<p>Hey people,
I notice that in the LSAT the essay doesn’t count in your score, but is submittedto the schools that you apply to. How can the essay affect your admissions vs other essays you submit in your application?</p>
<p>The LSAT essay has a very minor influence, if at all. The actual essays you submit with your applications will hold great weight! The thing about the LSAT essay is that while it is sent to the schools you apply to, it probably won’t help your chances of being admitted but it could hurt your chances if you write terribly in that 35 minutes of time. If your application essays are stellar, but your LSAT essay isn’t even written coherently, this will raise some red flags. Bottom line: Your application essays should be in your own words, and you should be relatively comfortable formulating an argument under time constraints.</p>
<p>It varies school to school. Some put a bit of weight on it; others don’t look at it at all.</p>
<p>oh ic. thanks for the input!</p>
<p>While I don’t believe that the LSAT essay has a lot of influence from a scoring perspective on one’s application, it is often reviewed by law schools to which you apply for two reasons. First, they compare it to your personal statement and other essays as a baseline to determine whether you might have had outside help or other editing resources on your application essays. Second, it is used for some insight on how you write under pressure as you would have to do on many law school exams (typically three to six hours per exam, almost exclusively essays, written in a number of bluebooks under extreme time pressure). Beyond that, I have never heard of any score or other grading system applied to this essay.</p>
<p>Moreover, I think that doing extremely well on the LSAT essay is probably not as valuable as one who does so well would hope, but doing poorly might really hurt your application.</p>