage was a wild ride — it first told us about the race to make microchips smaller, and the logistical challenges in attempting to do so. It then discussed how cells might provide a model for making microchips nano-sized. But then it brought in two people researching the mollusk abalone (wut?), and how they found that the peptides in an abalone shell might make microchips nanoscopically tiny. These two researchers, as far as I could tell, decided to play god and form “a billion” different types of peptides so they could accelerate the evolutionary process until they found a type of peptide that could make microchips smaller. We’ve had memes on our mind here, and this was all very wavy Mr. Krabs material. There were a veritable onslaught of details here and unfortunately for test takers, many questions were about those details. However, focusing on the overall cause and effect structure helped simplify this passage a great deal. More on this one later.

People really weren’t exaggerating the difficulty of the “country inspector” game, the fourth game on the Logic Games section. To start, it was a tiered ordering game with three different tiers, which gives us enough to keep track of already. In addition, and keeping with the trend established by recent games, it was severely underbooked. We had to place each player in three different places in our set-up, and each placement greatly affected the placement other players. It was a lot to keep track of. Fortunately, there was a relatively straightforward and common way to make scenarios on this game that answered a majority of the questions. However, answering the remaining questions required a not-at-all obvious deduction that would have been extremely tough to make on a timed test. More on this one later, too.

Given these two hard portions, many expected a fairly generous curve. This wasn’t quite the case, at least for the highest scores, unfortunately. People thought that maybe you could miss eleven or twelve questions on the exam and still earn a 170. Turns out, it was what people refer to as a “-10” curve. Below, we have the curve for this exam, compared to the curves of many recent exams. (These figures refer to the number of questions you can miss on the test and still earn the respective score.)

Again, we’ll be back soon to provide context for these figures by doing a deep dive into this test. For now, whether your score was a meh or amazing, congratulations for making through the score release day.

JULY SCORES ARE OUT!!!! Yes, that’s right! Per LSAC’s shocking announcement last week, July LSAT scores were released one week early! If you haven’t checked your score yet, head on over to your inbox and/or LSAC account!

If you remember, the July LSAT has a unique, never before offered perk: test takers can see their score prior to deciding whether to keep or cancel it. Well, the day to see that score has arrived.

Now that you’ve seen your score, (or are gathering the strength to do so) WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

If you reached your goal, are keeping your score, and are rightfully celebrating: Congratulations! You did it! Now comes ANOTHER hard part (oh boy, let’s just admit it; the whole law school application process is hard): the actual law school application. So, start checking items off your law school application checklist! And if you signed up for any other LSATs as a back-up plan, you can withdraw and still get a $50 refund — the deadline to do that for the September LSAT is this Friday, August 23 at 11:59 pm Eastern.

If you didn’t totally hate your score, and you’re on the fence on whether or not you should keep or cancel, here are a few things to consider:

• Do you already have a score on record? If so, where does your existing score fall in relation to your July score? If you’re below your score on record, canceling is totally fine! If you’re even just one point above it, keeping your score may be worth it! Compare your new score to the medians of the schools you are applying to in order to help you decide.

• How far below your practice test average did you score? If you were practice testing with an average of 165 but scored a 155 … perhaps canceling and retaking is a good option.

• Are you hoping to apply early decision to any schools? If so, are you already registered for September and/or October? If you are not, the September deadline has passed, and test centers around the country are mostly filled for October. If you do not test before the school’s early decision deadline, you may not be eligible.

If you are sure you will cancel, that’s completely fine! That was the whole point of the July exam: a risk-free test! We get it — not getting the score you know you are capable of is not a fun time. Good news, though: we are here to help you get that score! Here are some next steps to consider:

• The deadline to cancel July scores is Wednesday, September 4, 2019 at 11:59 Eastern Time. Yes, Californians, that is 8:59 Pacific Time!

• Do NOT give up on the LSAT! There are still exams in September, October, AND November this year, alone! And more next year!

• Start your prep now! In fact, you can take $200 off a Blueprint class with code RETAKE200

… So, which exam should you take? Good question! Each exam has its own benefits.

