I have an undergraduate engineering degree from India, and a graduate engineering degree from the US as well. I graduated from law school this year, and I am preparing for the bar exam now. This long post is my way of avoiding bar prep
The advice below is tailored to applicants with an international (non-US) undergraduate degree.
Recall how engineering graduate admissions work, and how two numbers are important for engineering grad admissions in the US: the GRE score, and your undergrad score. Law school admissions are similar, with a critical difference for
international applicants:
only the LSAT score matters. Your non-GPA international undergrad score will have absolutely no impact on admissions. Further, your graduate degree will only be a soft positive at best, and will have no real impact on admissions decisions. To understand why, read on.
Each year, the top ranked law schools try to maintain their top ranks, and the lower ranked law schools try to improve their rankings. Law school rankings (primarily) depend on the average LSAT score and the average GPA of admitted students.
Therefore, your chances for admissions at a law school depend on the impact of your undergraduate GPA and your LSAT score on that law school's rankings. Each law school over the years has a relatively stable band of LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs they accept. So each admission cycle, law school admissions offices play the game of thrones (seats), trying to balance the undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores of candidates they admit, such that the overall average undergraduate GPA and LSAT score for their law school is as high as possible. To predict your chance of success at a particular law school, compare their average undergrad GPA and LSAT score with yours. If both of your scores are higher than their averages, you will likely be admitted. If one of your scores is lower than the average, but the other is significantly higher, you will still be admitted (called a "splitter").
Your grad school GPA has absolutely no impact on law school admissions, since it has no impact on law school rankings.
Now for
international applicants, especially with undergraduate degrees from countries like India, where universities typically award scores/marks which do not correspond to a GPA, LSAC does a soft conversion of international GPA scores into a verbal scale, similar to: "superior", "good", "fair", etc. But for the purposes of rankings, an international undergraduate degree translates into a "blank": in other words,
international undergraduate institutional performance of admitted candidates does not impact law school rankings. Therefore, your undergraduate score (even if you had the best possible score) will not help law schools boost their ranking. Therefore, law schools will not care much about your international undergraduate performance, as long as it was satisfactory.
Think of it in this way: if a law school is comparing two students with the same LSAT score, one with an international undergraduate score of first class with distinction, say "superior", and another with an American undergraduate GPA that is higher than the law school's average undergraduate GPA ... even if it is a 3.25 or a 3.3 or a 3.5, the American undergraduate GPA will always beat the international undergrad score (as long as their LSAT scores are the same).
Therefore, for applicants with an international undergraduate degree, predicting law school admissions is relatively simple.
The only number that matters is your LSAT score. Compare your LSAT to the historical 75 percentile and 25 percentile LSAT scores accepted by various law schools over the last few years. If your LSAT score is below the 25 percentile LSAT, you will not be admitted (unless you have a Nobel prize, or an Olympic medal, or something similar). If your LSAT score is higher than the 75 percentile of the LSAT score band for a law school, chances are you will be accepted with a good scholarship. If your LSAT score is slightly over average, expect an offer of admission with little to no scholarship.
I had applied to around 25 law schools, and each offer of admission/rejection followed this "rule".
Given that you have an LSAT of 163, the top 20 schools are extremely unlikely. I would very strongly recommend that you retake the LSAT, and try to score at least a 167-168. It is not difficult if you practice diligently for about 20 hours a week for 3-4 months. I bet you did not. The good news is, if you do, and if you boost your score even by 5 points, your chances will improve significantly for T18-25. If you are shooting for T14, you should aim for 170+. If you have multiple LSAT scores, some schools consider the average score, while other schools consider the highest score.
Feel free to follow up with any other questions by replying to this topic or by directly messaging me.
[statistical note: I might have meant medians where I said averages]