Honors graduate with 174 LSAT shut out at top law schools

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

<p>Hi guys, I'm a U of C senior who applied to law schools this year and I have some advice for prospective students considering a top law school in the future. Basically: think long and hard about attending Chicago. </p>

<p>This year's LS admissions cycle is just about over and I must say, I'm very disappointed with the results. In high school, I was one of those who valued learning above everything else and thus believed U of C was the perfect environment for me. I applied to Ivies, got into Brown and Cornell (+Duke) but chose Chicago over all of them for the intellectual environment. I loved my time here. I spent my years working really hard and not really caring about grades all that much as long as I gave my best in everything (I had top stats coming out of high school so I thought I would naturally do well). I spent a lot of time debating with friends and professors. I turned down invitations to social gatherings, thinking all the hard work would pay off someday and that those other people who went out so often would someday wish they'd studied as hard as I did.</p>

<p>Well, I ended up with a ~3.3 cumulative (in classics) at the time of application (which is respectable, but not great) and a 174 LSAT (99th percentile, for those of you who don't know). I got rejected by HYS+Columbia+Chicago(that REALLY hurt, I have to say)+NYU. Also denied by Berkeley, Virginia (YP?), Northwestern (work experience requirement). Waitlisted at Penn, Duke, Georgetown. In the end, I had only two T14 acceptances: Michigan and Cornell. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got into Michigan and Cornell. However, it hurts to know that on the 2nd try, I wasn't able to achieve my lifelong ambition to attend a tippy top school like Harvard. Yeah, I genuinely love learning, but I thought my love for it would be so strong that it would naturally help me acquire the prerequisites for admission to super-elite schools at the same time.</p>

<p>My point is: I loved the education I got here. It really was wonderful, but I can't help feeling it also limited my law options for the rest of my life. I could have gotten a higher GPA elsewhere, gotten the same LSAT and gotten into not only Columbia but possibly the big H as well. I actually have a friend who applied with a 3.9 from Brown and a 173 LSAT who got into H + Columbia + Chicago+ most other elites. Seeing my and my friends' results, I'm also not so sure U of C actually gets the boost in LS admissions people claim it does. I've grown cynical about the process and really do believe deans just care about the numbers they report to USNWR. I think it's because they see LSAT as a leveler for those with varying GPAs, so a 3.9 at Brown isn't necessarily inflated their eyes when coupled with a top score.</p>

<p>So yeah, pursue a Chicago education at your own risk. I've committed to one of the schools that took me but will pursue my wait lists vigorously.</p>

<p>A caveat that could've made a difference: I was involved in a decent number of clubs (3) but had no official leadership positions (though I highlighted my leadership-type work). I did develop good relations with 2 professors, each of whom wrote me a strong letter of recommendation.</p>

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<p>I do wish law schools would punish Brown.
[The</a> Brown Daily Herald - More than half of grades are now A’s, data show](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/campus-news/more-than-half-of-grades-are-now-a-s-data-show-1.1668702]The”>http://www.browndailyherald.com/campus-news/more-than-half-of-grades-are-now-a-s-data-show-1.1668702)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>If we take those non-letter grades out, the distribution of As, Bs, and Cs is
66% A
28% B
5.5% C</p>

<p>Ridiculously easy…</p>

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<p>That Brown data is shocking. </p>

<p>Can any other UChicago students or grads who have applied to law school comment on thier experiences? The OP’s story seems to confirm what I have believed for a long time (i.e., that professional schools do not sufficiently compensate for grading differences among schools).</p>

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<p>A 3.3 GPA is about the average GPA from Chicago. Since law schools strongly emphasize GPAs in their admissions processes, it’s hard to believe that any student with the average GPA from any university would be accepted at the tippy top law schools, regardless of test scores. It’s unfortunately just the way that law schools work. It says nothing about law schools compensating for grading differences at top schools.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>To add onto this, a 3.9 at Brown is well above the average (~3.6), however inflated it may be. A 3.3 is average at Chicago. Given the minimal difference in LSAT scores, I’m not surprised.</p>

<p>You’d have more of a case if a 3.6 or 3.7 student at Chicago did significantly worse than the 3.9 student at Brown (assuming approximately equal LSATs).</p>

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<p>2nd year never-worried-about-what-grades-he-gets-as-long-as-he’s-happy-and-he-learns science major S with GPA just north of 3.7 is starting to mention that 3.8 would look a lot better for Grad School.</p>

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<p>UofCGrad2010 - thanks for the honest, candid post. I’ve posted on Chicago and law school placement quite a bit in the past (just look up my old threads), and I’m always eager to hear the thoughts of recent Chicago grads. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think it was your choice of college that hampered your law school admissions choices. Rather, it was not fully understanding the law school admissions game more comprehensively earlier on in your college career. </p>