• September: The deadline to register for this exam has passed. However, if you are already registered, then we have great news for you! There’s still a month left before the exam, AND it is still a very early exam for this year’s application cycle!

• October: If you can find an open seat at a test center or are willing to go on the waitlist, register now! Testing centers are almost completely booked up, so, if you find a seat, register! You will still be able to submit an early application, and have the opportunity to retake if things don’t do as planned. Plus, even if you signed up for October before you received your July score, LSAC will refund your October registration fee once you cancel your July score!

• November: November is another great exam. It is the last exam offered this year — yup, no December exam this year — so this test is the last one to take if you want to apply to schools before the new year!

• An exam in later in winter/next year/next decade after you figure out Island life is not for you: Want to take some time off to study? No worries! We’re here to help you throughout this journey — no matter how long it takes.

No matter what you decide to do, make sure that you’re making a decision that feels most comfortable to you! After all, you are the law school applicant. So, think about whether to keep or cancel this score, until September 4th at 11:59 Eastern! As always, we are here for you, and support you, no matter what your decision may be!

Based on all available information, the November 2018 LSAT scores will be released tomorrow, Saturday, 12/8! The LSAC has burned students before when LSAC gave a certain release date and then changed it, but it seems extremely likely for November LSAT takers that the icons on your account page of the LSAC site will change from green to grey around midnight tonight (depending on your time zone), followed by score releases beginning Saturday morning.

Modify your weekend plans accordingly. November test takers won’t know the precise time tomorrow to expect their scores. Since the scores are released in waves (and which wave you’re score will be released in is entirely randomized) over the course of one day, there could be some waiting involved.

If you’d like more exact detail on the way scores will be released, these are the details from my experience a couple years back: Unlike this November score release, LSAC’s score release date was back then more of a suggestion than a promise — LSAC would generally send scores out a few days or weeks before the promised release date. So I had the same experience of waiting, but without knowing how many days or weeks I would have to wait for my score (don’t you feel lucky now, November test takers, that your waiting is going to end tomorrow?).

I was refreshing the LSAC website multiple times per day, waiting for my icons to go grey. I also checked Reddit and every other source I could find to see if other people were posting that the icons went grey, and that the score release was imminent. In the end, I didn’t find out about the score release in those ways. Presumably because I was in one of the first “waves” of students to receive their score on that particular date, and because I hadn’t checked the LSAC site for the gray icons in the last few hours, I learned of my score simply from checking my email.

I got an email from a sender called “LSAC SCORE” (full email: [email protected]) with the subject line: “Your June 2017 LSAT Score.” The content of the email was extremely brief, but it did contain my actual score, along with a note that my “LSAT Score Report will be available under the LSAT tab in the LSAT Status section of your LSAC online account.” I did eventually go to the LSAC website to read the full score report, which includes your answer to each exam question, next to the correct answer. But for at least a few hours, knowing the score itself was enough information to absorb.

When you’re ready to take a look at your own score report, it can be a very helpful tool to help you improve (if you decide you’d better retake the LSAT). Since the November 2018 LSAT, like June 2017, is a disclosed exam, you’ll receive a score report on the LSAC site containing your answer choices and a copy of the exam. You won’t have access to anything like a scan of your exam booklet from the November test, but the score report and the copy of the test will give you a good picture of how you performed on the LSAT under truly real testing conditions. It’s a great idea to go over the different question types of the questions you answered incorrectly or skipped. The earlier you do this, the more likely you are to remember your reasoning from the exam itself, so you can identify what caused you to miss those questions.

Going over your score report from the November test and comparing it to your practice exams can also help you to decide whether or not you want to retake the test. Perhaps there was a particular logic game on the November test which gave you trouble, when the games are normally your best section on the test. Maybe your read a question incorrectly, and you think it would be relatively easy to prevent the same problem again. Or maybe you mis-bubbled your answers, so the score isn’t truly reflective of your ability. On the other hand, if your score on the November exam is consistent with your practice exams, you probably already have an idea of the areas where you could improve on the LSAT, and it’s up to you to decide if you have the capacity to develop those skills for another test.

Good luck to everyone about to receive an LSAT score! No matter what happens, your wait is almost over.