Top Law Schools

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What about all those hardworking students who did well in college?
Most people with high college GPA were simply disciplined and had the right work ethic.
Top law schools consider choice of major as one factor and look unfavorably upon spending five years in college for no good reason. So the type of kids you described in 2 (basket weaving major, 5 years) are unlikely to get into top schools in the first place and these kids often do poorly on the LSAT too.
If you are trying to argue for a lower weight placed on UGPA then you would be making law school admissions more like the MBA programs admissions. MBA and JD are very different in their curriculum, purpose and applicant pool.

Life is generally fair. Of course people who are born rich have tremendous advantages. But so long as you work hard toward your goal you can at least end up close to your goal. Seems like you are just trying to make excuses for poor college performance. Both GPA and LSAT taken together are reasonably reliable indicators of students' potential to do well in law school.

I recall that the LSAT alone was insufficiently correlated with first year grades whereas LSAT and GPA taken together produced a meaningful correlation. But I have seen some people with super stellar LSAT AND GPA only end up at median. If the op is arguing that GPA is an imperfect indicator that is of course true. In my experience both LSAT and GPA are only imperfect indcators. But relying solely on LSAT scores is simply unworkable as there are many people with the same LSAT.

tl;dr splitter mad gpa considered

Bildungsroman wrote:tl;dr splitter mad gpa considered

Yep.

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Pointing out someone's bias isn't an ad hominem. But if you'd like a more substantive response:

1) the LSAT isn't perfect or objective,
2) GPA isn't irrelevant, and
3) most schools already weight the LSAT more heavily than GPA.

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somethingelse55 wrote:Dismissing an argument based on bias is circumstantial ad hominem as I see it, so yes the additional points are definitely welcome.

he didn't dismiss the argument; he summarized it. accurately.

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:Pointing out someone's bias isn't an ad hominem. But if you'd like a more substantive response:

1) the LSAT isn't perfect or objective,
2) GPA isn't irrelevant, and
3) most schools already weight the LSAT more heavily than GPA.

Nony, pretty much hit this on the head.

If anything, the LSAT has too much weight, it would be nice if the b.s. that most schools preached about looking at the whole candidate were true, but most law schools are terrified of a magizine that is not even popular enough to stay in print.

Big Dog wrote:

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

Couldn't the same thing be said for GPAs though?

Nagster5 wrote:

Big Dog wrote:

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

Couldn't the same thing be said for GPAs though?

Oh, there are significant biases in place, but by having two fairly disconnected systems, you can split the blame.

The LSAT remains untainted by family money

LOL; so the kid who can put in 40 hours/week on LSAT is on objectively equal footing to the kid working full time and going to school full time while trying to do LSAT prep? Right.

It, like Lady Justice, blindly evaluates.

LOL again; enjoy having this notion shattered to pieces when you start reading cases.

Nagster5 wrote:

Big Dog wrote:

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

Couldn't the same thing be said for GPAs though?

Is there evidence that URMs have consistently lower UGPAs the way that LSAT scores are consistently lower? (There might be, I just don't know if there is.)

Also, given the role of prep in LSAT success (for most people), I'd hazard that LSAT scores are more directly correlated with socioeconomic status (or at least, that this would be the concern).

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

Nagster5 wrote:

Big Dog wrote:

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

Couldn't the same thing be said for GPAs though?

Is there evidence that URMs have consistently lower UGPAs the way that LSAT scores are consistently lower? (There might be, I just don't know if there is.)

Also, given the role of prep in LSAT success (for most people), I'd hazard that LSAT scores are more directly correlated with socioeconomic status (or at least, that this would be the concern).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489015/

https://www.jbhe.com/2012/11/new-data-s ... graduates/

Thanks.

Stopped reading when author referred to themself in 3rd person.

Couldn't the same thing be said for GPAs though?

oh gosh no. Plenty of high grades in 'Studies' majors at Directional State College.

when you said "this author" did you mean you? and did you use "Lady Justice" not ironically?

>this author

Dropped

DrSpaceman wrote:

The LSAT remains untainted by family money

LOL; so the kid who can put in 40 hours/week on LSAT is on objectively equal footing to the kid working full time and going to school full time while trying to do LSAT prep? Right.

is this "tainted?" though? I'd think spending more time on something and doing better on it is the opposite of "tainted." At the same time, I'm not totally sure where I know how family money taints GPAs unless people are actually buying exam answers or paying off professors.

Big Dog wrote:

The LSAT score should be the sole "hard" factor in admissions.

The problem is that such a dictate would result in disparate impact against URMs. Thus, it'll never happen.

Huh? It definitely already does, and that also doesn't matter given that the lsat has been extremely well researched and verified.
It's the opposite --it's an affirmative action issue. law schools currently very clearly violate grutter --you can take a look at LSN to see that there's a near perfect correlation for admissions for non-urms based on an LSAT/GPA index --and then they purposely deviate from it to get URMs into the schools. but to the extent that any plausible deniability currently exists, it would become even more difficult if they would confirm that they only care about LSAT...and then still miraculously include URMs in their incoming classes.

lacrossebrother wrote:

DrSpaceman wrote:

The LSAT remains untainted by family money

LOL; so the kid who can put in 40 hours/week on LSAT is on objectively equal footing to the kid working full time and going to school full time while trying to do LSAT prep? Right.

is this "tainted?" though? I'd think spending more time on something and doing better on it is the opposite of "tainted." At the same time, I'm not totally sure where I know how family money taints GPAs unless people are actually buying exam answers or paying off professors.

I would argue that if you compare two theoretical extremes, one being a candidate who has strong financial support from family, that has the freedom to spend 1-2 years with no other obligations that taking/improving a LSAT score, has both the time and $ to research and acquire the best instruction and tutoring to improve their chance of obtaining a higher score. These resources also allow them to travel to a testing center which they believe will provide them with the most comfortable facilities and can arrange to stay at a nice hotel next to the testing center to limit game stress of fighting traffic on the morning of the exam.

Compared to a student who just paying for fee to sit for the LSAT once. Study material is primary what is available in their community library. They provide a large portion of their families financial support and must work long hours, these family obligations also come with time commitments.

Is it that hard to imagine that if the theoretical capacity of these students were the same that the second student would not be at an significant disadvantage?

I'm loving the inquiry and the provocative propositions.