December 2009 LSAT: About that curve…

Yesterday morning, December LSAT-takers found a belated stocking stuffer in their inbox: their test results. (The official release date, mind you, was January 4, but the LSAC seems to take a strange pleasure in surprising students by sending out scores up to a week before “scheduled.”)

But the real story buzzing about the December LSAT revolves around that sexy, generous, (dare we say easy?) curve.  Usually, you can only miss about ten questions to get a 170. But a December test-taker who penciled in 14 wrong answers ended up with the same score.  Now, the LSAT curve is based purely on how well students did on the test—if people overall got lower raw scores, then these translate into higher scaled scores. So, easy curve means hard test, right?

Mostly…  after all, when we surveyed our students who took the December LSAT earlier this month, we found out that the Logic Games section of the test was particularly tough.

But there may be another factor at play: More test-takers. Now, the number of December LSAT-takers has yet to be released. However, given the fact that the number of people taking the June and September leaped by 12.6 and 19.8 percent over last year, respectively, we can assume that it was pretty high. At first blush, you may be thinking, “More test takers?? How can that possibly improve my chances of getting a good score?!?!” The answer? It all depends on who those people are.

The first factor that explains the soaring number of test takers is pretty simple: Back in June, the LSAT stopped letting students cancel their tests day of. So, all those people who wake up on the morning of the LSAT feeling sick, or tired, or hungover (we don’t recommend this strategy), or just thinking, “Gosh, there might be better ways to spend the next three hours of my life” can’t just skip out. Instead, most of them now end up taking the test.

Now, the other reason for the surge in LSAT popularity is: Recession test-takers. Economic downturns are good business… for grad school exam administrators. A lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise dream of attending law school decide to ride out the recession as a lawyer-in-training. These students, given their more pragmatic or panicked attitude toward the study of our great legal system, probably don’t prepare as much for or test as well on the LSAT—bringing down raw scores and raising the curve.

Your next concern might be: But will this affect how law schools interpret my score? Nope. The curve is intended to even out variations in difficulty between the different tests and law schools, who heavily rely on LSAT scores in admissions, buy into that. So, law schools shouldn’t look at your score any differently than if you had gotten it back in June.

We hope everyone got great news yesterday morning! And best of luck on your applications!