Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic? Forum

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TheWeeIceMon

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by TheWeeIceMon » Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:04 am

ksllaw wrote:
jetsfan1 wrote:
Why are business schools and other grad schools not as numbers-obsessed though? Do they not care about USNews as much?
Not really, they don't (although it is still important to a large extent, just not like with law schools). I don't know much about business school but I do know for med schools, rank is much less important because pretty much everyone gets a job coming out. Therefore, students are much less concerned with where they go to school, and consequently, rankings tend to matter less bc schools dont need a high ranking/reputation to attract students.

This is a different question, but should the ABA regulate law school admissions to control for the oversupply in the market?

I believe the AMA has a hand in medical school admissions, by setting the enrollment capacity each year. If I remember correctly, it's based on what they expected demand for medical services is in the U.S. They actively take a role in determining the size/supply of medical doctors going out into the market.

This seems to have many positives. At the very least, it helps prevent oversupply problems. And, some might argue that it ensures highly competent doctors. Only the "best" are able to get into medical school. And it protects medical school graduates' job prospects and salaries. If one simply graduates from medical school in the U.S., I believe it is around a 95% rate that they end up in a U.S. residency. Those graduating from Carribean medical schools have about a 50% U.S. medical residency rate.

The downside is that the tighter admissions controls make medical school difficult to get into (but certainly that can be seen as a positive as well, in terms of ensuring a highly qualified class), because there aren't as many slots as with law school. But if one is able to get in to a medical school, then there are little fears of graduating without a job.

I agree with your post, but I'd like to add that even though medical school enrollment is kept in check, what really controls the supply of doctors is the government. You could double the class size of all med schools but it wouldn't make any difference in licensed doctor supply since the number of available residency slots is determined by funding provided through Medicare. The number of spots has been stagnant for years even as med school spots go up. With this set up, it is possible that sometime down the road med grads could face the same problem as law grads. Too many grads and not enough residency spots.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by Huey Freeman » Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:55 am

NoodleyOne wrote:If students at cal tech are so much smarter, they'll rock the lsat and be fine.
This is a little off because GPA floors are a thing. Regardless of whether or not a Cal-Tech grad rocks the LSAT, a 3.5-3.6 will keep them out of HYS unless they're a URM.

Some of the engineering tech schools are among the worst in the country for grade inflation. I think a 3.55 or so is summa cum laude at Georgia Tech, so being a smart (i.e. top your of the class) engineering grad from a top 5 school will still keep you out of the highest tier of law schools (HYS), even with a 180 LSAT.

I wonder if there's any data on the class composition of HYS in terms of undergraduate majors. I'd hazard a guess that engineers are underrepresented, which is what makes IP lawyers so desirable these days. The average GPAs of top engineering schools (MIT, UCBerkely, CalTech, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc.) is so low already, and of the small number of people who do have a qualifying GPA, a large % of those pursue opportunities offered through engineering. That leaves a very very small subset of people left, and I'd also guess that a good % of the engineers that do make it to HYS got their engineering degree from a school outside of the top 5.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by IAFG » Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:04 am

Huey Freeman wrote:
NoodleyOne wrote:If students at cal tech are so much smarter, they'll rock the lsat and be fine.
This is a little off because GPA floors are a thing. Regardless of whether or not a Cal-Tech grad rocks the LSAT, a 3.5-3.6 will keep them out of HYS unless they're a URM.

Some of the engineering tech schools are among the worst in the country for grade inflation. I think a 3.55 or so is summa cum laude at Georgia Tech, so being a smart (i.e. top your of the class) engineering grad from a top 5 school will still keep you out of the highest tier of law schools (HYS), even with a 180 LSAT.

