The February 2012 LSAT has gone the way of the dodo, never to be seen again. If you took it, congratulations. You should have a score coming to your inbox by March 7 (which really seems like a cruelly long time to wait). But what if you think that said score is going to be terrible? What if Saturday’s test was less of a fun run and more of a death march? Well, LSAC actually gives you the option of canceling your score.

First, the logistics. To cancel your score, LSAC has to receive a written request within six calendar days. So you wouldn’t want to just send it in a regular ol’ letter – you should either fax or overnight it to them. If you do choose to cancel your score then LSAC won’t grade it, and law schools will never know how you did on it (neither will you). What law schools will know, however, is that you took the test and then cancelled your score. That’s not the worst thing in the world, as a single cancellation really isn’t looked down upon that much. It’s when you have multiple cancellations that you can start to look a little flakey (although some schools say they don’t care about even that).

But if you cancel, what then? If you’re applying this coming Fall for admission in 2013, then you’d have plenty of time to keep studying and retake the test. You could take the June LSAT and apply at the very beginning of the cycle. But if you’re applying this cycle to enroll this fall, with a few exceptions this was your last chance. So you’d pretty much have to apply with the lower score or else put off going to law school for a year. If the latter is an option, then you should strongly consider it, because your LSAT score makes such a huge difference in which school you’d be going to.

And so the big question: should you cancel? Just having general feelings of doom isn’t a sufficient reason; many people feel poorly after the test but end up doing quite well. If there’s nothing concrete you can put your finger on that went wrong, then you should really think strongly about your options before canceling. Check out Matt’s video about whether or not to cancel your LSAT score and maybe sleep on it for another day. Whatever you end up deciding, good luck!

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day.