From Anna Ivey, former dean of admissions at the University of Chicago Law School:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-ivey-guide-to-law-school-admissions-anna-ivey/1103016469?ean=9780156029797
" I crack open the next one on top of the pile, a file belonging to a woman named Sarah. I scan her application form, her LSAT scores, and her college transcript in less than a minute and conclude that her GPA is just below our GPA median, and that her LSAT score is just above our LSAT median. As dean of admissions, I could easily write an “A” for accept or a “D” for deny at the top of Sarah’s file based on this hard data alone, so the fate of her application depends entirely on the remaining four minutes I spend scanning the “soft stuff” of her application: her essay, her recommendations, her résumé, and her addendum."
For those who say that GPA/LSAT are basically all that matter in law school admissions: Not so, says the former dean of admissions of a prominent law school. Soft factors count, particularly when around the median, numbers-wise.
To add to this, the same U. of Chicago former dean of admissions says, very clearly, that your GPA will be considered in the context of where you went to college:
http://www.annaivey.com/iveyfiles/2010/10/does_it_matter_where_i_went_to_college_when_law_schools_evaluate_my_undergraduate_
So numbers alone aren’t everything.
There are really four types of applicants:
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Those above both medians – (and note, Anna speaks to being below the GPA median, which for Chicago is important).
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Those who are “reverse splitters” – above median GPA, but below median LSAT.
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Regular splitter – below median GPA and above median LSAT.
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Below both medians: better bring a HUGE hook.
Logically, undergrad school may come into play in Cat 3.
But the real question, is what is the admit % of those in category 1 who attend Podunk Regional State?
And btw: if Anna, or any other consultant, was to suggest that Cat 1 was *only/i] about the numbers, she’d lose a lot of potential clients. In other words, it’s be bad for 'bidness.
bluebayou, I have a lot of respect for your and your posts. I’m not quite following one thing: is your last sentence above in effect stating that the U. of Chicago Law School former admissions deal isn’t being truthful about law school admissions just to sell more books?
However, keep in mind Chicago has changed their policy regarding admissions…Now they are much more GPA obsessed where both their lower 25% and median are a bit higher than even Harvard’s.
In my opinion schools like Columbia and NYU have a more fair admissions policy than Chicago or Berk since the LSAT is an even playing field and you don’t have the differences between GPA’s among schools and inflation/deflation that aren’t necessarily taken into account by the GPA.
I would more believe it in practice if Chicago or Berk admitted a 3.3 non URM Engineer that went to a school with a lot of grade deflation
@bluebayou: Don’t forget URM, which is also an important category.
demo: as you know, a hook, which includes URM, makes up for a lot of non-numerical items.
Yeah, but Chicago is not seeking low GPA’s and Boalt it not seeking non-URM engineering applicants! 
Happy: perhaps bcos I am a cynic by nature – grew up on the wrong side of the tracks – I learned to become a very critical reader. Note, Ivey’s example: standard splitter, of which Chicago does not favor, since they are big on high GPAs. In other words, a below median GPA has to have something else to move to the next pile – admit/committee review.
But note, her example was not of a Cat 1 applicant. So, in that respect she is being truthful for the splitter applicant.
That being said, to make a blanket statement, “that undergrad matters,” to me it has to matter for all applicants. And I would suggest that Ivey might be wording her blog differently if the applicant had above 75th’s GPA+LSAT. In such cases, she’d be looking for any reason not to accept, such as registered sex offender, academic dishonesty, etc.
Whatever Demosthenes is saying, if Joyce Curll and Anna Ivey, former admissions deans of two top-5ish law schools, say one thing (that where you go to college and other soft matters matter somewhat) and if Demosthenes says another (that GPA/LSAT are all that matters), I’ll place my bets on Joyce Curll and Anna Ivey.
First, they say similar things; if law school admissions deans really cared only about numbers, then it is unlikely that they’d all be in cahoots with each other and would falsely claim that numbers alone mattered.
Second, if they were going around lying (or otherwise distorting what happens in law school admissions), there would be a large reputational risk to them of being caught in their lies, which would harm their consulting businesses.
Third, what they say (that non-numeric factors matter most for candidates that are otherwise not off the charts) syncs with what the lawschoolnumbers.com scattergrams show.
Fourth, Demosthenes needs to find ways to cast doubt on their assertions, since otherwise Demosthenes’ years of posts are completely contradicted by them.
bluebayou, fair points. “Undergrad matters” for people who don’t have test scores and grades way above the medians for the schools to which a person applies–and those people are most of the applicant pool. So if I need to start saying that “undergrad matters unless you have test scores and grades well above your school’s medians”, then I will do so.
What I’m getting at is that Demosthenes’ constant assertions that all that matter are GPA and LSAT numbers are not true for most people. I read CC via my phone and so Demosthenes’ posts were not blocked. Demosthenes says many things that are not true at all. For example, Demosthenes says that US News rankings are based on GPA and LSAT scores. That’s not true. GPA and LSAT scores constitute only 25% of a law school’s ranking (source: US News itself, at http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/law-schools-methodology?int=9d0608); other factors, such as placement (20%, which is nearly as important as GPA/LSAT), are influenced by undergrad school name and soft factors, such as work experience and prior studies.