I wonder if there's any data on the class composition of HYS in terms of undergraduate majors. I'd hazard a guess that engineers are underrepresented, which is what makes IP lawyers so desirable these days. The average GPAs of top engineering schools (MIT, UCBerkely, CalTech, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc.) is so low already, and of the small number of people who do have a qualifying GPA, a large % of those pursue opportunities offered through engineering. That leaves a very very small subset of people left, and I'd also guess that a good % of the engineers that do make it to HYS got their engineering degree from a school outside of the top 5.
You are assuming that summa at GT can't get into HYS and that is wrong.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by Tom Joad » Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:11 am

ITT: students with low GPAs tell us how much smarter they are than students with high GPAs.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by John_rizzy_rawls » Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:26 am

Tom Joad wrote:ITT: students with low GPAs tell us how much smarter they are than students with high GPAs.
Also ITT: people who would collective soil themselves and pipe down if they went and looked up TLS badass and 2013 YLS admit, Pacifica.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by scifiguy » Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:15 am

Tom Joad wrote:ITT: students with low GPAs tell us how much smarter they are than students with high GPAs.
I don't think anyone is saying that. It's more like we're asking if GPAs should be put into context.

Like others have said, numbers can mean different things and the OP is asking if that should be taken itno account in admissions.

It happens in hiring. Employers would probably rate a student with a 3.5 from MIT higher than a person with a 3.5 from Florida State if they had the exact same major in like chemical engineering. I'm not saying if that's fair or not. It's just that people assume that the work at MIT was more demanding and the student probably has a better preparation for the job. There's an implicit assumptoin there that the two GPAs have a different meaning.

I for one don't think we should knock anyone for getting high grades. I apologize for the way I sounded in my earlier comments about education majors. But I do think that maybe context should be considered when evaluating grades and GPA if possible. My thing is that I'm not sure there could be a systematic way of donig that. So I can see how practically a numbers game admissions system is maybe just easiest.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by scifiguy » Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:40 am

talesofyore wrote:
jetsfan1 wrote:The biggest problem I think with numbers game is comparing gpas across schools, not so much bc of the quality of the school, but bc of different levels of grade inflation. My UG, for example, is known for fighting grade inflation and making a significant effort to keep grades down. For instance, after one semester when the cumulative gpa of all students jumped, the administration emailed all the profs and told them to start grading harder. Our econ department curves to a B-, or a 2.66. Compare this to somewhere like Brown, where 2/3 of all grades given out are As. ( http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162- ... st-grades/ ) Not that my school is as good as Brown, but the point remains that when you have different levels of grade inflation, the same gpa can have vastly different meanings at different schools that are about equal in prestige, which makes it even harder to compare them.
This.

Since starting my application process I've been wishing I'd attended community college or University of Phoenix online or something.
But why would schools fight grade inflation if that's teh trend? Wouldn't they have incentive to at least keep up with it, because their graduates would have lower grad school acceptance otherwise? And it might affect employment lutlook too. ...and other things that can affect other aspects of UNSWR (not law, but other areas) and other ranking systems.

Are community college frowned upon for ls admissions?

For medical school, I know they actually question you if you took any core science classes at a CC. It's definitely frowned upon and can hurt you. Any affect on ls?

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by jetsfan1 » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:24 am

But why would schools fight grade inflation if that's teh trend? Wouldn't they have incentive to at least keep up with it, because their graduates would have lower grad school acceptance otherwise? And it might affect employment lutlook too. ...and other things that can affect other aspects of UNSWR (not law, but other areas) and other ranking systems.

Are community college frowned upon for ls admissions?

For medical school, I know they actually question you if you took any core science classes at a CC. It's definitely frowned upon and can hurt you. Any affect on ls?
Short answer, no its not frowned upon. UGs probably fight grade inflation for various reasons (this part is just conjecture here) but maybe bc you don't wanna be known as the school that just gives out all As? I mean these things are known theyre not exactly secret, and if you become notorious for grade inflation, that somehow invalidates your graduates bc their high gpa says "I went to X school wheres As are given out on platters" rather than "I'm a smart, hardworking SOB"

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by talesofyore » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:33 am

Borg wrote:The short and correct answer is that US News rankings are based almost entirely on numbers. The reason law schools care is that students care, and the reason students care is because jobs available to grads basically follow a linear relationship based on ranking.

