Will Law Schools Drop the LSAT Requirement? Forum

[Miracle]

Yes you find time. But you don't find money.

Can you explain to me how someone who's preparing to spend $200K to go to law school can't come up with $1K to prepare?

+1

[DeeCee]

Yes you find time. But you don't find money.

Can you explain to me how someone who's preparing to spend $200K to go to law school can't come up with $1K to prepare?

I'll explain perfectly. I make 10k a year as a grad assistant. I only take out loans to pay tuition, health expenses and meals. I scrape by in order to be financially responsible. My parents do not pay for ANYTHING. 1K is a lot and was barely feasible for me. I do not think it is ethical to have to take classes or buy a multitude of books to have a chance.

[d34d9823]

Yes you find time. But you don't find money.

Can you explain to me how someone who's preparing to spend $200K to go to law school can't come up with $1K to prepare?

I'll explain perfectly. I make 10k a year as a grad assistant. I only take out loans to pay tuition, health expenses and meals. I scrape by in order to be financially responsible. My parents do not pay for ANYTHING. 1K is a lot and was barely feasible for me. I do not think it is ethical to have to take classes or buy a multitude of books to have a chance.

I spent $40 on my study materials. If you can't come up with that, how are you going to pay for law school?

[Cmart050]

Yes you find time. But you don't find money.

Can you explain to me how someone who's preparing to spend $200K to go to law school can't come up with $1K to prepare?

I'll explain perfectly. I make 10k a year as a grad assistant. I only take out loans to pay tuition, health expenses and meals. I scrape by in order to be financially responsible. My parents do not pay for ANYTHING. 1K is a lot and was barely feasible for me. I do not think it is ethical to have to take classes or buy a multitude of books to have a chance.

I got a 166 studying with a couple books I bought from Amazon and a few of my buddy's old ones. Absolutely nothing in your life is going to be 100%, completely fair. I don't expect the application process to be. But its close enough.

[taxguy]

Finally, I can tell you that I have met a number of young lawyers. Many of whom have outperformed what was expected of them by their scores. In particular, I know two young guys who scored at least 10 points below their law school medians for admission, but were accedpted because of strong GPAs. They both finished in the top 5%. I would bet that private studies by law schools confirm this lack of corelation.

The data shows ~0.4 correlation for LSAT and ~0.3 for GPA. Since they are correlated themselves, the sum correlation is less than the sum of the correlations, ~0.6.

Both of these are extremely strong, which is why these two factors are used most heavily in admissions decisions. I appreciate your experience, but honestly, we can tell that you're a lawyer, not a statistician.

I am also a CPA. I can tell you an old maxim that most accountants know: Figures lie and liers figure. I don't know what the corelation is relating too but there are just too many outlying candidates that I have met. It can't be that coincidental. I would bet that whoever is citing these statistical corelations are related to the group that publishes the LSAT. Speak to the folks on the ABA council for abolishing the requirement of the LSAT. Speak to any admission dean, assuming they will really be honest with you. They themselves will tell you that many kids who scored below the median for their class out performed their expected performance. Moreover, many top LSAT scorers didn't do as well as expected.

[DeeCee]

Look, some people do not have it the same as you. The test comes down to resources available to study, not intelligence. I think we are all going a bit overboard on this. I am trying to explain that many times, intelligent people have serious barriers to overcome for law school. Perhaps it is not that way for you, but we do not all have the same life experiences.

[DeeCee]

Yes you find time. But you don't find money.

Can you explain to me how someone who's preparing to spend $200K to go to law school can't come up with $1K to prepare?

I'll explain perfectly. I make 10k a year as a grad assistant. I only take out loans to pay tuition, health expenses and meals. I scrape by in order to be financially responsible. My parents do not pay for ANYTHING. 1K is a lot and was barely feasible for me. I do not think it is ethical to have to take classes or buy a multitude of books to have a chance.

I spent $40 on my study materials. If you can't come up with that, how are you going to pay for law school?

That's great you only spent $40. You're not factoring in the other services you paid for though. Also, we can all take out loans as long as we have not defaulted on previous ones. Anyone can take out loans to pay for law school, as we all know the government is extremely lenient about that.

[d34d9823]

You're not factoring in the other services you paid for though.

Pray tell?

[DeeCee]

You're not factoring in the other services you paid for though.

Pray tell?

