guys I’m freaking out I literally opened my score w my bf and haven’t been able to stop crying since, the week of the oct lsat was so horrible for me and I still managed an 11 point jump from August 🥹🥹🥹🥹

I know for some this is a nightmare score but i’m so happy with this!!!! 8 point increase and this score is just fine for me since i’m just trying to go to regional schools in ny near me 😭😭❤️❤️

My highest PT was a 173 😭 must have really locked in

I started studying in August of this year and took the October LSAT. This was my first ever LSAT exam. My cold diagnostic was a 146 and my official score for October was a 153. I hated every second of this test and I have no interest in taking it again. I’m applying with what I’ve got: 3.67 GPA and 153 LSAT.

Seeing all the 160s and 170s being posted here, I thought I’d post mine since it’s much lower. Gotta represent for the low 150s here I guess lol.

Who else got a similar score?

HOLY FUCK NEVER KILL YOURSELF

Edit: thank you so much for all the kind wishes! I did almost throw up outside of my workplace!

I’m so happy holy shit

SO HAPPY IM IN SHOCK

Congrats to everyone who’s done with the LSAT!

Edit: I literally did not study one single time between the two. I told myself I didn’t care what I got and I actually truly didn’t, I had basically decided I wasn’t going to law school. So much of this shit is mind games, attitude, anxiety. YALL GOT THIS JUST STEP BACK RELAX

Hello all! Score release day is always a bit of a mess around here. I think it’s worth remembering some things as you either prepare to learn your score OR reflect on the score you’ve received. I know I write a lot, so I'm hoping the bolded statements on their own can be enough even if you don't have time for all of this wall of text.

1. Don’t use the experience of other people here as your experience. Your journey is yours, and theirs is theirs. There is not one path to any individual score, nor do you know that someone else possesses the same score goals as you, or has the same amount of time/opportunity to study as you, or has the same resources as you. Score release day is an opportunity for your anxiety to try to point at things you can’t control. Don’t let those things consume you.
2. To the extent that you can avoid it, do not make any major changes to your plans on score release day. Whether that’s deciding to retake, deciding not to retake, signing up for tutoring, pushing your plans back a year, do not lock yourself into anything that you might wake up tomorrow and realize is a bad idea. Schedule consults if it’ll help you process, ask for advice if you feel untethered, but don’t do anything that it might cost a lot of money to undo. Sleep on it first.
3. Give yourself room today to feel your feelings, but do not let them start driving the bus. It's not healthy to hold in disappointment or frustration, and there is no world in which trying to push that down now will help you later (especially if you're trying to do it in anticipation of taking the November exam). I guarantee you that you have a half day, or even a full day, to process your score, to feel your feelings, and if you need, to junk any study plans you had for the day. But if you let those feelings start making decisions for you, you might make some changes that turn out to be unhealthy or that you might well regret later. (And I'd apply this to attempts to lock those feelings away too; that will turn them into anxiety or similar emotions that are likely to rear their head at the worst time down the road, such as during a future test day.)
4. If you are considering retaking, it is extremely important that you do not burn yourself out. I have seen hundreds of people come through this sub thinking that their problem was not doing enough general drills or practice tests or practice sections—and then redouble their efforts and fry their brain before their next attempt. And indeed, many of them were actually burned out before their last test; burnout is a major reason why people end up scoring lower than their PT average on test day (burnout typically shows itself first during high-pressure settings). Quantity has never been the name of the game on the LSAT; it’s making sure you’re actually targeting your weaknesses.
5. This means that a break is often really, really important to actually convert the work you’ve done studying into actual gains. If you’ve been studying since the October test in anticipation of taking November, you’ve reached roughly your last chance to actually give yourself some time off. Especially if you feel like your score has plateaued or backslid in these last 3 weeks, you probably will NOT actually see further progress without giving yourself that break.
6. Remember that the sample size of people posting here on score release day tends to be skewed. Do not let your qualitative assessment of how people are doing distract you from the fact that the LSAT curve tends to remain very, very similar from test to test. Just because you may be seeing more 170+ scores than you expected does not mean that your score indicates a much lower percentile than it might have in the past.
7. Your score, and the scores of people around you, are heavily influenced by luck. We don’t like to talk about this too much around here, but on a test with only 77-78 total questions, running into a couple of right answers for the wrong reasons (or on random guesses) can swing your score quite a bit. Similarly, if you got distracted by an external issue, or you were overheated, or you were overcaffeinated, or your sock was slightly askew on your foot, or you were burned out (as mentioned in #3 above), it’s very possible that if the October test didn’t fit well with your intuition, your score was bumped down well below your PT average. We like to think that an LSAT score is a perfect illustration of how many correct logics you did, but it is simply an indicator of how many correct answers you clicked on, regardless of the reason you clicked on them. Do not let other people's good luck or your own potential bad luck indicate to you anything about your skills you've built or the work you put in. Now what this means, among other things, is that people who scored above their PT average likely benefited from some luck. This is not to say, of course, that those people necessarily had poor study strategies, and most of them certainly worked hard to be in position to take advantage of that luck. But you’ll notice that many of the folks who write celebratory posts about their scores don’t actually mention their PT averages, so (as with all untargeted study advice) take those people’s experiences with a grain of salt and do not over-rely on other people's experiences (imagine me pointing back at reminder #1).
8. If you have found yourself frustrated with your score relative to your PT average, whether just on October or across multiple tests, consider devoting some time to inquiring into whether your headspace has been less than ideal for prior tests, and what you might be able to work on maintaining a good headspace on future test days (whether it has to do with your overall mindset, controlling your anxiety, ignoring external distractions, addressing the ways you either speed yourself up or slow yourself down on test day as compared to PTs, or anything else). Accuracy and speed are two legs of the stool that supports LSAT success, but even with those two, you'll be capped at a low ceiling if you can't maintain a productive headspace on the test from start to finish.
9. Don’t forget to give yourself grace if you decide you need to take the test again. Remember, quantity is not the name of the game, and unless you really skimped on practice tests leading up to October, I guarantee you that exercises to target your weak question types, or your common trap answers, or your reading/parsing errors are going to go much, much further for you than simply trying to push yourself through PT after PT.
10. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: Doing well or poorly on the October 2026 LSAT does not reflect on your ability to do well on future LSATs, or your worth as a person, or your potential as a law student, OR your potential as a lawyer. I know that a lot of tutors and other advice-givers here spend a lot of time reminding people of some variations of this, but I take an even more hardline view than most: there is almost zero overlap between the skills you need to do well on the LSAT, to do well on law school exams, to do well on the bar exam, or to do well in law practice. Being good or bad at one of these four has virtually no bearing on being good or bad at any of the others. And as folks have said here consistently, people who walk into law school expecting good grades because of their LSAT score get humbled *extremely* quickly.

