What's the ideal LSAT and application timeline?

Your mileage may vary, and you may need to adapt these guidelines to your individual situation, but in a perfect world, here's how I like to work backwards from the end goal:

Plan to submit your applications in early November. Early November is plenty early; you do not have to submit applications the first day they open, I promise. That also gives you some wiggle room if life gets in the way and you have to push off your submissions for whatever reason.

In order to maximize the time you have on your applications, and to let your brain focus on — and master — one thing at a time, that November submission date means I like to see people take the LSAT well in advance.

This year, you have opportunities to take the LSAT in April, June, August, September, October, and November. I would plan on taking the LSAT for the first time in June — and if you feel ready for April, that’s even better.

Why so early? A couple of reasons:

1. The LSAT is ridiculously important to admissions outcomes. 

Your combined LSAT + undergraduate record are very likely to have the biggest impact on your admissions results. Other factors matter too — and for the most competitive schools, those other "soft" factors must be excellent as well — but in the hierarchy of factors, LSAT + undergraduate record sit at the top.

You might hear people suggest that you can write your way around poor numbers. Or a recommender might suggest he has so much pull with a school that he can get you in. Or you might attend an information session and hear an admissions officer say “Oh, we look at everything, not just the LSAT score.” Yes, the rest of the application does matter. Yes, having the right connections sometimes helps. Yes, admissions officers do look at the applications holistically.

But I would advise healthy skepticism.

Of course there are outliers for everything, including law school admissions, and there are people out there whose life stories are so improbable and impressive, or whose immediate network has such pull, that their numbers become secondary. Even in that case, though, they can't be bad numbers (where "bad" numbers are relative to a given school's normal pool).

In particular, many parents tell me how "unique" their children are and that therefore their sub-par numbers won't matter so much. Oof! There's a 99% chance their (adult!) children will learn the hard way that their parents are simply wrong. From an admissions officer's perspective, there is a whole herd of unique people out there. Their perspective is totally different from a parent’s, and their priorities are different as well. And that’s all well and good. It’s OK for our parents to be your biggest cheerleaders, but they are not the best proxies for admissions officers.

Because the LSAT is such an important factor in admissions outcomes, don't coast on your ostensible "uniqueness." 

2. The LSAT is hard. 

For most people, the LSAT is not just a cognitively challenging test, but also a test of endurance, time management, and anxiety management. Those are all mental muscles you need to build during your training period, and that's not a process that happens overnight. It can take time to work yourself into the necessary LSAT zen state. 

Never walk into an LSAT unprepared. Take the test very seriously, and give yourself enough time to reach your maximum performance. I’ve seen people struggle with the LSAT even when they’ve gotten great scores on the SAT or the ACT or the GMAT or the GRE. Don’t be overconfident. The LSAT has kicked the butts of very smart people and many good test takers.

For some people, that means two months of intensive, consistent training. For others, it's a lot more. In order to maximize their performance on the test, many people benefit from extra time beyond the length of a typical LSAT prep course. You’ll need time to keep practicing and internalizing what you’ve learned so that it becomes almost automatic and reflexive on the real test.

Train like an elite athlete... and like a Buddhist monk! You must learn how to perform under pressure. That includes training in less than ideal conditions — a noisy, distracting environment is best. If you learn to perform well on the test while tuning out distractions, you won’t freak out when relatives are traipsing through the house or there’s constructions going on next door during the test. If you can perform well in absolute calm and silence, you’ll be disappointed.

Or, if you have a disability that requires absolute calm and silence for the test, do apply for accommodations! That will add to the timeline as well — it will involve paperwork and bureaucracy, so don’t put it off. Schools cannot see if your test was accommodated or not, so don’t worry about that.

3. Working with a real score is better than working with a fantasy score. 

You'll get your June score back about a month later, and then you can spend July, August, September, and October working on all the other parts of your application with the benefit of your score.

