Law Test Scores Show More 48s

Harvard students taking this October's Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scored unusually high, but University officials are not sure why the students did so well or how the scores will affect their chances for admissions.

Dena O. Rakoff, the pre-law advising coordinator at the Office of Career Services (OCS), said yesterday that the number of students scoring a perfect "48" on their October LSATs tripled from last year to this year. She said she could not predict how the scores would affect admissions chances until she knew how Harvard students' performances compared with others nationwide.

"I don't know how to look at it [the high scores] in terms of Harvard's competition with other people from other schools...we need to know how it affects the chances for our pool in general," Rakoff said.

Officials at the Law School Admissions Service (LSAS), which administers the test, said there was no significant change in the nationwide distribution of scores this year.

"The October 1989 scores were not on the high side nationally," said Deputy Vice President for Test Development Robert L. McKinley.

Rakoff said she has already contacted LSAS to make sure there were no problems with the test scoring, and to see how Harvard's scores compared to others. McKinley said LSAS did score the tests correctly, but that "we haven't looked at the distribution of scores for individual institutions yet."

Rakoff said she is currently gathering information to predict how the high scores will affect law school admissions.

"It is of interest to me to know what the profile of Harvard students is to law schools...which will affect the way I advise students and assess their chances," Rakoff said. "I need to know whether it is a Harvard phenomena and what it it means for those kids who got 47s and 46s."

Rakoff has not tabulated the number of scores below 48 yet. And she said she needed a better idea of how the rest of the student body did before she could tell how well Harvard had done, as a whole, compared to other schools.

But even that information would not be an exact indicator of how well Harvard students would fare in the spring admissions game. Rakoff said.

"What it means for me is that I am going to look very carefully at this year's admissions statistics," she said.

One senior who got a "48" said the high scores mean little except that anyone can beat the test.

"The test is completely bogus. With a little bit of studying anyone can do well on it," said Andrew B. Clubok '90, one of there seniors in a Winthrop House rooming group who got a perfect score. "It is a poor measure of what it's supposed to test."