I hate the way law school admissions work because people who had lazy majors but did well on the LSAT wind up thinking of themselves as geniuses. I know social justice oriented English and history majors in my law school who refuse to talk about economics, for example, because it's a "pseudo-science," but in reality have no quantitative ability and are scared to death of anything involving numbers. I know of multiple law students who have taken finance classes in the business school with me and wound up on the bottom of the curve, but claim it's because they didn't do any work. Basically, the law school admissions process allows ignorant people to feign superiority when there are a lot of people who are more deserving but essentially self selected out by making the "mistake" of actually taking tough classes in undergrad.
+1!

Conversation I had in undergrad:
Me: Wow! My econ classes are SO difficult... barely anyone ever gets an A.
Friend who ended up in a T14 with a giant scholarship: why are you taking them then? Shouldn't you worry more about your GPA?

I remember thinking he was lazy, but turns out he was just smart and knew how to work the system.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by rad lulz » Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:03 pm

Borg wrote:
rad lulz wrote:
Borg wrote:The short and correct answer is that US News rankings are based almost entirely on numbers. The reason law schools care is that students care, and the reason students care is because jobs available to grads basically follow a linear relationship based on ranking.
--LinkRemoved--

Actually, the relationship is not linear.
You're right on the whole, but I assumed that we were talking the top schools based on the fact that this site is called top-law-schools.com.
Except we're talking about why LS admissions as a whole cares about USNWR, not just at the top schools.

Prospective students THINK that the relationships are fairly linear. They are wrong.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by timbs4339 » Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:35 pm

The difference between law and business schools is that business students need to have something beyond the name of their B-school to sell to employers- relevant work experience. While law students often have work experience, very few of them have experience that are considered relevant to institutional hiring organizations like biglaw, the federal government, clerkships, etc, or at least relevant enough to trump even tiny differences in school rank/grades.

Law school acts as a screening mechanism for people with high "Legal IQ", and the easiest way we have right now to measure Legal IQ is GPA/LSAT. 1L grades provide another layer of sorting. Basically, law schools market to employers that they have high-caliber students, so employers can market to clients that they hire the top students.

Most K-JDs scoring a 170 could probably get a GMAT score and Econ GPA necessary to get into HBS or Wharton- but they'd have trouble getting a job afterwards.

Now this should really only hold true for the top schools, since lower-ranked schools are essentially local institutions and shouldn't be concerned with their national ranking, right?

First, the overhang between the number of schools that consider themselves "national" and the number that can be objectively called "national" based on employment numbers is huge- the top 75-100 schools behave as if they are national schools whereas only 10-14 really are.

Second, holistic admissions requires a crapload of work and staff, including the input and labor of professors, who are largely unconcerned with that kind of stuff.

Third, the people running law schools largely came from elite law schools, and are overly concerned with their national reputation. Very few law schools want to admit that their school is essentially local. USNWR rankings are how deans and administrators are "graded" vis a vis their peers, and how an ambitious administrator might be able to move up the chain to a higher paid position or "lateral" to a position in the UG system.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by ksllaw » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:53 pm

cinephile wrote:I don't think anyone has touched on the real reason yet: law school is essentially another undergraduate degree. It'd be silly to compare it to med schools or other graduate programs because you can come into law school knowing nothing and you'll learn nothing you need to know there. Who cares if you know physics or film as neither will help you perform on a law school exam. So if we need some arbitrary distinction between applicants, might as well make it clear cut and numbers based rather than a touchy-feely balancing of the factors approach.
That's correct. There are no specific college majors that seem to thoroughly test and overlap with the work done in law school. This fact does lend itself to supporting arguments in favor of a numbers-based approach to admissions as currently stands.

Perhaps the closest major may be philosophy from what I have heard people say a lot (and from my own experiences in philosophy courses).