(#10 continues for the next 3 paragraphs, but Reddit's formatting is a little inflexible) I ended up doing well on the LSAT, but it ended up translating to middling grades in law school (which I was perfectly content with; once I realized I wasn’t going to graduate with any Latin honors, I ended up loading up on internships and extracurriculars and was even on my journal board). I then promptly failed the bar twice, one of a very small number of people who graduated from my law school to do so. No matter, though, as my track record in law practice has been even better than I could have hoped for: I’ve gotten federal sentencing law rewritten through a series of successful appeals, I’ve gotten someone released from a life without parole prison sentence for a nonviolent crime, I’ve gone undefeated in hearings to get children special education accommodations, and my successful parole representations have saved the state I live in millions of dollars on unnecessary incarceration costs.

I don’t say this to brag or to elicit any kind of adoration, but instead to stress just how little any of these hurdles has to do with each other. And it makes sense: the LSAT is a pattern recognition test with virtually no actual substance; law school exams are essay exams that often turn into mind-reading exercises or typing tests; the bar is mostly an actual rote memorization test; and law practice success is primarily about your ability to listen carefully and to think strategically about your clients’ goals. (Ironically, rote memorization was the thing I was best at before law school, so of course that’s where I did the worst.)

If you are discouraged, remember among other things that as soon as you reach a score you are satisfied with on this exam, you can functionally forget about everything you learned for it. And if you feel like this test score signals the end of the road for your potential legal career, well, who’s to say that avoiding large amounts of debt and a 3-year experience largely designed to be miserable is actually a bad thing? Many, many of my fancy law school classmates are out of law practice entirely, and I’m only 12 years out of law school. My immediate law school network includes people who are now high school teachers, professional dancers, accountants, and librarians. I went to law school for the wrong reasons (didn’t know what else to do) and happened to find an area of law that I loved, but it doesn’t work out that way for a whole lot of people. My partner, in fact, tried desperately to go to law school (years before we met), couldn't make it through the LSAT, and after pivoting, is now very happy in a non-law career without any student debt.

