If you prepared for the LSAT with a test prep company, did your instructor’s LSAT score play a role in your decision to enroll in their course? I’ve worked at a few different test prep companies, and they took different positions on the importance of teacher test scores.
On one hand, I worked at a company that swore its teachers to secrecy. We were not allowed to disclose our score to students, even if asked. This company put teachers at the front of the classroom who had not even taken a real LSAT. Some of the teachers were primarily GRE or GMAT instructors who had been selected for “cross training” and had received passable scores on a practice test that they took at home. The idea, at this company, was that a talent for teaching was all that mattered. Cynically, I believe this policy was a result of the fact that the company simply didn’t have access to enough LSAT instructors with 99th percentile scores because competitors were hiring us away by paying us higher wages (this is how I came to leave the company).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I worked at a company that required proof of a 99th percentile LSAT score before they would consider you for an interview. This company featured their LSAT instructors’ 99th percentile scores prominently in marketing materials. The idea was that you only deserved to be at the front of the classroom if you had exhibited both a talent for teaching and a talent for taking the test under real test conditions. The smaller size of this company, along with its willingness to pay top of the market wages, enabled it to be selective.
I’ve also worked at a company that fell somewhere in between these extremes. At this company, the official policy was that we weren’t to disclose our LSAT scores. However, the company published my likeness along with my LSAT score in marketing materials and online course materials. Basically, the company wanted to “show off” my 99th percentile test score in one setting, but asked me to deliver the party line in others: “all teachers that work for [COMPANY] have score in the 90th percentile or above on the real LSAT.”
In my experience, a student asks for my LSAT score when they are questioning my competency (this usually happens before or during the first class session). Perhaps I’m too prideful, but I like to be able to assure that student by sharing my score. I dislike it when I’m bound to tell the student that “all teachers that work for [COMPANY] have score in the 90th percentile or above on the real LSAT” because it implies that I have a lower score and I feel like some students lose confidence.
Here’s the thing. I think that some prospective LSAT students want a teacher with a top notch LSAT score. When I worked at the company that used the LSAT scores of it’s teachers and former students as its primary marketing message, we attracted a certain type of student: driven, hardcore, and ambitious. This type of student gains confidence from their teachers ability to score well on the test.
But there are also students who prefer a teacher who struggled on the LSAT–thinking that a teacher who has struggled will be more empathetic or better able to explain a complex idea in simple terms. It’s true that there are folks out there with 99th percentile scores who lack the patience or ability to break their thought processes into manageable pieces. But that doesn’t mean that it’s necessary for a teacher to have struggled with the LSAT to possess this ability (or empathy, for that matter). Regardless of what I think, there are students who take the teacher-who-has-struggled-is-a-better-teacher position.
Is sensitivity to this issue the reason that some of us are asked to keep our scores hush hush? Or is it just because the larger companies can’t find enough 99th percentile teachers and don’t want to deal with the fallout of students knowing that one teacher has a lower score than another. Finally, does it matter? If you’re a prospective law student, does your teacher’s score matter to you? If you took a prep course, did it influence your enrollment decision? I’m far too deep into test prep to have real perspective on the student p.o.v. on this issue, and I would love to know what you think.
My opinion is that if it matters to a student, he or she should have access to my LSAT score.
Read the full article: Does your instructor’s LSAT score matter?