<p>admissions members from uva, penn, michigan, and uchicago law schools came to my school the other day. they enacted a mock admissions procedure with real applications and, contrary to what's been often asserted on this board, they looked at more than "just the numbers"!</p>
<p>You went to that thing at Yeshivas University? Oh, and I hope you're being ironic.</p>
<p>I went to that thing today at UPenn. It was really informative! Getting to look at what consistutes great letters of rec, essays, etc etc. They said they were going to Princeton later today, if it's coming around your school I highly recommend it.</p>
<p>Plus the applicant from Yale with the 3.79 and a 172 didn't get in. mwhaha.</p>
<p>Out of curiousity..into where? Are you claiming that someone with those numbers didn't get into LS at all?</p>
<p>We went over four mock applications into a hypothetical top law school. They said that the median was a 169 lsat. We were told that they had all been waitlisted and only one could have been accepted.</p>
<p>Applicant 1: 3.25 GPA/172 LSAT. Substantial Work Experience. Math major with upward trend. Masters degree.</p>
<p>Applicant 2: 3.79 from Yale/169. No EC's, only work experience was for father's company. Generic Letters of Rec. Quirky personal statement.</p>
<p>Applicant 3: 3.83/166. Bad conduct in past with some arrests. Lots of beneficial work experience including teaching poor youth. Good personal statement but added a repetitive optional statement.</p>
<p>Applicant 4: 3.98 from UConn/ 161. Very solid, coherent and focused application. Amazing reccomendations, lots of different coursework.</p>
<p>The added problem was if you took someone with under a 169 it would break your median, and drop it from a 169 to 168, possibly affecting rankings.</p>
<p>Applicant 1 got 1 vote
Applicant 2 got 0 votes
Applicant 3 got 1 vote (which was actually myself)
Applicant 4 got 30+ votes</p>
<p>So the audience voted? No wonder the results didn't look like conventional wisdom would suggest.</p>
<p>And, of course, the vote will come out differently depending upon the schools the audience participants attend.</p>
<p>We also considered each applicant in order, weighing strengths and weaknesses. We voted immediatley after we went over Applicant 4 while she was still fresh in everyone's mind.</p>
<p>Applicant 3 still looks the best to me.</p>
<p>Of course # 4 won the students vote- he had the lowest LSAT though it was still probably in the top 15 % of all test takers.
In the "real world", my guess would be # 1 or # 2, depending if Law school wanted to "showcase" a Yale Grad or needed the 172 to boost up the median LSAT score.<br>
Hate to sound so cynical- but I think the #'s are 80 % (probably more) of the game .
I just don't think an LSAT grade of 161 is going to get that kid into a top 20 school (unless the recommendation is from a very rich and influential uncle who has some money to donate to the Law School).
People have to realize that life doesn't end if you don't get into a top law school.<br>
and btw- applicant # 3 with an arrest record, may be a hard sell to any law school.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that this sort of exercise illustrates the differences in behavior when there's an audience.</p>
<p>For example, political polls are often different from how actual votes turn out in systematic ways. Dubner and Levitt's Freakonomics points out that black candidates tend to poll better than they eventually do in actual votes. Polls, after all, have an audience -- the pollster. Voting is anonymous. They even point out one candidate with ties to the KKK who did just the opposite -- worse in polls than in votes. "Of course I'd never vote for David Dukes!" And then they quietly do.</p>
<p>An admissions panel, making a fake decision in front of a student audience is facing two major differences. First, they don't actually have to admit the kid and face lowerings in their rankings from doing so. Second, they now have an audience which wants to hear "good news." So they can admit low-LSAT students without penalty, and they in fact like to appear as if they're considering soft factors.</p>
<p>What you need is data. You need to see kids with lower LSATs (say, three points lower) going to better schools or founding community service organizations systematically and consistently getting into law schools over less-active candidates.</p>
<p>The closest thing you have is a large compilation of anecdotes, found on lawschoolnumbers.com. Those anecdotes seem to confirm conventional wisdom on here: with a few outliers (race? donors?) the numerical cutoffs are pretty obvious.</p>
<p>yeah i voted for applicant #3 as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The bottom line is that this sort of exercise illustrates the differences in behavior when there's an audience.</p>
<p>For example, political polls are often different from how actual votes turn out in systematic ways. Dubner and Levitt's Freakonomics points out that black candidates tend to poll better than they eventually do in actual votes. Polls, after all, have an audience -- the pollster. Voting is anonymous. They even point out one candidate with ties to the KKK who did just the opposite -- worse in polls than in votes. "Of course I'd never vote for David Dukes!" And then they quietly do.</p>
<p>An admissions panel, making a fake decision in front of a student audience is facing two major differences. First, they don't actually have to admit the kid and face lowerings in their rankings from doing so. Second, they now have an audience which wants to hear "good news." So they can admit low-LSAT students without penalty, and they in fact like to appear as if they're considering soft factors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I totally agree with this. I also think part of the problem is that the admissions officers don't want to admit publicly that many applications are rejected with little or no consideration. That many people spend $50 to apply and have their applications considered for about 15 seconds.</p>
<p>Such an admission would make the admissions officers look bad and would also discourage applications (which bring in revenue and also let the school appear more selective).</p>
<p>
[quote]
What you need is data. You need to see kids with lower LSATs (say, three points lower) going to better schools or founding community service organizations systematically and consistently getting into law schools over less-active candidates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree with this too. You need to look at what admissions offices actually do, as opposed to what they claim to do.</p>
<p>It's sort of like surveying women about what qualities they like in a man. Probably they will say it's more important for him to be "nice" than "rich."</p>