Relief Comes After LSAT Stressing

This past Saturday, many Harvard seniors breathed a sigh of relief as they finally completed the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), a half-day standardized test required for admission to all law schools approved by the American Bar Association.

Eliot resident Carol G. Cavanagh ’06 is one student who, along with many other seniors, celebrated with her friends on Saturday night.

“I felt very relieved. I went out with all of my friends, and hung out with my roommate who also took the test. I knew everyone else was also out having a good time,” she said.

Saturday brought to an end several stressful months of studying for an exam whose results play an integral role in the law school admissions process.

Bill Wright-Swadel, director of the Office of Career Services (OCS) for the College and GSAS, attests to the fact that law school admissions is less subjective than undergraduate admissions. The process is, in large part, a numbers game, and the pressure to crack the LSAT can be even greater than the stress engendered by the SAT.

“There really are no interviews in most cases so the application, and therefore the scores—both the Grade Point Average and the LSAT scores—become very important,” he said.

Wright-Swadel describes what is commonly known as “The Grids,” a chart accessible at OCS that provides students with a ballpark of schools to consider based upon their Grade Point Average and LSAT score.

But Wright-Swadel advised that students who may not be the best standardized test-takers should not fear.

“Anybody who takes a pure, quantitative look at [law school admissions] is missing something because the essay is important,” he said.

According to Wright-Swadel, while OCS provides students with one-on-one assistance in deciding where and when to apply to law school, Harvard’s residential houses offer more emotional support and stress relief. He also said that within each house, fellow test-takers and pre-law tutors are extremely helpful in alleviating the stress of LSATs.

In preparation for the LSATs, no House parties were allowed on Friday night—but the post-LSAT fetes of Saturday night kept the campus alive well into the wee hours.

Dunster resident and LSAT survivor Andre M. Penalver ’06 hosted a party with his blocking group on Saturday night in celebration.

“It is such a relief to be done,” he said. “The LSAT hangs over your head for months. For every free moment I had, I felt guilty if I wasn’t practicing some section.”

Cavanagh, who returned to her home state of Rhode Island to take the test, asserts that the LSAT is definitely a test one can prepare for—she enrolled in a Kaplan preparatory course in August. Other Harvard students enrolled in courses offered by The Princeton Review and TestWell.

Cavanagh advises undergraduates planning on taking the LSAT to invest in a course or some other form of preparation.

“It’s surprising how learnable the skills [on the test] are. The more you practice, the more it becomes like clockwork,” she said.

Although Penalver did not enroll in a preparatory course, he worked on practice questions throughout the summer using workbooks he had purchased. Like Cavanagh, Penalver believes that while LSAT test preparation may be stressful, diligence and hard work will offer great rewards on test day.

“My only advice is to practice early and often. If you can do that, then the real exam suddenly feels a lot less scary. It’s just like any of the other dozen practice tests you’ve taken.”