Law School Admission Test
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The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a standardized test used for admission to law schools in the United States of America and Canada that are members of the Law School Admission Council. It is scored on a normalized scale of 120 to 180—a 180 is the highest possible score, while a 120 is the lowest. A 150 represents the national median; the precise score distribution varies by test administration date.
It is administered four times per year, traditionally in February, June, October, and December. The LSAT is usually taken in the June or October preceding the year of admission, although most law schools will let applicants take the examination in December as well.
Unlike other American standardized tests, the LSAT is the most important criterion in its corresponding school admissions process. The second most important criterion is undergraduate GPA. Most prestigious law schools receive far more applicants than they can accommodate; the examination offers admissions officers a simple and generally effective way to eliminate a large number of applicants from the pool.
The LSAT is a very steeply graded test on the ends (high and low scores) and much more general in the range of the median score. To go from a 180 to a 175 may be the difference of 4 missed answers. To go from a 160 to a 155 could be a matter of 9 missed answers. Any score above 172 is usually in the 99th percentile (180 usually being about the 99.9th percentile). A 165 is the 93rd percentile. A 150 represents the 47th percentile. At many of the top law schools, admitted students' scores average in the high 160's to low 170's. <ref>[1]</ref>
Also unlike other standardized tests, the LSAT is rarely re-taken. This is because all of a student's LSAT scores are reported to their law school, not just his or her highest or most recent score (including examinations for which a student registered but did not take). Although most law schools consider all of an applicant's LSAT scores in their admission decisions, a few only consider the highest or most recent score, and the trend in recent years has been toward the latter method.
All students may cancel their LSAT score within nine calendar days of the exam. LSAC still reports to law schools that the student registered for and took the exam, but releases no score. There is no appeals process for an LSAT score, nor improperly-administered exam, all scores are final.
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Modern Test Composition
A complete LSAT administration takes up to seven hours, although only three and a half hours are needed for the test itself: the remainder of the time is used for materials preparation, breaks, and other tasks. Furthermore, of the three and a half hours of testing, only about two and a half are actually scored, due to the experimental section. There are six sections in all; with the exception of the writing section, all are multiple choice.
Logical reasoning
There are two logical reasoning sections of 35 minutes each. Commonly known as the "arguments" sections, each question begins with a logical statement or argument, usually composing no more than a few short sentences (e.g. "A is B; therefore C must be D"), and then asks the examinee to find unspoken assumptions, alternative arguments, or logical omissions or errors, to pick a line of parallel reasoning, or to identify weakening or strengthening statements. There is usually one question per argument, although sometimes the test will ask two questions about the same passage.
Logical reasoning sections usually consist of 24-26 questions each. In its officially LSAT Superprep, LSAC scores questions on a difficulty scale from 1-5. Most logical reasoning sections contain 2-3 level 5 questions.
The arguments section is somewhat difficulty-graded. While not directly graded like the SAT, the hardest questions tend to come toward the end of the section, while the first 10 often contain no questions above difficulty level 3.
Reading comprehension
There is one reading comprehension section of 35 minutes. This section usually has four brief written passages on a variety of topics and five to eight follow-up questions about each passage. The questions primarily ask the examinee to distinguish the author's main idea, intent, tone, attitude, and strategy for writing. The passages are typically several paragraphs long, covering some legal, political, scientific, or artistic subject matter. They contain more information than can be immediately retained by a typical reader, requiring frequent referral by the examinee.
Through the 1990s, the reading sections have gotten increasingly long. Now most contain 26-28 questions, with the most recent LSATs having 28.
Analytical reasoning
There is one analytical reasoning section of 35 minutes, informally known as the "games" section. The material generally involves grouping and/or ordering of elements whose number may or may not be known. The examinee is presented with a setup ("there are five people who might attend this afternoon's meeting") and set of condition statements (e.g. "if Amy is present, then Bob is not present; if Cathy is present, then Dan is present..."), and is then asked to derive various conclusions from the statements (e.g. "What is the largest number of people who could be present?"). The games often add or change rules in each question, requiring the examinee to reorganize information quickly.
Throughout the 1990s, these sections have become shorter, now often ranging from 21-22 questions instead of 22-24 as in the middle 1990s. This section is billed as the most coachable by most LSAT test prep materials and companies. In response, LSAC has increased the difficulty of the questions to such a degree that examinees are discouraged by most test prep materials from using exams from the early 1990s as practice on them.
Experimental
There is one experimental section, which can of be any of the above types. It is not reported as part of the examinee's scores; it is merely used by the LSAT authorities to test new questions for future tests. The examinee is not told which section of the exam is experimental, in order to avoid the distorting effects of examinee inattention or apathy. The experimental section is usually, but not always, one of the first three sections of the exam. This is done to reduce the impact of examinee fatigue on the score distribution for the experimental questions.
The fairness of this section is often debated. The student does not know exactly which section is ungraded. Which type of section it will be can be determined at a certain point in the exam (for example, if the student has already done two arguments sections and runs into a third one, then one of those three was the experimental section), and only after the examinee has already finished one such section. Some examinations will include three arguments sections, others will have two games or reading sections. The order is also unpredictable, which allows for the possibility of, for example, three arguments sections in a row. Depending on ordering and where a given examinee's weaknesses lie, an examinee can severely underperform (or overperform) on one specific testing. No formal examination of the impact of the experimental section has ever been done, and examinee scores tend to steadily rise with practice regardless. The experimental section also amounts to unpaid research being done on LSAC's behalf by examinees who are already paying for the testing.