So “undergrad matters unless you have test scores and grades well above your school’s medians”. GPA/LSAT alone do not matter exclusively unless they’re both off the charts and there is nothing else in your application that would disqualify you.
Enough with untruths that lead law school applicants astray.
Honestly, you don’t have to be truly smart to get accepted into law school (with the exception of Ivy Leagues). Its not the same thing as applying to medical school or trying to make it an engineering program. Law students were mostly liberal arts majors. Its not that hard to get a decent GPA in a liberal arts program. If someone majored in sociology and couldn’t get at least a 3.0 GPA, I would seriously question why - even with a high LSAT score.
Many law schools these days will take almost any applicant! There is a reason for that. Applications have declined in recent years, as it has become well known that the legal field is heavily over saturated, has been for many years, and not likely to improve in the future. You will also lose three years in school when you could have spent that time gaining valuable work experience, and if you can’t get a law job right away, it will be even worse - you lose even more time. Many law grads regret having wasted time in law school, as they have been through long term unemployment. Some eke out a living on 30 or 40K, but they have to use most of their salaries to repay their student loans, which are often in excess of one-hundred thousand dollars (100K) for three years of law school. They may have to live with their parents for years, don’t go on vacations, don’t buy anything and may not even own a decent car. These are people that I know and I know what they are going through.
I guess my point is that there really is no point in stressing out about law school admissions. You’ll get accepted. Don’t worry.
Happy:
personally I am of the opinion that undergrad (and grad, if appropriate) do matter, but only at the margins. And for the purposes of cc, that means it should not be a criteria for choosing an undergrad college. There are just too many other factors involved for an 18-year-old looking at colleges. In other words, for example, don’t accept a top private over the instate public if the additional expense will weigh heavily on the family, if the sole reason for selecting said top private is to boost chances of admissions – however small that boost may be – to HLS.
So in that sense, I agree with the Demo shortcut bcos most folks asking on cc are inquiring about undergrad college selection, and to me, any marginal benefit in Prof School admissions is too minor to consider. (But not saying that top privates should not be selected in their own right. They offer much that instate publics do not.)
Does this make sense, or is my logic muddled?
bluebayou, your logic is fine.
What gets me is that people just need to be told the full, unvarnished truth when they ask on this board, as people may well pay a lot of attention to the advice that they’re given. Giving someone a shorthand description of the truth, or part of the truth, can do more harm than good.
I faced a tough decision about law school and ended up turning down one school and attending another. The person who gave me some advice that was the last piece of advice that I got before turning down the school was a prominent lawyer, so I valued the advice a lot and made a major life-changing choice based on it. Advice matters, and its impact cannot be overstated.
GPA and LSAT are certainly the main criteria in law school admissions, but they’re not the only criteria, particularly for applicants on the margins.
Demosthenes admitted on this board that Demosthenes’ advice about GPA/LSAT alone mattering is really given on the assumption that the person asking for advice not a superstar, and the advice for a superstar would be different. (Search for the term “unicorn” and you’ll find the post.) That really bothers me, since someone asking for advice should just be told the full story and be allowed to then apply the correct advice to his or her own situation; why give someone only a partial truth, assuming that the person is mediocre? Just how would the recipient of the advice feel about that?
In addition, telling someone that where you go to school makes no difference at all could result in someone choosing a lesser school. In my experience, having gone to one school (for grad school) that was much more selective/prestigious than the other, the difference in selectivity/prestige made a huge difference in my life, since being surrounded by superstars at the more selective/prestigious pushed me to accomplish more than I’d ever have otherwise accomplished. I don’t want to deny people those advantages.
@bluebayou: It is theoretically possible that there are two applicants applying to a school with identical numbers and softs, but differing institutions, and the law school can’t just add a seat and must choose between them. Then yes, law schools would probably look at undergrad name. I see no reason to believe that these kinds of situations are common or even sufficiently plausible to tell prospective law students that undergrad matters.
^^Isn’t that what I just said, Demo?
btw: applicants don’t have to have “identical numbers”; indeed, they only need to be in the same band, which from a gross standpoint, is top quartile, above median, and below median.
If an applicant is top quartile, it doesn’t matter how high in the quartile that persons is. Ditto, if below median; once below median, it doesn’t matter how far below, which is the only thing that USNews cares about. (yeah, I get that way below would give rise t the question if the student could even do what work, but that is a different matter.) Thus, I would think it would be quite commonplace that students from differing undergrads are in the same ‘band’.
But as I said earlier, for an 18-year-old choosing an undergrad college, it would be foolish to choose the top private and to assume the top grades and test scores such that HLS might be a consideration 5 years hence.
btw: Morse has not really identified how the median LSAT is exactly used in USNews’ rankings. From what I’ve read, albeit anecdotally, the LSAT number is a not a hard cutoff unlike the GPA which is. Thus, schools wanting to climb the rankings, should focus on GPA first. Moving from a 3.7 median to a 3.8 can work wonders, but a 170 to 171 might not be as impactful.
@bluebayou: It may have been what you said and I just misunderstand. I agree with what you said in this post. From USNWR’s [url=<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/law-schools-methodology%5Dmethodology%5B/url”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/law-schools-methodology]methodology[/url] it looks like it treats LSAT and GPA the same way.