Interestingly, I did find a study that looked at the correlation between college majors and LSAT performance (which in turn has some decent, though imperfect, correlation with law school grades):

http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal ... score.html

From the link, this was a breakdown of the comparisons (from 2007-2008 LSAT takers' data):
The Law School Admission Council categorizes test-takers into 162 majors. Seeing many of those as sub-disciplines of major fields, Nieswiadomy groups them into 29 categories. Of those 29, he found that the top five majors and their average test scores were:
1. Physics/math, 160.0
2. Economics, 157.4
3. Philosophy/theology, 157.4
4. International relations, 156.5
5. Engineering, 156.2

The five lowest-scoring majors were:

25. Education, 149.4
26. Business administration, 149.1
27. Health professions, 148.4
28. Prelaw, 148.3
29. Criminal justice, 146.0
Last edited by ksllaw on Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by dingbat » Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:57 pm

ksllaw wrote:
cinephile wrote:I don't think anyone has touched on the real reason yet: law school is essentially another undergraduate degree. It'd be silly to compare it to med schools or other graduate programs because you can come into law school knowing nothing and you'll learn nothing you need to know there. Who cares if you know physics or film as neither will help you perform on a law school exam. So if we need some arbitrary distinction between applicants, might as well make it clear cut and numbers based rather than a touchy-feely balancing of the factors approach.
That's correct. There are no specific college majors that seem to thoroughly test and overlap with the work done in law school. This fact does lend itself to supporting arguments in favor of a numbers-based approach to admissions as currently stands.
Then again, there's no reason medical school couldn't be an undergrad degree too

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by scifiguy » Sun Jan 20, 2013 4:46 am

dingbat wrote: Then again, there's no reason medical school couldn't be an undergrad degree too
Med. school has more overlap and more detail with undergrad pre-med coursework.

I thinkn gross anatomy is like one ofhthe most detailed classes in med school. You learn every single bone, muscle, tissue, etc. in the entire human body. Yay. :lol: You learn some of that in bio in UG, but medical school sort of takes familiar material and extends it and adds more and goes into more depth....but there's still overlap.

Dunno if law school courses have that commonality with UG work.
ksllaw wrote: That's correct. There are no specific college majors that seem to thoroughly test and overlap with the work done in law school. This fact does lend itself to supporting arguments in favor of a numbers-based approach to admissions as currently stands.

Perhaps the closest major may be philosophy from what I have heard people say a lot (and from my own experiences in philosophy courses).

Interestingly, I did find a study that looked at the correlation between college majors and LSAT performance (which in turn has some decent, though imperfect, correlation with law school grades):

http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal ... score.html

From the link, this was a breakdown of the comparisons (from 2007-2008 LSAT takers' data):
The Law School Admission Council categorizes test-takers into 162 majors. Seeing many of those as sub-disciplines of major fields, Nieswiadomy groups them into 29 categories. Of those 29, he found that the top five majors and their average test scores were:
1. Physics/math, 160.0
2. Economics, 157.4
3. Philosophy/theology, 157.4
4. International relations, 156.5
5. Engineering, 156.2

The five lowest-scoring majors were:

25. Education, 149.4
26. Business administration, 149.1
27. Health professions, 148.4
28. Prelaw, 148.3
29. Criminal justice, 146.0
What might be interesting is matching those with the "hardest/easist" majors by GPA.