Writing sample
Finally, there is one writing sample, which is not scored but which is provided to the law school. There are two possible writing samples: a Decision prompt and an Argument prompt. In the Decision prompt, the examinee is given an argument as well as two positions, and then asked to present an essay in favor of one position. In the Argument prompt, the examinee is given an argument and then asked to critique that argument. The time limit for either prompt is 35 minutes.
The writing sample is kept by LSAC, and a copy is sent along to each law school along with the examinee's LSAT score. However, since most programs require a "personal statement" of some kind, the writing sample from the LSAT is sometimes ignored completely.
Demographics of LSAT takers
The number of students taking the LSAT skyrocketed after the economic downturn in the late 1990s, increasing over 30% between 2000 and 2002. <ref>[2]</ref> However, the increase slowed in 2004, and in 2005 the number of test-takers dropped by about 5%. The 137,000+ people who took the LSAT in 2005-2006 is still significantly higher than the 104,000 people who took it in 1997.
Preparation
Because of the importance of the LSAT in law school admissions, it is strongly recommended that all applicants prepare thoroughly before taking the exam. The LSAT is an exam that responds, in most cases, to preparation, and even the Law School Admission Council recommends that students prepare beforehand. Given that most students experience at least some improvement, and the growing competitiveness of law programs in America, any student wishing to qualify for a desired program should therefore probably take the time to prepare well for the exam. Doing so will likely significantly improve their odds of success.
According to LSAC, a student who takes a commercial prep course scores on average one point higher than a student who self-studies.
When preparing, students should keep in mind that only tests after 1995 are considered "modern tests." The LSAT has undergone many significant changes since the early 1990s. Most students will find recent LSATs much more difficult than LSATs administered in the early 1990s.
Use of the LSAT in Law School Admissions
As a standardized test, the LSAT is included in any criticism of standardized testing in general. Analysis of the use of such examinations may be found in the standardized testing article.
LSAC has a long-standing policy of conducting free correlation studies at the request of individual law schools to determine the effectiveness of the LSAT in that school's admission procedure. The results of these studies are initially released only to the requesting institution, but LSAT does occasionally compile these statistics for publication, and the results are fairly consistent from year to year.
Correlations between two sets of data (in this case, LSAT score and 1L grades) can be reported on a scale of -1.0 to +1.0, with -1.0 representing a perfect inverse relationship (a higher score means worse grades) and +1.0 representing a perfect positive relationship (a higher score means better grades). In a perfect correlation (+1.0 correlation coefficient) the relationship is 100% collinear. That is, a student with a 165 score has a 100% chance of having better grades than a student with a 164. The mean correlation coefficient for the LSAT has tended to be in the 0.40 range [3], with some years being higher or lower by factions of a point. To determine how well this correlation predicts grades, the coefficient is squared to produce a covariance. The covariance for the LSAT alone is 0.16 (that is, 16% of 1L grades can be predicted by the LSAT). Although 0.40 is the mean among all evaluated law schools, individual schools vary dramatically, with coefficients ranging from 0.09 (0.81% predictability) to 0.58 (33.64% predictability).
Although these correlations are not particularly strong, they are statistically significant, and no better individual measure is known to exist. By comparison, Undergraduate GPA has a statistically insignificant coefficient of 0.28 (7.84% predictability). As with LSAT score, individual schools have marked variations in this value, ranging from 0.07 to 0.53.
However, LSAC's correlation studies have consistently shown that an index including both of these measures has a stronger correlation with 1L grades than either measure taken independently. With a mean of 0.49, and a minimum of 0.28, a combined index of LSAT and Undergraduate GPA will, in the worst case, still outperform Undergraduate GPA alone for most law schools. The overwhelming majority of North American law schools continue to include the LSAT along with Undergraduate GPA as an evaluation tool in the admissions process.
Privacy concerns
The Common Law Section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa is worried by the use of personal information required for the Law School Admission Test, LSAT, particularly that of thumbprints because the adoption of the Patriot Act may allow federal services, such as the FBI to collect personal information without the knowledge of the people concerned in the name of national security and the war against terrorism. It is also unclear that the practice is legal under Canadian privacy law. The law school has been in contact with the LSAC and is waiting for their response before deciding whether to continue using the LSAT as an admissions tool <ref>[4]</ref>. Canadian law deans have expressed similar concerns. <ref>[5]</ref>
References
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External links
- Law School Admissions Council
- Information and Book Recommendations
- Information for Canadian LSAT Takers
- Fingerprinting threatens LSAT writers' privacy, university warns
- Student fingerprinting sets off alarms
- Cautionary Policies Concerning LSAT Scores and Related Services
- New Models to Assure Diversity, Fairness, and Appropriate Test Use in Law School Admissions
- The University of Toledo Law Review #34
- Discussion of UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander's study on effect of changing standards in law school admissions