<p>For better or worse, law school admissions is absolutely a numbers game. There are tons of applicants with great recs and interesting experiences - so, with the rising importance of US News - law schools focus very, very heavily on GPA/LSAT. </p>

<p>I don’t think it’s just Chicago that is penalized by this trend in LS admissions. I’ve met engineering students at MIT or students majoring in hard sciences at Princeton or students at other schools that don’t grade inflate that voice your same concerns. Even with a very high LSAT, if your gpa isn’t up to snuff, you’re not getting into a top 6 law school. I had a friend who majored in biochem at Princeton, struggled to get a 3.3 GPA, had a 173 LSAT, and didn’t get into a single top 14 school. (He was on the waitlist at Michigan, worked hard on the waitlist, and wound up going there.) I have another friend at MIT with similar stats who faced very similar results (and wound up going to Minnesota Law - a great school, but not quite where he had hoped.) </p>

<p>My question for you is, were you aware of the importance of a GPA - however inflated - during your time at Chicago? I feel that at Chicago now, it’s perfectly foreseeable to achieve a high GPA, but students do need to be a bit calculating. If your goal was Harvard Law, sadly, learning for learning’s sake may not need to be your top priority in college. Were you aware that the U of C pre-law advisor has a law school placement list for Chicago students that includes ten years of data? Do you know this list also has the avg. GPA and LSAT for Chicago students who were accepted at every top school? </p>

<p>My knock on Chicago during my time there wasn’t that the school was rigorous, it was that Chicago undergrads were not provided with the resources necessary to make them savvy law school applicants early enough on in the process. It’s only during winter quarter senior year that a lot of my classmates started to realize what the law school game was all about, and how Chicago fit into it. If they had known earlier, they would have made different decisions based on this knowledge.</p>

<p>How did you feel about the transparency of information and your access to it (both word of mouth info and formal resources)? </p>

<p>FYI, the “word of mouth” at Chicago when I attended was, for professional schools, Chicago got about a 0.1 GPA boost. Of course, no one really started talking about this until senior year - when it was already too late. </p>

<p>Again, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a Chicago-specific problem. If you knew from the very start that, at Chicago, the average Harvard admit had a 3.7 GPA and a 173 LSAT from U of C, you may have made different decisions during your time in Hyde Park. Even if you loved learning, it may have been practical to switch from your Classics concentration to Psych or Sociology.</p>

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<p>UofCGrad2010 - one further question, why are you pursuing the waitlists so hard at the schools that waitlisted you? From the information you provided, you were accepted at Michigan and Cornell - two superb law schools. From what I know, Michigan has as strong (if not STRONGER) of a rep than the schools that waitlisted you (Gtown, Penn, Duke). Moreover, Cornell is certainly on par with Duke. If you do get off the waitlist at any of these schools, you will most likely not receive any financial aid at all (bc they’ll use up all of it for the students they accepted initially). I’m just curious as to why you are pursuing the schools that waitlisted you so vigorously. You’ve already gotten into schools that are - at worst - on par, and, in the case of Michigan, still traditionally seen as a bit stronger.</p>

<p>On another note, as a piece of unsolicited advice, if your goal is to go to Harvard Law or at least Columbia, absolutely don’t give up on this now. Harvard and Columbia take LOTS of transfer students. During your 1L year, focus as hard as possible on doing as well as possible. In this regard, the grueling Chicago education has absolutely prepared you well. You already have great “endurance” for studying - now if you focus on studying smart during your 1L year, you should do extremely well.</p>

<p>I’d estimate that at a superb school like Michigan, if you finish in the top 20%, you’d have a great shot at transferring to Columbia, and a good shot at Harvard. Moreover, once the marathon of law school starts, the excellent preparation you received at Chicago will really come in handy. While Chicago students didn’t always fare well during the law school admissions game (bc of lack of info early enough on), Chicago students always seem to do VERY well in law school. Chicago’s a superb training ground for what happens in law school, from everything I’ve seen from my friends.</p>

<p>So, again, while the rejections from Harvard, Columbia (and Chicago Law) may sting now, you’re still in a great position. You have an acceptance to one of the very finest law schools in the country (in Michigan), and a chance to move on up after 1L year. Moreover, Chicago’s given you all the necessary tools to rock during your first year in law school. So, the rejections may sting now, but you’ve been equipped with perhaps the finest undergraduate training in america, coupled with an acceptance to one of the best law schools in the country. Combine this with the fact that you can approach 1L as an opportunity to make the move to Cambridge, and you’re not in bad shape at all. Just make sure you start law school in the right frame of mind, and you stay hungry during the duration of the year. Morningside Heights or Cambridge, MA may very well still be in your future. </p>