5 Lowest Grade Point Averages
Chemistry 2.78 GPA
Math 2.90 GPA
Economics 2.95 GPA
Psychology 2.98 GPA
Biology 3.02 GPA

5 Highest Grade Point Averages
Education 3.36 GPA
Language 3.34 GPA
English 3.33 GPA
Music 3.30 GPA
Religion 3.22 GPA

This article talks about how many drop out of STEM, because of teh low grades given.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162- ... tag=mwuser

Makes me wonder if STEM majors end up doing better in law school than other majors? Kind of a curiosity now.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by IAFG » Sun Jan 20, 2013 5:55 am

scifiguy wrote: Makes me wonder if STEM majors end up doing better in law school than other majors? Kind of a curiosity now.
I sort of doubt they do significantly better. STEM academic program teach you how to find the answer. Some STEM people have a hard time adjusting to the fact that on law school exams, you have to spend so much time talking about what you think is the wrong answer. Not saying that STEM people can't overcome that, but definitely not all of them do.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by ksllaw » Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:43 pm

scifiguy wrote:What might be interesting is matching those with the "hardest/easist" majors by GPA.

5 Lowest Grade Point Averages
Chemistry 2.78 GPA
Math 2.90 GPA
Economics 2.95 GPA
Psychology 2.98 GPA
Biology 3.02 GPA

5 Highest Grade Point Averages
Education 3.36 GPA
Language 3.34 GPA
English 3.33 GPA
Music 3.30 GPA
Religion 3.22 GPA

This article talks about how many drop out of STEM, because of teh low grades given.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162- ... tag=mwuser

Makes me wonder if STEM majors end up doing better in law school than other majors? Kind of a curiosity now.
This is strictly an observation based off of my LSAT course with TestMasters, but one thing that our instructor has mentioned is that traditionally students tend to struggle with one of two general things (sometimes both): logic or language.

Some find the logical and analytical thinking portion hard to grasp, wheras others have difficulty with the language of the LSAT. As to the latter, these individuals may have trouble interpreting what a passage means or lacking the vocabulary to fully understand the passage or prompt. There's some interpretive reading and language skills needed to do well on the LSAT and law, so it's possible that a science major may lack some elements of that skill set, due to STEM classes not emphasizing that aspect of the LSAT and law skills. Math, for example, is symbol heavy and technical in its writing, which requires and helps with logical and analytical thinking, but may not require much interpretive and analytical reading (non-numerical) found in the study of law.

This is just speculation, but something based on observation of what people have struggled with in my LSAT course from time to time.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by Huey Freeman » Sun Jan 20, 2013 1:05 pm

IAFG wrote:
Huey Freeman wrote:
NoodleyOne wrote:If students at cal tech are so much smarter, they'll rock the lsat and be fine.
This is a little off because GPA floors are a thing. Regardless of whether or not a Cal-Tech grad rocks the LSAT, a 3.5-3.6 will keep them out of HYS unless they're a URM.

Some of the engineering tech schools are among the worst in the country for grade inflation. I think a 3.55 or so is summa cum laude at Georgia Tech, so being a smart (i.e. top your of the class) engineering grad from a top 5 school will still keep you out of the highest tier of law schools (HYS), even with a 180 LSAT.

I wonder if there's any data on the class composition of HYS in terms of undergraduate majors. I'd hazard a guess that engineers are underrepresented, which is what makes IP lawyers so desirable these days. The average GPAs of top engineering schools (MIT, UCBerkely, CalTech, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc.) is so low already, and of the small number of people who do have a qualifying GPA, a large % of those pursue opportunities offered through engineering. That leaves a very very small subset of people left, and I'd also guess that a good % of the engineers that do make it to HYS got their engineering degree from a school outside of the top 5.
You are assuming that summa at GT can't get into HYS and that is wrong.
I don't think it's that wrong...

http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm

Look at the recent Yale Law admissions profile. Not a single student from MIT/CalTech/Georgia Tech, and in their "members of a class" they don't mention anything related to engineering (aside from a single "chemist). Which is hardly surprising, considering their 3.9 GPA median. I couldn't find data on Stanford. Harvard has an unusually large class size, so I think they're somewhat of an exception, but they do have MIT/Georgia Tech representation.

http://web.law.columbia.edu/admissions/ ... ss-profile

Columbia has 6% of students TOTAL in combining ALL of the sciences with all engineering disciplines and mathematics, with no data provided as to which engineering schools are represented.

