Is Lawschoolnumbers.com an accurate reflection? Forum

[alltheway]

Are the acceptance charts on lawschoolnumbers.com an accurate reflection of the people who get or don't? Like what are the pitfalls of paying too much attention to that site?

[bconly]

If you want to get technical, then yes there are some theoretical statistical issues... but in practice - yes it is a VERY good representation of what to expect.

[im_blue]

It's accurate in general, with a few pitfalls:
1) sampling bias - the website might attract a certain type of applicant, so you only see results of these applicants.
2) fudged profiles - some people fudge their numbers, hide their URM status, or incorrectly list their average rather than highest LSAT, which makes it hard to trust outliers.
3) small sample in a particular range - suppose I search for applicants with my LSAT and GPA (+/- 0.05) and find that 2 out of 4 of them got into my target school. Does that mean my chances are 50/50, or that the 2 who got in had great softs, or that the 2 who were rejected applied too late, or....(you get the idea)?

[Lomax]

Are the acceptance charts on lawschoolnumbers.com an accurate reflection of the people who get or don't? Like what are the pitfalls of paying too much attention to that site?

The vast majority of people who apply to law school do not use LSN. Users of LSN may share certain traits not representative of the pool of applicants on the whole. Anyone can post anything on LSN. People sometimes create joke accounts and post phony numbers and statuses in association with these. Previous cycles are not entirely representative of the current one. Softs, which can sometimes be important factors in admissions decisions, are rarely identified by users, let alone clearly listed.

LSN is a wonderful tool and can generally be used reliably as a rough guide for those deciding if they should apply to a school and what chances they have of getting accepted should they do so.

[j.wellington]

I use it more to see when people are getting their decisions and how long it took, not as a score barometer. The sample is too small and skewed to make any general conclusions from it.

[ScaredWorkedBored]

Statistically, it has self-selection sampling bias as well as the obvious Internet self-reporting problems. Because it is incomplete, it also has problems computing the stats of the entering class until the university releases them. With how big a difference balancing at the margins can make there, a sample isn't really helpful.

Ignoring troll profiles, the bias tilts towards the more hard-core applicant. The casual law school applicant who is determined to go to X, Y or Z school in his home state (or where Dad went) and is fairly comfortable he will get in is not going to bother with TLS, LSN or anything else. Ditto the oblivious applicant who doesn't really comprehend how the metrics work because he's never bothered to learn them. Most people really put very little thought or effort into their choices of school compared to what you see if you don't get outside the echo chamber.

[rookhawk]

?

[turkishangora]

sf

[D. H2Oman]

Somehow there doesn't seem to be a lot of below-median LSAT admits on LSN....if they're only taking splitters with low LSAT numbers...there should at least be a considerable number of high-GPA green dots....i.e. definitely skewed towards the stronger pool?

Nope

[PDaddy]

Are the acceptance charts on lawschoolnumbers.com an accurate reflection of the people who get or don't? Like what are the pitfalls of paying too much attention to that site?

The vast majority of people who apply to law school do not use LSN. Users of LSN may share certain traits not representative of the pool of applicants on the whole. Anyone can post anything on LSN. People sometimes create joke accounts and post phony numbers and statuses in association with these. Previous cycles are not entirely representative of the current one. Softs, which can sometimes be important factors in admissions decisions, are rarely identified by users, let alone clearly listed.

LSN is a wonderful tool and can generally be used reliably as a rough guide for those deciding if they should apply to a school and what chances they have of getting accepted should they do so.

LSN should link with LSDAS so stats can't be fudged. People should only be able to register for LSN through their LSAC account numbers, which would ideally retrieve accurate data without revealing names, UG's or hometowns or other identifying numbers. Just true academic stats! That would make LSN more credible. Taking it a step further, schools that admit applicants could post the admission (with the applicant's permission) on LSN by LSAC account number, which would correspond to applicants' LSN usernames. Again, the system would have to be fool proof to preserve privacy. But atleast we wouldn't have to look at the BS and wonder. If you see 10 people on LSN who got into Yale, 7/10 are lying.

[PDaddy]

I wonder if the "cinderella stories" are omitted from the LSN stats? Meaning, do the people that defy every possible statistic but have mega soft-skills put their info on LSN often?

In this cycle I saw 2 people getting into piles of T-14 with softs that were epic. But only 2?

Has anyone ever seen the actual, individual admission stats for T-14 applicants (not sure any t14s give out anonymized data of this sort) to compare against LSN?

You know that URM's and even SOME female non-URM's get into Stanford with 3.5/157, but not many. And, yes, the softs are always killer. Single mothers who overcame poverty, domestic abuse and cancer to run successful businesses, started foundations for battered women and put two honor roll kids through high school and college. Stuff like that.

[goosey]

i think it paints a much more bleak picture, but its good to not go into things overly optimistic only to have your hopes crushed

I prefer thinking I have no chance in hell based off of lsn and tls and then being pleasantly surprised when X Reach school is actually considering me.

