7.2 - Understanding Your Score

This lesson's all about your LSAT score and how to interpret your score report.

We'll cover:

• The difference between raw and scaled scores
• Percentiles and score bands
• Understanding your score related to medians

Let's get into it.

Raw Score vs. Scaled Score

Your score's based on the number of questions you answer correctly. LSAT world calls this your raw score. All questions are weighted equally and there's no penalty for wrong answers. So, for instance, getting 54 out of 75 scored questions correct results in a raw score of 54. This is why you'll often hear LSAT teachers talk about PT or section performance in terms of how many you miss (e.g., -8 or minus 8).

Your raw score gets converted to a scaled score, along the 120–180 scale you might already know. Your official score report reveals only your scaled score.

Each test administration, including each practice test, has its own scoring scale. Following our earlier example, a 54 out of 75 won't always result in the same scaled score. For example, on PrepTest 93+ it's a 159 but on PrepTest 92+ it's a 160.

Your Percentile and Score Band

When you get your score report, your scaled score will be accompanied by a percentile and a score band. These numbers are more for mental masturbation than they are used in any meaningful way.

Your percentile reflects the percentage of test takers who scored worse than you did across the past three testing years. For instance, f you're in the 50th percentile (50%), you scored better than 50% of test takers over the past three years. If you're in the 99th percentile (99%), you scored better than 99% of test takers.

The score band is more or less a reported margin of error. It's meant to predict how a test taker might perform if they took the test again. It's usually the scaled score you received, plus or minus four points.

Your Score and Medians

In our course intro, we talked about the relationship between your score and schools' medians.

Each year, the ABA requires school to publish consumer protections data in a standardized report colloquially called the 509 (named after the ABA standard requiring the disclosure). You can find each school's 509 report by year here.

When schools report these data, they report each applicable student's highest score.

Let's look at an example from one of these reports to put the median conversation in context. Here's the LSAT portion of New York University's (NYU) from 2023:

We're keying in on the percentiles, here. The 50th percentile LSAT score, a.k.a. the median, was 172.

This median, as well as the UGPA media, contribute to a school's annual US News and World Report ranking. Despite all the hubbub last year about the rankings being problematic and schools refusing to fill out the rankings survey, USNWR still publishes them. So schools still have an incentive to increase these numbers year over year.

This is where your score comes in. Having an official score on record above a school's median will help you tremendously as an applicant. It's not a necessary condition of admission to the school, but it will improve your candidacy.

Caveats

Before all the admissions consultants grill me in the comments, this is the part where I concede details about yield protection and splitters.

Yield Protection

Sometimes schools will waitlist applicants with solid stats simply because. they expect that applicant will be accepted elsewhere. They only have so many 1L spots to hand out, and they want to curate a class that has some folks in it who will actually pay them money. Not people like you who will study until you earn a score that sends you on a full ride (see what I did there?).

The schools come up with tons of artfully crafted excuses about how their holistic admissions processes determined you were a better fit for their waitlist, but they're actually yield-protecting you. It happens to everyone. Don't take it personally.

Splitters

Where my fellow splitters at? This law school admissions term means you have a strong LSAT and weak UGPA, or vice versa. Most splitters are low-GPA, high-LSAT (the higher the better).

Since UGPA is set in stone for most LSAT students, raising your LSAT score as much as possible is the best way to improve your candidacy.

As it relates to medians, having one stat above-median but the other below means the school will take a W in one form but an L in another if they admit you. So it's up to you to make that W as big and bold as possible.

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That's all for our lesson on interpreting your score. Next, we'll run through a quick lesson about the admissions cycle and when it's best to apply. See you there.

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What'd you like about this lesson? What'd you hate? Let me know in the comments so I can improve this course for you and future test takers.