What if the December 2010 LSAT Went Poorly?

We’re three days removed from the December 2010 LSAT, which is commonly considered the latest you can take the LSAT without your score being considered “late”. Many who took the December LSAT were students who either had difficulty with the October LSAT, or who opted to postpone the October LSAT until December. By taking the LSAT in December, you were hoping that you’d have your LSAT score by early January, putting you in the middle of the pack as far as applications go.

But what if the December LSAT went poorly? What if the stained glass window game did naughty things to you? What if you only got through two and a half reading comprehension passages?

It’s not such a big deal if you weren’t intending on applying for Fall 2011, but if you were, then life just got a lot harder for you. Still, you have a few options.

First, you can just accept whatever score you got on the December LSAT. We don’t typically recommend this, in the spirit of making money (just joking…but not really). But if you really feel you put in all the work necessary, and you still didn’t walk out of the test feeling great, then it might be the right idea to just accept the score and move on.

Second, you can cancel the December LSAT, take the February LSAT, finish all of your applications in the meantime, and hope that law schools will still have spots open in March. February is the last gasp if you’re thinking of applying for Fall 2011, and there’s no guarantee that all law schools accept scores that late. The best thing to do is to call all law schools where you’re thinking of applying to see if they’ll take the February LSAT before you think of it as a realistic option.

Third, you can make the prudent decision (check out the author’s attitude there), and start shooting for Fall 2012 admission to law school. Don’t worry about taking the next immediate LSAT. Instead, try to get the best LSAT score possible by really studying for the exam. This means taking it sometime in June or October or really whenever you have enough time to really study for the test (which could mean February, but don’t force it).

It’s definitely a tough decision. If you were gearing up for applying this cycle, it’s a tremendous disappointment to have your options limited. But you want to make the smart decision. If you can apply next cycle with a much better LSAT score (which means you had a lot of time to study), then you should do so.