Easier Than August, and Students Noticed
The most consistent theme across the thread was direct comparison to the August administration, and it broke overwhelmingly in September's favor. Test-takers who sat both described September as markedly more manageable and, more importantly, more representative of what they had practiced on.
Repeat takers were emphatic: One student who had sat the August exam — and been caught in its missing-dividers display problem — wrote that September “felt way more representative of practice tests and felt really fair,” noting that the ample review time they were used to on practice tests returned this round after vanishing entirely in August. Others put it more bluntly, calling September significantly easier than August.
Fair is not the same as easy: Plenty of test-takers still walked out shaken, and several first-time takers reported flagging five or six questions per section. The distinction students kept drawing was that this exam felt like the test they had prepared for, rather than one that had moved the goalposts.
A caution about curve speculation: Several test-takers immediately worried aloud that an easier-feeling exam would translate into a harsher scoring conversion. That is not how score equating works — conversions are set so that a given scaled score reflects the same ability regardless of form difficulty, which is precisely why an easier form is not automatically bad news.
Logical Reasoning: New Traps and Unfamiliar Phrasing
If August's flashpoint was a single brutal Reading Comprehension passage, September's was Logical Reasoning — and the complaint had an unusual shape. Very few students called LR harder in the conventional sense. What they reported instead was an exam that seemed to be testing familiar reasoning through unfamiliar packaging.
“Not hard, just different”: The phrase recurred across dozens of independent write-ups. Test-takers described question stems phrased in ways they had not encountered in years of prep, stimuli structured unlike anything in recent practice tests, and a general sense that LSAC was trialing new presentations of standard question types.
Trap answers that sat closer together: The most specific and widely echoed observation was about answer choices. Multiple students described choices where a compelling option was immediately followed by a slightly better one, or where a single word rendered an otherwise-correct answer wrong in a way that was easy to miss on a first pass. One test-taker summarized it as an unusual volume and type of trap compared to anything they had seen before.
First-time guessing: Several students who said they had never guessed on an LR question in their entire prep history — practice tests included — reported guessing on two or three this round, usually in a single section that ran long.
Uneven across sections, as always: The familiar pattern held: test-takers with multiple LR sections almost universally found one noticeably harder than the other, with no agreement on where in the order it fell. Students reported nearly every possible arrangement (RC-LR-LR-RC, LR-RC-LR-RC, LR-LR-RC-LR, RC-LR-LR-LR, LR-RC-RC-LR), and matching someone else's section order did not mean matching their content. Some also noted unusual clustering of question types, including several necessary-assumption questions in immediate succession.
Reading Comprehension: Lighter, With Missing Comparative Passages
Reading Comprehension drew the opposite reaction from August. Rather than one section-defining nightmare passage, September produced widespread reports of RC that felt unusually gentle — enough so that students grew suspicious of their own performance.
“The easiest RC I have ever done”: A striking number of test-takers described finishing an RC section with time to spare and re-reading passages and questions looking for traps they assumed they must have missed. Several said they found none, then immediately began worrying the section had been experimental precisely because it felt too straightforward.
Missing comparative passages: The most unusual structural report of the administration: numerous test-takers said one or both of their RC sections contained no comparative (dual-passage) set at all, which several described as a first in their testing and practice experience. Others did receive comparative passages and generally flagged them as the hardest item in the section. Because forms vary, both experiences can be accurate at once.
Repeated subject matter across sections: A number of students with two RC sections reported that the same broad topic appeared in both — disorienting in the moment, and a recurring source of speculation about which section was scored.
Stylistic observations: Some test-takers commented that passages read differently than usual, describing shorter paragraphs and a flatter prose style than the dense academic writing they had trained on. A few also reported spotting typographical or grammatical errors in passage text.
The Experimental-Section Guessing Game
As always, one of the four sections on every LSAT is unscored, and as always, that fact dominated post-test discussion — amplified this round by the wide gap students perceived between their easiest and hardest sections.
Hope running in both directions: Students who found one RC section trivially easy hoped it was scored; students who were destroyed by a late LR section hoped that one was not. Both groups were reasoning from the same unknowable premise. LSAC does not disclose which section is experimental, and no amount of cross-referencing section orders with strangers online can establish it reliably.
Why post-test comparison misleads: Section order is randomized and forms differ, so two test-takers with an identical order did not necessarily see identical content. A section that felt catastrophic may not have counted at all — which is the single most important thing to remember while waiting on scores.
