Relationship between GPA/LSAT and Scholarship $? Forum

[trqdor]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

[Mack.Hambleton]

Depends on the school, higher LSAT is almost always better tho

[Scalvert]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

I've wondered this as well. If you look at LSN, there seems to be some inconsistency in the amounts offered to different people with similar numbers. I think softs and timing of the application do matter in the case of splitters because it doesn't make sense otherwise why two people with the same stats get very different scholarships. The schools I've been accepted to so far have offered me at least a 2/3 scholarship, but I was close to or above both 75ths in all cases. I haven't been accepted anywhere yet where my stats are split (All t14s), so I can't answer that.

[trqdor]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

I've wondered this as well. If you look at LSN, there seems to be some inconsistency in the amounts offered to different people with similar numbers. I think softs and timing of the application do matter in the case of splitters because it doesn't make sense otherwise why two people with the same stats get very different scholarships. The schools I've been accepted to so far have offered me at least a 2/3 scholarship, but I was close to or above both 75ths in all cases. I haven't been accepted anywhere yet where my stats are split (All t14s), so I can't answer that.

thanks for the insight and congrats on the great scholarship offers. just out of curiosity, how would you evaluate your softs? do you think they had an impact at all on your scholarship offers?

Depends on the school, higher LSAT is almost always better tho

insofar as most scholarship offers are a means of attracting (over)qualified students (relative to a school's median), does it follow that a higher LSAT score is always better? Or is there a point where the opportunity cost of gaining one, two, or even three extra point does not increase your chances of increasing the scholarship amount because you are already over the school's 75th? For example, if a school's 75th for LSAT is 170, does having a 172 make you more attractive than a 171? a 180 more attractive than a 173? etc..

a silly but related question.. is there a point where you become so super qualified that a school may assume you will go to a higher ranked school so they don't even bother shooting you a scholarship offer (or acceptance)?

[fredfred]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

I've wondered this as well. If you look at LSN, there seems to be some inconsistency in the amounts offered to different people with similar numbers. I think softs and timing of the application do matter in the case of splitters because it doesn't make sense otherwise why two people with the same stats get very different scholarships. The schools I've been accepted to so far have offered me at least a 2/3 scholarship, but I was close to or above both 75ths in all cases. I haven't been accepted anywhere yet where my stats are split (All t14s), so I can't answer that.

thanks for the insight and congrats on the great scholarship offers. just out of curiosity, how would you evaluate your softs? do you think they had an impact at all on your scholarship offers?

Depends on the school, higher LSAT is almost always better tho

insofar as most scholarship offers are a means of attracting (over)qualified students (relative to a school's median), does it follow that a higher LSAT score is always better? Or is there a point where the opportunity cost of gaining one, two, or even three extra point does not increase your chances of increasing the scholarship amount because you are already over the school's 75th? For example, if a school's 75th for LSAT is 170, does having a 172 make you more attractive than a 171? a 180 more attractive than a 173? etc..

a silly but related question.. is there a point where you become so super qualified that a school may assume you will go to a higher ranked school so they don't even bother shooting you a scholarship offer (or acceptance)?

Just on the last point- there is a point of diminishing returns but remember, if a school with a median of 170 can attract 5 180s with full rides, then thats more room they have on the lower end to attract some less qualified applicants such as URMS (not saying all URMS are less qualified, rather just the school will have more opportunity to pick up a few 162's instead of just 165s or whatever). So it might not make a difference really between a 172 and a 180 for PDVB for instance, schools will always put a premium on a higher numbers so they can bring in a potentially more diverse class and still hold median.

Edit: I guess that is directed at the second to last point you made. On the last point, yes that happens and its called yield-protection. It happens at a bunch of schools, most notably UVA I believe. ND is also known to yield protect if you don't write a why ND essay. There are plenty of other examples but just the two I know of directly.

[ihenry]

if a school with a median of 170 can attract 5 180s with full rides, then thats more room they have on the lower end to attract some less qualified applicants such as URMS (not saying all URMS are less qualified, rather just the school will have more opportunity to pick up a few 162's instead of just 165s or whatever). So it might not make a difference really between a 172 and a 180 for PDVB for instance, schools will always put a premium on a higher numbers so they can bring in a potentially more diverse class and still hold median.

I actually don't think that's what median means - it seems you are talking about arithmetic mean (aka average). Theoretically, for a school with 170 median, as along as they can bring in 3 171's (3 170's would suffice in fact), they can take 3 135's while still holding their median. But I guess schools want their students to succeed and LSAT is arguably the best testimony to it. It is therefore reasonable that they reject some 135's and, if they have limited money, give full rides to 180's instead of 171's.

[Clearly]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

I've wondered this as well. If you look at LSN, there seems to be some inconsistency in the amounts offered to different people with similar numbers. I think softs and timing of the application do matter in the case of splitters because it doesn't make sense otherwise why two people with the same stats get very different scholarships. The schools I've been accepted to so far have offered me at least a 2/3 scholarship, but I was close to or above both 75ths in all cases. I haven't been accepted anywhere yet where my stats are split (All t14s), so I can't answer that.

thanks for the insight and congrats on the great scholarship offers. just out of curiosity, how would you evaluate your softs? do you think they had an impact at all on your scholarship offers?

