Top Law Schools

Hi all - I made a thing! While I have been busy waiting on decisions, I made an index calculator which helps you determine your school matches. This is a first draft of the tool so it is likely fraught with errors. If you find a school whose numbers are incorrect, please PM me!


The tool works by calculating each school's index values. These values were obtained from the LSAC website here. Note: You must be logged in to LSAC to see the pdf, otherwise it is found on the transcripts page of the LSAC website. The published formula is =(Student LSAT * Lsat Constant) + (Student GPA * GPA Constant) + Variable Constant.


I used the ABA 509 Data to calculate what a perfect 25th percentile, 50th percentile, and 75th percentile student would look like. In other words, a 25th student at school X would have both a 25th percentile GPA for school X and a 25th percentile LSAT for school X.


You can enter your GPA and LSAT in the top right corner (row 1) and it will spit out your index number for each school. The left columns will show you the 75th, 50th, and 25th for each school To the right, I calculated ideal splitters (@75 LSAT / @ 25 GPA) and ideal reverse splitters (@75LSAT / @25 GPA). There is additionally a max bound and min bound column which use 180/4.3 and 120/2.0 respectively. These columns aren't super useful, but some schools have wildly different calculations (some range 1-5, others 160-200, etc) so the info may be of interest.


For ease of use, I had the calculator color code each school based on user input. Red indicates you are below the 25th, Orange indicates you are between the 25th and 50th, yellow indicates between the 50th and 75th, and green indicates above the 75th.


It should be noted, that there are a number of schools that do not publish their index formula and therefore have been omitted. This includes roughly half of the top 20 schools.

3/14/17: Added 2018 USNWR Ranks into Column A and sorted by highest rank.
12/16/17: Changed all of the input variables to match the July 2017 release of the law school index formula values in addition to replacing the GPA and LSAT values to match the 2017 ABA 509 data released yesterday.
Check out Version 1.3 of the Index Calculator Here.

Feel free to download the chart into excel. Otherwise the document is protected save for the User Data cells.

Pretty cool stuff. Going to keep tabs on this thread for when its updated.

ELI5 what do the spit out numbers mean?

ZVBXRPL wrote:ELI5 what do the spit out numbers mean?

Each school listed assigns an "Index Value" to students before reviewing an application. Column K, L, and M represent the values associated with students who have an LSAT and GPA at the corresponding 75/50/25 value. So for Columbia, a 75th student has a 4.386 index, which corresponds to a 174/3.81.

Column P reflects your index number for each school based on the LSAT and GPA you enter. Refer to the original post for the formula schools use. Download the chart and unhide columns B through J to see the inputted GPA/LSAT data and the respective index constants.

Generally speaking, green schools are safe, yellow are target, and red are reaches. Yellow simply means above 25th and below 75th, so it is important to compare your P column values with the corresponding L column values. The data is useful for determining the value of an increased LSAT score, an increase GPA, or determining how schools evaluate spliiters. Of course, the chart does not take into account things like URM status, international, compelling softs, etc. but it can be a useful guide.

What does 166 3.9 tell you? Green at Stanford? Sorry but not to great with this data.

ZVBXRPL wrote:What does 166 3.9 tell you? Green at Stanford? Sorry but not to great with this data.

Those stats should spit out 3.384 which is yellow and just below the 50th. Try downloading the document for use in excel, there are a lot of users on it right now and so the GPA/LSAT input numbers are being changed by others frequently

mtf612 wrote:

ZVBXRPL wrote:What does 166 3.9 tell you? Green at Stanford? Sorry but not to great with this data.

Those stats should spit out 3.384 which is yellow and just below the 50th. Try downloading the document for use in excel, there are a lot of users on it right now and so the GPA/LSAT input numbers are being changed by others frequently

This is the problem with using the LSAC indexes, which are notoriously inaccurate. A 166 is an auto-reject from Stanford, period.

It sounds like your issue may be that you've given equal weight to the LSAT and undergrad GPA on this spreadsheet, and you're treating all schools as equally splitter-friendly and reverse-splitter-friendly. This is why MyLSN is generally considered a better resource than an objective calculator, even though the data set is limited.

cavalier1138 wrote:

mtf612 wrote:

ZVBXRPL wrote:What does 166 3.9 tell you? Green at Stanford? Sorry but not to great with this data.

Those stats should spit out 3.384 which is yellow and just below the 50th. Try downloading the document for use in excel, there are a lot of users on it right now and so the GPA/LSAT input numbers are being changed by others frequently

This is the problem with using the LSAC indexes, which are notoriously inaccurate. A 166 is an auto-reject from Stanford, period.

It sounds like your issue may be that you've given equal weight to the LSAT and undergrad GPA on this spreadsheet, and you're treating all schools as equally splitter-friendly and reverse-splitter-friendly. This is why MyLSN is generally considered a better resource than an objective calculator, even though the data set is limited.

The index calculator is not meant to replace MyLSN or the LSAC GPA/LSAT calculator. It is simply another tool which can be used to gauge your 'index value' at different schools.