Discussion rules still apply: r/LSAT embargoes topic discussion until the final day of testing, and LSAC's candidate agreement prohibits disclosure of question content and answers entirely. The subreddit's separate topic thread, opened after testing concluded, exists to identify general subject matter only — not answers.
Platform and Technical Issues
September ran far cleaner than August's divider glitch, but it was not flawless. Reports were scattered and individual rather than systemic, which matters: there was no sign this round of a defect widespread enough to prompt the kind of blanket retake offer LSAC extended in August.
Answers that would not register: The most serious single account came from a remote test-taker who reported a delayed start, a mid-section security check that broke their concentration, and then two answers that would not record with roughly ten minutes left in the section. Proctor response was slow, the support page they were directed to did not work, phone support reached an automated system, and by the time they reconnected the platform had advanced them into their break without letting them return. LSAC advised them they could cancel and seek approval to retest at a later date.
Being dropped back to the start screen: Multiple students independently described being kicked out mid-section and returned to a start-test or agreement-acknowledgment screen. In each account, submitted answers were preserved, but answer choices they had eliminated using the strikethrough tool came back cleared or displayed with unexpected markings. Alarming in the moment; not, by these accounts, scoring-relevant.
Break-timer confusion: At least one test-taker who timed their intermission carefully and returned early found the screen already reporting their break as over, requiring a proctor to clear them back in. No section time was lost, but it is a reason to return from break with a wide margin.
If it happened to you: File a complaint with LSAC promptly. Complaint windows close quickly, and the resolution you choose — keeping your score versus retaking — is generally final once submitted.
The In-Center Experience
With one administration of institutional memory behind them, test centers ran more smoothly this round, though the same category of complaint recurred: the testing environment itself, rather than the exam.
Noise and seat placement: Students seated near doors or proctor stations reported hearing check-ins, conversations, and workstation resets throughout their exam. One test-taker with ADHD accommodations was placed directly beside the door and described the placement as actively undermining the accommodation. If a quiet seat matters to you, it is worth raising at check-in rather than after.
Headphones: The provided noise-cancelling headsets drew repeat complaints for physical discomfort, with several students removing them partway through and finishing without. Worth practicing both ways before test day.
Scratch paper: A specific and easily overlooked issue: the provided colored scratch sheets combined with pencil and dim center lighting made some students' own notes hard to read back. Press harder than feels natural, and write larger than you would at home.
Rule enforcement is real: Several test-takers separately reported overhearing disputes with proctors over break-time rule violations, including at least one case where a candidate was told their administration would be invalidated. Read the break rules before test day — phones, notes, and conversation are all restricted during the intermission.
Check identification requirements in advance: One test-taker described a dispute at check-in over whether they could retain a personal identification document during the exam. Reviewing LSAC's ID policy and Prometric's approved-items list beforehand makes these conversations shorter.
Scoring Expectations
Self-assessments after this administration skewed more positive than August's, but with a persistent undercurrent of doubt rooted in how unfamiliar the Logical Reasoning presentation felt.
Score release: Scores for the September 9–12 administration are expected around September 30, 2026, roughly three weeks after testing, consistent with LSAC's recent release pattern. Check your LSAC account for the date attached to your specific registration.
Why your gut read is unreliable this round: Between the unscored experimental section, real form variation, and an exam whose difficulty many students described as differently distributed rather than higher, post-test impressions are especially poor predictors here. Students who felt they bombed one section were frequently describing the section that did not count.
What to Do Next
However September felt, here is how to use the weeks before your score arrives.
- If you hit a technical problem: File your complaint with LSAC now rather than waiting for your score. Document what happened, when, and what the proctor did, while the details are fresh. Choose your requested resolution carefully — it is generally final.
- If one section wrecked you: One of your four sections was unscored. A single disastrous section, particularly one hundreds of other test-takers are describing the same way, tells you very little about your final score.
- If you are weighing a retake: Wait for the official score before deciding. The October 7–10 and November 11–14 administrations remain available in 2026, both comfortably ahead of most rolling-admissions deadlines — though October registration deadlines may fall before your September score arrives.
- If you are prepping for a fall retake: Train for unfamiliar packaging, not just harder content. Practice reading question stems literally rather than pattern-matching them, and drill discriminating between two close answer choices where a single qualifier decides it — that was this administration's defining difficulty.
- Do not over-index on other people's test day: Forms varied, section orders varied, and one of everyone's sections did not count. Your own sense of how many questions you found genuinely difficult remains the better signal.