Applications
the Candidate Referral Service (or whatever its called)

[d34d9823]

I am also a CPA. I can tell you an old maxim that most accountants know: Figures lie and liers figure. I don't know what the corelation is relating too but there are just too many outlying candidates that I have met. It can't be that coincidental. I would bet that whoever is citing these statistically corelations are lated to the group that publishes the LSAT. Speak to the folks on the ABA council for abolishing the requirement of the LSAT. Speak to any admission dean, assuming they will really be honest with you. They themselves will tell you that many kids who scored below the median for their class out performed their expected performance. Moreover, many top LSAT scorers didn't do as well as expected.

Sorry if I was harsh, but I hate it when people claim that anecdotes in any way refute actual analysis.

Also, it would be expected for there to be a vast number of outliers. 0.4 is enormously strong for a complex system like this, but it's still a hugely scattered data set. It would be more surprising if you didn't know any outliers.

[flcath]

Dropping the LSAT might be a good idea:

It will greatly lower the stratification of the field with regard to law school pedigree. Employers hire from HYS because they believe those schools have the most intelligent students; once that is no longer true--i.e., HYS is full of retards who excel in nothing but "founding" bullshit clubs and performing bullshit "community service"--firms will have to dig frantically across the gamut of law schools to find students who are actually smart. As it stands, the LSAT does most of that work for them.

As a former inner-city tutor/teacher, I have seen "teaching to the test" firsthand. This starts from our elementary days, and even through today, as we study for the LSAT. It is an inherently privileged system.
You have to believe these tests are teachable. If we all sat around and studied for a year and learned every nuance of the test, then most would do well. However, many do not have these resources. I still believe it is best to judge by achievements and experiences (internships, volunteering, work), as I've said before.

Teachability is the primary weakness of the LSAT (and the LSAT is still pretty good about it; the little bit of hard data available indicates that meaningful improvements on the test are rare). This is a better justification for fundamentally altering the test every year than it is for abolishing it.

If anything, drop GPA. I am tired of seeing people with a 160 LSAT and a 3.88 GPA from their TTT in Poli Sci gain admission to schools in which they cannot compete.

As I said above, it will replace the emphasis on school pedigree with an emphasis on grades. Since you'll now have kids who would've gotten a 173 in the same classes as 155-quality kids, the grade distributions will be huge and meaningful. Instead of the difference between an A and a B being a small set of dumb arbitrary things (since you're separating kids who are essentially equally smart), it'd now be the difference between a kid with 172 intelligence and one with 163 intelligence.

Yeah, God forbid we go by criteria that matters.

Poor subject-verb agreement. Also, why doesn't intelligence matter?

the larger issue, once again, being about 75 too many schools.

Thank god we can still all agree on this.

[d34d9823]

Applications
the Candidate Referral Service (or whatever its called)

Apps are free with demonstrated financial need. The CRS isn't necessary - I assume you mean the data assembly service which is ~$100.

I'll concede that, but if you can find me even one person who can't come up with $140 to pursue their life dream, I'll be shocked.

[Cmart050]

Retracted that post. It was yucky and did not contribute to the conversation.

[DeeCee]

Sorry about my "poor subject-verb agreement." It's late and really, who cares.

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all. You just don't want it taken away because you (and most people on TLS) worked so hard for your score. That's what it really comes down to.

[Cmart050]

I'll concede that, but if you can find me even one person who can't come up with $140 to pursue their life dream, I'll be shocked.

TITCR. Thank you.

[flcath]

Sorry about my "poor subject-verb agreement." It's late and really, who cares.

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all. You just don't want it taken away because you (and most people on TLS) worked so hard for your score. That's what it really comes down to.

I'm just kidding about the subject-verb agreement.

I didn't say it correlated with achievement; are you making a counterpoint (and implicitly conceding my point) or do you really think that intelligence = achievements? Or that raw intelligence doesn't matter?

[Cmart050]

Sorry about my "poor subject-verb agreement." It's late and really, who cares.

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all. You just don't want it taken away because you (and most people on TLS) worked so hard for your score. That's what it really comes down to.

You don't want your GPA taken away because you worked hard for it. There is selection bias going on both sides. I have a 2.9. Got a 166. Failed three classes my first year. Have had a 3.5-3.6 since. Why should my GPA keep me out of excellent schools when it was something that happend 4 years ago????

