Top Law Schools

take Vandy as a random example - only 11% of those that they offered admission to actually went to the school. I've noticed that a lot of schools have low percentages for this. That 11% that attended had a median LSAT 166 with IQR 162-167.

but what were the stats AT admission of the whole 100%? on one hand, i might speculate they would be higher, where many of the higher scorers went to better schools. but on the other hand, maybe they accepted a lot of people with ~164,165 LSATs, but with no scholarship money, so only the people who scored 166+ higher actually attended the school.

so which is it? 11% is not a lot of people to actually attend out of those admitted, so I'd imagine that the other 90% has some influence on the actual LSAT/GPA

The answer will vary by school. To take your example, Vandy likely loses a very large portion of their admits to higher-ranked schools, but according to their 509s, the vast majority of students have some kind of scholarship. But if we pick another random school (I looked at GW), over 1/3 of the class pay sticker, and scholarships are quite low. Students who think of a school as a "reach" are probably going to accept a spot in the class, even if they don't get much (or any) money. These forums don't reflect the wider population's attitude toward debt. In general, I'd assume that the admitted pool mirrors the accepted pool. Adcomms have gotten very good at this game. There's a reason that the medians don't fluctuate that much from year to year.

The other thing you have to remember is that LSAT/GPA stats are very narrowly grouped. Vanderbilt's numbers aren't substantially different from Wash U, UT, etc. So a lot of admits are going to be choosing between similarly ranked schools. Ultimately, you'd have to get a lot of confidential data from a lot of different sources to get anything informative.

This is all a thought experiment, though. MyLSN gives fairly accurate predictions at admissions chances, and the 25/50/75th numbers give solid guidance as to admissions chances. If this were the secret key to admissions, we'd see different outcomes in the information we already have access to.