<p>Best of luck!</p>

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<p>I don’t know what lesson really comes from this. I think if you want to go to Harvard Law School, you have to look like you are one of the best students at your college, and that is going to be a tough task with a GPA that’s basically at the median. (Even for Classics, no one is going to say that 3.3 is outstanding.) The OP had a great LSAT, and actually got great results from his law school applications.</p>

<p>One other thing: Michigan is a great law school. If it’s not Harvard or Yale, it is very, very close. It’s immature and unsophisticated to complain about “only” getting into Michigan. I haven’t looked closely at the faculties recently, but not so long ago I would have thought it very questionable to choose Columbia over Michigan unless you were 100% committed to being in NYC. (I like Cornell a lot, too, but it’s a full notch lower on the prestige scale.)</p>

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<p>this post reminds me of another bitter complaint posted by a U Chicago senior on a CC forum (not THIS forum. which one, I forget). How U Chicago completely failed him, etc, etc. In his case, even though his GPA was outstanding, he did not get a job at Wall Street. Turns out, GPA was about the ONLY thing that was going for him (no ECs, poor social skills etc), and furthermore, he was an international student who had to be sponsored by the hiring company for the work visa. </p>

<p>He was completely unaware of what it took to get a WS job offer and he had no idea that the lack of a green card of a citizenship would be a major issue for him. As such, he had no preparation to deal with his weakness as a candidate. He thought simply getting a high GPA from an elite school would give him an automatic entry into WS.</p>

<p>It’s obvious that the OP had no idea what it took to get an admission into a top law school, and still seems to have no idea why he was rejected (GPA that is just average at a school he was attending). </p>

<p>As I have been lurking in this forum for a while, I find it interesting that some current and graduating students at U Chicago find it easy to blame the school when their post graduate plan does not pan out. It almost seems that they quickly seize the mantra of “I came to the school that values the life of the mind, and look how it failed me miserably for my professional plan. Don’t come here if you want to do XYZ.” I wonder if a Harvard student, who failed to achieve his post graduate plan due to his poor planning and lack of preparation, would have such an easy time blaming the school…</p>

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<p>When you balance your checkbook and you are $1.05 off, you can say “wow, there is only one discrepancy of $1.05” and be happy or think that there could be 20 discrepancies that add to $1.05. Think of GPA the same way.</p>

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<p>ROTCetc.: As a parent of two UChicago kids with lots of UChicago friends, and as an Ivy alumnus, I believe that there IS a difference between career-path assistance at Chicago vs. its competitors, especially for career paths that don’t involve getting a PhD. Chicago has been working hard on improving what it does, but it’s not all the way there yet. Organized, aggressive students can get a lot of help, especially in some fields, but it’s comparatively easy not to get any help at all.</p>

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<p>“I only got into 2 Top 14 law schools.”</p>

<p>sheeeesh . . .</p>

<p>OP said: “I turned down invitations to social gatherings, thinking all the hard work would pay off someday . . .” </p>

<p>It did . . . you got into 2 of the best law schools in the country.</p>

<p>OP said: "I wasn’t able to achieve my lifelong ambition to attend a tippy top school like Harvard . . . " </p>

<p>Two comments:
1- Alternative explanation . . . maybe you weren’t as good a fit for the “tippy top” as you saw yourself?
2- That’s a risk that anyone takes who goes to a school outside the norm . . . like the t-shirts at the UC bookstore say: “If I wanted an A I would have gone to Harvard”</p>

<p>OP said: “My point is: I loved the education I got here. It really was wonderful, but I can’t help feeling it also limited my law options for the rest of my life.”</p>

<p>Get serious, will ya? Are you saying that you NOW will no longer be able to do the kind of legal work you want to do at the level you want to do it? You think that Michigan or Cornell is a BARRIER?</p>

<p>OP said: “I’ve grown cynical about the process and really do believe deans just care about the numbers they report to USNWR.”</p>

<p>There is a strain of faux disabused innocence here, as if you naively believed that if I do the best work I will get the benefits that come to the best. In reality, you were hoping that the reputation of UC would make up for - how did you put it? - a “respectable but not great” record of academic achievement. </p>

<p>That’s the disconnect: if your GPA was respectable but not great at UC, why did you expect to get into a Top 4 law school?</p>

<p>P.S. The college I went to years ago used to offer “narrative evaluations”, not grades. That drove some people crazy: “how can I compete for grad schools without a GPA?”</p>

<p>And that was true . . . there were some grad schools at which people were at a competitive disadvantage because of the quirky undergraduate institution they attended. And that was your point with UC: attendance there FOR SOME PEOPLE may create a competitive disadvantage.</p>

