<p>I know there have been similar threads in the past, but they all seem to end with a debate about grade inflation and prestige. I am trying to find information about how my 2.8 from Harvard will translate when applying to law schools. I am preparing for the September LSAT and am unsure if the Boston College grids will apply to my gpa and scores once I find out how I do on the test. </p>
<p>Basically, will a Harvard undergrad help my GPA at all? I want to know where I should start looking to apply. Let's assume LSAT is 160-170 range. Any advice, information, or current research on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>The general consensus is that the strength of your undergraduate college is treated as a ‘soft’ factor, along with your extracurriculars and the like. It’s a good thing, but is by no means an important factor. Most people believe the reason for this is that law schools have to report UG GPA, and not UG quality, to USNWR. Having a degree from Harvard will help you, but will it compare favorably with, say, a 3.5 GPA from the University of North Florida? No.</p>
<p>based on my observations,
what is important in law school admissions is how the applicant benefits the school,
as in, having strong numbers (3.9+ GPA 175+ LSAT) would raise the avg GPA and LSAT of the school, and consequently, its USNWR ranking. </p>
<p>the fact that you went to Harvard for undergrad, while admirable, probably wouldn’t benefit the law school much. Hence, a 3.5 GPA from North Florida State University would most likely be favored over a 2.8 GPA from Harvard.</p>
<p>Considering the very significant grade inflation at Harvard, your 2.8 is disastrous.
Since all top law schools place a great deal of emphasis on GPA, you’re going to want to apply to schools where you’ll be at or above the 75th percentile in terms of LSAT score.</p>
<p>^I would not say that is was a total waste, but definitely an impediment from getting into a top law school. Follow the advice of the poster who said to look at schools where your LSAT score would look very strong in their applicant pool. Best wishes! :)</p>
<p>wow, getting a 2.8 from the school with arguably the most grade inflation out there, you should be ashamed of yourself for either wasting financial aid’s money or wasting your parents money</p>
<p>That post does not PROVE anything, to tell you the truth I have no idea what it is even saying. Grade inflation is not a myth, it is a well know fact.</p>
<p>Of course grade inflation is a well-known fact. But it happens in reverse from how people normally think of it. Big state schools like Berkeley and Los Angeles are the inflated ones; small privates like Harvard and Princeton are, relatively, deflated.</p>
<p>The explanation is right there. Using standardized testing to measure out a control, the same student is likely to get a higher GPA from UCB than Harvard.</p>
<p>bdm, with all respect, you could be clearer in your response; you’re not talking about grade inflation at a school but specifically the (median) grades of law school applicants compared to those applicants’ (median) LSAT’s. The post by jonrio is clear and you then did the math. I’ve stuck a quote from jonrio’s post below. His and your point then was that you get a simple ratio, as indicated in the last paragraph quoted below. </p>
<p>In this light, a poster with a gpa of 2.8 will look worse. (My questions are: why are going to law school? Is that what you actually want to do?)</p>
<p>From jonrio’s original post:"As I’ve posted before, the way law schools get a “quick fix” on grade inflation/deflation is by comparing the median GPA earned by law school applicants from a given college with the median LSAT earned by those applicants. The LSDAS compiles that. It uses the SAME methodology to compute the median GPA for all colleges. It is NOT the median GPA reported by the college that matters—it is the median GPA for the college as calculated by LSDAS vs. the median GPA earned by applicants to law school–NOT all students–from a particular undergraduate institution.</p>
<p><cut></cut></p>
<p>If the median LSAT is 166, the median GPA “should be” a 3.3. So, in theory, a school where the median GPA of actual law school applicants is a 160 and the median gpa is a 3.0 and a school where the median LSAT is 166 and the median GPA is 3.3 are viewed as being equally grade inflated/deflated."</p>
<p>Fair enough. The person who responded to me complained that he didn’t understand what I was saying, so I attempted to simplify–perhaps I did so excessively.</p>
<p>I’m having trouble understanding the concept. At ~3.6, Brown has arguably the highest mean gpa of any top college. And, one just has to assume that what (few) B’s are given out, they predominate in the math-sciences (at least according to cc’s melody). Thus, the median gpa of Brown’s law school applicants (social science and humanities majors) almost has to be higher than 3.6, but yet your data interpolation show the opposite since Brown has a negative number.</p>
