LSN and Accuracy Forum

[delusional]

Okay, I'm a newbie, I confess. And I am ever grateful to whomever is behind this website, including the admin who sent me a welcome message that essentially said "Don't post any topics; they've all been posted before. Use the damn search feature." I know how annoying it can be when a guy starts a topic like "Has anyone ever heard of LawSchoolNumbers?! and I don't want to be that guy.

Hooooowwwwevvveer... I still have a question. And after trying to search, I've found vaguely related topics, but not exactly what I'm looking for...

Is LSN always accurate? I went there looking for Penn and Columbia. Off the top of my head, the two schools have official numbers, based on some guides and some online calculators, that are roughly 3.5 - 3.9; 168-175, with Upenn a couple notches lower within that range. According to LSN, almost nobody got in (a couple 4.1+ and/or 176ish. Columbia first: Almost nobody under 172, and almost nobody under 3.8. Even at 173-3.9 it looked like 50-50. Penn was also two points higher than I expected; 171 at the low end, and then only with GPAs above 3.9.

I seem to observe here that people are pretty optimistic about CLS with 3.8/172, and about Penn with 3.7/170. Am I wrong? Are there a whole slew of lower numbers in CLS and Penn that aren't reporting? What gives?

(My numbers, based on PTs only, are 3.8 and 172. Columbia and Penn are my dream, Fordham I consider realistic, and other area schools are plan C, D, and so on.)

[Sell Manilla]

LSN is the single most accurate resource you have, unless you think people are lying.
Trust self-disclosed anecdotals massed into a boatload of data points before you believe general opinions or official school data.

[balzern]

Take a real lsat then speculate son.

[sumus romani]

I'm not sure that I understand your question. The bulk of those who are admitted to any school are above at least one of the medians. People don't have to be above both, just one (preferably the LSAT median). Why is this surprising?

There are indeed some acceptances below both medians, but these are somewhat infrequent, and typically go to URM and legacy admits.

[sumus romani]

Okay, I'm a newbie, I confess. And I am ever grateful to whomever is behind this website, including the admin who sent me a welcome message that essentially said "Don't post any topics; they've all been posted before. Use the damn search feature." I know how annoying it can be when a guy starts a topic like "Has anyone ever heard of LawSchoolNumbers?! and I don't want to be that guy.

Hooooowwwwevvveer... I still have a question. And after trying to search, I've found vaguely related topics, but not exactly what I'm looking for...

Is LSN always accurate? I went there looking for Penn and Columbia. Off the top of my head, the two schools have official numbers, based on some guides and some online calculators, that are roughly 3.5 - 3.9; 168-175, with Upenn a couple notches lower within that range. According to LSN, almost nobody got in (a couple 4.1+ and/or 176ish. Columbia first: Almost nobody under 172, and almost nobody under 3.8. Even at 173-3.9 it looked like 50-50. Penn was also two points higher than I expected; 171 at the low end, and then only with GPAs above 3.9.

I seem to observe here that people are pretty optimistic about CLS with 3.8/172, and about Penn with 3.7/170. Am I wrong? Are there a whole slew of lower numbers in CLS and Penn that aren't reporting? What gives?

(My numbers, based on PTs only, are 3.8 and 172. Columbia and Penn are my dream, Fordham I consider realistic, and other area schools are plan C, D, and so on.)

Let me have another shot at it. By this time in the cycle, waitlists are not changed and they overlay the admits and rejects. For whatever reason, this is the case: and it should somehow be user-modifiable. Nevertheless, it is what we have. But go to the "applicant" tab and you'll see tons of admits of applicants who are above just one median.

[berkeleykel06]

I think one important factor that accounts for the difference between the admittance %s on LSN versus the 25t/50th/75th percentile ranges that get reported for each school is that LSN includes all offers made, whether accepted or not, while the reported statistics only include people who matriculate. Since people with higher stats are going to have lower yield rates due to better offers, schools end up admitting a lot more people with numbers on the high end of their range than on the low end. LSN and the official numbers don't contradict because they are showing different things.

Also, sumus romani is right about the WLs covering up a lot of the admits on LSN. A lot more people with 170/3.8 get admitted at Columbia than it first appears.

[Sell Manilla]

Also, sumus romani is right about the WLs covering up a lot of the admits on LSN. A lot more people with 170/3.8 get admitted at Columbia than it first appears.

So those yellow dots don't switch to green after a WL is converted to an accept?
If not, this is a huge opportunity for TLS to destroy this market.

Note to any lurking admins/moderators: your TLS stats thing has more specific info than LSN. If you work on the image quality of the graph, also including lines for each .1 of GPA, &, ideally making the graph larger with an option for full screen, you win.
Also, do away with the letters: dots with as many colors as you need.

[berkeleykel06]

Also, sumus romani is right about the WLs covering up a lot of the admits on LSN. A lot more people with 170/3.8 get admitted at Columbia than it first appears.

So those yellow dots don't switch to green after a WL is converted to an accept?
If not, this is a huge opportunity for TLS to destroy this market.

Note to any lurking admins/moderators: your TLS stats thing has more specific info than LSN. If you work on the image quality of the graph, also including lines for each .1 of GPA, &, ideally making the graph larger with an option for full screen, you win.
Also, do away with the letters: dots with as many colors as you need.

What we were referring to, or I was anyway, is that only the very tip of the corners of the green admit triangle is visible under the yellow WL symbol, so at first glance entire sections seem completely WL'ed, when in fact there is a fair mixture of accepts/WLs if you pay close attention or if you look under the applicant tab, as sumus said. Also, to some degree I assume people who are WL->accepted never get around to changing their info on LSN, especially the later it occurs in the cycle.

