Hey all,
In a bid to keep my options open for as long as possible (I am an Arts student, after all) I'm sitting the LSAT this February. I wasn't actually going to bring it up until after I've sat it and therefore could give some really solid advice for it but I realised that many of you out there may be considering going down the Melbourne JD road. Which is fine, it's your decision, but in order to make the best decision, it often helps to have as much information as possible available to you about it. Frankly, I'm glad I didn't do Law as an undergrad because I would have done it for the wrong reasons and it wouldn't have afforded me the chance to focus solely on the intellectual pursuits I've been able to as part of my undergraduate degree. So this thread is definitely not meant to scare you in to thinking that doing law as an undergrad is necessarily a better option, though it will be for some people. The thread is here to give you some information about the LSAT that you should have in the back of your mind if this is your preferred pathway. This is certainly stuff I didn't know when I finished year 12 but would have been helpful to know (I probably would have started studying for the LSAT earlier if I had known this stuff!)
Anyway, the LSAT is a bit of a bastard of a test. It is extremely well-written and I think it's probably the best standardised test I've seen in terms of testing ability. It is well-targeted to law because it essentially tests your logical reasoning skills. It does not test knowledge, it tests your application of particular rules to particular situations. Unfortunately, there are extreme time limitations to every section - you are given 35 minutes per section (of which there are 6 with a 15 minute break in the middle) to do quite a lot of work.
The LSAT is structured as such (these sections can appear in any order although written is always last and the experimental is always one of the first three sections):
1x Reading Comprehension Section. This involves you having to read 4 different passages and answering questions on them. There are 25-28 questions all up. The questions involve you having to pick out the main points and drawing inferences, implications and analogies from the passages. Some questions test your ability to read in that they directly ask what the passage said, other questions test your ability to do some quite complex reasoning.
1x Analytical Reasoning Section (a.k.a. Logic Games). Humanities students tend to find this part the most challenging. There are about 23-25 questions divided into four separate games. Basically, you are given a scenario and a set of rules and your ability to answer the questions hinges on your ability to both follow those rules and make logical inferences from those rules.
2x Logical Reasoning Sections (a.k.a. Arguments). Here, you are given around 24-26 questions per section. Each question has a short paragraph and usually the paragraph is making a claim of some variety. The question asks you then to identify one of the following: its assumptions, its problems, its main argument, and what fact(s) could strengthen the argument. This sort of skill would be crucial to one's study of law, which is why is comprises half the marked sections of the test.
1x Experimental Section. The experimental section is used to test future questions. You are not told that it is experimental and it either has comprehension, analytic or logic questions. You will not know which section is experimental but you will know what type of section is experimental because you will get one extra of that type. It's unmarked.
1x Written Section. You are given a prompt and you write a short essay. The prompt involves a description of a scenario and then the main goals someone wants to achieve. You are given two possible courses of action and you are to pick the best one, based on the scenario and the goals the person wants to achieve. This section is unmarked but UoM will receive a copy of it as part of your application.
Now, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the LSAT is a highly learnable test and therefore you don't need to be naturally good at it in order to do well, as long as you study. The bad news is that you do need to study for this test. The extreme time limitations and even just the general nature of the test means that in order to maximise your score, you really need to do quite a lot of practice tests. Some people are naturally good at standardised tests, but this is not the GAT here.
This test is very popular in the US but, as far as I know, only UoM actually uses it in Australia. This means that far fewer LSAT resources are available to Australian students than our US counterparts (such as prep-courses and study groups and such), but as the results of Australian students are scaled against scores from the US, we are competing with students who do have those additional resources. This is probably mitigated though by the fact that Americans will hardly be applying to UoM specifically, so while we are competing with Americans for scores, at least we aren't competing with them for spaces in the degree.
With scoring - scores are distributed between 120 and 180, 151 is the average, scores above 170 would get you into top law schools such as Harvard and Yale and such. UoM doesn't list a cut-off score in which they won't consider your application, but I think that you would definitely want it to be above that 151 mark, and higher if you don't have a glowing academic transcript. This unfortunately means that if you are taking the LSAT, you need to study. You need to set aside some time, over a few months, to actually properly succeed.
Additionally, the LSAT costs ~$100 and you can sit it four times a year. In order to be considered at UoM for the first semester intake, you'll need to have sat the LSAT by June of the year before (e.g. If you are applying for February 2012, you need to sit it in June 2011). I personally think that earlier is a better idea because if something happens on test day that causes poor performance, you won't be able to to re-sit the exam after June.
Anyway, this is all I can remember about the LSAT at the moment, if you have any questions, this is a good thread to ask them. Additionally, the LSAC website is a great resource -
http://lsac.orgEDIT: I deleted some incorrect info
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