Students Travel Far and Wide To Take LSATs

Many pre-law students had bigger worries this weekend than getting to law school. First they had to get to the LSAT.

Saturday's administration of the LSAT broke the record for the largest in history, forcing Harvard students and others to scramble across the country just to take the test.

Worldwide, 64,791 students registered to take the exam, over 5,000 more than last October.

The record-number of test takers resulted in most LSAT test centers convenient to Boston rapidly reaching their capacity limits even before the registration deadline.

Forced to travel, many Harvard students decided just to return home rather than take the test at an unfamiliar, distant location.

When Alvaro M. Bedoya '03 signed up on Sept. 4, the last day of regular registration, he couldn't find a single seat in any test center within 100 miles of Boston.

Instead he elected to make the five-hour trek to his home in Binghamton, N.Y.

"It meant 10 hours of traveling, but it wasn't so bad," he said. "I haven't been home since June, so I was happy to take the trip."

Bedoya caught a Friday morning bus and arrived in Binghamton by 6 p.m. He caught a bus back to Boston early yesterday morning.

"I got plenty of sleep the night before, and my mom picked me up at the station, so I didn't mind the travelling," he said over his cell phone as the bus made its way back to Boston.

Other students found themselves in more hectic situations, hard-pressed to get back to Harvard for other weekend commitments.

"When I couldn't find a Boston area test center, I was unsure of what to do," said Priya Mehta '03. "I was worried about driving somewhere the morning of the test since it began at 8:30 a.m., plus I don't even have a car here at school."

She wound up travelling seven hours home to Princeton, N.J., to take the test. And she barely made it back to Cambridge for Saturday-night partying.

"It was my roommate's 21st birthday, so I had leave New Jersey immediately after the test to make it back in time," she said. "It was a rush and I'm pretty exhausted now."

For the students who were lucky enough to test close to their Harvard home, a number of Houses instituted a no-party rule Friday night so test takers could get a full night's sleep.

"We didn't want those students studying to have to compete with the noise," said Dunster House Senior Tutor Paulette G. Curtis '92.

Still, some Houses permitted party requests to go through. Quincy House approved one request for a Friday night party, said Assistant to the Senior Tutor Susan Hamel.

"We were assured that it was neither a big nor a loud party, so we let it through," she said.

Law school counselors and officials attribute the sharp increase in test-takers primarily to the flagging economy. The previous record for largest LSAT test was held by the October 1991 administration, when the economy last suffered from a recession.

"There is speculation that as the economy falls and immediate employment options dwindle, a lot of students decide to apply to graduate schools," said Dena O. Rakoff, a law school counselor at the Office of Career Services.

"Many people think that by going to business, law or medical school, they can avoid the bad economy," said Ed Haggerty, a spokesperson for the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which administers the LSAT. "And they hope that, when they emerge from school with new skills, the economy will be booming again."

The LSAT, a three-and-a-half-hour standardized test, is administered four times a year at hundreds of locations around the world, from Boston to South Africa to Wyoming.

LSAC does offer an alternative for students who can't locate an open test center within 100 miles of their location. According to its website, applicants may request that LSAC establish a new, unpublished test center at an educational institution in a nearby city-so long as they pay a fee, which ranges from $199 to $266.

But LSAC does not publicize this option widely. Bedoya said he was unaware of the alternative program when he received word that all test centers within 100 miles of Boston were full.

"I had absolutely no idea you could request an alternate test center," he said, "but in any case there is no way I could have paid that much money, unless I could have split the fee with other students."