C/O 2016 median lsat/gpa/class size Forum

[jingosaur]

My UG's average LSAT is 159, which I guess is towards the better end of things, and it's a top 30 USNWR school. I see a lot of people from my school going to TTTs. It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

[altoid99]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... DNSbUNtZ1E

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

It's not surprising at all.

It does seem like most the schools here are above the 151 national average though. What are we missing? Community colleges and smaller colleges?

Is ~151 the national average or the median? That may have something to do with it. I'm not mathematically inclined to know exactly what.

[BigZuck]

My UG's average LSAT is 159, which I guess is towards the better end of things, and it's a top 30 USNWR school. I see a lot of people from my school going to TTTs. It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

I think the spending 220K for college might be the biggest tragedy of all those you mentioned.

[danquayle]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... DNSbUNtZ1E

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

It's not surprising at all.

It does seem like most the schools here are above the 151 national average though. What are we missing? Community colleges and smaller colleges?

Lots of big publics still aren't represented. For example no directional Michigan school is on that list, and they all have like 25k students each. Meanwhile you have a lot of good privates with a fraction of the students (Bates with 1700). This list is by no means holistic and I'm guessing it actually overrepresents strongly performing small colleges over poorer performing large colleges.

[jingosaur]

My UG's average LSAT is 159, which I guess is towards the better end of things, and it's a top 30 USNWR school. I see a lot of people from my school going to TTTs. It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

I think the spending 220K for college might be the biggest tragedy of all those you mentioned.

They're pretty generous about scholarship and financial aid, but it's very common for people to spend that much on UG. Almost everyone at my UG was super rich so I'm not concerned for most of them (I'm not poor and I got a Pell Grant), but there are hundreds of liberal arts colleges/private regional universities that have 50k/year COAs where a good chunk of students are unemployable.

[jingosaur]

Lots of big publics still aren't represented. For example no directional Michigan school is on that list, and they all have like 25k students each. Meanwhile you have a lot of good privates with a fraction of the students (Bates with 1700). This list is by no means holistic and I'm guessing it actually overrepresents strongly performing small colleges over poorer performing large colleges.

Most of the schools on that list are filled with students who were 80th-99th percentile on the SAT. Of course these people are going to do above the average on the LSAT. Additionally, people at lower ranked schools have worse job prospects so many of them are more inclined to look at graduate school options. Once they see TTT law schools that are easy to get to, they take the LSAT and the cycle continues. TTT law schools came to be because there is a demand for them and they're meeting that demand.

[Big Dog]

It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

People who are full pay for undergrad are wealthy pretty much by nearly every definition. (At least top 5% income earners in the country/world.) If they choose to spend their wealth in this way, why should we care? (Ignores the fools who incur massive private loans to attend TTT undergrads, or NYU.)

[Big Dog]

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

Regulus:

for a data junkie, you shoulda saw this one coming. The colleges at the top of the USNews food chain purposely select for high test takers (SAT/ACT). It should be no surprise that the same students can do well on the LSAT (and MCAT).

[jingosaur]

It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

People who are full pay for undergrad are wealthy pretty much by nearly every definition. (At least top 5% income earners in the country/world.) If they choose to spend their wealth in this way, why should we care? (Ignores the fools who incur massive private loans to attend TTT undergrads, or NYU.)

I live in the NYU part of Manhattan. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who's going to NYU to study women studies, art history, library science, etc., I would be able to pay my rent with it. It's not even the usual liberal arts majors like English and History.

[moonman157]

This is a bit off topic, but I'm genuinely curious, is there really that great of a difference between undergraduate institutions in terms of job placement? Obviously, very top, prestigious undergrads will have a large influence, but small, expensive, liberal arts schools? I'm just wondering because I saw people from my undergrad graduate with jobs (or in some cases, without them) in a very wide range of location, salary, etc. It seems like the opposite in law school, where the schools are extremely regional and your career prospects are much more closely tied to the school you went to.

I ask this largely because I chose my undergrad on intangibles, without much concern for which undergrad would get me the best "job" whereas job placement was far and away my number one concern for law school.

[jingosaur]

This is a bit off topic, but I'm genuinely curious, is there really that great of a difference between undergraduate institutions in terms of job placement? Obviously, very top, prestigious undergrads will have a large influence, but small, expensive, liberal arts schools? I'm just wondering because I saw people from my undergrad graduate with jobs (or in some cases, without them) in a very wide range of location, salary, etc. It seems like the opposite in law school, where the schools are extremely regional and your career prospects are much more closely tied to the school you went to.

I ask this largely because I chose my undergrad on intangibles, without much concern for which undergrad would get me the best "job" whereas job placement was far and away my number one concern for law school.

There are a lot more undergraduate programs that have strong job placement than there are law schools with strong job placements. Additionally, what you major in and what you want to do is just as important as which school you go to in terms of jobs and salary.

At law schools, everyone is essentially majoring in the same thing and all law schools are pretty similar in terms of people's career goals, so the differences in salary and job placement among law schools is a lot wider and a lot easier to see.

[kay2016]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... DNSbUNtZ1E

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

It's not surprising at all.

It does seem like most the schools here are above the 151 national average though. What are we missing? Community colleges and smaller colleges?

My UG isn't on there. It's a large public school (although not the largest at all) and it's average is 149.

[jbagelboy]

This is a bit off topic, but I'm genuinely curious, is there really that great of a difference between undergraduate institutions in terms of job placement? Obviously, very top, prestigious undergrads will have a large influence, but small, expensive, liberal arts schools? I'm just wondering because I saw people from my undergrad graduate with jobs (or in some cases, without them) in a very wide range of location, salary, etc. It seems like the opposite in law school, where the schools are extremely regional and your career prospects are much more closely tied to the school you went to.

