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Kohinoor wrote:

talibkweli wrote:

EzraStiles wrote:http://umich.edu/news/index.html?Releas ... remecourt2

notably the phrase "In two lawsuits challenging University of Michigan admissions policies, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Law School"

Maybe not affirmative action in all it encompasses, but the law school was not forced to change its previous method of evaluation.

is justice rehnquist still the chief justice?

which came first: the gratz/grutter cases, or michigan's ballot initiative?

Pretty sure the ballot initiative came after and negated gratz/grutter.

oh i know, i just wanted the poster to look it up and stuff. he linked to a press release where a guy who is now retired gave the opinion.

michigan can still take into account all sorts of stuff, but they can't (legally) consider race and ethnicity. a great diversity statement explaining how one's perspectives and life experiences are different would still be helpful, i think.

talibkweli wrote:

Kohinoor wrote:

talibkweli wrote:

EzraStiles wrote:http://umich.edu/news/index.html?Releas ... remecourt2

notably the phrase "In two lawsuits challenging University of Michigan admissions policies, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Law School"

Maybe not affirmative action in all it encompasses, but the law school was not forced to change its previous method of evaluation.

is justice rehnquist still the chief justice?

which came first: the gratz/grutter cases, or michigan's ballot initiative?

Pretty sure the ballot initiative came after and negated gratz/grutter.

oh i know, i just wanted the poster to look it up and stuff. he linked to a press release where a guy who is now retired gave the opinion.

michigan can still take into account all sorts of stuff, but they can't (legally) consider race and ethnicity. a great diversity statement explaining how one's perspectives and life experiences are different would still be helpful, i think.

Adcomm office assistants remove the place on the app where you indicate your race before it even goes under review. So w/o a DS or some obvious extracurricular (i.e. Black Student Union) they won't even know your race. That being said, it's pretty obvious the practice AA. A 157 3.5 applicant got in last year, give me a break.

hopefulundergrad wrote:Yale supposed has a firm 3.5 cutoff, URM or not. Save YLS, you'll be in everywhere.

Why won't this rumor die??

While it might seem that 3.5 functions as a GPA cut-off here at YLS, that's not actually true; while the class of 2011 did not have any admits with a GPA below 3.5 (http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm), in years past there have been people admitted with GPAs below that...but you're right that in general, the lowest GPA of admitted students tends to hover around 3.5, give or take a bit.

In general, YLS has no cut off numbers, either for the LSAT or GPA: http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/howw ... ations.htm because of the holistic nature of application review. Dean of Admissions Asha Rangappa goes into great depth about how the LSAT and GPA are not subject to cutoffs, here, about 2/3 down the page: http://www.admissionsdean.com/researchi ... a-rangappa

Yea there aren't "quotas" anywhere anymore.

But with a statistically predictable process like admissions cycles, they can almost certainly give a "boost" to URMs applying so that they will virtually always accept the desired % of minorities.

Quotas may be gone, but that doesn't mean schools can't adjust their "holistic" reviews so that they still get X numbers of seats for AAs, Latinos, etc...

rabbit9198 wrote:

hopefulundergrad wrote:Yale supposed has a firm 3.5 cutoff, URM or not. Save YLS, you'll be in everywhere.

Why won't this rumor die??

While it might seem that 3.5 functions as a GPA cut-off here at YLS, that's not actually true; while the class of 2011 did not have any admits with a GPA below 3.5 (http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm), in years past there have been people admitted with GPAs below that...but you're right that in general, the lowest GPA of admitted students tends to hover around 3.5, give or take a bit.

In general, YLS has no cut off numbers, either for the LSAT or GPA: http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/howw ... ations.htm because of the holistic nature of application review. Dean of Admissions Asha Rangappa goes into great depth about how the LSAT and GPA are not subject to cutoffs, here, about 2/3 down the page: http://www.admissionsdean.com/researchi ... a-rangappa

Yea there's no hard cutoff, but schools will need extraordinary reasons to dip below their traditional "cutoffs". If you are applying to Yale with a sub 3.5 you NEED a truly amazing application. And while there are no HARD cutoffs, there are certainly "cliffs" where anyone less than that number will need an exponentially better application to be accepted with numbers below that point. With "numbers-centric" schools like Harvard, Columbia, and NYU I would expect it might be virtually impossible to get in with below certain numbers (3.0, 150) and even with a more extensive process like Yale you would need to be a Nobel prize winner who cured cancer, achieved world peace, and director of an academy award winning documentary on our legal system to even get past the stigma of having below a 3.0 or 150 at Yale. In short, it might happen once, if at all, over the next century.


TL;DR

Yea there are no hard cutoffs, but you better have a mindblowing app beyond "I'm a URM with a high LSAT" to get into Yale with a 3.49

Kohinoor wrote:

BenJ wrote:Nowhere. You're not guaranteed at Yale, but you're definitely favored. Berkeley is an interesting case, but they really do practice affirmative action though it's technically banned. Your numbers are good enough for Michigan even without the URM, and of course they also practice affirmative action despite it being banned. (In both cases, they just call it "holistic judgement", which just a euphemism.)

For the record, Law School Predictor, which has a reputation for understating URMs, puts you at "Consider" for Yale and "Admit" everywhere else.

Fie on you sir. Berkeley and it's quasi-peer school Michigan haven't practiced affirmative action in years. It's time for people to wake up and realize that essay writing matters and is a valid metric in the law school admissions process.

R O F L

I call flame on OP and everyone else in this thread, including myself.

no flame by the OP. Unfortunately I live with him. Its legit.

Maybe not YLS.