<p>No, jonri, I think you are the one who is leaping to illogical conclusions.</p>
<p>First of all my point was not that Yalies never go to lower-tier law schools. The real point is that you know as well as I do that disproportionately few Yalies go to lower-tier law schools. Looking around and finding one or two guys who did go to a lower-tier law school out of the many people who have ever graduated from Yale does not disprove the basic point any more than finding one guy who did win the lottery disproves the point that buying lottery tickets is a bad investment, or finding one guy who lives to be a 100 yet smokes 2 packs of cig's a day disproves the point that smoking is dangerous. At the end of the day we both know that relatively few Yalies will go to lower-tier law schools. Take some no-name undergrad program, look where their prelaws go, and then compare that to where the Yale prelaws go, and I think even you would not seriously dispute that the statistical distribution of the former would basically be congregated in lower-tier law schools than the latter would. I happen to personally think that it's an interesting question why that is the case, which is why I went off on a tangent (and I admitted it was a tangent). If you don't think it's interesting, fine. But the point is, at the end of the day, you and I both know that far fewer Yale prelaws are going to apply to and matriculate at lower-tier law schools than do prelaws at a no-name undergrad program. That was my basic point. I was looking at statistical distributions and where the datapoints congregated, not whether you could find one guy among hundreds or perhaps thousands who went against the grain. </p>
<p>By the way, whether you happen to like Sowell or not or agree with him politically is neither here nor there. There is still the open question as to why is it that Yalies rarely apply to and matriculate at lower-tier law schools. You said that if Yalies did do so, they would probably get in. I think that's probably true, but it doesn't really matter. The fact is, very few of them are applying to such schools, and if you don't apply, you obviously can't get in. Hence, at the end of the day, some Yalies aren't getting in anywhere, and whether that's because they really aren't good enough to get in anywhere, or because they are good enough to at least get into lower-tier law schools but don't want to go to such schools (and for whatever reasons they might decide not to go to such schools), it doesn't affect the basic point which is that they aren't getting in. </p>
<p>Now about your geography contention - again, I never said that ALL Yalies who applied to Columbia but not to YLS/HLS/wherever were restricted by geography. But that's not the point. The point is that it cuts both ways. Some Yalies will apply to Columbia but not HLS because of geography, because some people need to be in New York On the other hand, some Yalies will apply to HLS but not Columbia also because of geography - some people need to be in Boston. In THAT sense, geography washes out. What I mean is that a fair thing for me to do is 'subtract' those Columbia applicants who need to be in New York, and then also 'subtract' those Harvard applicants who need to be in Boston, and then compare what remains. The point is that if you want to compare the relative number of Columbia to HLS applications, then geography cuts both ways and hence washes out. </p>
<p>Now, I think you fundamentally misunderstood a point I made before, or else I have misunderstood you. I already said that the median GPA of Yale was not 3.6. You are acting as if I assumed that I had said that. I did not. Read my post again. You said that a person with qualifications in the middle of Yale's class was good enough to get into UCLA Law. I said this is false - a person who is in the middle of Yale's prelaws who apply to law school is good enough to get into UCLA Law - but the fact is, those people are on average, better than Yalies in general. The former does indeed have a median GPA of 3.6, as the data indicates. The latter does not. </p>
<p>I posted the median GPA of Harvard because, frankly, I couldn't find the data for Yale. But my point is not that it is the same as Harvard's, but that I think I'm safe in saying that it isn't far off. Case in point. Harvard's is 3.4 Stanford's is 3.44. Princeton's is 3.4. These are all peer schools to Yale. Hence, I think I'm on safe ground when I say that Yale's GPA is probably around 3.4-3.44, simply because I think that it would be close to its peers. Yale has the same reputation of grade inflation and basically the same quality of students as these 3 schools, so I think it is a perfectly reasonable inference. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford.html</a>
<a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html</a></p>
<p>Now, I don't disagree with you that Yalies who know they want to go to law school are studying their ass off. Of course they are. But so are prelaws at any school. Admissions is a game of relativity. You don't get admitted because you present a certain set of qualifications in a vacuum. You get admitted because your qualifications are better than somebody else's. Hence, it's all relative. Hence, your notion that Yale prelaws are studying hard is not particularly relevant. As I'm sure you are aware, lots of prelaws across the country study very hard, and yet still can't get into not only the law school they want to go to, but in some cases, can't get into any law school period. Why would Yalies be any different? Surely you're not saying that a Yalie who studies hard is assured of getting into law school, but a guy from SW Missouri State who studies hard is not assured.</p>
<p>Now, as to your last 2 paragraphs proves what I have been talking about. Is it a guess on my part that those Yalies with low grades probably aren't applying to law school. Of course it is. But it is, I think, a very safe one. You know as well as I do that there are in fact Yalies with mediocre grades - i.e. below a 2.5 How many of these people are applying to law school? Probably not a lot. Yet how many of them want to go to law school, especially an elite one? Probably more than are actually applying. Case in point ,take some Yalie's with 2.5's. How many of them are applying to HLS? Few- perhaps none. Now (magically) offer them admission to HLS. I think we can both agree that many if not most of them are going to accept. That obviously means that many of them want to go (for otherwise, why would they accept), yet they don't apply because they don't think they will get in, so they're not going to waste their time. But if somebody handed it to them, they would take it. That illustrates the point that people only apply if they think they have a reasonable chance of getting it. My real point is that just because you don't apply doesn't mean you don't want it. Hence, the Yale prelaw admissions data (and all prelaw admissions data, for that matter) is skewed in the sense that it doesn't show those people who want to go to law school but don't apply because they don't think they can get in. The TRUE prelaw population is everybody who wants to go to law school, not just those people who apply to law school. The latter is a subset of the former.</p>
<p>But anyway, looking at your 2 paragraphs, you basically said it yourself - it's all based on statistics. You said that it is true of some Yalies but not true of others that they won't go to lower-tier law schools. Yep, that's exactly my point Just like I said that some Yalies with low grades are most likely not applying to law school. And if you look at the data, that's exactly what it shows. The average GPA of Yale prelaws who apply is about 3.5 That seems to very strongly indicate that the Yale prelaws with low grades aren't applying (otherwise that 3.5 would have been pulled down). I admit I obviously can't show this with 100% certainty. But that's not the point. Statistics is demonstrative.</p>
<p>And finally, as to your last paragraph, I think you need to read my post again. I never said that my example of the dog-walker proves anything about Yale prelaws. It was just an analogy that I thought of, and obviously every analogy breaks down at some point. There is no perfect analogy. The point I was making is that for some reason, a strikingly small number of Yale prelaws don't apply to no-name law schools. Whatever you might think as to why that is the case, it doesn't take away from the fact that it is the case. And furthermore, whatever reasons you might come up with don't take away from the real point which is that just because you go to Yale doesn't mean that you're automatically assured of getting into law school. </p>
<p>Finally, while I don't want to be harsh, I have to say that I am afraid that you are the one that needs to use better logic. You should have been able to tell that this is an argument based on statistical distributions. I don't understand why you are going around, finding one Yalie who went to a no-name law school. That doesn't disprove the basic point that in general, Yalies don't apply to no-name law schools. Just like finding one guy who smokes and has perfect health doesn't disprove that smoking is dangerous. You have to look at where the trend lines are, not where a few data points happen to be. And the trend is that Yalies by and large don't apply to low-level law schools. Also, the trend is that while Yalies do get into top-tier law school at a higher proportion than the national average, they clearly aren't guaranteed such a thing.</p>