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The best possible LSAT score is 180, but the best score for you is the one that clears your target schools' medians on the 120 to 180 scale. As rough tiers, about 196 ABA-approved law schools is broadly competitive, and top-14 programs cluster their medians much higher. Aim above each school's median.
By Ali Unar, JD candidate at Georgetown Law and founder of Lovare Institut. Last updated August 2026. Figures on this page were verified in August 2026 or point readers to the current source.
The best LSAT score you can get is 180, the top of the 120 to 180 scale, but almost no applicant needs a 180 to reach their goals. The best score to aim for is the one that meets or beats the medians at your target law schools, because admissions weigh your score against those medians. In practice, a higher score widens your options and improves scholarship leverage.
Competitiveness rises steadily as you move up the scale, and rough tiers help you see where a score stands. The table lists common LSAT score bands with the kind of schools they tend to open and the national percentile each represents, using current figures to confirm.
The current ranking is best read directly from the source. See the U.S. News Best Law Schools list for the up-to-date order, and each school's ABA Standard 509 report for its median LSAT, GPA, and acceptance rate.
Read the percentile for each band from LSAC's current score-to-percentile tables, and read school medians from each school's ABA 509 report, since both update over time.
The tiers combine two published sources: LSAC's national percentile tables, which map each scaled score to the share of test-takers it beats, and the ABA Standard 509 reports, which list every school's 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile LSAT. Neither source labels a score good or bad; those labels come from comparing a score to school medians. The national average, currently the low-to-mid 150s (LSAC does not publish a single headline average; the median falls near 152 on the percentile tables), anchors the middle of the scale.
Choose your target by listing the schools you want, noting each one's median LSAT, and setting your goal at or above the highest median you realistically pursue. Aiming for a school's 75th percentile rather than just its median improves both admission odds and scholarship chances. Lovare's tools help you match a target score to your school list and track practice progress toward it.
A good LSAT score is one that meets or exceeds the medians at your target law schools on the 120 to 180 scale. Broadly, higher scores open more and better-funded options, but the practical benchmark is each school's 50th percentile. Compare your score to your target schools' published 25th-50th-75th percentile figures to judge it.
The average LSAT score across all test-takers is in the low 150s, near the middle of the 120 to 180 scale. It shifts slightly each testing year as the applicant pool changes. For the current mean and how it maps to a percentile, see the LSAC percentile tables (for example a 150 is about the 37th percentile, 160 the 71st, 165 the 85th, and 170 the 94th).
The LSAT is scored by converting your raw score, the number of correct answers, into a scaled 120 to 180 score using your form's conversion table, then assigning a national percentile, with no penalty for wrong answers. Since August 2024 the scored sections are two Logical Reasoning sections and one Reading Comprehension section, plus one unscored variable section.
Verified August 2026.
August 21, 2026
August 21, 2026