H vs S admissions Forum

[hellohi]

I'm a little confused about admissions at H vs S.
TLS conventional wisdom seems to say that S definitely more GPA focused and possibly more difficult than H. But looking at the 25% median and 75% for the two it seems that Harvard is higher in all of them for both LSAT and GPA.
Is this because Stanford is smaller so their applicants with awesome softs and URMs weigh more? If so would it be fair to say that if you took out those applicants Stanfords' LSAT and GPA statistics would be higher than Harvards?

[IAFG]

IDK how you're defining "more difficult" but I would say SLS is more difficult because someone with the right numbers is all but auto-admit at HLS and may still very well get dinged at SLS. And for that matter, having better numbers (say, 4.0 175 instead of 3.9 173) may not even have helped.

[Ti Malice]

OP, for an illustration of what IAFG is saying, take a look at how applicants with GPAs ranging from 3.9 to 4.33 and LSAT scores from 173 to 180 have done at SLS and HLS in recent cycles: http://myLSN.info/4ifxxe.

[hellohi]

Yeah I've seen the law school numbers, I guess I'm just having difficulty understanding how to go from that to the published medians of the two schools.

[IAFG]

Yeah I've seen the law school numbers, I guess I'm just having difficulty understanding how to go from that to the published medians of the two schools.

I mean... there's no where to go but to the application process. SLS medians don't really indicate how "hard" it is to get in, because as is apparent from LSN, they'll ding people with numbers that could improve their medians. SLS isn't going to admit everyone HLS is going to admit. The only way to know if you're going to get in is to wait and see what they say.

[alwayssunnyinfl]

Yeah I've seen the law school numbers, I guess I'm just having difficulty understanding how to go from that to the published medians of the two schools.

High numbers + boring story= Lock at HLS
High numbers + boring story= Ding at SLS

Stanford is willing to take a hit on their medians to have a class not composed entirely of K-JD Polisci majors.

ETA: Not saying that's what Harvard's class is entirely composed of, but when assembling a class of 500+ students, you can afford to take 300+ kids with nothing more than great numbers.

[justinp]

Yeah I've seen the law school numbers, I guess I'm just having difficulty understanding how to go from that to the published medians of the two schools.

High numbers + boring story= Lock at HLS
High numbers + boring story= Ding at SLS

Stanford is willing to take a hit on their medians to have a class not composed entirely of K-JD Polisci majors.

ETA: Not saying that's what Harvard's class is entirely composed of, but when assembling a class of 500+ students, you can afford to take 300+ kids with nothing more than great numbers.

HLS K-JD polisci major that got waitlisted at Stanford checking in. Come at me bro.

[alwayssunnyinfl]

[Lovely Ludwig Van]

SLS is objectively harder to get into, they consistently have a lower admissions rate. Also, SLS tries to "balance" its incoming classes by deliberately looking for applicants from a broad range of backgrounds. You could be an Afghan refugee with a 3.9/174 applying to study law in the US, and if SLS coincidentally already had 15-20 Afghan refugees admitted for the class that year, you'd probably still get waitlisted.