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LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:13 am
by BruinRegents
How accurate are LSDAS GPA calculators like Law School Predictor? Frankly I love that thing.

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:25 am
by eaad91
interested in this as well.

Go Bruins btw :D

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:32 am
by OkSo
Mine matched up perfectly.

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:33 am
by BruinRegents
eaad91 wrote:interested in this as well.

Go Bruins btw :D
+1. People don't know how awesome UCLA is. It's frakking magical.

I know that the creator has written an article for TLS and licenses the software. Just curious as to how this thing works.

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:34 am
by BruinRegents
OkSo wrote:Mine matched up perfectly.
I tried LSP and LawPad and the difference was 0.01. I'm not worried or anything. Just curious.

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 2:12 am
by yot11
I posted this in another thread. Pertains here:
Your LSAC gpa doesn't come out of a black box. Assuming you correctly input the number of credits you got for each letter grade, then the calculated gpa is correct with an error margin of 0.01 in either direction.

The error margin stems from the fact that the GPA calculator will do the "correct" calculation by multiplying the GPA weight to the credits, summing, then dividing by the number of credits. LSAC takes a slightly different approach by doing this for each semester, then weighting the semester against the running cumulative. This results in more rounding errors than the first method.

If you want to simulate it EXACTLY, then have the GPA calculator calculate each semester individually, then weight the semester against the running cumulative, roundin to 2 decimal pplaces at each step.

TL;DR the calculator is correct if you input your grades correctly

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 3:15 am
by BruinRegents
Thanks yot

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 5:23 am
by BruinRegents
yot11 wrote:I posted this in another thread. Pertains here:
Your LSAC gpa doesn't come out of a black box. Assuming you correctly input the number of credits you got for each letter grade, then the calculated gpa is correct with an error margin of 0.01 in either direction.

The error margin stems from the fact that the GPA calculator will do the "correct" calculation by multiplying the GPA weight to the credits, summing, then dividing by the number of credits. LSAC takes a slightly different approach by doing this for each semester, then weighting the semester against the running cumulative. This results in more rounding errors than the first method.

If you want to simulate it EXACTLY, then have the GPA calculator calculate each semester individually, then weight the semester against the running cumulative, roundin to 2 decimal pplaces at each step.

TL;DR the calculator is correct if you input your grades correctly

I just received my Academic Summary Report and LP's LSDAS calculator was right on the money. w00t

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 4:28 pm
by EEguy5
LSAC actually doesn't use a set conversion table in all circumstances. So while the calculators may be right sometimes they can be very off too, as in my case. When i receieved my academic summary report i emailed LSAC informing them my GPA was .2 points lower than what it would be using the conversion chart they post on their website. I got a reply stating that the chart is not universally used, it is just an example. When i tried to inquire about how they actually calculated mine they refused to provide the details.

Awful.

Re: LSDAS calculators

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 4:42 pm
by yot11
EEguy5 wrote:LSAC actually doesn't use a set conversion table in all circumstances. So while the calculators may be right sometimes they can be very off too, as in my case. When i receieved my academic summary report i emailed LSAC informing them my GPA was .2 points lower than what it would be using the conversion chart they post on their website. I got a reply stating that the chart is not universally used, it is just an example. When i tried to inquire about how they actually calculated mine they refused to provide the details.

Awful.
This may be the case if your school does not use a standard grading scale (A+/B-/etc). If your school uses a standard grading scale then there should not be any difference between the calculator and the LSAC GPA bar rounding errors