<p>Since this is my first post here, I'd like to say hey and thanks to anyone willing to give me advice.</p>
<p>I'm a rising junior at Columbia College, and I'm looking at t14 schools. How realistic is that goal, based on the fact I have a 3.5 GPA (political science) and I'm a URM (black male)? My dream school is HLS, and I'm a legacy there.</p>
<p>Assuming I score around 160-5, what would be my chances for t14?</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>With a 160-165? Very low.</p>
<p>He would get about a ten point boost; a 175 falls in Harvard’s 75th percentile. Legacy and minority status only seal the deal.</p>
<p>Try to raise your GPA as high as you can to play it safe.</p>
<p>I’m with kwu.</p>
<p>ya, 160s=low</p>
<p>A 165+ and a decent personal story and you should have chance. For these sort of chance questions you want to check out lawschoolnumbers.com to see what gpa/lsat other URMs had.</p>
<p>A 10 point boost? that’s just ridiculous.</p>
<p>This isn’t 1960s anymore.</p>
<p>Why are blacks given an advantage just because of their skin color?</p>
<p>I know this argument was given before in the case of Univ. of Michigan Affirmitive action case, but this practice of giving a 10 point boost seems to be a discrimination against people of other race.</p>
<p>Seriously, what is barring black people from succeeding today? </p>
<p>I now understand why Judge Thomas of the Supreme Court, currently the only black, so detests affirmitive action.</p>
<p>^ Like it a lot, we have no choice but accept this practice until it is changed (My guess is that it would be half a generation later).</p>
<p>According to this article:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?em[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?em</a></p>
<p>“One study found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3; a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words, leaving that child at a disadvantage in school.”</p>
<p>So, if we want to blame anybody for this, blame the parents who do not have the means to give their children a good environment.</p>
<p>Another “soft factor” that we can not completely ignore (whether we like it or not): In many professions (esopecially law and to a little bit less extent, medicine), where/how (thus ethnic group) the lawyer/doctor were brought up still matters. In our city (which is considered as a “blue” city rather than a “red” one, if it matters), there are often conflicts between a minority neghberhood and the police department. At another time, there was a conflict between a policeman and a housewife from a super-wealthy neighborhood. I think the conflict is partly due to the fact that their backgrounds are so different and had a biased view toward each other even before the conflict started.</p>
<p>I believe most of us think it is better to transcend the race, unfortunately we are not there yet.</p>
<p>I also suspect (but not very sure about it) that, if there is no such affirmative action in place, the congressmen at the state level (some of them representing the interest of their “mostly minority” district) may have the political power to shut down (or at least hurt them financially) some of these public professional schools.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I am not from an under represented group. BTW, if you think the admission process (at undegraduate or graduate/professional school level) treats you unfairly, ask your family members to vote. When your ethnic group do not have enough political power, you really do not have any say on this issue – no matter how reasonable your argument may be. Call me pessimestic, but I think this is how the society works.</p>
<p>To be honest, I wasn’t looking for a sociopolitical discourse on the merit/detriment of affirmative action. While I totally understand many find it a grossly unfair practice, the reality is that race is a factor in law school admissions.</p>
<p>What I would like to hear from people is a rough guess as to how much AA would add to my application to t14s, as well as how large a part legacy plays at HLS. And as a closing question, does going to Columbia University strengthen the application, or do law schools not really consider it?</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>Legacy and Columbia each add a little.</p>
<p>I think a 163 is a T14 lock; a 165 almost certainly gets you into T6 territory.</p>
<p>[LSN</a> :: Welcome to LawSchoolNumbers.com](<a href=“http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com%5DLSN”>http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com)</p>
<p>^^ Like I said, LSN will answer all of your questions. Look at the numbers of URM admits to all of the schools going back several years.</p>
<p>Keep AA until we adopt a Finnish educational model (crosses fingers). Good luck sir on your HLS pursuit, but legacy and URM are HUGE bonuses. Best bonuses you could compile.</p>
<p>-undergrad doesn’t matter, law schools only care about GPA/LSAT scores</p>
<p>-study your ass off for LSATs, if you get 173+ you could get into t10. 160-165 means reject/waitlist hell from t25. </p>
<p>-Legacy for which school: Harvard undergrad or HLS?</p>
<p>-URM helps, but not by 10 points…that’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>–Undergrad only matters a little.</p>
<p>–That’s true if you ignore race.</p>
<p>–That’s a good point.</p>
<p>–If anything I think 10 points is an underestimate.</p>
<p>I concede my previous post- excepting the legacy question. Just asked someone and chance of OP getting into t14 with current stats is good… as much as that angers me.</p>
<p>I never realized URM status meant that much. I could see OP getting into HLS with a 160-165 LSAT if there was a 3.8+ GPA to go along with it, but 160-165 with 3.5? </p>
<p>I guess I’m just very shocked with the idea that URM status would give an applicant a +10 point boost on LSATs, seeing as how a 1-point difference between LSAT scores makes a significant difference. Are there statistics that back this up? I’m just curious</p>
<p>The consensus floating around LSD – I haven’t been there for a few months – seems to be that AA status is worth about 0.3 to the GPA and 13 points on the LSAT. Hispanic status is worth about half that and shrinking.</p>
<p>I don’t have any statistics available offhand, except that fewer than 100 AA’s score 165+ per year. I believe AA’s are roughly 7% of the student body at the T6 schools, so that pretty much means AA schools want every single 165+, and will still have some room.</p>
<p>Moreover, 10 LSAT points out of 60 (the spread from 120-180) is actually smaller than what we see AA’s receive in undergraduate admissions (240 points out of 1200) and in medical school admissions (10 points out of 42). And those, I do have official statistics for. See Espenshade et al (2005) and the AAMC website for those.</p>
<p>The reason I bring up the significance of 1 point on the LSAT and not the SATs is because law schools generally (although not in this case) only care about LSAT and GPA. So even if the LSATs only have a 60 point spread, the significance of each point becomes that much more important, whereas in college admissions there are many other factors to be considered. </p>
<p>I know OP doesn’t want comments on AA, the 13 point LSAT boost/0.3 GPA boost shocks me. Though if anything I’d like to see where the AA applicants place in the class rankings of the law schools they get into.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info.</p>
<p>Richard Sander offered a very controversial paper a while back. I think he missed one crucial assumption he was making and that his conclusions were off, but what’s not in dispute is his set of starting facts.</p>
<p>One of his opponents on this subject, Ian Ayres, says up front: “Richard Sander’s study of affirmative action at U.S. law schools highlights a real and serious problem: the average black law student’s grades are startlingly low.”</p>
<p>Where did you all get this “10 point” bonus for AA from? Has Harvard or any of the other T14 or even T25 released a written statement saying “Hey, the darker your skin is, the less work you have to do in school” (of course a bit more articulated ;))?</p>