Mean LSAT scores at top universities

College Search & Selection
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<p>I assume he’s talking about working straight away, without a professional or graduate degree, and you help to underscore his point. Top LACs will need to offer strong acceptance to those professional schools, because without them it will be difficult for students to get a high paying job that rewards them for their high intelligence. Also, Wall Street is clearly not for everyone, especially now :wink: Students who have a marketable degree like engineering may not need to try so hard for the LSAT, because they have a 60k/yr job lined out for them if they at least meet national averages so law school isn’t a life or death thing for them, as it may be for some LAC grads.</p>

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<p>Hey, can somebody help me find out what the average LSAT score is for students at Bowdoin College?</p>

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<p>WUSTL turns brilliant minds to mush.</p>

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<p>WUSTL is overrated because its ranks are artificially boosted by USNWR due to their marketing practices. It’s not really that WUSTL is bad, or that their tactics haven’t paid dividends. It’s just sort of disingenuous.</p>

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<p>Marketing practices? I’m assuming you mean sending a lot of mail, which results in more applications, which results in a lower acceptance rate, which accounts for a whopping 1.5% of the USNWR ranking. </p>

<p>Of course, attracting more applications also likely attracts more qualified students, which in turn increases the quality of the student body. But that’s all artificial, of course.</p>

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<p>^ Obviously the quality of the student body isn’t all that hot, in comparison to top schools (notice I don’t say “other” top schools ;))</p>

<p>WashU is notorious for waitlisting the very students that would make the student body world-class, simply because they know that the vast majority of those students are using WashU as a last resort and would almost never attend.</p>

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<p>This has nothing to do with the schools and only what students choose to major in. It’s not like a history major at Georgetown (national university) has any more marketable skills than a history major at Wesleyan (LAC).</p>

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<p>No but at GT they have the option to study a more marketable major. I’d love to hear what GT grads in the liberal arts are doing this year if they got jobs.<br>
Wall Street is not hiring in the numbers they did a few years ago. The top few will get jobs but the rest are looking at grad school, TFA/Peace Corps, or lattes.
And Harvard is a little exceptional, No? What about all the grads of Hamilton, Grinnell and Kenyon?</p>

<p>While LACs may have some basic CS classes few are recruited by the top CS firms.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>But what does that have to do with LSAT scores? I imagine that most people taking the LSAT are doing so because they plan to apply to law school. It’s not like it’s a test that lots of people take just for fun. And if someone is applying to law school, I imagine they are normally doing so because they want to go there, or at least want the option. Most people who want to go to law school want to go to the best one they can. So the people with marketable majors either won’t apply, or will have just as much incentive as anyone else to study and do as well as they can so they can get into a top school. </p>

<p>Basically, if there is an engineering major, they either won’t take the LSAT because they are going to work in engineering, or they will decide “hey, actually I change my mind, I want to go to law school,” and then they will have just as much incentive as anyone else to study hard.</p>

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<p>Because at places like UCB and other major state schools many of the smartest kids are in engineering, CS, business and the like. At LACs the smartest are probably looking at Law or Med schools. So at one you are getting the cream of the class taking the LSAT and at others maybe nto so much. You just don’t know if the sample taking the LSAT is a good sample of all the students. So you cannot conclude anything about the school from LSAT score averages. Pretty basic stats if you ask me.</p>

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<p>^^may also be true for Cornell. Since one half the SAT is math and, like all top eng programs, Cornell eng students average high 700’s…</p>

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<p>“At places like UCB and other major state schools many of the smartest kids are in engineering, CS, business and the like. At LACs the smartest are probably looking at Law or Med schools.”</p>

<p>Lol, what is that claim based on?</p>

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<p>The typical admissions stats of those depts which are more selective than the school as a whole.</p>

<p><a href=“Prospective freshman FAQs - Berkeley Engineering”>Prospective freshman FAQs - Berkeley Engineering;

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<p>SAT’s, LSAT’s, MCAT’s, GRE’s and gpa’s don’t measure the most important characteristic of a job candidate (or productive citizen) of all: ETHICS. </p>

<p>In this time of near total and catastrophic collapse of our financial markets and banking system, it is worth noting that the people most responsible for the fraud and bubbles of wallstreet were often the best and brightest college graduates.</p>

<p>There is a very big lesson in that.</p>

<p>People who spend an inordinate amount of time (beyond mild curiosity seekers) on college rankings and all the petty minutiae they dig up to justify their narcissistic condescension of others in supposedly lower ranking schools because “the quality of the student body” doesnt fit their neat and tidy version of perfection are not the sort of people I would like to spend a career with anyway. Let alone re-spend my incredibly rewarding college years at a second tier university that I would not trade for a free ride at Harvard. </p>

