<p>
</p>
<p>Well yeah, that is exactly what “high probability” means (as any high schooler in AP Stats knows full well). :rolleyes:</p>
<p>"I don’t care if you personally are dean of HLS and oversee each and every admission yourself. Data doesn’t lie. People do. When the 15 years past (why do we even care about this? Did it magically become 15 years ago when I wasn’t looking?) dean says “we care about stories,” and the data shows clear acceptance bands correlating perfectly with GPA/LSAT, then either there is an absolutely remarkable correlation between high scores and stories or the dean is full of it. "</p>
<p>No, former Dean Curll is not “full of it”.</p>
<p>People with requisite LSAT scores and grades AND a good story get into places such as HLS.</p>
<p>People with requisite LSAT scores and grades but WITHOUT a good story do NOT get into places such as HLS. They get in somewhere, but not HLS.</p>
<p>See below:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/11/11/former-hls-dean-gives-advice-joyce/[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/11/11/former-hls-dean-gives-advice-joyce/</a></p>
<p>May I ask where you went to law school yourself? You’re in effect stating that the HLS admissions office just throws a bunch of applications by people with requisite grades and LSAT scores and sufficient recommendations on the floor and picks admitted students at random, without regard to their “stories”. I’d be curious as to what kind of law school takes people like that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers”>Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers]Here[/url</a>] are Harvard’s numbers. See the nice diagonal bands? There are two possible explanations consistent with your theory about stories. Either there is an incredible correlation between good GPA/LSAT numbers and stories, or stories don’t matter. Since the former is so incredibly implausible that if you demonstrated it you would very likely be eligible for a Nobel Prize, I’m going to go with the latter. By the way, my not caring if you were the dean extends to not caring what is said in the crimson. Didn’t they test on the authority fallacy on the 15 years ago LSAT?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, the only plausible alternative to you being right is to literally pick at random. Back here in the real world we know there is this thing called “scarcity.” Simply put, there aren’t enough high GPA/high LSAT applicants to go around. That means HLS (and every other school) needs to fill the class with as many as possible. After they burn through the people that meet both they have to look at the splitters. People with a high enough score in one area to offset the lower scores in another. They are relatively easy to find on the chart at either end of the band. With the class almost full, they then turn to URMs for that all-important diversity selection. They pick the best scoring URMs who wouldn’t have otherwise made it (the vast majority of the green dots not within the band). Maybe they have a few spots left over to hand out to people with nice stories, but more likely the rest of the aberrations are simply well connected.</p>
<p>Oh, and there’s no evidence that recommendations matter either, despite all the law schools demanding them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LARGE law schools, of which HLS is one. HLS has to make a choice: protect its median numbers, or go with good stories. Since numbers are involved in rankings, and ‘good stories’ are not, only a fool adcom would ignore the former.</p>
<p>Yale and Stanford* do in fact accept folks with numbers and “good stories” but Harvard is just tool large to find such folks – because there are not enough to go around.</p>
<p>*Columbia & Chicago also accept similar folks with numbers and good stories, but to induce them to attend, C&C offer them big bucks (named scholarships).</p>
<p>“May I ask where you went to law school yourself? You’re in effect stating that the HLS admissions office just throws a bunch of applications by people with requisite grades and LSAT scores and sufficient recommendations on the floor and picks admitted students at random, without regard to their “stories”. I’d be curious as to what kind of law school takes people like that.”</p>
<p>Without being too rude, did you actually go to HLS? They usually accept people with better critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>The kind of law school that “takes people like that” is either a large one or one that is determined to protect its US News rankings (and alumni connections, donations, prestige, etc.). Demosthenes has done a good job of explaining the evidence; your “evidence” amounts to the self-interested statements of a dean. (Of course, that the dean’s statements were in her own interests do not make them false, but they should be subjected to testing and analysis, which is what Demosthenes did.) </p>
<p>Let’s also remember what two things will happen if a dean admits that it is all about GPA and LSAT: her department will be downsized and replaced with computers, and fewer people will bother applying. The former puts her out of a job; the latter makes the school look worse and might make it impossible for them to build a racially diverse class.</p>
<p>The nice diagonal bands are not quite so obvious if you add several years’ worth of results to the graph. Maybe you need a good story to keep from being waitlisted.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As you scroll back through the years, the bands are still there but do get blurrier. You’ll notice those times correspond with high applicant rates. Basically, the more high scorers around, the more choosy schools like HLS can be. Since the crash we have entered a deep contraction phase in applications (LSAT takers are down something absurd like 40%), limiting the number of good scores available and therefore tightening the bands. They’re still fairly clear even in 2003 though, the earliest for which we have data and right in the boom years. As soon as consumers began closely following USNWR, that’s all schools cared about. And since USNWR only cares about GPA and LSAT, that’s what schools care about.</p>