As a note, I'm not weighting the GPA/LSAT, those values are published by each school listed on the chart.In fact, the purpose of columns N and O is such that you can see the relative value of someone with a 75th LSAT and 25th GPA (and vice versa) and compare their worth at each school. For example, Northwestern values a splitter with the above at 11.291 and a reverse splitter at 10.892. Where this becomes dicey is schools who have a 25th GPA and/or LSAT far below their median. It is also important to add the caveat that, as you mentioned, schools will target students for different purposes at times and do have GPA/LSAT floors. This calculator is not capable of incorporating that info because it is not published.

Columns K, L, M, N, and O are simply reference values. It is unrealistic to be at exactly the 25/50/75th for any given school. The user generated index value (P column) is compared against K,l, and M simply because without those reference points the individual school index value is largely worthless.

As for the stanford example, I agree. I could make the chart more aggressively color scheme. Currently, if you are over a '75th applicant' you're green, between 25 and 75 yellow, and under 25 red. Stanford's 509 is a 3.75/168. Due to the way they weight GPA, a 166, 3.9 is between the 50th and 25th calculated applicant. However, if we drop the GPA to a 3.8, the data turns Red.

Edit: Adding in a new color scheme where Red is below 25th and Orange is below median

Neat! Thanks for sharing

Hey all. Now that the new ranks are official, I went ahead and added the 2018 USNWR Ranks into the chart. By request, I have resorted the chart by highest rank.

cavalier1138 wrote:

mtf612 wrote:

ZVBXRPL wrote:What does 166 3.9 tell you? Green at Stanford? Sorry but not to great with this data.

Those stats should spit out 3.384 which is yellow and just below the 50th. Try downloading the document for use in excel, there are a lot of users on it right now and so the GPA/LSAT input numbers are being changed by others frequently

This is the problem with using the LSAC indexes, which are notoriously inaccurate. A 166 is an auto-reject from Stanford, period.

It sounds like your issue may be that you've given equal weight to the LSAT and undergrad GPA on this spreadsheet, and you're treating all schools as equally splitter-friendly and reverse-splitter-friendly. This is why MyLSN is generally considered a better resource than an objective calculator, even though the data set is limited.

had a URM friend with a 166, accepted in Stanford Law. Anecdotal and rare I know, but never say never

darthrevan92 wrote:had a URM friend with a 166, accepted in Stanford Law. Anecdotal and rare I know, but never say never

Solid necro. And your friend was a URM.

mtf612 wrote:Hi all - I made a thing! While I have been busy waiting on decisions, I made an index calculator which helps you determine your school matches. This is a first draft of the tool so it is likely fraught with errors. If you find a school whose numbers are incorrect, please PM me!


The tool works by calculating each school's index values. These values were obtained from the LSAC website here. Note: You must be logged in to LSAC to see the pdf, otherwise it is found on the transcripts page of the LSAC website. The published formula is =(Student LSAT * Lsat Constant) + (Student GPA * GPA Constant) + Variable Constant.


I used the ABA 509 Data to calculate what a perfect 25th percentile, 50th percentile, and 75th percentile student would look like. In other words, a 25th student at school X would have both a 25th percentile GPA for school X and a 25th percentile LSAT for school X.


You can enter your GPA and LSAT in the top right corner (row 1) and it will spit out your index number for each school. The left columns will show you the 75th, 50th, and 25th for each school To the right, I calculated ideal splitters (@75 LSAT / @ 25 GPA) and ideal reverse splitters (@75LSAT / @25 GPA). There is additionally a max bound and min bound column which use 180/4.3 and 120/2.0 respectively. These columns aren't super useful, but some schools have wildly different calculations (some range 1-5, others 160-200, etc) so the info may be of interest.


For ease of use, I had the calculator color code each school based on user input. Red indicates you are below the 25th, Orange indicates you are between the 25th and 50th, yellow indicates between the 50th and 75th, and green indicates above the 75th.


It should be noted, that there are a number of schools that do not publish their index formula and therefore have been omitted. This includes roughly half of the top 20 schools.

3/14: Added 2018 USNWR Ranks into Column A and sorted by highest rank.

Check out Version 1.1 of the Index Calculator Here.

This is amazing!!!

Updated today to include the 2017 index formula numbers and the recently released ABA 509 (gpa/lsat) data.

.

cavalier1138 wrote:

darthrevan92 wrote:had a URM friend with a 166, accepted in Stanford Law. Anecdotal and rare I know, but never say never

Solid necro. And your friend was a URM.

I like the qualifications Cav. You said, "A 166 is an auto-reject from Stanford, period." That means no one with a 166 is getting in. He provided anecdotal evidence proving you wrong. Here's some more, I have a handful of friends here with 167s and lower. They all got into Stanford. Of course, they have extenuating circumstances as well.

How about this? Someone with a 166 is almost certainly not getting into Stanford, unless they have extenuating circumstances, like being URM, having super softs, or having astronomical GPAs (4.1+, preferably from top undergrad). That I can get on board with.

Should we enter the LSDAS GPA or our degree GPA? I know some schools use the LSDAS GPA to determine index and others do not. Does that affect this calculator?