I ask this largely because I chose my undergrad on intangibles, without much concern for which undergrad would get me the best "job" whereas job placement was far and away my number one concern for law school.

I cant speak for all schools, but myself and my friends in college didnt choose the school because of anything related to post-grad employment. It may be in part that Liberal arts schools stress their strong performance in graduate school and fellowship admissions (fulbright, watson, ect) more than hiring or recruitment data. But as you said, aside from the UG rankings that obviously factor in, "intangibles" certainly played the largest role, be they in academics, size, community/enviornment, architecture, ect.

THAT BEING SAID, Pomona didn't snag its spot in Forbes ahead of HYPC because of "intangibles" this year - it was post-grad earning power and student debt. So top small lib arts schools do extremely well on all counts as far as I can tell

[zman]

there was one outlier on the GPA. CMU at 3.15. They must have really evil curves

[dissonance1848]

there was one outlier on the GPA. CMU at 3.15. They must have really evil curves

CMU, Georgia Tech, and a few other schools are basically engineering/hard science schools.

If you hit a 3.0 or so in CS from CMU, you are getting offers from the major tech firms in SF and SV.

Same goes for engineering at Georgia Tech for engineering firms.

The other top schools have higher GPAs because their graduates are majoring in English, Ethnic Studies, and other bullshit majors.

I hope people from CMU in CS and Georgia Tech in engineering are rational enough to stay the hell away from law school.

[zman]

there was one outlier on the GPA. CMU at 3.15. They must have really evil curves

CMU, Georgia Tech, and a few other schools are basically engineering/hard science schools.

If you hit a 3.0 or so in CS from CMU, you are getting offers from the major tech firms in SF and SV.

Same goes for engineering at Georgia Tech for engineering firms.

The other top schools have higher GPAs because their graduates are majoring in English, Ethnic Studies, and other bullshit majors.

I hope people from CMU in CS and Georgia Tech in engineering are rational enough to stay the hell away from law school.

yes that must be it. Bet liberal arts school people say they have to read all day to get good grades

[banjo]

I can't believe there are that many Columbia and Cornell graduates at USF, especially after seeing the average UG LSAT at these schools. If there are people like that reading this (doubt it)...why?

[ManoftheHour]

My UG's average LSAT is 159, which I guess is towards the better end of things, and it's a top 30 USNWR school. I see a lot of people from my school going to TTTs. It's really sad how people spend $220k on a private UG education just to throw away their career prospects on awful law schools.

So is mine. Wow. So TTT...

[sinfiery]

I can't believe there are that many Columbia and Cornell graduates at USF, especially after seeing the average UG LSAT at these schools. If there are people like that reading this (doubt it)...why?

Columbia graduates enter the workforce earning an average of $59,400 per year, about $1,500 more a year than Dartmouth students but much less than the $66,500 averaged by Princeton students.

life is hard bro (this doesn't include unemployed and likely is bolstered by self selection because payscale so take it with a grain of salt)


also they likely didn't visit LST

[moonman157]

This is a bit off topic, but I'm genuinely curious, is there really that great of a difference between undergraduate institutions in terms of job placement? Obviously, very top, prestigious undergrads will have a large influence, but small, expensive, liberal arts schools? I'm just wondering because I saw people from my undergrad graduate with jobs (or in some cases, without them) in a very wide range of location, salary, etc. It seems like the opposite in law school, where the schools are extremely regional and your career prospects are much more closely tied to the school you went to.

I ask this largely because I chose my undergrad on intangibles, without much concern for which undergrad would get me the best "job" whereas job placement was far and away my number one concern for law school.

I cant speak for all schools, but myself and my friends in college didnt choose the school because of anything related to post-grad employment. It may be in part that Liberal arts schools stress their strong performance in graduate school and fellowship admissions (fulbright, watson, ect) more than hiring or recruitment data. But as you said, aside from the UG rankings that obviously factor in, "intangibles" certainly played the largest role, be they in academics, size, community/enviornment, architecture, ect.

THAT BEING SAID, Pomona didn't snag its spot in Forbes ahead of HYPC because of "intangibles" this year - it was post-grad earning power and student debt. So top small lib arts schools do extremely well on all counts as far as I can tell

Thanks for the info. Like I said, I didn't even consider choosing a school based on post-graduation employment outcomes until I chose a law school, so I was wondering how much of a consideration that was for other people, or possibly one of the reasons why they choose small liberal arts schools (I also had no interest in going to a liberal arts school for UG, so I'm especially ignorant on the reasons why people choose them since I've done no research on that).

[2x2Matrix]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... DNSbUNtZ1E

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

notice also the moar prestigious the school is, the higher the average gpa

so when people at princeton and uchicago complain about the grade deflation there, they just mean avg GPA is not 3.5

[zman]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... DNSbUNtZ1E

It is interesting how closely the LSAT scores match the USNWR undergrad rankings.

notice also the moar prestigious the school is, the higher the average gpa

so when people at princeton and uchicago complain about the grade deflation there, they just mean avg GPA is not 3.5

You can't give someone lower than an A- at Princeton. Parents usually threaten to withdraw donations if they do. That's what I heard from professor over there.

[jingosaur]

My undergrad's GPA mean is a 3.17 according to my LSAC transcript. Based on what you guys are saying, this is really low?

[Big Dog]

In comparison to Brown, every college has a low average GPA.

Next up is generally Pomona and Yale.

Many top privates are in the 3.3-3.4 category. Most publics tend to be a lower.

[Happy Gilmore]

Mine wasn't on there, large public in Iowa with average GPA at 3.16- Mean LSAT is 150 (couldn't find the median).

I was shocked to see my school averaged a 150 though. I can't imagine how anyone would walk into the LSAT prepared to score sub150, but it just shows how big of a bubble I live in.