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For example, I saw someone on lawschoolnumbers who had a 177/3.8 get rejected by Harvard. Many others with similar numbers were waitlisted there.

Why do you think JR rejected or wailisted these people? Most people here say it's all a numbers game but clearly that's not true. For what kind of reasons do you think these people with high numbers don't get accepted?

roranoa wrote:For example, I saw someone on lawschoolnumbers who had a 177/3.8 get rejected by Harvard. Many others with similar numbers were waitlisted there.

Why do you think JR rejected or wailisted these people? Most people here say it's all a numbers game but clearly that's not true. For what kind of reasons do you think these people with high numbers don't get accepted?

I'm not sure why someone with high number would get rejected, unless they're murderers or something, but just because someone has written down 177/3.8 doesn't actually mean that's what they have.

2 additional things to consider

someone with those numbers can be a piss poor writer and not pass the most basic threshold in their essays

Harvard gets more of top number applicants than it can take (maybe not 177, 3.8, but you get the point)

3.8 might mean 3.75 and I think they have a hard cutoff at 3.80.

They also might have been a schmuck.

I got rejected for both reasons probably (plus the low LSAT).

ahduth wrote:3.8 might mean 3.75 and I think they have a hard cutoff at 3.80.

They also might have been a schmuck.

I got rejected for both reasons probably (plus the low LSAT).

High five?

People with one number above 75th and one below median get rejected routinely, especially considering 3.8 is very low for Harvard. It's Harvard, and it's prestigious enough to attract applicants with numbers above both 75th who aren't even going to apply to Yale. Even people with numbers above both 75th get rejected/waitlisted sometimes.

Also don't put too much faith in one poster on lawschoolnumbers. Look at the trends and floors both at each school and multiple people with similar numbers before you draw conclusions.

ahduth wrote:3.8 might mean 3.75 and I think they have a hard cutoff at 3.80.

Not true. I got in with less than a 3.8 (less than a 3.7, in fact). That may have changed over the past few years, though.

They also might have been a schmuck.

If that was a reason for rejection, half the people I graduated with wouldn't have gone to school there

In all seriousness, though, there are plenty of reasons for someone with qualifying numbers to get rejected from a school. Yes, the numbers are the most important two factors, but selective schools have the luxury of being able to looking beyond them. If you write an awful essay (and, believe me, I've seen some awful ones from people with 3.9+ GPAs and 175+ LSATs), you're probably going to be disappointed with where you get into law school.

Just to throw this in - from looking at Harvard's past LSN charts, seems like a lot of the people with median/above median numbers who get waitlisted or rejected are self-identified music/accounting/finance/etc. majors. My guess is that these applicants get a lot more scrutiny placed on their PS and transcript because they haven't had a lot of writing experience in undergrad.

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"Why do some people with high numbers get rejected?"

Answer: Because life isn't fair.

It was probably due to YP

BiglawOrBust wrote:It was probably due to YP

I think this is the majority of it. Some can be from poor applications. Some will be the time of it all. Some will be because your numbers are all you have and you have not accomplished much otherwise, maybe thirty. Less will be Character and Fitness, ten or twenty at most.


Then again, someone with 177/3.9 can probably have all of those negatives and still be accepted by one T6. If there's one thing that LS has over business school, its that the numbers really do make it a more even playing field.