<p>To the OP: yes, a sub 3.0 from a school known for grade inflation is not good. Schools like H just don’t give out too many C’s.</p>
<p>BB: The point is that you can’t just look at the raw GPA, you have to adjust for the sort of students who are earning those GPAs. In a prelaw population, the logical metric to do that is the LSAT. (This is particularly the case because we only have GPAs for prelaw students anyway.)</p>
<p>So using that adjustment, we can see that schools like Harvard are actually LESS inflated–that is, more difficult–than a school like UCLA. Harvard students get higher GPAs, but they do more better, so to speak, on the LSAT.</p>
<p>But as others have alluded to, the analysis applies only to the ‘pre-law’ population, which is not fixed, but is actually endogenous to both the GPA and the opportunities at the undergrad school. Somebody who gets terrible grades at Berkeley probably won’t take the LSAT in the first place because he knows he can’t get into law school - in fact, he may not even be able to complete his undergrad degree at all. What is especially problematic is that the person might actually be highly talented and hence have scored a high LSAT if he had taken it, but just happened to have chosen an extremely difficult major - i.e. engineering - that ruined his GPA. Couple that with the fact that taking an engineering job, assuming that you are in fact able to complete the engineering degree (albeit with mediocre grades), is probably better than going to the low-tier law schools to which your opportunity set is restricted.</p>
<p>The selection problem may exist via a different mechanism, but with the same ultimate directionality, at Harvard. I believe the LSAC process only compiles the records of students who actually appply to law school, meaning that you can take the LSAT, view your score, and then decide whether to apply. Hence, a Harvard student with top grades but who scores a relatively mediocre LSAT will realize that he probably won’t get into a top law school and hence may choose to pursue some of the other career opportunities available at Harvard, i.e. a high paying job in consulting or banking. I myself have heard Harvard undergrads say that unless they think they have a decent shot at a top 3 law school, they probably won’t even apply at all. </p>
<p>The upshot is that the prelaw population, and hence the average GPA and LSAT score of that population, is not fixed, but is itself determined by the GPA and LSAT scores scored by those students, in conjunction with the other opportunities available at that school. The mere act of applying to law school puts you in a peculiar and highly self-selected group. It is therefore unclear just what information can be extrapolated from the prelaw population that applies to the school as a whole.</p>
<p>This all has meaning ONLY in the context of law school admissions and specifically ONLY when you use the LSAT to establish a ratio. The point being made is that Harvard students have high LSATs and if you plotted the LSATs of applicants from other schools you can construct a scale. BDM sensibly set the scale to the median, but there are limitations. As for example, GPA is not as flexible as LSAT scoring, meaning the LSAT has more possible number results and GPA only has a few possible numbers. If kids - as in law school applicants from Harvard - score higher by 25 points over the median then that compresses on to the GPA scale and thus it looks like Harvard’s law school applicants should all be getting higher grades than they do (or are possible). </p>
<p>Grade inflation at Harvard is real, as it is at Brown. The point being made is that if you take this scale based on LSAT scores you can work backwards to figure out what GPA that would be equivalent. That doesn’t mean x school is actually harder than y. It means the applicants from x school have higher LSAT’s and that’s about it. The process values LSATs a lot, for right or wrong.</p>
<p>BTW, I was at a college dog & pony show this PM and the admissions director speaking talked about how little he values ratings - and how very few people look at how they are compiled or how much error is built in. He is one of three to fill out the USNWR survey. He barely knows most of the schools and he’s been in the field for a long time. So he ranks the few he can sort of kind of rank. Afterwards, we were talking and we agreed the surveys and the methods used merely reinforce the existing prestige structure.</p>
<p>As others have suggested, check with your pre-law adviser to see the grids. </p>
<p>Also study hard for the LSAT. PSedrish, the former moderator of this site, had a D who had about a 3.2 from Harvard. Scored a 180. Got into HLS and won a free ride to UMichigan. </p>
<p>Now obviously, a 180 is hard to pull off. However, I just want you to know you have a chance of getting into a good law school. </p>
<p>And, personally, I don’t think a 2.8 from H is a “disgrace.” A lot depends upon the pattern of the grades, the background of the individual and the course selection. </p>