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In sum: Your life cannot be boiled down to a number. It's important not to give it that power over you, even if it feels all-encompassing today. You're gonna make it through, whether that's in law school or not, and you're going to have lots of opportunities to make your mark. I'm happy to commiserate or troubleshoot here in the comments, but I hope you find some time today to not panic spiral on the internet as well. Best of luck to you in your path forward.

Today's the day. Use this thread for posts about today's score release.

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It is never straightforward to write a message on score release day, because three groups of people are reading: those who got their scores, those who did not, and those who are in a confusing limbo where they got a good score but not quite the score.

I wish first of all to say that, however you scored, the LSAT does not define you. It is just a point in time measurement of a few specific skills, and you are so much more than that. The LSAT is a brutally hard test that takes people who are very strong readers and thinkers, and measures them against each other. It is designed to be difficult even if you are smart and capable.

For those who got your score, congratulations! And if you're deciding what to do next or whether to retake, that's what this thread is for. I hope this can help you process whatever news you received today. Good luck in admissions or your LSAT studies.

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Some Resources

• January LSAT Registration. Deadline, December 1st. Refund and accommodation deadlines, also December 1st. Full info here: https://www.lsac.org/lsat/lsat-dates-deadlines/january-lsat
• Jon Denning's Score Release Protocol Thread. Mostly describes what has already happened by now, but still a great read: https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/1wtmdi0/lsat_score_release_protocol_what_to_expect_on/
• Law School Admissions Subreddit: If you're done with the LSAT, you can migrate here for the next phase: r/lawschooladmissions

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People have their own goals, and that is ok

Every time scores come out, you see a variety of situations like this:

• I got a 158, above the median of my target school, I'm so happy! --> Criticism
• I got a 167, below the median of my target school, I'm so distraught --> Criticism

People have their goals which may not be your goals, and it is legitimate for people to feel happy for meeting their goals and sad for not meeting them. This should be basic common sense, please do not attack people for how they feel about meeting their goals or not. This day is full of emotions, do what you can to help others have a good day and think twice before attacking someone.

Diagnostic 148. I hate to come on here and flex but wow man. So much time, effort, and sacrifice went into this, truly thankful.

Sorry if this happened to you. While it may be due to testing conditions or some contextual factor, there’s also a chance it was bad luck or natural variance. Maybe next time you’ll end up on the other side. What you can control though is continuing to study so that you put yourself in the best position possible.

On my first test I scored 1pt below my goal score and was super frustrated. Took that as an opportunity to master the test and scored a 180. Never would’ve happened if I got “lucky” on one more question.

My goal was a 163 I’m officially done after 4 exams and a multitude of random illnesses fucking up my progress.

I was PTing 170-176 leading up, so I was on the low end of my score band, but this is following August and September scores of 167 each. Sure there's a tiny voice going "only 170?", but I'm trying to shut it up– there were many moments in study where I dreamed of this score! At the end of the day, I scored in the 170s on an official LSAT and I'm proud of that! Regardless of the score, we should all be proud of the time and effort this test takes.

i guess its time for apps now but at least the beast is over. was hoping for 165+ but we're pleased nontheless. still confused why the score band is so wide though 👀. first test had a 10+ pt score band? guess its normal? kinda insane but ok w/e

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Nth more to say. Cried tears of joy. I promise this test is a bitch, so make it your bitch. I remember crying on my first test. Keep going guys.

It is going on 8 a.m and scores are released at 9 a.m ET. READY YOUR SHIPS FELLAS, IT IS ALMOST GO TIME

EDIT @ 8:50 A.M: SCORES ARE NOW BEING RELEASED. CHECK YOUR SCORE. I JUST GOT MINE.

Let me just come on here and be a grouch. I have been working on this test for two years basically, two jobs, waking up at 4:30am every morning before work. PTing 168-172 for two months before September and October. Let me just say that hard work gets you NOWHERE!!!!! Optimism gets you NOWHERE!!! Being tough on yourself gets you NOWHERE!!! Got a 164 in September and in October. No more retakes possible. Fuck this test. I hate my life

You might score 6 points higher next time! (sorry this is super annoying I’m just so excited!!)

When I took the test in August I knew going into it that I did not put enough reps in for RC. After that I doubled my RC drilling and it paid dividends.