Today is the last day to sign up for the July 2018 LSAT, and procrastinators everywhere are panicking as they make their final decisions about whether to register. If you fall into the group of people making a last-minute judgement call on whether to register, here are some things to keep in mind.

The July LSAT is a month and ten days from today, and it can be hard to assess whether you’ll be ready to take the LSAT by then. However, there are several factors that suggest that for most people, it’s a good idea to sign up.

These days, there’s not too much of a downside to having multiple LSAT scores — schools will see all of your scores, but they really only care about the highest one. You might take the July LSAT, decide you can do better, and then decide to take it again in September, but that’s not a big deal; plus, if you do end up taking the LSAT more than once, your test-day nerves might be calmer the second time around when you know exactly what to expect from the test-day experience.

Furthermore, having a set day that you’ll be taking the LSAT might provide you with the motivation you need to get your rear in gear. There’s a tendency to just decide to study until you “feel ready,” which is a nebulous feeling that almost never actually occurs. There will always be something else that you could have spent a little more time studying, or something that you still feel slightly nervous about. Signing up for an LSAT date can help rip the band-aid off and motivate you to be as ready as you can by that date (and you’ll probably find that you are plenty ready!).

If you know there’s absolutely no way you’ll be ready to take the LSAT in July (for instance, if you’re following a study plan where you won’t have gotten through all of the material by the test date), then yeah, you might as well save yourself some cash and skip the July LSAT. But if there’s even a chance that you’ll be scoring where you want by July — and a lot can change in a month and ten days, so that chance is probably bigger than you think — you’ll likely want to sign up for the July test just in case.

There’s one other factor that sweetens the deal this year: As we discussed yesterday, LSAC just announced that June test takers who register for July can get a full refund if they decide after receiving their June scores that they don’t want to take it again after all, and the same deal applies for people who take the July LSAT and sign up for the September one too. This is a pretty unbeatable bargain, since there’s virtually no downside.

So, if you took the June test and aren’t positive how well you did, it’s probably worth your while to register for July just in case. And similarly, if you think there’s a chance you won’t be completely ready by the time of the July LSAT, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll be able to sign up for the September test and then make up your mind later about whether you really need to retake.