That last part matters, because it's very hard to know what law schools you should be shooting for without an actual LSAT score, and your particular list of schools can affect your positioning in your applications, what kind of essays you write, if and where you apply Early Decision, etc.

If I had a dollar for every time an applicant has told me, "I'm getting 175's on my practice tests, and I'm confident I'll score in the 170's, so let's plan around that," I'd be sipping pink-umbrella cocktails on my private island somewhere. You're much better served working off of an actual LSAT score rather than the one you fantasize about, or the one you’ve been getting in your practice tests.

4. Plan on taking the LSAT more than once.

Many — most! — people aren’t happy with their first score. They’re dismayed that they didn’t do as well as they had been consistently scoring on their practice tests. I often see a “melt” of at least 5 points on the real test, which makes a big difference in the law school admissions world. That’s completely normal.

So taking it in June builds cushion into your timeline to regroup, refocus your test prep, and retake the test and aim for that higher score. (You can tell I’m all about cushions in the timeline.)

And guess what — you might find that for one reason or another, you aren’t in a position to take the very next test that’s on offer in the LSAT calendar. Build that possibility into your timeline as well. (Don’t worry about having multiple scores on your LSAT Report. If you are able to improve your score, that’s 100% cause for celebration.)

5. “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GRE?”

The last several cycles, some law schools started accepting the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT. More recently, the ABA finally gave its official blessing for all law schools to accept the GRE if they so choose.

A couple of impressions about the GRE from the last several cycles in which that was an option:

• Most applicants still apply with the LSAT. The GRE is still a bit of an outlier.

• It’s harder for most people to get a high score on the LSAT than it is to get a high score on the GRE. (That’s for a number of reasons, we can save that conversation for another time.) Admissions officers understand that. So a high score on the GRE, and even a high percentile on the GRE, is not going to register the same way as a high score/percentile on the LSAT. In my experience, the GRE-LSAT conversion tool made by ETS, no surprise, wildly inflates the the LSAT that they say a given GRE corresponds to. (ETS makes the GRE, so of course they want those scores to look good. The reality is that they are completely different tests, measuring different things.) If you’re really bad at the LSAT and can get a much better percentile on the GRE, though, then it might still be worth it for you.

• In our admittedly small sample size, we’ve seen strong applicants applying only with GRE scores not faring as well as strong applicants applying with LSAT scores. Make of that what you will.

• At some law schools (looking at you, NYU), you’ll have to report your GRE scores from the past five years even if you have taken the LSAT score and want to be evaluated on just LSAT score. Read the application instructions carefully. For schools that ask for both reports (if you have taken both), I think that’s for internal correlation studies only, so don’t panic. They probably don’t trust the official conversion tool either. But they will see the GRE scores if you’re required to submit them.

• If you’re applying to other graduate programs at the same, it is more efficient for you to take just one test that you can use for both programs. The GRE is more flexible that way than the LSAT. That remains the best reason to take the GRE for law school at this time.

That's the perfect-world timeline. We don't live in a perfect world, of course, so a lot of people take the LSAT for the first time in October. Best case scenario: the score turns out to be good, but then you have to wait until late October to get your score back, and that can push back your timeline for the other components of the application.

Another possible scenario: You wait until October to take the test, you aren't happy with the score (or wig out and postpone, or wig out and cancel), retake it November, and then have to wait for that later score. At that point you’ll be in danger of missing some Early Decision opportunities in November, and in the meantime, you're trying to pull your applications together without even knowing what schools you'll be competitive for. It's an option, but it's far from ideal. I don't recommend it. Take advantage of all this lead time!

So for those of you who will be submitting your applications early in the coming cycle, now's the time to make a plan and start getting up to your elbows in LSAT prep if you haven’t already started, or at least figure out a game plan. At a minimum, make a calendar for yourself now so you know when to start prepping; you’ll need to reverse engineer that date, and make sure your prep plan works around other important dates and other obligations in your life. You can find upcoming LSAT dates here.

All that lead time works to your advantage... if you take advantage.