EncouragingPoliteWalrus '21–'22 app cycle Class of 2025 class year

–Background–
I took a very non-trad route to law school. Majored in hard science at a college known for very little grade inflation. I had a very strong upward trend as I became a better student. After that, I worked in a foreign country for a few years and learned studied the language. Came back and worked at a law office as a legal assistant while studying for the LSAT. My PS was about this journey: how it was inspired by my family’s background and how it lead me to law school.

–URM-ish–
For those wondering, I am not “true” URM but I am URM-adjacent. But my family’s background was definitely a big part of my application since it’s also a fairly big part of my life, and has impacted the kind of law I would like to pursue.

–LSAT–
Because my GPA was not going get me in anywhere, I knew I had to crush my LSAT but… I really struggled with the LSAT. Overall, I spent about a 16 months studying for the LSAT on/off (mostly on). I had never really “studied” for standardized tests because I just felt it was “innate.” That is total BS and I wish I had a better official test day record to prove it, but the only thing I can say is that from my diagnostic to my PT average I improved +8 points or so. I was seriously a lot better at the test from when the first time I took it.

I had a pretty good diagnostic but had a tough time performing on game day. I took the test officially 5 times: 158 (same as diagnostic even though I studied for 2 months), 159, 163, 156 (RIP), and 162 (RIP). I was basically PT’ing in the low/mid 160’s when I took the first test and high 160’s when I took the last few times, so I was very consistently underperforming. I also got a tutor between my 4th take (October) and 5th take (January) which in retrospect was too last minute even though I felt that the tutor was helpful.

Of all the things I tried, what REALLY helped me a lot were the following:

1. Full-proofing individual LGs–doing two every day;
2. The Loophole translation drills;
3. daily meditation;
4. finding a study buddy.

Things that I think helped some and if I had started them sooner would have helped a lot more:

1. Talking with a tutor/high scorer;
2. Finding what my “bad patterns” were and really focusing on stamping them out one at a time;
3. Writing in my wrong answer/LSAT journal–forced me to slow down and think about what kinds of mistakes I was making. Not just limited to individual problems but also in overall test taking strategy etc.;
4. Having a strategy for each LR question type and drilling questions.

In my case, my main bad pattern was that when I was unsure on an answer choice I would dwell on it, and quickly lose confidence as I re-read it and failed to understand it. My tutor literally just said: “I hate thinking; if I don’t understand it I don’t think about it and read the next answer choice.” Usually, we could eliminate three of the other answer choices and then when I came back to the problem later on in the test, it was a piece of cake.

Things that didn’t really help:

1. constantly checking r/lsat - taking the LSAT is really stressful and I don’t think that a constant reminder of the LSAT improved my score. After a few weeks on the sub you have basically learned everything you need to know for how to approach the test (and there is some truly excellent advice)–but at that point I should have just shut it out. Probably much better to spend 1-2 really focused hours on LSAT questions and spend the rest of the day doing other stuff than to constantly think about the LSAT all day and THEN do 1-2 hours of actual study. I found that those 1-2 hours were less focused because I had been thinking/worrying about the test all damn day.
2. fixating on score vs. on qualitative improvements and context. IDK why this was hard for me but there is not shame in celebrating small victories on this journey. Ex: even though you didn’t get a PT high, if you were able to do well on a section thanks to some new skipping strategy you tried out–that is something to take note of and appreciate. Never giving myself the benefit of the doubt and trying to be hard on myself can be a real downer and didn’t help me want to keep going. Feeling like you are improving is central to actually improving, and actually improving isn’t usually a step-function change.
3. hyping up test day. To be fair, I wasn’t trying to do this and actively fought against it, but in the end I just found it basically impossible to treat test day like a normal PT. Actually, I think I accidentally made “I’m bad at tests” a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s normal to score below your highest PT on the real thing, but after my first take I scored well below my highest PT at the time and I decided that my main problem was that I couldn’t perform on game day. But the “bad at test taking” mindset is a real handicap, and probably wasn’t the full story anyways. All of my studying was at the service of “executing well on gameday” so of course that made gameday a huge target and when the day came it was too much. It would have been better to just think that my studying was at the service of learning how to understand the exam better.
4. Always studying for a test date that was 2-3 months away. Should have just signed up for a test a year in advance after not performing as well on the first one and slowly studied the whole time.

I hope this post doesn’t come off as bitter, but I’d be lying if said that I happy with my official scores. I did end up with a solid score that got me acceptances to some great schools, but I am bummed because I felt I made substantial improvement and that I was much better at the LSAT than my official record shows. On the plus side, I do genuinely think that the reading and reasoning skills that I improved for this test will really help me out in law school. Also, even though I didn’t have a fairy tale LSAT story, I don’t regret giving it my all because I learned some important things about myself and how to approach a challenge that did not come easily to me. Hopefully you can take a few things from this too. The LSAT is learnable–you just need to give it the time it deserves and chip away at areas that you need to improve. And most importantly, don’t let yourself get in the way.

–Application Strategy–
I applied to all schools where I was at/above the LSAT medians in Oct/Nov, and held off applying to others until I got my January score. In my first round, no one seemed to care that I got my lowest score (156) on my 4th take except for UNC lol.

I applied to my “reaches” (every school with an LSAT median >163) after I got my January score back because I thought it would be higher than my 3rd take.

–Other Thoughts–
My overall thoughts about my cycle were sort of what I expected: be above one median. While this isn’t true for everyone, I had a pretty cool and unique backstory that I had tied pretty well into law, so I knew that all I had to do was give the adcoms one reason other to let me in: GPA or LSAT. There was a very specific reason my GPA was low, and they knew that, but their job depends on numbers so I still had to give them something. For those of you that are discouraged because it’s such a numbers game, I can’t say that isn’t the case. BUT BUT BUT especially if you are someone with a non-trad or unique backstory, that backstory will make admission much more likely if you get above one of the medians. I got into every single school I applied to where I was above the median, except for UNC, and TBH I didn’t really want to go there.
Also, caveat: there are always exceptions so shoot your shot!