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

[ManoftheHour]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

[Tiago Splitter]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

Florida does do a little better with the "best" jobs, but the numbers for both schools are terrible overall. Stetson's at 8% 50+/Fed Clerkship, Florida at 18%.

[AT9]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

And reputation, alumni network, etc.

Also: any news on Alabama, SMU, and Tulane?

[cotiger]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

Florida does do a little better with the "best" jobs, but the numbers for both schools are terrible overall. Stetson's at 8% 50+/Fed Clerkship, Florida at 18%.

UF's got that TTT 28% Un(der)employment score. 19% for Stetson.

[052220151]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

And reputation, alumni network, etc.

Screw network and reputation. I'll go to Cooley tomorrow if I'm getting BIGLAWL guaranteed. Employment scores matter, a bunch of boomers fawning over some TTT's reputation don't.

[AT9]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

And reputation, alumni network, etc.

Screw network and reputation. I'll go to Cooley tomorrow if I'm getting BIGLAWL guaranteed. Employment scores matter, a bunch of boomers fawning over some TTT's reputation don't.

When comparing schools like UF and Stetson, I think reputation and alumni network matter to an extent. If they were the same price, employment scores are comparable, and I'm looking to practice in Florida, I'd rather have UF on my resume.

[man_utd_4l]

Also: any news on Alabama, SMU, and Tulane?

Didn't see anything for these three while I was searching this afternoon.

[sublime]

..

[BigZuck]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

In b4 "But not everyone wants to be a lawyer!!!"

[KingFish]

What are we missing that LST isn't providing us?

Maybe quality of jobs?

But not everyone wants to be a lawyer!

[jingosaur]

Stetson Law Entering Class (information as of first day of class)

http://www.stetson.edu/law/about/home/profile.php

710 full-time Jd students

Numbers aren't as bad as you would expect though. They pretty much run central florida, and IIRC, have a higher employment score than UF. They are, however, more expensive.

Dude, no. If you work for Stetson admissions you can obviously ignore this and nice work doing your job, but otherwise you can't say stuff like this on TLS. It's 2013. Fill in the blank TTT "runs X state/region" is a statement that messed over too many lives. Stetson doesn't run anything. They do not run central Florida. Also, the fact that their employment score is better than UF only suggests what some of us have been saying all along: LST is a great tool but its not the end all be all because employment outcomes are contextual, depending on the particular goal of each student.

Stetsons ok, but UF is a much better school. Neither school runs anything outside of their campus.

In Sublime's defense, running central Florida is like being the healthiest person with terminal cancer.

[Dr. Dre]

BUT BUT BUT WHAT IF STANFORD PULLS A VILLANOVA OR A Uni. of ILLINOIS?

[moonman157]

BUT BUT BUT WHAT IF STANFORD PULLS A VILLANOVA OR A Uni. of ILLINOIS?

THEN IT'S HYCLS

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

School A: 3.57/3.75/3.88, 164/168/169, 34.2% Biglaw+FedClerk
School B: 3.48/3.63/3.80, 165/167/168, 61.6% Biglaw+FedClerk

Just in case you get the idea that medians have anything more than a spurious correlation with whether or not you will get a jerb.

Georgetown is becoming a trap school.

Are you so sure he was talking about GTown? Their numbers on LST clearly put that at 43% combined Biglaw and FedClerk. And for all the shit GTown gets, I feel like that's still substantially better than pretty much anything not T14. Even great schools like Vandy or UCLA or Texas simply did not breach 40% last year.

Neither school is Georgetown, although the 3.75/168 GULC medians were coincidentally the same.

But trying to figure out what the schools are is missing the point: Medians are only one component of preftige, and preftige is only one of many factors that determines what schools get the most jerbs.

[shifty_eyed]

University of Missouri School of Law's 2013 Entering Class Profile

http://www.law.missouri.edu/admissions/ ... ofile.html

I find only 34% women in their class an interesting statistic. I'm also surprised that they chose to explicitly state that they have an acceptance rate of over 50%.

[Nova]

I'm also surprised that they chose to explicitly state that they have an acceptance rate of over 50%.

I don't remember which, but one TTT put their admitted student stats and attending student stats. idk what they were thinking, it made them look terrible. It was like,

Admitted: 152-158-160
Attending: 149-152-154

[isuperserial]

I still can't get over Notre Dame. What a slaughter.

[jne381]

What do you all think class size really means in terms of the ability of a school to change its rank, assuming other factors are already accounted for, like student-faculty ratio?

There are a few factors I can think of, and I will use Michigan State as an example since I am most familiar with it.

Michigan State has had about 300 students a year. Their median LSAT is 157, and their top 25% has been around 160. This means, that if they eventually shrunk to a class size about that of Maryland, like 150 students, their median LSAT would be about 160, the same as Maryland.

So why keep the large class? I think it is a strategy to bank funds from students they have that fall below the median in order to do several things: Give scholarships to student with better numbers, hire more prestigious faculty, increase funding in the school for things like clinical programs and different legal interests.

As those things get better, I suspect that they can lower the class size a little bit each year and maintain whatever their numbers are, even as they slow the granting of scholarships. As older less prestigious professors retire or get fired, they will not have to replace them because of the shrinking class size, so the student-faculty ratio will remain about the same. Further, employment numbers will go up significantly if they are trying to place 150 students a year as opposed to 300. Even if the same number of students get jobs, the placement percentage will double.

