Top Law Schools

I'm a bit of a splitter, I estimate a 3.81 GPA, and I just got a 176 on the LSAT. Pretty average soft spots, with speaking Chinese, and studying there for 3 months being one of my better selling points. Also, I'm not sure how it will affect things, but my GPA has gotten a lot better in the later years. ( 3.51 Freshman year, and a 3.93 between sophomore and junior years).

What chances do I have at HYS?

What about your stats makes you a splitter...?

Anyway, you have a decent chance at all 3. I'd say a better shot at Harvard than Yale or Stanford. H is more #s based, and your high LSAT is a huge plus for them. Yale and Stanford are more unpredictable.

tikiman6 wrote:I'm a bit of a splitter, I estimate a 3.81 GPA, and I just got a 176 on the LSAT. Pretty average soft spots, with speaking Chinese, and studying there for 3 months being one of my better selling points. Also, I'm not sure how it will affect things, but my GPA has gotten a lot better in the later years. ( 3.51 Freshman year, and a 3.93 between sophomore and junior years).

What chances do I have at HYS?

H - Most likely unless your undergrad was shit.
S and Y- Slightly better than 50/50, with chances increasing if you have great softs or a prestigious undergrad with a clearly difficult curriculum.

invisiblesun wrote:

tikiman6 wrote:I'm a bit of a splitter, I estimate a 3.81 GPA, and I just got a 176 on the LSAT. Pretty average soft spots, with speaking Chinese, and studying there for 3 months being one of my better selling points. Also, I'm not sure how it will affect things, but my GPA has gotten a lot better in the later years. ( 3.51 Freshman year, and a 3.93 between sophomore and junior years).

What chances do I have at HYS?

H - Most likely unless your undergrad was shit.
S and Y- Slightly better than 50/50, with chances increasing if you have great softs or a prestigious undergrad with a clearly difficult curriculum.

Don't know how true your statement about Harvard is. I went to a pretty shitty undergrad and I got in. I don't have anything really exceptional on my application to make up for it either.

Zara wrote:

invisiblesun wrote:

tikiman6 wrote:I'm a bit of a splitter, I estimate a 3.81 GPA, and I just got a 176 on the LSAT. Pretty average soft spots, with speaking Chinese, and studying there for 3 months being one of my better selling points. Also, I'm not sure how it will affect things, but my GPA has gotten a lot better in the later years. ( 3.51 Freshman year, and a 3.93 between sophomore and junior years).

What chances do I have at HYS?

H - Most likely unless your undergrad was shit.
S and Y- Slightly better than 50/50, with chances increasing if you have great softs or a prestigious undergrad with a clearly difficult curriculum.

Don't know how true your statement about Harvard is. I went to a pretty shitty undergrad and I got in. I don't have anything really exceptional on my application to make up for it either.

Was your GPA better than his? And I'm not saying that he wouldn't get in, I'm just saying its not as much of a lock as if he had those numbers from a top 50 UG.

I'm going to UW-Madison, which is like 35th-ish? But I'm a bit of a splitter because my LSAT is above the median at every school, GPA around 25th at HYS. I'd think my chances would be roughly similar at SLS and YLS, since SLS likes the GPA more, which is the weaker of my two. On the other hand, my GPA is not grade-inflated like most Ivy Leaguers.

Hehe. You fact checked me. Should have figured...

3.2 is alright, definitely not grade inflation

invisiblesun wrote:

Zara wrote:

invisiblesun wrote:

tikiman6 wrote:I'm a bit of a splitter, I estimate a 3.81 GPA, and I just got a 176 on the LSAT. Pretty average soft spots, with speaking Chinese, and studying there for 3 months being one of my better selling points. Also, I'm not sure how it will affect things, but my GPA has gotten a lot better in the later years. ( 3.51 Freshman year, and a 3.93 between sophomore and junior years).

What chances do I have at HYS?

H - Most likely unless your undergrad was shit.
S and Y- Slightly better than 50/50, with chances increasing if you have great softs or a prestigious undergrad with a clearly difficult curriculum.

Don't know how true your statement about Harvard is. I went to a pretty shitty undergrad and I got in. I don't have anything really exceptional on my application to make up for it either.

Was your GPA better than his? And I'm not saying that he wouldn't get in, I'm just saying its not as much of a lock as if he had those numbers from a top 50 UG.

eh, id say good chance in at H
S is more 50/50...if your PS and LORs are good, or have some nice softs, all the better
Y i say out, just from the general ambivalent tone you have toward your softs and the fact that you're still in UG

H - Most likely unless your undergrad was shit.
S and Y- Slightly better than 50/50, with chances increasing if you have great softs or a prestigious undergrad with a clearly difficult curriculum.

Don't know how true your statement about Harvard is. I went to a pretty shitty undergrad and I got in. I don't have anything really exceptional on my application to make up for it either.

