<p>Harvard Law's website states that the 75th and 25th percentiles GPA/LSAT of its admitted students were 3.95 and 3.74 and and 176 and 170.</p>
<p>Does that mean top 25% of its admitted students had a GPA ABOVE 3.95 and LSAT above 176, and the lower 25% BELOW 3.74 and 170, and the middle 50% of applicatns had somewhere BETWEEN 3.95 and 3.74 and 176 and 170?</p>
<p>Yep, you got it right.</p>
<p>That’s a wrong interpretation. GPA and LSAT are independent, so you cannot conclude that the top 25% had both GPA above 3.95 and LSAT above 176.</p>
<p>If you arrange all the acceptees by GPA, then the top 25% of this arrangement would have GPA above 3.95, next 50% would have GPA between 3.74 and 3.95, last 25% GPA below 3.74.</p>
<p>If you arrange all the acceptees by LSAT, then the top 25% of this arrangement would have LSAT above 176, next 50% would have LSAT between 170 and 176, last 25% LSAT below 170.</p>
<p>Thats statistics 101 for ya.</p>
<p>Scratch that: fiona_ is right. I misread your question. Mea culpa.</p>
<p>how the hell you get a GPA above 3.95 ?</p>
<p>Have a nearly perfect college record with just a smattering of A-'s or B+'s. An A+ here or there doesn’t hurt either. </p>
<p>At my alma mater, the top 2% of graduating seniors receive summa cum laude honors, and the cut off in 2008 was something like a 3.95. Our valedictorian had over a 4.0.</p>
<p>crmcjycereal,</p>
<p>does your college award A+s? (4.3)? </p>
<p>I can’t believe that 25% of Harvard Law’s admitted applicants had a gpa above 3.95.
These monsters – where do they come from?
I thought a majority of Harvard Law’s accepeted applicants come from the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Do most of Ivy League colleges award A+? </p>
<p>If not, does that mean the applicants got As throughout the 4 years?
Monsters!!!</p>
<p>Yes, my college does give out A+'s. How else would expect someone to get higher than a 4.0?</p>
<p>The majority of students accepted at Harvard Law do not come from the Ivy League, but Ivy League students definitely represent a plurality amongst HLS students. </p>
<p>And calm yourselves, people. You all knew that the numerical requirements for the top law schools were harsh. It only gets more difficult for Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.</p>
<p>and don’t forget that HSL accepts students from all 50 states, so it is bound to have to accept a few students from (ghast) state schools! Last year a student from Arizona State was accepted to HLS with a 4.0. (He took ASU’s full ride for NM.)</p>
<p>Luckily the numbers of admitted Harvard students aren’t nearly as tough, especially for GPA.</p>
<p>Don’t forget Ivy undergrad tends to inflate GPA in many cases</p>
<p>^Myth. Controlling for eventual standardized test scores, Ivies give LOWER grades than most universities.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=SexyKoreanGirl]
Monsters!!!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>More like … Nerds!!!</p>
<p>There’s data that supports the inflation. Not sure what the study was exactly but something like 8 of 10 at Harvard graduating with honors and half receiving A’s in a given course. That is definitely inflation. Yes, Ivy Leaguers are smart. No, they’re not that smart.</p>
<p>Harvard has cutoffs, but makes it so that the top 50% of students can graduate with honors if their grades and professor recomendations are good enough.
[Harvard</a> College :: other programs :: honors faqs :: honors faqs](<a href=“http://www.college.harvard.edu/academics/resources/honors_faqs.html]Harvard”>http://www.college.harvard.edu/academics/resources/honors_faqs.html)</p>
<p>Grade inflation at Ivies really depends on what your definition of grade inflation is. If you compare an Ivy to a top 20 state school I would say that the courses at the Ivy are tougher and if the same curves were used at an Ivy as at a state school, students would get Cs or lower while they could have easily earned As at a state school. Why is it hard to belive that 80% of Harvard students are capeable of doing A work?</p>
<p>BDM did some analysis comparing LSAT scores to GPAs and found that top schools have lower grades for teh same LSAT scores or something like that. Do a search.</p>
<p>
You’re confusing the different kinds of inflation.</p>
<p>There’s absolute inflation (“too many Harvard kids get A’s”), which is a normative value judgment. This is not a data-answerable question. There’s time-series inflation (“Harvard kids get more A’s than they used to”), which is unquestionably true.</p>
<p>But what we’re discussing here is cross-sectional inflation (“Harvard kids get more A’s than they would at less-selective schools”). And the available data demonstrates that this is false, at least among pre-law students.</p>
<p>
So the top 50 schools should give everyone A+ because god knows they would get that at ASU? You’re always graded against your peers. If ASU is Harvard’s peer, then I have no problem with your assertion.</p>
<p>Well, law schools are in fact evaluating everybody in the same pool, so in that sense all undergraduate universities are “peers”. The point is not that schools should adjust their grading schemes; it’s that observers (including admissions committees) should understand that high GPAs at Ivies are not because the schools are easier.</p>
<p>By and large, they do understand this. LSDAS publishes that information for them, anecdotally we can see that they do make SOME adjustments for it, and (until it got caught) Berkeley law used to use a chart which basically adjusted a candidate’s GPA based on where he went to school. And, in agreement with my calculations, they gave more points to Ivies and such.</p>
<p>^^ I think the logic you’re presenting is flawed because of what your comparison is to; if we separate colleges into three rough catagories (and I do mean rough), we have 1) ivys + upper tier LAC’s and more acclaimed state schools, 2) most state schools + other middle range universities, and 3) lower level state schools, smaller universities (in your case ASU). </p>
<p>If we assume 3 to be the measuring stick to measure everyone by, then obviously almost everyone else is doing “A” work. However, I think BDM’s comparison is to a different norm; in his case the measuring stick I’m assuming is somewhere between the bottom of 1 and the upper part of 2. I think his argument still holds true: an average student from Harvard attending one of these schools probably would have a better GPA, which is why Harvard uses grade inflation to balance this out as so not to hinder their own students success.</p>