In a perfect world, it would rain donuts, we’d all be able to turn water into wine, and no one would ever have to wonder whether they should cancel their LSAT score. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, but hopefully I can resolve any confusion on that last point for you.
In general, the bar for whether you should cancel your score is surprisingly high. There are several reasons for that: For one, it’s notoriously hard to judge how you performed on the LSAT based on how it felt. (How many times did you score a practice test that you thought you bombed, only to find out that it wasn’t that bad after all?) Secondly, now that most schools consider only your highest score (rather than taking the average of multiple scores), there’s not much of a downside to keeping your score even if you’re not sure that it will be good — and, as discussed in point one, you might end up surprising yourself.
So when should you cancel your score? Generally, only when something really disastrous happened and you know your score is definitely lower than usual. To be clear, we’re not just talking about having a bad feeling about how something went – we’re talking that you woke up on test day with the flu and were only able to finish half of a section when you normally finish all of it.
The other thing to keep in mind regarding canceling the February test is that if you don’t yet have a valid LSAT score and you cancel this test, you won’t be able to apply to law school for a full application cycle. I’m a huge believer that no one should settle for a subpar LSAT score just to apply to law school on a certain timeline – if all other signs point to the conclusion that you should cancel, waiting for one more year til going to law school isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things – but it is an important point to consider.
If you do end up deciding to cancel your score, you need to do so by Friday (assuming you took the normal Saturday administration) so don’t delay in doing so – head over to LSAC.org and get that taken care of ASAP. Then start thinking about when you’ll take the test again and how you’ll prepare, to avoid any nasty surprises on your next go-around.