Was your GPA better than his? And I'm not saying that he wouldn't get in, I'm just saying its not as much of a lock as if he had those numbers from a top 50 UG.

eh, id say good chance in at H
S is more 50/50...if your PS and LORs are good, or have some nice softs, all the better
Y i say out, just from the general ambivalent tone you have toward your softs and the fact that you're still in UG

Well, I do have the ability to speak Chinese. I think this will be eventually more useful finding a job than a school, but I think this is a skill being desired more and more. Furthermore, I asked the fine folks at Yale, and they said they did not give preference to those who do not come straight out of UG.

tikiman6 wrote: Well, I do have the ability to speak Chinese. I think this will be eventually more useful finding a job than a school, but I think this is a skill being desired more and more. Furthermore, I asked the fine folks at Yale, and they said they did not give preference to those who do not come straight out of UG.

How good is your Chinese? Read and write as well? Good enough to do business abroad? And is that your interest? Otherwise I don't think it will matter much more than someone who is pretty decent at French or Italian or Russian.

people being too optimistic about H imo

We have similar stats, feel free to take a gander at my LSN (I speak Chinese and studied abroad as well, but I don't think it was a deciding factor). I think my UG might've given me a teensy boost (it's one of the snobby ones and there are lots of 175/3.8ish HLS rejects) but who knows. In at H, out at Y, and probably heading for the WL at S.

Just got held at H with a 176 and 3.87, below average softs. Keep in mind 50% of the applicant pool has "below average softs", try to not to overestimate how you will stack up against the other people applying to a school like Harvard.

If I don't get rejected/held by Harvard then I think we can positively prove that they do care about softs over numbers. I am not really hopeful though

About the Chinese: I don't know how many white applicants speaks Chinese but lets not forget that maybe 20% of all students at top school are Asian and probably were born speaking Chinese. I don't know if being bilingual in Chinese is going to be considered a top soft considering most of non-Chinese will never speak as well as the native Chinese. There are already too many of us

r6_philly wrote:If I don't get rejected/held by Harvard then I think we can positively prove that they do care about softs over numbers. I am not really hopeful though

About the Chinese: I don't know how many white applicants speaks Chinese but lets not forget that maybe 20% of all students at top school are Asian and probably were born speaking Chinese. I don't know if being bilingual in Chinese is going to be considered a top soft considering most of non-Chinese will never speak as well as the native Chinese. There are already too many of us

bolded: haha what a roundabout way of saying 'accepted'

well at ivy schools like HLS, it's actually only around 10% Asians

and how many of those 10% can even speak Chinese fluently...hmm...imo, being able to speak Mandarin Chinese, for example, will be a great soft for firms to see (iunno about law school admissions)

DoubleChecks wrote:
bolded: haha what a roundabout way of saying 'accepted'

well at ivy schools like HLS, it's actually only around 10% Asians

and how many of those 10% can even speak Chinese fluently...hmm...imo, being able to speak Mandarin Chinese, for example, will be a great soft for firms to see (iunno about law school admissions)

Well I don't want to get my hopes up!

I stand corrected on the percentages. Maybe my chance is a faction higher than I thought??? Off topics but why are there many more Asian women than men?

to answer an earlier post, the op is technically a splitter w/r/t h given that his or her gpa falls below the median. of course, in absolute terms, a 3.81 qualifies one for summa at most schools and is pretty damn impressive.

but yeah, much more than i think many on tls suggest, it seems that quality of ugrad is a somewhat important factor for getting into hys.

in any case, good luck op

APimpNamedSlickback wrote: but yeah, much more than i think many on tls suggest, it seems that quality of ugrad is a somewhat important factor for getting into hys. just looking through the roster for h's march asw, it looks like some outrageously large percentage of kids went to elite schools.

While not surprising, this does seem to be the case for most of the top law schools. ~ 1/3 of the students in the Yale FB group are HYPS undergrads.

BioEBear2010 wrote:

APimpNamedSlickback wrote: but yeah, much more than i think many on tls suggest, it seems that quality of ugrad is a somewhat important factor for getting into hys. just looking through the roster for h's march asw, it looks like some outrageously large percentage of kids went to elite schools.

While not surprising, this does seem to be the case for most of the top law schools. ~ 1/3 of the students in the Yale FB group are HYPS undergrads.

Unsurprising. Top law schools recruit top undergrad students that typically self select into top undergraduate colleges.

BioEBear2010 wrote:

APimpNamedSlickback wrote: but yeah, much more than i think many on tls suggest, it seems that quality of ugrad is a somewhat important factor for getting into hys. just looking through the roster for h's march asw, it looks like some outrageously large percentage of kids went to elite schools.

While not surprising, this does seem to be the case for most of the top law schools. ~ 1/3 of the students in the Yale FB group are HYPS undergrads.

Yeah, and when you include schools like MIT, the other Ivies, and elite LACs, it's somewhere around 90%.

tomhobbes wrote:

BioEBear2010 wrote:

APimpNamedSlickback wrote: but yeah, much more than i think many on tls suggest, it seems that quality of ugrad is a somewhat important factor for getting into hys. just looking through the roster for h's march asw, it looks like some outrageously large percentage of kids went to elite schools.

While not surprising, this does seem to be the case for most of the top law schools. ~ 1/3 of the students in the Yale FB group are HYPS undergrads.

Yeah, and when you include schools like MIT, the other Ivies, and elite LACs, it's somewhere around 90%.

And then there's the misfit from Alabama...