Cancelling Your LSAT Score: Is LSAC’s “Score Preview” Worth the $45?

Many of my ScoreItUp students often ask me whether paying an extra $45 to LSAC for its “score preview” feature is worth the money. As much as I don’t like telling prelaw students to pay LSAC even more money, my answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” Please see below for the reasons why.

What Is LSAC’s “Score Preview”

LSAC gives you the right to “cancel” your LSAT score (free of charge) within six days after you take the exam. If you cancel your LSAT score, no one (including you) will ever see it. Law schools will see that you sat for (took) the exam and cancelled your score, but that’s it. The problem is that you have to cancel before you receive your score, which often creates a dilemma: should you cancel? What if you did better than you thought, and you wind up canceling a decent (or even great) LSAT score? Sometimes you know it went horribly, but other times we can be our own worst critic, and it may have gone better than you thought. You just don’t know.

LSAC’s “score preview” resolves that dilemma for students. By paying LSAC $45 in advance, or $75 after you take the exam (yes, LSAC has found a way to profit from this!), “score preview” allows you to see your LSAT score before deciding whether to cancel it or not. You are given six days from the time you receive your LSAT score to decide whether to cancel it.

The Advantages of “Score Preview”

For the reasons mentioned above, it is clearly beneficial to know what your LSAT score is before deciding whether or not to cancel it. Whether or not you cancel, law schools almost invariably will focus on your highest LSAT score and will not “average” your scores. Nevertheless, law school admission committees will view and consider all your LSAT scores. So, a low LSAT score (or scores) will not be a death sentence for you (as long as your highest LSAT score is good enough). But those low LSAT scores will be a bit of a taint on your record. In contrast, cancelled LSAT scores often are ignored by law school admission committees. So, it is generally better to have a cancelled LSAT score than a low one.

Bottom line

LSAC’s “score preview” allows you to make the decision of whether or not to cancel your LSAT score after receiving a critically important piece of information: your LSAT score. Considering the overall importance of your LSAT score to your law school application, I believe $45 is likely going to be a very worthwhile expense for you to have that added bit of information before making your decision. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your own personal situation, please contact me at mark@scoreitup.com.