<p>"Without being too rude, did you actually go to HLS? They usually accept people with better critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>The kind of law school that “takes people like that” is either a large one or one that is determined to protect its US News rankings (and alumni connections, donations, prestige, etc.). Demosthenes has done a good job of explaining the evidence…"</p>
<p>Yes, I earned my J.D. from HLS in the 1990s, when Arthur Miller’s admin would bring him coffee in the middle of class, when 3 Aces Pizza was still there, when Sodexho was contracted to serve food at the Hark, etc., and I survived Gropius, Mort the Tort, the parody, Langdell construction, etc.</p>
<p>Where did you go?</p>
<p>Back on topic, my logic is fine, whether or not you are able to understand it. (If you decide to dish out rudeness, be prepared to receive some as well.)</p>
<p>The “evidence” that is shown as indicating that “stories” don’t matter is a graph showing self-reported admission/rejection numbers for a few people. Even with that “evidence”, there are some people with grades and LSAT scores below what would be considered requisite numbers but who get in, and some who don’t. That indicates that there is more to acceptance and rejection than numbers alone. If you look at acceptance/rejection charts showing all applicants (rather than just numbers of a few self-reported numbers), then the picture is clearer: simply meeting the threshold for grades and LSAT scores, by itself, does not guarantee admission at HLS or a comparable school. (Of course, if your numbers are astronomical, then you will get in unless your “story” is that of an axe murderer or the like, but otherwise you’ll be considered and non-numerical factors come into play.)</p>
<p>When I was applying to law schools, I recall seeing admissions charts showing all sorts of grades and LSAT scores and percentage admissions to law schools. Even with my grades and LSAT scores, which were at the Harvard average (as per USNWR), I had a chance of admission of far below 50%, and that was in an era, like now, when the legal services industry was in a recession, and law school applications were certainly not at a peak. As Dean Curll says, “stories” made the difference in admissions.</p>
<p>Finally, if the only thing that matters is numbers, then even though law school admissions could still require essays and recommendations, then an applicant’s numbers and other statistical information about an applicant, perhaps even tailored to the level of the specific classes that an applicant took, could be fed into a software program and an acceptance or rejection could be generated immediately. There would be bright-line thresholds (which could include many objective criteria) above which admission would be automatic and below which rejection would be automatic. There is no bright line; numbers matter a lot, but stories also matter.</p>
<p>Well, I have a son currently going through the law school application process and he applied to Harvard so I have looked at a lot of the information available on HLS admissions.</p>
<p>Interviews. Harvard expects to do Skype interviews of 1200 applicants and to offer admission to approximately 850 to enroll 550+ 1Ls for 2014. Even in the current situation HLS is getting 5500-6000 applications. My son had his interview earlier this month. He said that it was clear from her questions and statements that she had read all his submissions. I find it difficult to believe that reading and familiarizing oneself about things other than LSAT/GPA is something that is done for show.</p>
<p>Self reporting. I have looked at the law school numbers site at the Harvard applicants’ page. My son has accurately listed his status (accepted) and scores. I have arranged the stats for the applicants by status and there are already a significant number of posters who assert accepted status with LSATs of 173 and lower. Arranged by GPA, it shows a significant number of accepted applicants with averages below the median. This is after only 2 decision release clusters (one in November and one in December). There is another feature on the site that allows you to search results by LSAT and GPA. When you do this function the results for Harvard are much different than the scattergram/cluster results. (I have no explanation for that). One time I ran the GPA at the median average and did each LSAT from 173 on up. Over the last 3 cycles LSAT scores in the 175-77 range still did not have 80% accepted.</p>
<p>Not all applications are filed. The application cutoff date is Feb. 1 except for those whose test centers were closed due to weather for the Dec. test. If Harvard is currently giving out admissions offers to applicants with stats lower than the median, something other than these stats is coming into play.</p>
<p>52% of the 2013 1L’s have been out of college 2+ years. The application includes disclosure of what the applicant has been doing since high school. For a significant number of applicants college EC’s would seem to be significantly in the past. “The story” would be about after college for a lot of applicants.</p>
<p>I think stories probably matter at the margin. What’s at issue here is how wide the margin is–and it may well be true that the margin has narrowed if the number of high-stats applicants has declined.</p>
<p>Hunt–</p>
<p>My son absolutely agrees with you about this. His take is that because of the size of the Harvard 1L class and the stats of the admits, if the LSAT/GPA is in the “admit” grid, the other things can only get you declined. So, he took ALL the application seriously.</p>
<p>He was comfortably within the “admit” grid and did not seem to be overly concerned. I was less sure that it was purely numbers at any level and was very glad that he also had done things in the 2-1/2 years after college that were interesting.</p>