Depends on the school, higher LSAT is almost always better tho

insofar as most scholarship offers are a means of attracting (over)qualified students (relative to a school's median), does it follow that a higher LSAT score is always better? Or is there a point where the opportunity cost of gaining one, two, or even three extra point does not increase your chances of increasing the scholarship amount because you are already over the school's 75th? For example, if a school's 75th for LSAT is 170, does having a 172 make you more attractive than a 171? a 180 more attractive than a 173? etc..

a silly but related question.. is there a point where you become so super qualified that a school may assume you will go to a higher ranked school so they don't even bother shooting you a scholarship offer (or acceptance)?

Just on the last point- there is a point of diminishing returns but remember, if a school with a median of 170 can attract 5 180s with full rides, then thats more room they have on the lower end to attract some less qualified applicants such as URMS (not saying all URMS are less qualified, rather just the school will have more opportunity to pick up a few 162's instead of just 165s or whatever). So it might not make a difference really between a 172 and a 180 for PDVB for instance, schools will always put a premium on a higher numbers so they can bring in a potentially more diverse class and still hold median.

Edit: I guess that is directed at the second to last point you made. On the last point, yes that happens and its called yield-protection. It happens at a bunch of schools, most notably UVA I believe. ND is also known to yield protect if you don't write a why ND essay. There are plenty of other examples but just the two I know of directly.

Yeah this is just wrong.

[Scalvert]

There's probably no clear answer to this, but does anybody have an idea of the correlation between the numbers you have and the likelihood of receiving full/half scholarships?

for example.. if you meet the school's 75th percentile for both LSAT and GPA, are you likely to receive a full scholarship offer? If you meet the 75th for one category and fall between their 50th-75th in the other, are you out of contention for full scholarships? if you're a splitter, are you lucky to just gain admission?

or do softs play a bigger factor when it comes to scholarship money? i'm mostly curious about the t14, though I would not mind hearing about the science or logic behind how school's determine how they distribute their merit based funds.

I've wondered this as well. If you look at LSN, there seems to be some inconsistency in the amounts offered to different people with similar numbers. I think softs and timing of the application do matter in the case of splitters because it doesn't make sense otherwise why two people with the same stats get very different scholarships. The schools I've been accepted to so far have offered me at least a 2/3 scholarship, but I was close to or above both 75ths in all cases. I haven't been accepted anywhere yet where my stats are split (All t14s), so I can't answer that.

thanks for the insight and congrats on the great scholarship offers. just out of curiosity, how would you evaluate your softs? do you think they had an impact at all on your scholarship offers?

Honestly idk. I would say my softs are average: lots of volunteer hours, club memberships, officer positions in a few things, club sport participation, summer internship, honors. All of that is very average (most people over-evaluate their softs, I think) I would say that my PS and work experience were average as well. I'm just going to guess that submitting early helped me more than anything.

[trqdor]

It is therefore reasonable that they reject some 135's and, if they have limited money, give full rides to 180's instead of 171's.

so it sounds like you're saying that there are no diminishing returns - that the higher LSAT score will more likely (if not always) produce the more substantial scholarship offer, regardless of whether or not a competing score is at or above the 75th percentile as well. I suppose the exceptions to the rule are for those schools that yield protect or those scholarships that are not strictly merit-based (ex. expressed interest in PI)

[Ravenclaw23]

You're correct that there is no "right" answer here. It depends a lot on when you apply in the admissions cycle(more money available early on), the schools you are applying to & what those schools focus on, etc. Also, if you're applying to a state school with an in-state resident quota, and you are lucky enough to be in-state, you're likely to get a good amount of money if you're above median.

[radio1nowhere]

a silly but related question.. is there a point where you become so super qualified that a school may assume you will go to a higher ranked school so they don't even bother shooting you a scholarship offer (or acceptance)?

I believe this is what happened to me; I was—disappointingly—waitlisted at three T14s where I was significantly above both 75ths. Barring problems with my application that I didn't recognize (unlikely, since I got into higher-ranked schools), I'm guessing that I was perceived as unlikely to attend those schools and thus not worth wasting an offer on.

However, there are probably some things that those in my situation can do to better signal interest in schools (write compelling "Why X" essays, for example). If I had made a convincing case of specific interest in attending, it's possible that I would have not only avoided the waitlist, but received good money. Of course, that's purely speculative.. all I mean to say is that there are plausible cures to "overqualification," and therefore it probably shouldn't be an actual worry for diligent applicants that they will overqualify.

[trqdor]

thanks for the great insight. I feel I have a better idea of how to maximize my scholarship potential. now I just have to wait for that Oct score to come out and hope that it matches up with where I need to be ^^;

summary: 1) kill the LSAT; 2) apply early; 3) throw in a well-written "why x" essay when applicable; 3.5) maintain interest/be attractive to the school and don't get yield-protected. I guess I always knew this but it was fun getting some anecdotal advice while I pretend to work.

I imagine there would be an interview process for some of the big name scholarships, but I will cross that road if/when I am fortunate to be in that position.

[Tiago Splitter]

insofar as most scholarship offers are a means of attracting (over)qualified students (relative to a school's median), does it follow that a higher LSAT score is always better? Or is there a point where the opportunity cost of gaining one, two, or even three extra point does not increase your chances of increasing the scholarship amount because you are already over the school's 75th? For example, if a school's 75th for LSAT is 170, does having a 172 make you more attractive than a 171? a 180 more attractive than a 173? etc..

There can be diminishing returns if you're way up at the top, but generally the higher the LSAT the more money the school has to give to pull you away from higher ranked schools and the money you might get from those places. A school with a 167 75th will have to give you more money with a 175 than they would with a 169 because your other options will be better with a 175.