<p>As for my school, at some grad schools the narratives gave us an incredible boost; at the time my school had the 2nd highest rate of acceptances into grad school of all the Univ. of CA campuses, ahead of Cal and UCLA.</p>

<p>And that’s probably true of Chicago, too, eh?</p>

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<p>DD had the same experience at Barnard, lower GPA than kids who couldn’t get into Barnard and attended other schools.</p>

<p>She was not accepted to any T-14 law school, but was offered a lot of money at a Tier 1 law school.</p>

<p>However, she has elected to attend CUNY because she is interested in public law and spending her career in NYC. I am very proud of her. The tuition is so reasonable that she will actually be able to practice public law.</p>

<p>She is very proud of her education and feels that kids at easier schools (including Brown where two of her best friends went) did not learn what she did. </p>

<p>I am proud of her attitude.</p>

<p>No, she did not understand the numbers game of law school but is glad she didn’t because she chose the major and courses she wanted and left with a BA, including a thesis, that really meant something to her.</p>

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<p>A few more thoughts:</p>

<ol>
<li>The OP’s dream to attend a tippy-top law school was shattered? He has that in common with roughly 90% of the people who apply to tippy-top law schools every year – about 6,500 Harvard applicants this year. And that’s just counting the ones who apply, not the ones whose dreams were shattered to the point where they didn’t even apply.</li>
</ol>

<p>There are going to be lots of shattered dreams every year, and not many of them will be the University of Chicago’s fault. The total capacity of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law Schools is under 1,000 students. Roughly 2,500 people per year have LSATs at 171 or above (generally thought to be the range for top law schools). By contrast, the number of people each year with 2280+ SATs or 34+ ACTs is about 8 times that. And the University of Chicago alone graduates about 700 people per year with GPAs of 3.25 or higher (i.e., general honors). </p>

<ol>
<li> Looking at the self-reported stats sites, it seems that top law school admissions, while not 100% predictable, are much more predictable based on GPA and LSATs than undergraduate admissions. The sweet spot seems to be LSATs above 171 and GPA above 3.75, although that varies a bit by school. The OP missed the top GPA range by a mile, not a little. It is somewhat self-deluding to think that a 3.3 at the University of Chicago equates to a 3.8 elsewhere, especially at another elite college. There’s no evidence for grade deflation anywhere knocking off more than .1-.15 of GPA compared to peer schools.</li>
</ol>

<p>What this means is that it’s even more clear that the OP has the University of Chicago to thank for his surprising results in getting into great law schools despite average grades. Michigan, especially, accepts very few applicants with GPAs below 3.5, even when their LSATs are higher than the OP’s.</p>

<ol>
<li> My current firm, which is full of successful, well-compensated, respected, classy lawyers who have great lives does not have a single lawyer who went to Harvard or Yale Law School. People are not crippled for life by not going to Harvard or Yale Law School.</li>
</ol>

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<p>uofch:</p>

<p>A couple of points:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Michigan and Cornell are GREAT law schools and you were accepted at these two law schools with only a 3.3 GPA - how about that!</p></li>
<li><p>Has it ever occurred to you that the high LSAT score that you obtained was due to the great education that you received at Chicago?</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>I think people are being a little harsh to the OP, but of course, these are valid points. I don’t know how I’d feel if I had been rejected from all Tier 1 law schools and came on to CC only to find you seemingly dismissing Michigan and Cornell…</p>

<p>I think a major issue here is the myth that many seem to believe, the myth that Chicago academics are more difficult than at other schools by several degrees of magnitude. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not very qualified to speak on the subject as a rising freshman, but while Chicago academics are certainly challenging and perhaps harder than other top schools, they’re not THAT much harder, even if it sometimes seems that way when everyone’s wearing shirts that say “If I wanted an A, I’d have gone to Harvard”.</p>

<p>Deluding yourself that way is dangerous.</p>

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<p>do I remember correctly that decades ago the Med schools and/or law schools would multiply the GPA by an index depending on what school the applicant graduated from?</p>

<p>what ever happened to this practice?</p>

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<p>Top student coming out of HS, loves learning, worked really hard even to the extent of eschewing social life, has GPA of 3.3.</p>

<p>One of these does not belong. Chicago is not <em>that</em> hard.</p>

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<p>I agree with JHS, it is not the end of the world. Also, as a parent of a 2nd year at uChicago, I found Cue7’s advice valuable enough to cut and paste his threads and send them to my S. to warn him about uChicago and pre-law. Law schools and for that matter medical schools couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the life of the mind. law schools and medical schools really don’t know what makes a good attorney or a good physician so they fall back on the quantitative approach. UChicago is at fault for not providing better pre-law guidance from day one. So far as a parent, I am not that impressed with the administration of student services at Chicago. They are far behind their intellectual peer institutions in this regard.</p>