A Question about Law School Medians Forum

[Gravitas]

Hello fellow TLSers,

I have recently realized that I have been equating the word "median" with "average". Obviously I am a humanities major

So, to my question: Say you have a school with a goal 170 median LSAT and suppose you had two applicants with the same GPA. Applicant 1 has a 180 LSAT and applicant 2 has a 171 LSAT. Theoretically, will these applicants be treated almost identically since they are both above median?

[rinkrat19]

Mathematically, they both affect the median equally. However, a school would likely prefer the 180 because A)it's a fucking 180, and B)schools also publish their highest and lowest LSAT scores admitted and would certainly like to be able to claim a 180 in the entering class.

The difference between say, a 171 and a 174 at a school with a median of 170 would be much smaller.

[Gravitas]

That makes sense. I also understand that 25-75 percentiles are important (although have no impact on ranking). So once you're above the 75ths it really doesn't matter? The difference between a 172 and a 177 is negligible in the previous scenario, but the difference between a 169 and a 170 would mean everything. Interesting.

[TigerDude]

US News has in the past averaged the 25th-75ths to create the median used for the ranking. Theoretically the chance of this happening leads schools to value 75ths.

Some schools have very non-normal (stats-speak) distributions of LSATs.