<p>True people of character see the value and benefit of a higher education at many institutions of higher learning, and value and appreciate what many schools, some of them well off the beaten path of USNWR rankings, do for their particular student body.</p>

<p>I always find it very humorous that some of these so called “lesser” schools that people sneer at have faculty halls filled with PhD’s from the Ivy League and top tier schools. If they were such awful schools, I am sure these top graduates and PhD’s would not be teaching there, many of them with tenure.</p>

<p>I was at a very small southern Virginia college just last week. Its a near perfect fit for one of my kids. Including a competitive Equestrian athletic program. I could care less what the average gpa is or SAT score. The only thing we cared about were the academic programs, the nurturing faculty and administration, the facilities and the overall character of the school as embodied in the ethics and ethos of the students. </p>

<p>Many of the students at this college go onto Veterinary, Medical, Dental, Law and MBA school. Is it Harvard? No. Is it Emory? No. But its a perfectly wonderful place with bright and cheerful people who seem to really like being there. This school contributes as much to society in educating its student body as does any other school in the USNWR rankings.</p>

<p>Elitism is a very unfortunate quality in someone’s personality if you ask me. Nothing wrong with a healthy dose of pride about where you go to school. That is school spirit. But when it meanders over the bright red line of integrity into elitism and snobbery, its ugly and more than a little bit unfortunate.</p>

<p>Just my two cents.</p>

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<p>I agree with most of your points except two of them.</p>

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Most of them are there because they want to get into academia and have no other options. In a time when even visiting professorships are hotly contested (200 applications for one spot), a tenured position at ANY college looks pretty darned good. </p>

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Most of these posters are high school students. Some of them are insecure about their options; others want to brag. Regardless of their reasons, most of them settle down once they reach college. CC has a few college students and alumni who persist in that mode of thinking, but fortunately such posters are few and far between. </p>

<p>Was the college Hollins, by any chance? I have two friends who graduated from there and absolutely adored it. Virginia has several great overlooked colleges.</p>

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<p>Sounds like Hollins, Sweet Briar or Randolph College.</p>

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<p>You are BOTH very close. We have toured Hollins (a friend of my oldest is there now), Randolph, Roanoke, Sweet Briar and JMU. On a lark we popped over to Bridgewater College. Its heritage is German Anabaptist-Church of the Brethren, but its more an affiliation, not a doctrinal thing. We were stunned with the warmth, beauty, unassuming nature of the campus. Their Equestrian Program is young (9 years) but its gaining in stature with several NCAA Div. III awards and championships. Their Equestrian program is on a stunning farm they own outright, five miles south in Weyers Cave, in rolling Shenandoah Valley hills. The college owns 29 horses but you may bring your own if you please. The Equestrian Director is a no nonsense woman who demands that her riders perform academically and mentors them accordingly, checking up on their class progress throughout the semester. Many new buildings on campus, including some HUGE new dorms. It has strong academics, but is coeducational, contrary to Sweet Briar and Hollins. Its a dry campus, of course. </p>

<p>Strong record of graduates making it into grad schools, and strong ties to UVa. (Founder was a UVa alumnus). </p>

<p>It was not on our list of schools, but it certainly is now. For this child of mine, it seemed like a perfect fit, though we are not Baptists. We spent 2 hours in Admissions and they were as welcoming and warm and genuine as any place we have ever visited. Answered all of our questions directly and honestly. </p>

<p>A quick check on their Bulletin of Courses, looking at faculty credentials revealed some heady degrees from Georgetown, Notre Dame, Virginia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Furman…on and on. </p>

<p>When they told us they nurture and mentor their students as individuals and holistically, it just rang genuine to me. Not talking points, but genuine philosophically and educationally (pedogogically). </p>

<p>Its a very small college in a small town, near a larger city (Harrisonburg), 10 miles south of JMU. The tour guide was an URM student (mixed race) who was genuine, honest and caring. So for us, this works, and its skyrocketed up near the top of the list.</p>

<p>It doesnt hurt that the Equestrian Director was highly interested in us. Its yet another example of how colleges off the beaten track can be an epiphany for certain students and families, and how a college visit…sometimes an unplanned visit…can open your eyes to opportunities.</p>

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<p>As a Duke Pre-Law Student, I must say: GO DUKE!</p>

<p>:)</p>

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I would like to point out that the stats at LACs are skewed. They weeded out the losers and do not include them in the average. The committee would tell you to get lost if they don’t think you’re competitive. Hence, your stats aren’t in the aggregated average.<br>
Actual average would be lower.<br>
Don’t kid yourself thinking if you go to Amherst, your chance at a medical school/T14 law school is 95%+ or whatever. No no no.</p>

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Your school isn’t on the list because the list lists top universities. =)</p>