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[Hikikomorist]

The LSAT remains untainted by family money

LOL; so the kid who can put in 40 hours/week on LSAT is on objectively equal footing to the kid working full time and going to school full time while trying to do LSAT prep? Right.

is this "tainted?" though? I'd think spending more time on something and doing better on it is the opposite of "tainted." At the same time, I'm not totally sure where I know how family money taints GPAs unless people are actually buying exam answers or paying off professors.

I would argue that if you compare two theoretical extremes, one being a candidate who has strong financial support from family, that has the freedom to spend 1-2 years with no other obligations that taking/improving a LSAT score, has both the time and $ to research and acquire the best instruction and tutoring to improve their chance of obtaining a higher score. These resources also allow them to travel to a testing center which they believe will provide them with the most comfortable facilities and can arrange to stay at a nice hotel next to the testing center to limit game stress of fighting traffic on the morning of the exam.

Compared to a student who just paying for fee to sit for the LSAT once. Study material is primary what is available in their community library. They provide a large portion of their families financial support and must work long hours, these family obligations also come with time commitments.

Is it that hard to imagine that if the theoretical capacity of these students were the same that the second student would not be at an significant disadvantage?

To the extent those things taint an LSAT score, wouldn't they still taint a GPA more?

[A. Nony Mouse]

Not necessarily - I don't think all the outside resources are necessary to complete college classes successfully, compared to the LSAT. Schools offer a lot of free resources enrolled students can take advantage of.

(In the grand scheme of things, sure - all else being equal, kids brought up with all material/educational advantages start ahead of kids without those advantages - but speaking narrowly of GPA/LSAT, I think LSAT is slightly worse.)

In any case - if they both have a disparate impact on URMs, the answer isn't to weight one over the other, it's to actually engage in holistic review.

[lacrossebrother]

i think that's a silly comparison. you go to law school after undergrad. everyone is pretty poor then. if you go straight through, then you had class to deal with. if you took anytime off, you work. maybe there's like .01% of the test taking population that goes to live with their parents for an entire year after graduating from a decent undergrad with the grades/intellect to go to law school, but I don't think that's a meaningful enough amount of people to worry about.

i don't know what these super poor people look like who are otherwise qualified to excel in law school, but for not having the time to study for the lsat because they have to work 2 minimum wage jobs (after graduating college)

[landshoes]

I prepped for the lsat while working full-time & with substantial family responsibilities. It was far easier than getting a good GPA. It wasn't as subjective and culturally specific as a lot of my college assignments. I didn't need materials besides a few cheap books and practice tests. I didn't need a ton of background knowledge that I didn't get from my shitty high school. I didn't have deadlines besides the test date, so if something came up and I couldn't study for a day or two it wasn't a big deal. There are a lot of people taking the exact same test talking about strategies on the internet.

That doesn't mean that the LSAT is inherently fair, but it seems easier to prep for the LSAT than to get a high GPA if you're short on money/time.

[ihenry]

Not necessarily - I don't think all the outside resources are necessary to complete college classes successfully, compared to the LSAT. Schools offer a lot of free resources enrolled students can take advantage of.

(In the grand scheme of things, sure - all else being equal, kids brought up with all material/educational advantages start ahead of kids without those advantages - but speaking narrowly of GPA/LSAT, I think LSAT is slightly worse.)

In any case - if they both have a disparate impact on URMs, the answer isn't to weight one over the other, it's to actually engage in holistic review.

Speaking of socioeconomic fairness, holistic review might actually be worse. From what I've gathered college admissions in the U.S. are generally considered holistic, and people born in richer families get to attend "conferences", play violin at prestigious concerts, learn foreign languages, etc., which helped them tremendously in gaining admission to top colleges. That is not to say, though, these people do not deserve these credentials, because they still have to devote considerable efforts to these commitments and you can't penalize them for utilizing available resources to advance themselves. It's just that people in lower social strata do not have access to them.

To this end, the socioeconomic resources required for excelling the LSAT is so minimal that is almost negligible. If you qualify for LSAC fee waivers, you get free tests and some study materials that familiarize you with the test; and additional PT sets are pretty cheap. In all honesty, how many high LSAT scorers consumed significant resources beyond that? There might be expensive prep courses that help improve the score, and for two people scoring in 150's, the one able to afford the course may get into 170 while the other cannot in such short time; granted, this is indeed such possibility, but the effect, in the view of the entire test taker population, is marginal. Even in China, disproportionately high percentages of incoming class in top universities are from urban families, because students in rural areas, despite their strong will, do not have access to nutrition, advanced teaching facility and study materials. But bringing in other backgrounds/qualifications into the game failed much more miserably. Furthermore, it's hardly deniable that school admissions, in general, are fairest compared with other walks of life.

[Nekrowizard]

Hey OP, can you take this test and tell me what you get?