Don’t panic and make a hasty decision, but you need to decide quickly if you should cancel your LSAT score. If you did not cancel the score by following the instructions on your answer sheet the day of the test administration, you must submit a written request that LSAC must receive within 6 calendar days of the test. LSAC does have rules, so follow them exactly.

Following are some things for you to consider.

Reasons you should NOT cancel your LSAT score:

• If you cancel the score, you’ll need to retest. Consider using the first exam is a prep tool! You can review the decisions you made on an actual, stress-filled Test day. You can go through the sections and analyze your choices (unless it is a non-disclosed test). If you cancel your score you can’t do that!
• LSAC statistics show that many test-takers who cancel their score and then re-test could have saved themselves the fees and stress, as their first score would have been better. You just won’t know for sure how the test went unless you are able to look at that test and see for yourself.  You will not find out what your cancelled score is, but LSAC does do the computation and compares the cancelled score and the subsequent scores.

• Law schools want you to do well, and most will want to take the best of your two or three scores, regardless of the order that the tests were taken in. This takes a lot of pressure off. (disclaimer, check this out with the admissions staff at the school(s) where you will apply.)

Evaluate your test-day experience:

Time Management:

Perhaps you didn’t get through a section or two when you were normally able to finish in your practice sessions. This might not make a huge impact on your overall score. The material at the end of a section is often more difficult, so you may not have gotten them correct had you finished the section. Or, perhaps it was an experimental section.

Distractions:

There WILL have been distractions, especially when you are nervous. But, this situation will change only slightly for the next test administration, when you again will have to deal with nerves when re-taking the test. You just aren’t going to have a perfect atmosphere! (This is why we advise our students to take full-length practice exams in locations that offer some distraction.)

Reasons to cancel  your LSAT score:

• You know that you can do much better!

• You were sick…This makes it more than likely that you didn’t score your best.
• You were completely unable to focus on large sections of the test. This problem would most likely have existed in more than one section of the test.

• If you’ve taken the LSAT two or three times already, you will have a better “feel” for your test-day performance.  With these scores already recorded, another cancellation might not hurt you much. But you should also remember that you can’t take the LSAT more than three times in a 2-year time frame…and this includes any times when you decided to cancel your score.

• Timing errors:
  Did the proctor short a section? Was your timing device working improperly for the entire test?
  (Make sure you have your own watch and that you’ve practiced your timing when prepping!) So, if you had significant time losses over several sections of the test, perhaps you should consider cancelling the score.
• Gridding Mistakes: If you mis-marked entire sections, then you put many questions in danger of being incorrect. You should probably consider canceling the score.

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