Top Law Schools

3.7 GPA, 169 Dec. Asian. Applying this month (haven't factored this in - for many, there are no entries).


What's my optimal settings?

Also interested in this in general for what people put as a range with their scores/gpa included.

I'd start with only the most recent cycle first, and only add in previous cycles if you need more data points. Looking at just the current cycle (2013-2014) and last cycle, I'm seeing 35 data points for Penn using an LSAT range of 168-170 and a GPA range of 3.9-4.1. That seems like enough to give a fair indication of your chances, so I wouldn't add in previous cycles in that case.

So put a point below and a point above for LSAT, but gpa = ?

What's the rule of thumb in picking a range? For the last cycle, 168 was 70%, but 170 was 90%. Is the range needed for a sample size?

I am seeing some telling things, ignoring the issue of sample size. For the 2004-2005 cycle, there was a 23% chance of getting into Penn in the 168-170 range. Last cycle, it was 81%.

Bajam wrote:So put a point below and a point above for LSAT, but gpa = ?

I started off with going up and down a tenth of a point in GPA, and up and down one point in LSAT. If your GPA and LSAT are equally competitive (i.e. you're not a splitter/reverse splitter), then it might be better to just use your exact LSAT rather than a range, as long as it gives you enough data points. At the higher-ranked schools, even one LSAT point can make a difference, so I'd keep that range as narrow as possible.

I'm a super-splitter, so if I used my exact LSAT and went +/- 0.1 in uGPA, I never got more than three data points for any school in the T50, even including all of the cycles back to 2010.

Seoulless wrote:What's the rule of thumb in picking a range? For the last cycle, 168 was 70%, but 170 was 90%. Is the range needed for a sample size?

3 points, unless it crosses a median. Id leave 168 out

if your numbers are rare, you should probably use bigger ranges. but yours are pretty common

Nova wrote:

Seoulless wrote:What's the rule of thumb in picking a range? For the last cycle, 168 was 70%, but 170 was 90%. Is the range needed for a sample size?

3 points, unless it crosses a median. Id leave 168 out

if your numbers are rare, you should probably use bigger ranges. but yours are pretty common

Yeah, the most important thing is not crossing the median or the quartiles, so you're not going to have a single optimal range for every school.

At the end of the day, though, don't worry about trying to pick a range that gives you the "most accurate" chances. Use the percentages as a first glance, but then actually click through to look at specific profiles.

Also be sure to check out the auto feature, it tries to balance sample size and precision without crossing medians.