I'll admit that Harvard, due to its large class size, is able to take at least 1 MIT/Georgia Tech (no Cal-Tech though...) graduate. However, at these engineering schools, it isn't enough to be in the top 10%. You literally have to be one of the top 10 graduates for your GPA to have a shot at these schools. I think around 6 people in the Electrical/Computer Engineering department at GT have a 4.0 past their 3rd year. I'm better off getting a job at Google than trying to get into an elite law school (perhaps that's for the best...).

Well if it wasn't obvious enough before, I am a GT undergrad student, so I really do apologize if this comes off as being biased. Sometimes, it's a little frustrating that engineering students are fighting such an uphill battle, even when we're at the top of our profession. Law schools continue to preach about their desire to increase diversity in the class, but isn't academic diversity also important?

For the record, I currently have a 4.0, but I'm still very early on in my UG career (and at a school like mine, that's subject to change very quickly). I just don't want it to sound like I'm a kid with a low GPA telling everyone to pay attention to me (and once again, I sincerely apologize if it comes off like that).
Tom Joad wrote:ITT: students with low GPAs tell us how much smarter they are than students with high GPAs.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by shntn » Sun Jan 20, 2013 1:50 pm

rad lulz wrote:USNWR rankings are why
/thread

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by IAFG » Sun Jan 20, 2013 1:58 pm

Huey Freeman wrote:
IAFG wrote:
Huey Freeman wrote:
NoodleyOne wrote:If students at cal tech are so much smarter, they'll rock the lsat and be fine.
This is a little off because GPA floors are a thing. Regardless of whether or not a Cal-Tech grad rocks the LSAT, a 3.5-3.6 will keep them out of HYS unless they're a URM.

Some of the engineering tech schools are among the worst in the country for grade inflation. I think a 3.55 or so is summa cum laude at Georgia Tech, so being a smart (i.e. top your of the class) engineering grad from a top 5 school will still keep you out of the highest tier of law schools (HYS), even with a 180 LSAT.

I wonder if there's any data on the class composition of HYS in terms of undergraduate majors. I'd hazard a guess that engineers are underrepresented, which is what makes IP lawyers so desirable these days. The average GPAs of top engineering schools (MIT, UCBerkely, CalTech, Georgia Tech, UIUC, etc.) is so low already, and of the small number of people who do have a qualifying GPA, a large % of those pursue opportunities offered through engineering. That leaves a very very small subset of people left, and I'd also guess that a good % of the engineers that do make it to HYS got their engineering degree from a school outside of the top 5.
You are assuming that summa at GT can't get into HYS and that is wrong.
I don't think it's that wrong...

http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm

Look at the recent Yale Law admissions profile. Not a single student from MIT/CalTech/Georgia Tech, and in their "members of a class" they don't mention anything related to engineering (aside from a single "chemist). Which is hardly surprising, considering their 3.9 GPA median. I couldn't find data on Stanford. Harvard has an unusually large class size, so I think they're somewhat of an exception, but they do have MIT/Georgia Tech representation.

http://web.law.columbia.edu/admissions/ ... ss-profile

Columbia has 6% of students TOTAL in combining ALL of the sciences with all engineering disciplines and mathematics, with no data provided as to which engineering schools are represented.

I'll admit that Harvard, due to its large class size, is able to take at least 1 MIT/Georgia Tech (no Cal-Tech though...) graduate. However, at these engineering schools, it isn't enough to be in the top 10%. You literally have to be one of the top 10 graduates for your GPA to have a shot at these schools. I think around 6 people in the Electrical/Computer Engineering department at GT have a 4.0 past their 3rd year. I'm better off getting a job at Google than trying to get into an elite law school (perhaps that's for the best...).

Well if it wasn't obvious enough before, I am a GT undergrad student, so I really do apologize if this comes off as being biased. Sometimes, it's a little frustrating that engineering students are fighting such an uphill battle, even when we're at the top of our profession. Law schools continue to preach about their desire to increase diversity in the class, but isn't academic diversity also important?

