Two weeks ago, I officially began my law school journey by taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). The LSAT, like so many aspects of life as we knew it, was not immune from COVID-19.
The LSAT is composed of three parts: logical reasoning, reading comprehension, and the famed logic games section. In any other year, I would’ve taken the LSAT somewhere on campus, like the Thomas Building. This year, I took the LSAT-Flex – only the second at-home iteration of the test tailored for a pandemic. The test was shorter, to fit online proctoring requirements, but as a result it gave more weight to the logic games (widely recognized as the hardest section of the test).
At 12:15 on test day, I walked downstairs to my basement and prepared to begin the test, a scenario I never would’ve imagined just a few months prior. It was my first experience with ProctorU, a remote proctoring service, but I was able to log on and get connected to a proctor immediately. Prince Devan, my proctor, walked me through the candidate agreement and set me on my way.
It was the culmination of a year’s worth of diagnostic tests and preparation. In January, I enrolled in CAS197: Legal Reasoning and the LSAT. To my knowledge, it was the first for-credit LSAT prep course offered at Penn State, made possible by the Students Teaching Students program and taught by a fellow PLA’er. It supplemented my self-studying regime and put me on the right track for test day.
The test went by quickly, and I ripped up my scratch paper in front of the camera and signed off afterward. A few days later, I completed LSAT writing, a short, ungraded writing sample based on a prompt provided by the Law School Admission Council.
One of the biggest hurdles to legal education is the costs associated with it. The admissions process itself is costly, and a grant from the Presidential Leadership Academy partially alleviated that burden. Now, I will await applications in September and see where my law school journey takes me next.
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