Law school candidates appear for an LSAT examination every year. A Law School Admission Test is an incredible opportunity for any law school aspirant to make his/her career. Undoubtedly, LSAT is one of the most difficult exams one can prepare for. But don’t worry, we will have you covered in this guide.
What is LSAT Examination?
LSAT is not an exam to assess your legal acumen. LSAT Examination analyzes your skills that are key components for success in the legal field. These key elements are critical thinking, analytical mind, reading & comprehension, and the ability to evaluate arguments.
Taking an LSAT exam is a significant step to demonstrate your quality as a prospective law student. The American Bar Association accredits LSAT and it has set the highest standards for quality assessments.
What is the LSAT timing?
LSAT offers to conduct its examination four times around the year. Typically, the months are February, June, September/October, and December.
If you take your LSAT during December, your application to any law school will be considered the coming fall. Everything depends upon when you are applying for your dream law school.
Where are the LSAT centers?
LSAT has both American and international testing centers. LSAT test centers usually have a very limited amount of seats, so it is advisable that students register themselves faster. Before you register yourself, LSAC will provide you with a list of testing centers near you. Post-registration, LSAC will inform you of test dates beforehand.
What is the format of LSAT Examination?
LSAT is a paper-based examination and it includes five sections of 35-minutes each. Let us now go through each of these sections and discuss in detail.
Logical Reasoning
This broad section comes in two segments with 25 approximate questions per segment. Logical reasoning in LSAT gives you short passages to test your ability to formulate arguments, apply critical thinking, discover & analyze relevant information from these short passages, and critically evaluate arguments.
Logical Reasoning questions are usually Multiple-choice type – Strengthen/weaken an argument, finding flaws, formulate reasoning, drawing inferences, showcasing principles, and argument methodology.
You will have not more than 35 minutes per sub-section/segment in this category.
Analytical Reasoning
There are no subdivisions when it comes to this section. However, you will now be facing analytical questions or “Logic games”. With each changing scenario, there will be 5-6 associated questions.
Each of these logic games will begin with a scenario and will have predetermined constraints. Logic games will range from “grouping”, “assignments”, to “ordering”. This segment requires candidates to categorize the game with that of an image/diagram as an answer to the question.
This particular way will help identify any candidate’s ability to relate scenarios with concepts. Moreover, this segment will also determine how rules impact outcomes or decisions. Candidate’s ability to analyze situations based on specific guidelines and apply logic to complex situations – these are the key aspects!
By the way, you will have to cover 23-24 of these questions within 35 minutes.
Reading & Comprehension
This segment also does not come with sub-segments/sections. You will get 35 minutes to run through 25-28 questions.
There will be four sets of passages and approximately 5 to 8 questions per passage. The first three sets are longish, while the last one is shorter in terms of text size.
This segment is one of the more significant ones in the entire LSAT exam. The design of this part allows for judging of any candidate’s ability to grasp new information quicker and the ability to retain it. Being able to draw analytical inferences, decipher relevant informations and comprehend key pointers are some of the basic parameters.
In this section, you may expect multiple-choice questions ranging from social sciences and humanities. These questions will analyze your deeper understanding of the socio-economical concepts. Moreover, your ability to read texts and develop connections between the shorter & longer texts will also be analyzed.
Unscored Section
This one may consist of questions from any of the previous segments. This section will recognize your ability to remember and comes as a surprise. You may face this section at any point in time during the entire course of LSAT.
You need to cover around 24 to 28 questions in a span of 35 minutes under this section. These questions are usually a method to test questions for future LSAT exams.
Writing Sample
LSAT will assign you an essay topic and you will have to expand on it. You will have standard criterias and facts to formulate your response. Moreover, there is no right or wrong stand as long as you can formulate an opinion based on facts.
LSAT Fee Structure
- Basic Registration Fees – $100 just to take the examination.
- Credential Assembly Service – $185 to make one singular file on a particular student and it helps in law school applications.
- All late registrations will charge an extra $100
- Moreover, if you wish to change date and centre of exam you need to pay 100$ each request (separately)
- If you live more than 100 miles away from an approved centre, you may choose to appear from a “non-published Test Center”. However, you need to pay $285 for domestic non-approved test center and $380 incase unapproved international centers (that are non-published).
- Handscoring LSAT test scores is a request to manually check the paper instead of machines. Simply pay another 100$ and you can book this service.
- For every law school you apply to, you need to pay an extra $35 for such application.
Time Breakups
As we said, LSAT exams will have 35 minute segments. However, there is a window of 15-minute break after the third segment. Otherwise, segments happen one after the other. You may choose to carry your analog wrist watch to keep a track of time.
LSAT Gradation
In here, LSAT has divided the scoring into three parts, – Raw scoring, Scaled Scoring, and Percentile scoring.
Raw Scoring – If you answer 90 questions correctly out of 100 you will get 91.
Scaled Scoring – This is a qualitative or a “scaled” conversion of the raw scores which may range from 120 (being the lowest) to 180 (the highest).
Percentile Scoring – This scoring style draws the connection between your points and your fellow examinees. If you score higher in raw and scaled scoring methods, chances are you will be ranked in the top 10% of the total examinees.
Read more about LSAT on their official website.