Does retaking usually work? Is there a "ceiling"?

Law School Admissions LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum
1

Asking this mostly out of curiosity. I’m an old man, and when I took the LSAT most law schools were still averaging rather than accepting the highest score, so I never retook although I PT’d 5 points higher than my score.

Here it seems like the conventional wisdom is ALWAYS to spend another few months prepping hard and to retake. Does this usually work, assuming hard study? Can everyone really bump their score another few points?

2

There is a firm ceiling at 180.

3

To be clear, I mean do people ever find they hit personal ceilings.

4

I think that most people can improve (assuming they have not hit 180), but life is full of trade offs.

I think Mike Spivey did a nice job talking about the reality of retakes in a world were scores are no longer averaged.

http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/mistake-5-oxymoronic-lsat-advice/

5

Useful post, thx.

lol one guy retook with a 180 (and got a 175)

http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/pdfs/repeaterdata.pdf

6

..

7

Damn haus, you beat me to the punch. Thanks for linking, I edited my article just now so I don’t say “indeed” every 5 words. Hope it helps!

8

There certainly is a ceiling. Not everyone is capable of a 180, but I don’t see how one could go through the bibles and/or manhattan (even kaplan) and not increase there score.

9

180

10

That was most likely a test prep person who was retaking to add another top score to their resume.

11

It’s probably Dave Hall.

12

If I wasn’t convinced to retake before, I am now. However, could you shed some light on schools like HYS, what you think they’d think about a retake, and potentially, a lower retake?

13

How about I will see if Karen can hop on this when she starts Sept. 1? She will have wonderful insight.

14

Getting Karen’s opinion on the subject would be very interesting.