[stratocophic]

i think it paints a much more bleak picture, but its good to not go into things overly optimistic only to have your hopes crushed

I prefer thinking I have no chance in hell based off of lsn and tls and then being pleasantly surprised when X Reach school is actually considering me.

TITCR. I'd prefer to assume schools are actually laughing at my application only to later find out they were just chuckling derisively before they let me in to preserve their LSAT median.

[PDaddy]

i think it paints a much more bleak picture, but its good to not go into things overly optimistic only to have your hopes crushed

I prefer thinking I have no chance in hell based off of lsn and tls and then being pleasantly surprised when X Reach school is actually considering me.

TITCR. I'd prefer to assume schools are actually laughing at my application only to later find out they were just chuckling derisively before they let me in to preserve their LSAT median.

Agreed. And my point above is that those people who do get into the elite schools without super numbers are exceptional, rare. So people shouldn't put too much stock in the prospects of squeezing through the gate.

[reasonabledoubt]

Something that is, in my opinion, far more useful due to it actually being verified data, is the "school description" ABA link off of everyone's LSAC account when you search a school.

Most schools have a chart. Here's IUB's, for example.

http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchRes ... AC1324.pdf

Scroll down, look at the matrix, and guage your chances based on these actual figures. I don't trust nor have an account on LSN.

[D. H2Oman]

lol, anyone who thinks LSN paints an overly negative picture is in for a nice surprise

[PhantaManta]

LSN is -by far- the best tool for predicting application results.

[stratocophic]

Something that is, in my opinion, far more useful due to it actually being verified data, is the "school description" ABA link off of everyone's LSAC account when you search a school.

Most schools have a chart. Here's IUB's, for example.

http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchRes ... AC1324.pdf

Scroll down, look at the matrix, and guage your chances based on these actual figures. I don't trust nor have an account on LSN.

Out of the 9 schools I'm applying to, Duke's the only one honest enough to provide numbers. To be fair, I have to give props to Emory and WashU as well for providing the probability charts they've got posted, since it may be an even better reflection of admissions chances than the raw data (since one never knows due to softs, URM status, etc.). To the others... c'mon. We know you all about the GPA and LSAT, they're as close a currency to actual Benjamins as the USNWR accepts. May as well be honest with us.

[nyknicks]

I never got why people on here say that LSN is skewed toward applicants with higher numbers. Yes, the site as a whole is, but I don't see how individual reports for the top 50 or so schools are. It is not like you only see the numbers for admits, you see the the numbers for rejects as well. When there is a clear pattern for every school for which numbers are rejected I think it is pretty obvious that it is an accurate reflection. Yes, there are exceptions, and I have heard real life anedoctes of non-urm, weak-soft candidates, getting into schools during cycles where all admits on LSN had stats above theirs (as well as many rejects). However, a couple of these anedoctes is not sufficient evidence against the accuracy of LSN charts in general.

[wired]

Something that is, in my opinion, far more useful due to it actually being verified data, is the "school description" ABA link off of everyone's LSAC account when you search a school.

Most schools have a chart. Here's IUB's, for example.

http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchRes ... AC1324.pdf

Scroll down, look at the matrix, and guage your chances based on these actual figures. I don't trust nor have an account on LSN.

Out of the 9 schools I'm applying to, Duke's the only one honest enough to provide numbers. To be fair, I have to give props to Emory and WashU as well for providing the probability charts they've got posted, since it may be an even better reflection of admissions chances than the raw data (since one never knows due to softs, URM status, etc.). To the others... c'mon. We know you all about the GPA and LSAT, they're as close a currency to actual Benjamins as the USNWR accepts. May as well be honest with us.

Agreed. However, I don't think it would be good publicity for UVA when they release their chart and it has a 0/1000 accepted for the 165-169/3.5-3.75 range.

[stratocophic]

Something that is, in my opinion, far more useful due to it actually being verified data, is the "school description" ABA link off of everyone's LSAC account when you search a school.

Most schools have a chart. Here's IUB's, for example.

http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchRes ... AC1324.pdf

Scroll down, look at the matrix, and guage your chances based on these actual figures. I don't trust nor have an account on LSN.

Out of the 9 schools I'm applying to, Duke's the only one honest enough to provide numbers. To be fair, I have to give props to Emory and WashU as well for providing the probability charts they've got posted, since it may be an even better reflection of admissions chances than the raw data (since one never knows due to softs, URM status, etc.). To the others... c'mon. We know you all about the GPA and LSAT, they're as close a currency to actual Benjamins as the USNWR accepts. May as well be honest with us.

Agreed. However, I don't think it would be good publicity for UVA when they release their chart and it has a 0/1000 accepted for the 165-169/3.5-3.75 range.

I'm going to feel at home at UVA if I end up there Hey, there has to be at least one good school that takes splitters. NU doesn't count as they are worthless to me and a great many other splitters because of their work experience BS.

[ram jam]

Sometimes in life, limited information is the only information. It has been accurate for me so far!

[UFMatt]

In my experience so far (10 decisions), LSN has been extremely accurate.