When the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) announced plans to make significant changes to the LSAT, students worried that these changes would drastically alter their scores. After careful planning and research, the LSAC hopes that students will see these changes as beneficial rather than harmful.
Time for a change
The decision to change the reading comprehension section of the LSAT comes after eight years of research by the LSAC. During the mid-1990s, LSAC researchers attended law school classes and noted that students needed the ability to work with multiple texts. In 1998, the LSAC Test Development staff began work with ACT to discuss possible formats for a new test.
Field tests of the new comparative reading questions were administered between 2002 and 2003. The field tests were given as part of a regular LSAT administration, but were ungraded ‘sample sections’. Test-takers were aware of the ‘sample section’ but didn’t know which of the five sections was ungraded.
Major revisions to the LSAT are infrequent, says Wendy Margolis, director of communications for the LSAC. When research shows there is a necessary skill for law school that could be measured better by a test revision then the LSAC will inquire about changing the test, she said.
Being able to understand arguments from multiple texts by applying skills such as comparison, contrast, generalization and synthesis are among the fundamental tasks required in law school, Margolis said.
“The introduction of comparative reading into the reading comprehension section will broaden the LSAT’s assessment of the kinds of reading skills used in law school,” Margolis said.
New vs. Old
The old LSAT asked questions in three different subject areas – reading comprehension, logical reasoning and analytical reasoning – and asked test-takers to submit a writing sample, which wasn’t graded.
The new LSAT features changes to the reading comprehension and writing sections of the test. Only about five percent of the test will be affected by these changes, says Dr. Stephen Harris, director of curriculum development for Educational Testing Consultants, Inc.
Sample questions from the new LSAT
The reading comprehension portion of the test makes up one-quarter of the test – approximately 25 questions, and out of those about six will be changed.
“The changes to the questions themselves are virtually insignificant to test-takers,” Harris said. “Instead of being asked about one passage in the reading section, you’re going to be asked to compare two.”
The total amount of reading on the test will not be significantly shorter or longer, and there are only two different types of questions that have not appeared on previous exams, Harris said. These two types of questions involve analogous reasoning and asking test-takers to describe how the author of one passage would respond to another author’s passage, said Harris, a former writer of LSAT questions.
The LSAC website says that the writing prompt will no longer be randomly assigned as either a decision-based or an argument-based prompt. Instead, all students will be given a decision-based prompt for the writing sample. This portion of the test will remain unscored.
Preparing for the new test
Changes to the curriculum regarding test-preparation will be relatively minor and the change to the reading comprehension section may actually help test-takers, says Dr. Harris. The new design sets a clear division between where one author’s passage and point of view ends and another’s begins. The old test put two conflicting views in one passage, which made distinguishing the two different views difficult.
How much are you going to spend?
“Our curriculum has not undergone any substantive changes,” Harris said when asked about how Educational Testing Consultants, Inc. handled curriculum for the new test.
“We will take our students and guide them through the new stuff, but they will still be using the same skills we taught in previous years.”
Getting accepted
Some test-takers are facing the choice of whether to submit their scores from the old test or to take the new test and submit those scores.
Students should not worry about the difference between the two tests when determining whether to send in scores, says Jacqlene Nance, director of admissions at the University of Kansas School of Law.
Students worried about the new test being scored differently than the old test have nothing to worry about, Nance says. The LSAC uses a score band, which accounts for a certain margin of error for test-takers. The score band also throws out questions if test-takers nationwide have low scores on the same questions.
Schools are also moving away from averaging the scores of people who have taken multiple tests. Many schools will report the highest score for admittance records, but will look at every submitted score by applicants, said Nance.
“There’s nothing different about how the new test is going to be scored. It doesn’t matter if you take the test in June or if you took it five years ago; we’re going to look at all of your scores,” Nance said.
Law schools don’t use the LSAT as the only basis of admission for students. Schools require essays and letters of recommendation in addition to LSAT scores.
The reason that the LSAC can continue to use the same score band is because the test still uses the same test-taking skills that were used on the old test, Nance said. If the test had been completely changed, then the scale for the scores would be different.
What’s the bottom line?
The changes to the LSAT are necessary, according to Wendy Margolis. Without changes to the test, law schools cannot accurately judge the skills needed for admission. While the changes may seem drastic, says Dr. Harris, there really is no difference in the tests.
“Anybody that was prepared to take the test before the changes will be prepared to take the new test,” Harris said.
Sources:
Dr. Stephen Harris, Educational Testing Consultants, Inc., (803) 319-4000
Wendy Margolis, LSAC, wmargolis@lsac.org
Dr. Jacqlene Nance, KU School of Law, jnance@ku.edu
Russell Shaffer, Kaplan Test Prep, (212) 453-7538
Marianne Hovgaard, Kaplan Test Prep, (785)842-5442
Megan Lewis, student, meglew@ku.edu
Tara O’Brien, student, (913) 568-6978
www.lsac.org