Law School Admissions Unplugged Podcast: Personal Statements, Application Essays, Scholarships, LSAT Prep, and More…
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It has never been easier for students to get top LSAT scores and as a result, the top 14 law schools all have LSAT medians at or above a 170. For example, Yale's LSAT score median is now a 175. And I believe this is because a number of students have learned how to game the system. They are exploiting loopholes in the process and not everyone's equally aware of this. And so as a result, I wanted to share with you out there how to exploit this loophole similarly so that you are not at a disadvantage because you don't know how to play the game. For those who don't know me, my name is Steve Schwartz. I've been teaching the LSAT since 2005, and I personally increase my LSAT score from a 152 to a 175 and I spent my career helping other students do the same. Now, the thing is law school admissions is a zero sum process because there are limited seats available at the top law schools. There is limited scholarship money available. And today I'm going to share with you what top LSAT students are doing to get into the top law schools and get full ride scholarships while others, even smart town to students, get stuck and don't know why. Because you see, there are a subset of law school applicants who have found loopholes in the LSAT loopholes in the law school application process and they are exploiting these loopholes for maximum advantage. Technically, they aren't breaking any rules, of course. But by thinking like lawyers, they found these ways to game the system to get into better law schools to get more scholarship money or both. What I'm talking about here is extra time accommodations on the LSAT. It used to be that LSAT was overly strict in granting these accommodations, even if you were deserving of getting extra time, they would deny you even if you were a blind test taker who couldn't benefit from diagramming on the logic game section the way that others could. LSAT still would not accommodate you. And as a result, LSAT got sued over and over again. They got sued by the federal government. They got sued by the blind test takers. And as a result, we no longer have logic games on the LSAT. LSAT had to settle that lawsuit and they agreed to develop a new version of the test without logic games for everybody. Similarly, LSAT is now granting extra time accommodations for virtually everybody who asks. It used to be they granted only 70% of requests. Now they are granting 98% of requests, meaning pretty much that as long as you are dotting your eyes and crossing your teeth and you technically have a note from a doctor, you're good to go with whatever you ask for. So students are getting time and a half. They're getting double time. They're getting triple time. There are even students who are getting 160 minutes per section. It used to be that you were lucky to get 53 minutes per section as opposed to the standard 35 and you would have to really fight if you wanted to get double time, meaning 70 minutes per section. But now all you've got to do is ask, get that note and you can get seemingly as much time as you want to get. And if you don't think that getting extra time is an advantage on a strictly timed test like the LSAT, I'm wondering if you've taken enough practice test yet to discover for yourself what a difference it can make with the time constraint versus without the time constraint. I'm going to show you a story to illustrate this. Back when I was in high school, I was determined to get a perfect score on my high school math final exam. For those of you who are also from New York State, you may be familiar with the Regents exams. And so these Regents exams, they would give you a full three hours if you wanted it. But that was usually far more time than you needed. Most students who were decent at math were complete this exam in an hour, maybe an hour and a half, then leave the auditorium, leave the gym, and go off and enjoy the rest of their day. But not me. I was obsessed with getting a perfect score on the math Regents exams, maybe because I was insecure that I wasn't that good at math. And I wanted to show up my math nerd friends. So I stayed there the full three hours. I did every single question twice. I did some of them three times to double check and triple check everything I possibly could, leaving no stone unturned. And as a result, I did in fact get that perfect score on the math Regents exam. While my math nerd friends who were not as diligent, who maybe didn't care as much, they were getting 93, maybe 95s. I was getting 100 because I took advantage of the extra time that was available to me. And similarly, I hear from students all the time that they've gotten extra time and they'll say to me, I really benedged from the extra time on say reading comp, but I don't really need on logical reasoning or vice versa. I mean, logic games were on the LSAT. I would also hear from students who were saying, I don't really need the extra time on logic games. But I really love to have it on reading comprehension. And so what I my point here is that these extra time accommodations are not precise. And LSAC is being a little bit too liberal as an over correction when previously they were too strict. These accommodations are lacking in precision because these qualified professionals, so called who are doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists, they're able to say, yes, you suffer from anxiety or yes, you have difficulty focusing. But should they be the arbiters of granting a privilege relative to other students? Can they really say with any degree of precision that you deserve time and a half versus double time versus triple time versus 160 minutes per section, more than two and a half hours. Whereas the standard timing is only 35 minutes. What I find is that students are applying for time and a half or double time, getting it, taking the LSAT and saying, you know what, I actually decided that I want more time, or I want to take it over two days, or I want unlimited stopstart breaks, or actually, I want it on paper. They go back to their qualified professional, they get the revised request, they go back to LSAC, LSAC grants it. Now this test taker has way more time. And then of course, they're getting a bigger score increase as a result. And we're seeing from a recent report released by LSAC, that's 85 pages long, I went through the whole thing. So you don't have to. One big thing that jumped out to me aside from what I've shared previously here is that accommodated test takers get five points higher on average than unaccommodated test takers. And so if accommodations were simply leveling the playing field, I would expect that accommodated test takers would be getting roughly equal LSAT scores to unaccommodated test takers. And so the fact that they're getting five points higher on average tells me that perhaps this is an overcorrection. Of course, this is not a guarantee of that. But it is certainly suggested that LSAC may be over accommodating people. Now, law schools will not know whether you got extra time. So it's not as if there's any disadvantage to getting time and a half or double time or triple time or more. So I don't blame anyone for getting the doctor's note and ask you for the extra time. In fact, if anything, I would blame LSAC for being so strict in the past, that they got sued to the point that they had to remove logic games for everybody, rather than granting the blind test taker the accommodations they were requesting back at the time. And I would blame LSAC for refusing extra time accommodations to those with testing, anxiety, and ADHD to the point that now LSAC feels they have to overcorrect by granting extra time to pretty much anybody who asks. Now, my point here is that the existence of this loophole in the system puts you at a disadvantage in the process if you don't know how to play the game. As I said earlier, admissions is unfortunately a zero sum process because there is by definition a finite or limited number of seats available. And there is a limited amount of scholarship money available at pretty much all the law schools, of course. And so my point here is that if you don't want to be at a disadvantage relative to others who are exploiting these loopholes in the system, and the loopholes are not just about logical reasoning or reading comprehension or how much time you put in to the exam, it is about the accommodations that you can get based on the conditions that you can demonstrate. And so if you think you might qualify, if you think you might suffer from ADHD or testing anxiety, don't be afraid to seek out the accommodations. No one's going to know, no one's going to judge you, and it may just be what you need to get back on that level playing field. Anyway, folks, that's all for now. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and