It wasn’t showing a registration hold this morning. I’ve only taken the LSAT twice.

Hello, everyone!

Those of us who took the October LSAT will be getting scores tomorrow. It was my first official LSAT. I'm not sure what I scored, but I plan to celebrate whether I got my ideal score or not. Why? Because (a) it's a score, and I can use it to apply for law school, (b) I did a hard thing, and (c) I'm still breathing and alive, so there's a reason to celebrate.

I've seen someone say "I'll celebrate if I got my goal score", which I understand. I just want to make a case for the idea that you can also resolve to celebrate regardless of the outcome.

I did the unusual thing and also registered for November, *just in case this one didn't go well* (partly because LSAC waits to give you results until it's too late to register for the next one haha; also because I was blessed to receive a fee waiver), but if this score comes back very high, I can cancel. I'm curious to know y'all's celebration plans. 👀 My plan did involve an icee, but I might end up rethinking that. We'll see. 😄

Four days before the LSAT, my wife, who I had been with for six years and married to for one, told me she wanted a divorce. I still took the exam.

I feel like I did horribly. During the test, I kept tearing up and could not concentrate. Afterward, she did not even message me to ask how it went.

These have been the worst couple of weeks of my life. Results come out tomorrow, so please pray for me. I wish everyone the best of luck with their results and legal journey.

I feel like I can’t breathe. I’ve lived the life of every number between 140 and 180. Let me sleep.

(164 in September)

162😭
163😭
164😭
165😓
166🤔
167🙂
168😀
169😁
170🥳🥰🥳🤪🥳🥰🥳😎🥳
171-180🪦🪦😵(died of excitement)

Just venting and looking for anyone to commiserate with as this anxiety eats me alive lol. I never post but I feel like I’m going insane

I found Oct test fairly “easy” (as far as content goes) which is TERRIFYING ME because every time that I have taken a PT and thought “wow that was cool” it would be a big drop in my score (exactly how I felt on my Sept 21 PT). I wish my PT scores were more consistent because I cannot find any peace right now 🚫

I don’t even know. Would it be worth registering for January at this point? Would I then aim to try next cycle? I feel like I’ll never get another test that “feels” as good as October, and frankly, I don’t want to spend another year working in my current field! I am yearning to go back to school! Bruh the waiting is so awful. I feel like my whole financial and professional future depends on this test, which I know isn’t necessarily true, but it really does feel that way.

I felt very chill during the test and was not anxious at all. Diagnostic 165 in Feb, kinda studied, took actual April, got 163. Then, started studying very seriously. I feel like I understand the test. But, I just don’t know if I can afford financially or emotionally to go through this all again & I just need to be okay with the fact that I very easily could not have broken 170

Also, I’m not “unhappy” with my 163 actual. I just have a 3.5low & big ambitions & no external financial support, so it would just kill me to “know” I could perform well on the test (as “shown” by my PTs), and not be able to replicate it

And my fears don’t even exist yet because I don’t even know my score!!! So who knows! Not me! Until tomorrow!

Why must we wait so long!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway that’s all, just sitting at my desk sick to my stomach & wondering if anyone else feels like me rn

If you’re feeling like me, please rant with me in the comments if that’s cathartic for you as well. My bf and friends are very tired of hearing about this test lol

Been trying to distract myself all day. The laundry is done. The dog got a bath. Mowed the lawn and blew the leaves. Changed the oil of my car. I’ve been at the gym for almost 2 hours. I’m freaking out. Send help.

i am so so nervous for the october lsat score release tomorrow that it is manifesting in physical symptoms. just had a quesadilla from chipotle and i prayyyy it stays down!

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

i feel like i was more well-prepared to accept results good or bad within the first week .. 1.5 weeks after the rest. now a few weeks have gone by and i just dread opening lsac tomorrow.

For context, received a score hold last night with what seems to be the basic message. Checked registration and…

Does this mean what I think it means?

I’m literally losing it. I just keep telling myself “plz not 150s”

anyone else’s stomach literally turning? I was pretty calm up until today. I am registered for the nov test IN CASE but I can’t get myself to stop spiraling. letting everyone who feels the same that they are not alone!

Good luck to everyone! -10 PT avg inbound for me 🤣😩

This what I think? 172 last exam, pt between 170 and 180…

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.

So the October test was my third test and I’m a senior in undergrad prepping to go next year. I told myself I don’t care what I get on this one, it’ll be my last. I’ve got a high enough score to get in to most of the schools on my list, i’ve spent a fortune and countless hours on prep material, tutoring, and time. Screw this test I’m done with it. Once I get it, I’ll finalize my applications and submit everything by Saturday to all of my schools. If anyone plans to go to IU McKinney, Michigan State, Ohio Northern, university of Toledo, or Northern Illinois university, hopefully you’ll see me there next year. Good luck everybody, hope this is the one for all of you!

Ik there’s tons of posts about this, but maybe someone has smth new to share. I’ve never hit 165 on a PT but was consistently scoring ~157-161 then blind reviewing 167-170. Highest I ever hit was a 164 in June (not official pt).

Someone plz feed into my delusions of your success stories where/if you had a crazy surprising score increase on test day (unexpectedly). I felt rly good about the exam, even having 5-10 mins left at end of each section which has never ever happened. Felt like I got at most -5 per section. Is there any chance I actually got a 165+?

It let me select my November appointment time slot. So I guess I didn’t score a 180 in October. 🤷‍♀️

The score release date is on the same day as my birthday 😃, so it’s gonna either be a really good birthday or a sucky one. At least I have dinner with my friends to either celebrate or cheer me up.. 💀

cbtm

Wish this was more of a state based process on its own servers 😂