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Hello,
I am writing today in the hopes of gaining information to help my significant other. I have recently matched into my residency training in the bay area and my girlfriend is in the process of studying for the LSAT. With that said, our plan is for her to join me in sunny california, with the goal of attending stanford or berkley for law school.

My girlfriend is a first generation mexican-american who is also socioeconomically disadvantaged. She attended a university in Texas and did well (I think around 3.7 or so), and is now working towards completing her PhD in Immunology from Yale (there is no GPA in grad school, but she will be able to get strong letters from her mentor as well as in the office of technology transfer).

My question to the group, how much does it matter to be both a URM (mexican) as well as have "soft" factors (PhD from Yale)? I have all the confidence in the world in her to do well on the LSAT, but there is also a very good chance (statistically speaking) that she will not reached the 25th% number for Stanford or Berkley.

Any help, insight, or words of encouragement or wisdom I could pass on to her would be greatly appreciated.

Good luck to everyone applying and thanks for the help.

Best,
"trying to help"

URM status tends to help LSAT more than GPA. However, her GPA sounds like it's good, and a PhD from Yale is a pretty strong soft to have on top of it.

Unfortunately, Mexican-Americans seem to get less of a boost in CA than they do in the north and east, due to the increased number of applicants there. The only surefire way to crack Stanford or Berkeley is going to be to get in their LSAT range, which means breaking the 25% at least.

The thing is that the LSAT is an incredibly learnable test. You can make gains of 10, 15, and even in some cases 20+ points from where you started. I'm sure that she'll be able to make real progress on it if she studies long and hard enough. Several months of study can lead to big gains, which are what make the real difference in applications.

This is one of those really-hard-to-say things. I could honestly see it going either way. The only way to find out is to get her LSAT score and have her apply. However, she sounds like she'll be able to build a very strong application, and as a URM she will have an advantage others will not. Good luck.