[bdubs]

Go on http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/ and look at the index ranges. These combine both GPA and LSAT into a single weighted number that is comparable across applicants. Granted you have to be somewhat skeptical because most of the top schools (i think Columbia and Penn included) don't publish their indexing formulas. Either way LSP should help give you some insight as it is based on LSN and official data.

[sumus romani]

Also, sumus romani is right about the WLs covering up a lot of the admits on LSN. A lot more people with 170/3.8 get admitted at Columbia than it first appears.

So those yellow dots don't switch to green after a WL is converted to an accept?
If not, this is a huge opportunity for TLS to destroy this market.

Note to any lurking admins/moderators: your TLS stats thing has more specific info than LSN. If you work on the image quality of the graph, also including lines for each .1 of GPA, &, ideally making the graph larger with an option for full screen, you win.
Also, do away with the letters: dots with as many colors as you need.

What we were referring to, or I was anyway, is that only the very tip of the corners of the green admit triangle is visible under the yellow WL symbol, so at first glance entire sections seem completely WL'ed, when in fact there is a fair mixture of accepts/WLs if you pay close attention or if you look under the applicant tab, as sumus said. Also, to some degree I assume people who are WL->accepted never get around to changing their info on LSN, especially the later it occurs in the cycle.

Yes, very few of the WLs you see now will be or have been converted to acceptances. But there are acceptance symbols covered up by the waitlist sybols. This is just the way that the designers of the site chose to set it up. Please fool around a bit on the site and check out the actual numbers of those who are accepted.

[UFMatt]

LSN was completely accurate for my 17 applications, and I'm an atypical candidate with a science PhD.

I also noticed the USNWR numbers seemed lower than LSN, but I suspect URM candidates and legacies (i.e. groups who get in with those subpar stats) are less likely to use LSN.

[delusional]

LSN is the single most accurate resource you have, unless you think people are lying.
Trust self-disclosed anecdotals massed into a boatload of data points before you believe general opinions or official school data.

Okay, I don't have any doubt that you're right. But as later posts proved, my question has an answer. To sum it up, many of the yellow waitlist flags will end up as admissions. Presumably, they will be the ones that struck me as odd.

On the other hand, I was also making a basic mistake. I assumed that if I have the median LSAT and GPA, I'd be roughly OK. But that's not true, because the folks who got in with the median GPA or below, had to have better LSATs, and vice versa, especially when you consider that a lot of the lower half slots are URM. Math confuses me, but I think that makes sense.

[delusional]

Take a real lsat then speculate son.

Thank you for the advice, oh wizened warrior of the LSAT. Actually, this question was more hypothetical. By the time the October test rolls around, I'm going to get 180 FTFW, have every top school kneeling at my feet, and I'll end up getting paid to move to Boston and attend Harvard. I will be offered the first ever SA position as a Supreme Court Justice by President Beck, the nations first blind president. But I thought I'd ask so that others in my situation could learn from the discussion.

[Knock]

Take a real lsat then speculate son.

Thank you for the advice, oh wizened warrior of the LSAT. Actually, this question was more hypothetical. By the time the October test rolls around, I'm going to get 180 FTFW, have every top school kneeling at my feet, and I'll end up getting paid to move to Boston and attend Harvard. I will be offered the first ever SA position as a Supreme Court Justice by President Beck, the nations first blind president. But I thought I'd ask so that others in my situation could learn from the discussion a 162 and /self.

[Sell Manilla]

Regarding too many dots in too little space: One trick is to slowly scroll your mouse in one linear direction & read the bubbles that pop up.
A better solution would be for LSN to offer a "zoom" feature on their graphs.

Regarding the users not converting their "waitlists" into "acceptances", I think LSN needs to make that a thing; they need to incorporate it into their code of ethics... somehow...

It'd work better on TLS stats, 'cause the data points are attached to usernames that have developed e-reputations/personalities & thus have e-egos, so they're prolly more likely to take the time to switch something from WL to Acceptance. Again, TLS, drop the letters! Go with different color data points, add more lines to your graphs, add a "full screen" & "zoom" feature and you got this!

[balzern]

Ok then speculate all you want. You wanted opinions I gave you one, it wasn't what you wanted to hear "Oh you will get EXACTLY what your PTs are and probably get better." I was being real and sometimes reality isn't what you want to hear. The real deal is so different than your PTs so hyping yourself up about where you could get in with a PT avg is just a waste of time and could and might be a let down come test day. Forget about schools, focus on the LSAT, and then after the scores are released ask this question again.

"If you don't know, now you know."

[thecilent]

Ok then speculate all you want. You wanted opinions I gave you one, it wasn't what you wanted to hear "Oh you will get EXACTLY what your PTs are and probably get better." I was being real and sometimes reality isn't what you want to hear. The real deal is so different than your PTs so hyping yourself up about where you could get in with a PT avg is just a waste of time and could and might be a let down come test day. Forget about schools, focus on the LSAT, and then after the scores are released ask this question again.

"If you don't know, now you know."

lol This is so dumb

[gdane]

Keep in mind that LSN is self reported and that only a small percentage of a schools applicants post on there. You might see 500 Georgetown applicants on LSN, but they receive well over 5000 applications every year. For the most part, look at where there are consistent results. If the 165-168 and 3.6-3.8 range is where you see all green dots, then you can guess that you would need those numbers to have a good shot to get in.

Good luck!