Scoring Basics
The Law School Admissions Test (or, LSAT) features 99 to 102 scored questions; a test taker’s raw LSAT score is the number of these questions answered correctly. This raw score gets converted into a scaled score from 120 to 180. The scaled score is the score that law schools look at and everyone talks about. When your friend proudly announces that she got a 180 on the LSAT, she’s referring to her scaled score. Also, she should buy you drinks. Anyone who gets a 180 (the highest score possible) on the LSAT definitely owes their friends some type of alcohol.
The conversion from raw score to scaled score varies from LSAT to LSAT. On some test administrations you might be able to miss 14 questions for a score of 170, whereas on others you might only be able to miss nine.
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This make sense of why some students hope for an “easy” curve. Although the test isn’t curved (we’ll get into that in a moment) they’re articulating the hope that they can miss more questions, say 14 as opposed to 9, and still receive a 170. Other test takers hope for an “easy” LSAT, one on which they hope they can perform better because the questions are easier. Still others hope that the people taking the test with them on the day of the LSAT aren’t too bright, so that they stand a better chance of getting a higher scaled score.
All of the above constitute LSAT scoring misconceptions that we’ll clear up.
The Myth of the “Easy” LSAT and LSAT Curve
There’s no such thing as an easy LSAT. To see why, let’s take a look at the score equating process. (What most people refer to as “the curve”). It all starts with the experimental section; the unscored research section that every test taker receives as one of the five multiple-choice sections on the LSAT. What many people overlook is that the four scored sections of any particular LSAT administration started their lives as experimental sections on previous LSAT administrations.
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The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) compares how test takers perform on the experimental section they receive with their performance on the scored sections (which in turn started out as research sections; it’s a beautiful circle of life). This lets the test writers determine the exact difficulty of the questions on the experimental section: they know how many questions right and wrong correlate with particular scaled scores.
When LSAC then puts a full test together, the data from the four sections are put together into an equating (or score conversion) table for that test, which translates the raw scores to 120-180 scaled scores. So, when a particular LSAT’s equating table lets a test taker miss 14 questions for a 170, it’s not because LSAC decided to be generous. It’s because the questions were harder as determined by previous experimental sections. The difficulty of scoring a 170 remains constant.
The “Not So Bright” Theory
Another common misconception is that since you’re judged against your fellow test takers, you should seek out a test administration with a weaker pool of test takers. The truth is, there’s absolutely no advantage to this. The LSAT isn’t curved the way the midterms in one of your huge freshman year intro classes might have been. Your score isn’t determined in relation to the performance of your peers the day you take the test. The equating process described above makes sure that a certain score is constant across LSATs, no matter which test administration it comes from. Law schools, which depend on the LSAT as a consistent metric by which to compare applicants, would demand nothing less.
The percentile table you receive along with your score relates your scaled LSAT score to those of other test takers from the previous three years. This is enough data that a little bit of fluctuation of the average score on any particular test date won’t change much of anything. LSAC also reserves the right to do a bit of fudging after the test results come back, in order to correct anything out of the ordinary that might have happened.
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The Take Away (from the article, not the neighborhood Chinese deli)
The important thing for law schools is that the level of ability represented by each scaled score remains constant. The important thing for you, as a law school applicant, is not to worry about all this and to focus simply on preparing as well as you can for the LSAT. In the end, your LSAT score will be determined by your level of preparation and not by trying to find any “easy” LSAT, a pool of less-than-stellar test-takers, or praying for a lenient “curve”. For LSAT preparation, as with law school and your future legal practice, there aren’t any short cuts.
Article edited by Blueprint LSAT Preparation founders Trent Teti and Jodi Triplett. Find more information about the LSAT at Most Strongly Supported, Blueprint’s LSAT and law school admissions blog.