(Please note that was sarcasm. The system is fine, just get eliminate 75 schools and just about everything would be fixed.)

[d34d9823]

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all.

Data says otherwise. It correlates with both undergrad GPA and law school GPA.

[DeeCee]

Applications
the Candidate Referral Service (or whatever its called)

Apps are free with demonstrated financial need. The CRS isn't necessary - I assume you mean the data assembly service which is ~$100.

I'll concede that, but if you can find me even one person who can't come up with $140 to pursue their life dream, I'll be shocked.

Apps were not free for some....I live below the poverty level and I couldn't "demonstrate financial need." Yes, I meant DAS, couldn't remember what is was called. I believe I paid around $100 plus the LSAT administration, plus many PS Bibles and PT's, plus 4 applications around $95 a piece ($12 LSAC fee included). For the rest I received fee waivers. Still, that's a lot.

[DeeCee]

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all.

Data says otherwise. It correlates with both undergrad GPA and law school GPA.

What about the LSAT?

[DeeCee]

Sorry about my "poor subject-verb agreement." It's late and really, who cares.

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all. You just don't want it taken away because you (and most people on TLS) worked so hard for your score. That's what it really comes down to.

You don't want your GPA taken away because you worked hard for it. There is selection bias going on both sides. I have a 2.9. Got a 166. Failed three classes my first year. Have had a 3.5-3.6 since. Why should my GPA keep me out of excellent schools when it was something that happend 4 years ago????

(Please note that was sarcasm. The system is fine, just get eliminate 75 schools and just about everything would be fixed.)

That's why I say go by achievements. Any adcomm should be able to recognize that was several years ago and that you have grown since then.

[taxguy]

Many of you are assuming that if you study well for the LSAT, you will always do well. This is NOT the case. Fully 50% of test takers get under a 150 for the LSAT. I personally know someone who took the Powerscore course and thoroughly did the course. He then studied ALL of the Powerscore bibles and then took about 15 or more actual LSAT tests. Despite studying for 6 months, his high score was 146! Moreover, this same kid never has done well in a standardized test in his life but has outperformed the score expectations. He did much better in undergrad then his SAT would have shown. He was in the bottom 25% of the GMATs and yet graduated from a graduate business program and was number one in his class, graduating with High Distinction. I could go on and on,but not everyone does well on the LSAT even with a LOT of work.

[firemed]

Sorry about my "poor subject-verb agreement." It's late and really, who cares.

Also, The LSAT does not correlate with achievements at all. You just don't want it taken away because you (and most people on TLS) worked so hard for your score. That's what it really comes down to.

You don't want your GPA taken away because you worked hard for it. There is selection bias going on both sides. I have a 2.9. Got a 166. Failed three classes my first year. Have had a 3.5-3.6 since. Why should my GPA keep me out of excellent schools when it was something that happend 4 years ago????

(Please note that was sarcasm. The system is fine, just get eliminate 75 schools and just about everything would be fixed.)

My 3.0 held me back from something I did 12 years ago. Without the LSAT I never would have even gotten into the T2 schools I have. It allowed me to demonstrate some intelligence (got a 160 cold if I remember correctly) and that I could study hard (though that only got me up to 165). It is worth something.

I also agree, definitely, that all of the T4 except Cooley (I have a soft spot for them, don't ask me why) needs to go away, and the T3 needs to be put on probation as a whole so that 20 or 30 of them can go away in the next few years. Oh, and class sizes should be strictly regulated, no more than 100 per class, period.

[d34d9823]

Cooley (I have a soft spot for them, don't ask me why)

Could it be the size of their library?

[DeeCee]

Many of you are assuming that if you study well for the LSAT, you will always do well. This is NOT the case. Fully 50% of test takers get under a 150 for the LSAT. I personally know someone who took the Powerscore course and thoroughly did the course. He then studied ALL of the Powerscore bibles and then took about 15 or more actual LSAT tests. Despite studying for 6 months, his high score was 146! Moreover, this same kid never has done well in a standardized test in his life but has outperformed the score expectations. He did much better in undergrad then his SAT would have shown. He was in the bottom 25% of the GMATs and yet graduated from a graduate business program and was number one in his class, graduating with High Distinction. I could go on and on,but not everyone does well on the LSAT even with a LOT of work.

Thank you for your insight. I believe this also. In general, most people on this site test well and do not understand that some people can not ace the LSAT, no matter what.