As I see it, the trick right now is to keep the incoming class profile numbers as steady as possible in terms of LSAT GPA without lowering class size, until they decide to make the transition to a fundamentally smaller class.


Do you all think I am way off base to think this is a strategy they are using? Do you think I am I missing something else about class size? Do you see flaws with this reasoning?

[The-Specs]

As those things get better, I suspect that they can lower the class size a little bit each year and maintain whatever their numbers are, even as they slow the granting of scholarships. As older less prestigious professors retire or get fired, they will not have to replace them because of the shrinking class size, so the student-faculty ratio will remain about the same. Further, employment numbers will go up significantly if they are trying to place 150 students a year as opposed to 300. Even if the same number of students get jobs, the placement percentage will double.

Do you all think I am way off base to think this is a strategy they are using? Do you think I am I missing something else about class size? Do you see flaws with this reasoning?

This is what I have a problem with. While it seems right on the face of it to some extent firms recruit based on class rank. So, if they only go median deep in the class of 300 they will be looking at 150 applicant but if they go median deep in a class of 150 they will only be looking at a pool of 75. Even with a smaller class I don't think anyone wants to hire the dregs of Michigan State. The students at the bottom will still be at the bottom and will not be recruited unless they have some kind of connection or spectacular softs. I don't think that this will improve their placement by much (though it seems to be the ethical and responsible thing to do).

Correct me if I am wrong.

[JCougar]

I still can't get over Notre Dame. What a slaughter.

Seems like just outside the T18 was a massacre. Minnesota and ND lost three points, GW and Indiana lost two. Even the 15-18 schools all lost a point.

I'm still wondering how Emory kept their medians in light of all this. I'm skeptical about the numbers on the spreadsheet, but looking at their LSN profile, I believe it. Doesn't seem like they massively shrunk class size, nor does it look like they handed out ridiculous scholarships. Same with BC.

[Ramius]

What do you all think class size really means in terms of the ability of a school to change its rank, assuming other factors are already accounted for, like student-faculty ratio?

There are a few factors I can think of, and I will use Michigan State as an example since I am most familiar with it.

Michigan State has had about 300 students a year. Their median LSAT is 157, and their top 25% has been around 160. This means, that if they eventually shrunk to a class size about that of Maryland, like 150 students, their median LSAT would be about 160, the same as Maryland.

So why keep the large class? I think it is a strategy to bank funds from students they have that fall below the median in order to do several things: Give scholarships to student with better numbers, hire more prestigious faculty, increase funding in the school for things like clinical programs and different legal interests.

As those things get better, I suspect that they can lower the class size a little bit each year and maintain whatever their numbers are, even as they slow the granting of scholarships. As older less prestigious professors retire or get fired, they will not have to replace them because of the shrinking class size, so the student-faculty ratio will remain about the same. Further, employment numbers will go up significantly if they are trying to place 150 students a year as opposed to 300. Even if the same number of students get jobs, the placement percentage will double.

As I see it, the trick right now is to keep the incoming class profile numbers as steady as possible in terms of LSAT GPA without lowering class size, until they decide to make the transition to a fundamentally smaller class.


Do you all think I am way off base to think this is a strategy they are using? Do you think I am I missing something else about class size? Do you see flaws with this reasoning?

You're missing one big thing here that is a fundamental flaw. Schools only care about medians to the extent that they don't want it to affect the bottom line. While it might be altruistic and the right thing to do shrinking their class size, that would mean a serious cut in tuition brought in, and therefore a negative impact on the bottom line. So ultimately they are deciding how much of a hit they are willing to take on these numbers based on the current climate and then deciding after that if they need to drop class size to maintain those numbers.

Deans aren't fired because they plummet in the rankings. They are fired because they didn't do enough to keep pockets of the school fat. USNWR affects this too, which is why they game the rankings at all. But push come to shove, they'll protect the cash flow before they protect the prestige (with a few exceptions out there where they don't have to worry about the numbers they're attracting because they'll always have their pick of the top candidates).

[cannibal ox]

I still can't get over Notre Dame. What a slaughter.

Seems like just outside the T18 was a massacre. Minnesota and ND lost three points, GW and Indiana lost two. Even the 15-18 schools all lost a point.

I'm still wondering how Emory kept their medians in light of all this. I'm skeptical about the numbers on the spreadsheet, but looking at their LSN profile, I believe it. Doesn't seem like they massively shrunk class size, nor does it look like they handed out ridiculous scholarships. Same with BC.

Emory's numbers come from here. They don't have a "class of 20XX" but they're different from their numbers from the last few years. They also have their class of 2015 profile still up elsewhere on their website, which is odd that they wouldn't update that but would update another portion of their site.

[KoolGJ]

Looking back at a previous version of the Emory page from August courtesy of the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/201208230557 ... ments.html

It seems that the only thing they changed on the page was the GPA from 3.7 to 3.75. The class size of 245 language is the same, the LSAT score is the same; they just added this one digit. I am not sure if these are new numbers for the Class of 2016 or maybe a correction of the old ones.

[empyreanrrv]

Fordham:
http://law.fordham.edu/614.htm

BU:
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/jd/class_profile/

[hephaestus]

Fordham:
http://law.fordham.edu/614.htm

BU:
http://www.bu.edu/law/prospective/jd/class_profile/

Wow. Fordham to 163 for day and 160 for evening. That is quite the drop in the last couple of years.