Top Law Schools

Wondering if law schools differentiate between the GPA you received in your major versus your overall GPA?
Went to a top 10 university (known for grade deflation) where I graduated with honors as social sciences major. Major GPA, 3.82. Overall GPA 3.56. Lower overall GPA reflects slightly lower grades in non-major courses that I took to challenge myself/expand beyond one area of interest. Wondering if law schools consider this when weighing GPA since the difference between major/overall is large. For context, will be applying 5+ years out of undergrad with meaningful employment experience.

Not really. Schools report your degree GPA to USNWR for rankings purposes, so that’s the one they care about. If they’re comparing you with an otherwise identical candidate whose major GPA is lower than yours, maybe. But I don’t think there’s any great benefit to (essentially) claiming that you can do well in your major but not in other subjects.

nixy wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:51 pm

I don’t think there’s any great benefit to (essentially) claiming that you can do well in your major but not in other subjects.

Agreed. "I don't do well in subjects I'm less passionate about" is actually a red/yellow flag for law school, which involves a lot of mandatory, extremely boring classes.

It’s not that cut and dry. Admissions officers read transcripts. They notice trends. They know that a 3.6 GPA at MIT or Chicago Is different from other schools with grade inflation. As an example, here is what Cornell says. They pay attention to -

Trends in an applicant's grades
Grading curves at the college or university
Rigor of the courses taken

I certainly agree that you should be silent on not doing well in classes you dint find interesting.
Believe me. In law school, many many classes will be a royal pain ! They are still mandatory.

007sean wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 24, 2020 4:30 pm

It’s not that cut and dry. Admissions officers read transcripts. They notice trends. They know that a 3.6 GPA at MIT or Chicago Is different from other schools with grade inflation. As an example, here is what Cornell says. They pay attention to -

Trends in an applicant's grades
Grading curves at the college or university
Rigor of the courses taken

What schools say on their websites that they pay attention and what they weight most heavily in admissions aren't the same thing. They don't get to report which GPAs are from schools with grade inflation when they report GPAs to USNWR for ranking purposes, so while it's better to have a 3.56 from a school known not to have grade inflation than from a school known to inflate grades, it's not going to equate to a higher GPA.

Nixy — I noticed in your responses that you believe it’s 99 percent about formal numbers — GPA and LSAT. I am here to tell you that the numbers matter most and certainly establish presumptions. But they are not exclusively 100 percent dispositive. Law schools are very familiar with colleges, grading, majors and even the professors who write letters. I know of countless examples of folks who went to elite colleges with 3.3 -3.5
GPA ‘s in hard sciences, quantitative economics, or engineering or who went to notoriously grade deflating colleges, getting into several low T14 with low 40th percentile LSAT For each applicable school. Law school admissions also involves qualitative judgments. If it all were purely a numbers game, there would be no need for admissions committees spending 8 months a year on applications. A computer could do it.

I never said that it was 99%, let alone 100%. But I do think it's primarily numbers, knowing many people with glittering softs who got accepted right where their GPA/LSAT suggested they would. And even if admissions were only numbers, it takes 8 months because a school needs to build a class to maintain their medians - you have too many splitter applicants and schools don't know whether they'll need a high GPA or high LSAT at what point.

I'll admit that the very tip top schools (Y & S) are going to pay more attention to other factors, since they can pick and choose from among a whole range of top performers and can afford to accept the Elizabeth Wurtzels of the world with 160 LSATs. (H too, but it's a large enough class that I think it's a bit different.)

But I also have to ask, how do you know the numbers, majors, and alma maters of "countless" lower T14 admittees? Does recruiting actually ask for people's UGPA and LSAT scores these days? Are these "countless" in any given year, or are these people distributed over a wide range of years? What proportion of these lower T14 classes do you think they make up?

I have been in major law business for 30 years. A lot of info passes formally and informally.
Now interestingly, the tippy top schools YSH actually do require close to perfect stats, and the qualitative analysis distinguishes between those quantitatively perfect candidates. The lower T-14 who have to deal with splitters and sometimes weaker stats seem more willing to read between the lines. In any event, I don’t think we disagree that much. Just allow for the fact that law admissions officers know the colleges, grading etc. They have to normalize GPA’s. How else do they compare a 3.3 Econ from UChicago (notorious evil curve) with a 3.9 fine arts major from Rutgers ?

I mean, the whole point is that they can’t objectively compare an Econ 3.3 from Chicago with a 3.9 in Fine Art from Rutgers (this is the basis of the perennial complaint about the weight placed on UGPA, usually made by people who went to “elite” schools and majored in “hard” subjects who are outraged to find that doesn’t carry them to their chosen law school). But a 3.9 in Fine Art from Rutgers is going to improve a law school’s GPA medians in a way that the 3.3 won’t. I also pretty categorically reject the idea that a 3.3 in Econ from Chicago is, in a vacuum, inherently more desirable or demonstrates better potential in law school than the 3.9 in Fine Art from Rutgers. (This is my issue with grade inflation complaints: one given school may give out more As than another given school. But for any given student at that first school, you can’t, in a vacuum, assume that their As are inflated - what if they actually are an excellent student who would have got As at any school?)

I also don’t think adcomms can actually possess the range of knowledge you suggest except for a relatively small range of schools, which is why I find distinguishing GPAs based on alma mater kind of suspect. I know they get stats about other LSAT scores from the institution and they may have some grade distribution info - I’m sure Harvard has the grading at Chicago and Yale and Princeton down. But I doubt they’re as savvy about grading and profs etc at all the various directional state schools across the country, who nonetheless send students to HYS based on stats.

