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I'd like to hear from anyone out there about his/her admissions experiences as a splitter. I've gone down the rabbit hole of gpa-floors but those statistics all seem rather arbitrary. Anecdotally, my brother got into Virginia with a 2.5/171 and solid work experience. I myself am at 3.5/176 without good work experience. I have to suspect that there many many splitters out there like myself who can't determine what's a stretch or a safety school for themselves.

You aren’t a splitter

ivysplitter wrote:You aren’t a splitter

If we define a splitter as someone with a >75th LSAT and a <25th GPA, then they're a splitter at most of the T13, but just barely.

OP: You shouldn't be thinking about "safety schools" in terms of law schools admissions. You should only be targeting schools that will reasonably get you the job you want. After that, it's just a decision based on price. You will absolutely get into T13s outside of HYS, likely with good scholarship offers from NYU (maybe Columbia?) on down. You might be out at Chicago or Berkeley because they care more about GPA. But you'll have plenty of good options.

cdsmith wrote: I have to suspect that there many many splitters out there like myself who can't determine what's a stretch or a safety school for themselves.

While you might technically be a "splitter" it's a stretch. You're fine, and spending your time seeking hard-to-find anecdotes from other people with LSAT scores of 176 and pretty good GPA's is wasteful. Just think about where you'd be happy living for 3 years and apply to those schools in the t14. You'll get plenty of money from the lower t14's and likely gain admission to HYS. There's not really a big question here. The fact that your brother got in to Virginia with 171 and 2.5 should tell you all you need.

Good luck

Stats aren’t everything. I messed up somehow and got one T13 acceptance - Berkeley - with 3.5ish/178. YMMV

cavalier1138 wrote:OP: You shouldn't be thinking about "safety schools" in terms of law schools admissions. You should only be targeting schools that will reasonably get you the job you want. After that, it's just a decision based on price. You will absolutely get into T13s outside of HYS, likely with good scholarship offers from NYU (maybe Columbia?) on down. You might be out at Chicago or Berkeley because they care more about GPA. But you'll have plenty of good options.

cav is right. Law school admissions are based almost exclusively on GPA and LSAT, and so outcomes are pretty predictable based on historical MyLSN data. Here you go:

Apply to Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Penn, Michigan, Berkeley, UVA, Duke, and NW among the T13. (And make sure to write convincing, tailored Why X essays for Penn, Michigan and Virginia - those schools love that stuff.) Cornell is idiosyncratically picky about GPA, so if application fees are a concern, you can leave Cornell out. You may also want to pick a few T20s to apply to, depending on which part of the country you're interested in practicing in post-graduation. (I call T20s "Super Regionals," in that they typically place in a broad region, but not nationally. So, if you're exclusively interested in CA, for instance, don't apply to UT.)