jreeve12 wrote:
Schools will never systematically discriminate negatively against accommodated scores unless all accommodated testers also have a GPA below median. Since they are only reporting GPA for those applicants, the ones with good GPAs will benefit the school regardless of their LSAT score, and the ones that will hurt the school with a bad GPA will be justifiably rejected because they have a bad GPA.
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Sounds great, even slightly reasonable. But where is your evidence?? I never intended this forum to be a venue for expressions of wishful thinking or how YOU would make admissions decisions if YOU were running a law school admissions office.
The fact is that UVA would have to explain how someone with a 170+ and a 3.5 is pretty much guaranteed admission to the law school through ED, but my accommodated score got rejected with that same GPA. If they can't come up with a very good answer, someone in my position has just won the lottery. They discriminate at their greatest peril, so the question I would ask them if this goes on would be, "Is it worth it?"[/quote]
I think you are putting too much stock in the "guaranteed admission" assertion. Not to menion, if the school falls back on the hollistic approach of admissions I am sure they can come up with another reason to deny you. On top of that, admissions decisions are generally not appealable nor reviewable and I don't think any court in its right mind would let you litigate your way in to UVA. The very idea of admissions is to discriminate among people and determine who should attend. While there may be a case to prevent LSAC from flagging scores achieved with extra time (I personally think the flagging is okay for reasons already mentioned) there is no case to argue UVA had to let you in because they let some other guy in with your stats.[/quote]
I haven't lost YET, now. Let's not count the votes/admissions decisions before they're cast. I may very well prevail in the end. A lot can happen in a year.
As for "your GPA was below median" being an adequate response from UVA to rebuff any potential civil claim, ordinarily I would agree with you. Hands down. Courts are understandably loathe to get involved in the insular affairs of colleges/law schools, and they don't need much of an excuse to throw a case out in these situations. However, I believe you're thinking too small here. If there REALLLY is widespread, systematic, and illegal discrimination against applicants with accommodated scores (which, again, I am FAR from convinced of after this thread) and you REALLY want to stick it to law schools for these crimes, you don't look at the facts of JUST your case and file a lawsuit. You pull the admissions data of THOUSANDS of accommodated applicants in search of a pattern of applications with similar stats being accepted while those with similar accommodated LSAT scores being rejected; you take that pattern to a disability advocate group with similar plaintiffs; and then they file MANY lawsuits in several different federal district court jurisdictions across the country. One case of a rejection on account of a below median GPA and an accommodated LSAT which usually guarantees admission? Meh. Two such cases? Meh. TEN TO FIFTY SUCH RECENT CASES at a school like UVA?!? The school would definitely have some serious questions to answer, and they had better make sure that they have some good answers! Let's not pretend otherwise. This is one of many reasons that I now believe that accommodated scores are equated equally to non-accommodated scores in law school admissions more or less across the board. There's just too much risk of exposure to litigation and bad press.
Now, obviously, any such litigation would be an enormous pain, and I would have to go through countless hours of deep introspection and discussions with a family attorney to determine if pursuing the matter would either a) offer the opportunity to make a difference/make history OR b) actually be worth it for me personally in the long run. Jeffrey Sutton, after all, went to OHIO STATE LAW, wound up clerking for Lewis F. Powell and Antonin Scalia, and is now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (the very pinnacle of worldly ambition in my book). He didn't have to go to a "top" law school by any means to achieve that, and neither do I. Don't get me wrong. I would certainly LIKE to have UVA's help, and I think they could equally benefit from having me, but I do not NEED them.
All that aside, pretending that law schools are immune from judicial review of their admissions decisions is, at best, facetious. We are, at this moment, awaiting a ruling in the biggest university affirmative action case in at least 10 years- maybe ever. The Supreme Court (yes, the very one with the overly restrained John G. Roberts at the helm) seems poised to strike the University of Texas' affirmative action plan as failing to be narrowly tailored to meet the compelling state interest at issue. They may even get rid of affirmative action in university admissions altogether. As UVA is ultimately a state agent, persons with accommodated scores have an even GREATER basis to have their cases heard by the courts than Abigail Fisher, as persons with disabilities quite arguably fit what Harlan Fisk Stone described as the "discrete and insular minorities" which compel the judiciary to scrutinize discriminatory laws/state action that would otherwise fall squarely under the prerogatives of popular sovereignty. Stone was speaking of constitutional rather than statutory review in his famous Footnote 4, of course, but I think the standard should still hold.[/quote]
Your classmates and professors are going to love you.