<p>What is considered a competitive/good GPA for top law schools?
Also, when during UG should someone start prepping for the LSAT/ or will be armed with enough skills to start prepping?</p>
<p>That’s an extremely weighted question (regarding the GPA) and can’t really be answered with a single numerical response. </p>
<p>For the first part, varying law school can have varying competitive GPA. What could be “competitive” at Columbia is not necessarily competitive at say Harvard or Yale. </p>
<p>The next reason your question cannot be answered is because, as I’m sure you know, Law School admissions is about the synthesis of GPA and LSAT. Therefore, whether or not your GPA is “competitive” is entirely based on your LSAT score. For example, two students could have 3.7’s, but if the prior has a 175 and the latter has a 165, they will obviously not be competitive at the same schools. </p>
<p>In general, to be competitive I would say you would need to find yourself in the 25-75 percentile (middle 50%) of both LSAT and GPA for a given top school. A rough estimate of these numbers can be found here: </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html]Top”>Law School Rankings]Top</a> 2010 Law School Rankings<a href=“If%20anyone%20has%20a%20better%20site%20with%20what%20they%20feel%20are%20more%20accurate%20numbers,%20please%20chime%20in.”>/url</a></p>
<p>Notice that a 3.7 COULD be competitive at Columbia, if you’re LSAT lies within the 170-175 range. However, even a 4.0 will not be competitive if you are not at least above a certain threshold (for Columbia, I would estimate this to be a 167/168). </p>
<p>As for as the LSAT, based on my knowledge of what I’ve read on this board people generally begin preparing for it either before or during junior year and take it late junior year or early senior year.</p>
<p>Great thank you! I was also wondering, apart from GPA and LSAT scores, what other factors are important for law school admission? I know ECs factor in, but to what extent?</p>
<p>Depends on the school. Yale and Stanford are one extreme; NYU and GULC are the other.</p>
<p>The GPA required also depends on where you went to undergrad. If you have the numbers (GPA and LSAT), you won’t ever need more than one or two semi-serious ECs even when applying to law schools like Yale and Stanford, which emphasize their holistic approach to each application.</p>
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<p>It’s interesting (i.e., funny) that you chose to use those two schools as examples, as they are schools that are known for not merely paying lip service to the notion of holistic review. They actually engage in that process. Thus, some “serious” softs are almost a pre-requisite for those two schools (and, in my opinion, also for Boalt).</p>
<p>^ Most definitely agree with flowerhead. If you’re aiming for YLS or Stanford, sans 180/4.3 you will almost surely need strong soft factors. </p>
<p>However, it seems as though the OP has the best undergraduate name you can think of, so that’s already a strong soft factor in itself. </p>
<p>To your specific question about what helps other than LSAT and GPA, here are a list of things I feel help that are in no particular order and are definitely not the only things:
- Work experience (either during the summer or after Undergrad)
- Fellowships (Goldwater, Rhodes Scholar, etc)
- Undergraduate Research
- Leadership in clubs
- Varsity Athletics at the collegiate level
- Serious international experience (meaning not just studying abroad but working or something else along those lines) </p>
<p>Again, there are obviously more things but these are the first that come to mind.</p>
<p>Great thanks for all the responses! I’m a little confused with the terminology used in these posts though, what exactly do “soft factors” mean? And when you guy say “holistic” are there any other factors apart from GPA, LSAT, ECs and the roneald’s list that factor into admission? I know we are supposed to write personal statements but how much of a factor does that weigh (I’m guessing it also depends on the school)?</p>