For the record, I currently have a 4.0, but I'm still very early on in my UG career (and at a school like mine, that's subject to change very quickly). I just don't want it to sound like I'm a kid with a low GPA telling everyone to pay attention to me (and once again, I sincerely apologize if it comes off like that).
Tom Joad wrote:ITT: students with low GPAs tell us how much smarter they are than students with high GPAs.
How many summa people from T5 engineering programs are going to LS each year?! Think about that; they're at the tippy top of their field with the best engineering options open to them.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by sinfiery » Sun Jan 20, 2013 3:21 pm

Huey Freeman wrote: Columbia has 6% of students TOTAL in combining ALL of the sciences with all engineering disciplines and mathematics, with no data provided as to which engineering schools are represented.
That 6% is actually relatively very high.

Compare it to Psychology (4%) or the ridiculous Finance/Accouting/Business (4%) all in 1 category and the manner in which you statistically attempted to prove your point doesn't hold up.


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In my UG, the S.T.E.M. majors had Suma Cum laude and Manga Cum laude distinctions at the same rate as any other major going off our graduation booklets. The lowest rate seemed to actually be in communications.


Now certain S.T.E.M. schools may make it far more difficult to get admitted into a numbers based process but they aren't really concerned with how well of an LS applicant you will be. Even then, I think many top schools give you a bump for having a GT Engineering undergrad so it isn't completely against you, even as a whole, it would be a negative aspect for a LS applicant. (Low GPA, GT Engineering Major)


Not to mention how most "Top" schools have GPA medians of LS applicants far and away above non "Top" schools.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by Tom Joad » Sun Jan 20, 2013 3:55 pm

OP, just keep getting nothing but As and don't worry about your poor GPA classmates.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by ksllaw » Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:45 pm

scifiguy wrote:
Makes me wonder if STEM majors end up doing better in law school than other majors? Kind of a curiosity now.
This can be answered straightforwardly with data.

It's an interesting question, but I'm not currently aware (having not actually looked) of any data on this at the moment. At best (without that data), we might speculate that because the highest LSAT scorers tended to be in the STEM fields and that LSAT scores are a decent, albeit imperfect predictor, of future law school success that it may be logical to conclude that they do generally do better than non-STEM majors. But this is tenuous without further concrete numbers.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by KevinP » Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:57 pm

scifiguy wrote: What might be interesting is matching those with the "hardest/easist" majors by GPA.

5 Lowest Grade Point Averages
Chemistry 2.78 GPA
Math 2.90 GPA
Economics 2.95 GPA
Psychology 2.98 GPA
Biology 3.02 GPA

5 Highest Grade Point Averages
Education 3.36 GPA
Language 3.34 GPA
English 3.33 GPA
Music 3.30 GPA
Religion 3.22 GPA
The study for correlation between major and LSAT score may not be totally representative though.
scifiguy wrote: Makes me wonder if STEM majors end up doing better in law school than other majors? Kind of a curiosity now.
Quoting the following from http://www.lawschoolpodcaster.com/2012/ ... our-major/
Of course, each major comes with its own strengths, Dean Zearfoss says. “If you’re talking just about grades, it is… basically, it is very rare at Michigan Law School, at least, to see students with science, math or engineering majors who end up at the bottom of the class. Those students always seem to do pretty well.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by KevinP » Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:01 pm

IAFG wrote: You are assuming that summa at GT can't get into HYS and that is wrong.
Not with that GPA.

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Re: Why is LS Admissions Mostly Numbers-Based vs. Holistic?

Post by IAFG » Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:07 pm

KevinP wrote:
IAFG wrote: You are assuming that summa at GT can't get into HYS and that is wrong.
Not with that GPA.
it's happened before but is necessarily rare 1) not many people get summa, obviously 2) people who can get GT summa don't apply to law school very often.

Seriously? What are you waiting for?

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