And 30 years of “countless” people getting into schools where they’re below the medians doesn’t actually give a very clear impression to me of what percentage that might actually be of applicants in a given year. I get the impression you hire from only the top schools; you’re relying on what may already be (and I would suggest is) an unrepresentative group of people, the people who made it in, and you have no way of knowing what percentage of applicants they actually made up.

Because I can’t say it *never* happens that people outperform their numbers, and (sadly) it probably is often people who went to the “right” undergrad and have the “right” people supporting their applications. But I don’t think it happens consistently enough to advise people who haven’t yet got into law school about admissions prospects based on those successes.

Nixy. You are missing my point. I make no judgment in the substance of the fine arts major versus Econ. What I am saying is that schools know the grading curve of the majors and the colleges. They would known that a 3.2 Econ from Chicago is an fact a high achiever in a group of very High achievers. They distinguish between a 4.0 GPA from a school where half the class has a 4.0 GPA and a school where say the top 20% only has a 3.6 GPA.

I get that point, but it doesn’t really address my other arguments. Adcomms knowing that a 3.2 at Chicago is a high achiever isn’t the only factor that goes into admissions.

Of course it’s not the ONLY factor. It is one out of many factors.

007sean wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:30 am

Nixy. You are missing my point. I make no judgment in the substance of the fine arts major versus Econ. What I am saying is that schools know the grading curve of the majors and the colleges. They would known that a 3.2 Econ from Chicago is an fact a high achiever in a group of very High achievers. They distinguish between a 4.0 GPA from a school where half the class has a 4.0 GPA and a school where say the top 20% only has a 3.6 GPA.

Except we repeatedly see that this is not the case. Applicants perform roughly in line with their numbers, regardless of where they went to school. If they had a "tough" major or alma mater, that might matter on the fringes, but it certainly isn't a big enough factor in admissions to advise applicants that they can rely on an easier cycle. Bottom line: A 3.8/168 from Penn State will always outperform a 3.3/168 from UChicago.

cavalier1138 wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 26, 2020 9:22 am

007sean wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:30 am

Nixy. You are missing my point. I make no judgment in the substance of the fine arts major versus Econ. What I am saying is that schools know the grading curve of the majors and the colleges. They would known that a 3.2 Econ from Chicago is an fact a high achiever in a group of very High achievers. They distinguish between a 4.0 GPA from a school where half the class has a 4.0 GPA and a school where say the top 20% only has a 3.6 GPA.

Except we repeatedly see that this is not the case. Applicants perform roughly in line with their numbers, regardless of where they went to school. If they had a "tough" major or alma mater, that might matter on the fringes, but it certainly isn't a big enough factor in admissions to advise applicants that they can rely on an easier cycle. Bottom line: A 3.8/168 from Penn State will always outperform a 3.3/168 from UChicago.

So, Cav, how exactly do Adcomms know the grading policies of UG institutions? For example, they can see GPA stats and how many students made President's/Dean's Lists, but do they know what the cutoffs are for an A? I have to make a 94% in a class (with no curve, we don't really do that) in order to receive an A. I believe less than 10% of the UG student population at my school has above a 3.85 (President's List criterion). But there are a lot of students who have close to (or exactly) a 4.0, myself included, because they grind out these classes and do a bunch of other stuff. How do schools know whether a high GPA at a certain school is worth more than at another school? I go to a small private business school in the Midwest and there's a pretty strong bimodal distribution among UG student GPAs- lots of 3.0 student athletes and a lot of kids with high GPAs.

A high GPA is a high GPA. Be glad. They’re not going to undervalue it.

(But as to specifics: most schools publish standards for things like Latin honors or Dean’s List and so on. They also usually publish grading standards, although 94 = A is pretty common. They’re in academic handbooks/rules and such, and a lot of info actually goes on your official transcript.)

mastermonkey45 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 1:37 pm

So, Cav, how exactly do Adcomms know the grading policies of UG institutions?

Pretty much what Nixy said. Given how many applications these guys have to review, I'd be extremely surprised if they looked beyond the transcript and CAS data provided by LSAC. But if they want to find a specific institution's grading policies (and agreed that 94%=A is standard), they can just look for the published guidelines.

mastermonkey45 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 1:37 pm

cavalier1138 wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 26, 2020 9:22 am

007sean wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:30 am

Nixy. You are missing my point. I make no judgment in the substance of the fine arts major versus Econ. What I am saying is that schools know the grading curve of the majors and the colleges. They would known that a 3.2 Econ from Chicago is an fact a high achiever in a group of very High achievers. They distinguish between a 4.0 GPA from a school where half the class has a 4.0 GPA and a school where say the top 20% only has a 3.6 GPA.

Except we repeatedly see that this is not the case. Applicants perform roughly in line with their numbers, regardless of where they went to school. If they had a "tough" major or alma mater, that might matter on the fringes, but it certainly isn't a big enough factor in admissions to advise applicants that they can rely on an easier cycle. Bottom line: A 3.8/168 from Penn State will always outperform a 3.3/168 from UChicago.

So, Cav, how exactly do Adcomms know the grading policies of UG institutions? For example, they can see GPA stats and how many students made President's/Dean's Lists, but do they know what the cutoffs are for an A? I have to make a 94% in a class (with no curve, we don't really do that) in order to receive an A. I believe less than 10% of the UG student population at my school has above a 3.85 (President's List criterion). But there are a lot of students who have close to (or exactly) a 4.0, myself included, because they grind out these classes and do a bunch of other stuff. How do schools know whether a high GPA at a certain school is worth more than at another school? I go to a small private business school in the Midwest and there's a pretty strong bimodal distribution among UG student GPAs- lots of 3.0 student athletes and a lot of kids with high GPAs.

They don't know or care what the policies are, they don't care what the distribution is. Your 4.0 polisci degree from Cal State Channel Islands is worth way more on a law school app than a 3.5 econ degree from Princeton.