Medical schools are major agnostic. Applicants are not obligated to have completed any particular major so long as they present with the necessary prerequisite subjects which can be completed as part of their general education credits.
correct. (and I never said otherwise.)
Several web sites post scattergrams for law school admission. They vary somewhat from school to school, but the general pattern is that they closely follow a combination of GPA and LSAT. The outliers who get in with lower stats are generally URMs, not students who attended MIT or similar.
As an example, I looked up the scattergram for NYU at NYU Law School - Admissions Graph | Law School Numbers . I chose NYU because it was a T10 law school with a large sample that does not have stats almost exactly at the maximum. After removing the post-COVID 2020-21 and 2021-22 cycles, it looks like a few hundred application decisions remain. There appears to be a stat thresholds similar to below. Above this threshold, the applicant is almost certain to be either accepted or waitlisted. Below this threshold, they are probably going to be rejected.
4.0 GPA – 164+ LSAT = accepted or waitlisted
3.9 GPA – 165+ LSAT = accepted or waitlisted
3.8 GPA – 167+ LSAT = accepted or waitlisted
…
3.5 GPA – 171 + LSAT = accepted or waitlisted
However, there were a significant number of outliers who were accepted with lower stats, sometimes much lower. These were almost without exception URMs. The 4 lowest stat acceptances are listed below.
- 3.23 GPA + 162 LSAT – Black, female, non-traditional applicant, Liberal arts major, Undergrad school not listed
- 3.29 GPA + 164 LSAT – Black, female, other info not listed
- 3.34 GPA + 165 LSAT – Black, female, non-traditional applicant, Political science major, Howard University
- 3.24 GPA + 166 LSAT – Black, female, non-traditional applicant
There appear to be no non-URM acceptances significantly below the stat threshold mentioned above, as if there is a hard stat threshold for non-URMs. The lowest GPA non-URM admits on that stat threshold attended a variety of different colleges and had a wide variety of majors. Selective colleges do appear to be overrpresented, although there are many exceptions… This could relate to applicants who have top soft non-stat factors also being overrepresented at selective colleges.
Having high stats above the threshold was enough to not get rejected, but not enough to get accepted. Many high stat applicants were waitlisted. The limited information available about applicants offers little insight as to why some high stat applicants were waitlisted and others were accepted. I see little pattern based on college name/type or major. I expect influence from non-stat criteria, which may or may not include course rigor. The highest stat waitlisted applicants that listed school info were as follows.
- 4.09 GPA + 179 LSAT – “Top 10” college, Engineering major
- 4.1 GPA + 177 LSAT – HYPSM, Philosophy major
- 3.91 GPA + 176 LSAT – “Mid-Tier State School”, Social Sciences major
- 4.0 GPA + 174 LSAT – “Large Public”, Political Science major
That’s NOT my argument. Especially since MIT doesn’t offer Fashion Merchandising… or anything of its ilk. My argument is that law schools READ the transcripts- i.e. don’t just accept that a 4.0 is a 4.0 is a 4.0, unlike the argument on CC that major doesn’t matter, rigor doesn’t matter, as long as you have good grades you are “in” at law school…
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Blossom : most engineering applicants can do well in LS admissions as long as they have a above median LSAT score, of which quant folks can do well. (Under the old LSAT, the easiest section to prep for was the Logic Games, which for an MIT grad, is an easy 6-8 LSAT points.) Yes, Eng types are generally applying with a lower GPA than Soft Studies, but they can make up for it in LSAT (as you mentioned previously, a so-called splitter.) Eng types can do well in the splitter competition bcos they are considered more employable – IP and other tech law. And since a small part of the rankings is graduate employment, they can get a tiny boost.
But a splitter will lose out to someone above both medians nearly every time (absent a big hook). Moreover, a Soft Studies major who is in the top quartile of (GPA+LSAT) would have to have be involved in some illegal activities not to be admitted. Heck, looking at Harvard’s classes from teh past few years (pre-covid), it has an extremely high admit rate for applicants above both medians – that where the Soft Studies (traditional liberal arts) majors fit in as first and foremost HLS has to hold its medians (if not raise them)… Engineers can get a marginal boost when competing for the splitter spots.
btw: when some of us say major don’t matter, all other things being equal, it does have a qualifier as it has to be a traditional liberal arts, engineering or business major. (Not sure Fashion Merchandising fits into those categories.)
YOU say that major doesn’t matter- meaning poli sci vs. history. But there are posters on CC who are ready to pound the table that criminal justice, recreation management, etc. are fine for law school as long as you “protect” your GPA. Which is why I asked for data upthread. I’ve seen no evidence at all in the real world that 4.0 Sports Management grads do better (or equal) traditional liberal arts grads in law school admissions. And if you want to become a top agent (which many of the sports management young people I know thought they were going to do), studying history and going to law school is a faster track than studying sports management and trying to figure out the 2022 version of “worked my way up from the mailroom”.
I like your qualifier, but many do not believe it! And criminal justice-- different kettle of fish entirely. As is “legal studies” as a major!
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I’m not one of those on cc that says a criminal justice or rec management major is “fine” for law school. I have argued the opposite. Law schools prefer a traditional liberal arts major (or eng or business) as they know that those students can do the work, and present well for obtaining that first legal job. A recreation major or Legal Studies major will give the Adcom pause that the student might not make it thru all 3 years of law school.
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I don’t make much of the C and D percentage at Brown or at any other highly selective college. The grades, standardized tests (well, prior to test-optional), ECs, etc. now required to get into Brown means that the entire student population is pretty much hard-wired to never get a C or D. For all of the legacy and donor tropes, most of those admits earned As in high school, too. Even recruited athletes at a school such as Brown got good grades in high school.
These kids are so well prepared and the competition for selective admissions is so fierce that it’s unrealistic to expect a precipitous grade dropoff in college. To use a concrete STEM example (since everyone seems to think the Ivies only teach gender studies for some reason), why would a student who earned an A in Algebra II, an A in Pre-Calc, an A in Calc I, and an A in Calc II in high school suddenly not be able to grasp Calc III in college? Especially when for many of these kids the aggregate workload (in the classroom, out of the classroom, and with ECs) in college is far less than it was in high school?
Now, there is PLENTY of what I would consider grade inflation going on at the top schools, but it’s in movement from the B into the A range. That’s what I would consider a somewhat artificial piece of the grading trend. But at the selective schools, the disappearance of the “Gentleman’s C” owes more to the reduction in the number of “gentleman” in the Ivies than it does to the grading policies.
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Totally agree, where is the data for this? Why would a law school not care about a bunch of “Ps” on a transcript? If I were on an admissions committee I would absolutely, all else being equal, choose the kid with no Ps with slightly lower grades over one with a bunch of Ps. Shows they are fearless and confident and not overly obsessed with chasing an A.