Top Law Schools

No idea if other people have done similar graphs before.

I realize the quality isn't great, so if you know of a better image hosting service that doesn't shrink large images, feel free to recommend it.

Also, all corrections are welcome. e.g.
1) Class sizes (some of these are bound to be mistyped)
2) Colors (all grabbed from Wikipedia)
3) LSAT / GPA (I double checked but you never know)

The data is grabbed from LSN. I have no idea which year the data dates from.
edit: the data is from the ABA-LSAC Official Guide to Law Schools, 2008 edition

Looks pretty good. Thanks.

By the way, I don't think the image host is shrinking it; I believe the forum is shrinking it. If you right click and "View Image" you see it in a larger size, unless that, too, is smaller than the original.

awesome work.

Nitpick: "medium" ≠ "median"

Very nice - the color-coding adds a nice touch, too.

You know what would be cool? Circles extending to the 25th and 75th percentiles.

Those numbers are from LSN. There are no percentiles. And I'm assuming these are the people attending the schools right?

How do you know the Harvard/Yale entering class median GPA??

Great idea, and nice graph!

Just one suggestion: use the medians from the ABA Guide rather than LSN. I don't think we can rely on LSN posters to be a representative sample.

I think that by LSN he means the ABA reported numbers from a year ago rather than the self-submitted data. Ideally we should use the most recent ABA reported numbers (those can be pulled off the TLS rankings page.)

EDIT: Clarification, I think he used the Law School Guide numbers of LSN rather than the LSN data itself.

oakroom wrote:Nitpick: "medium" ≠ "median"

Dammit... engineering major too, now this is embarrassing.

Nice catch.

ran wrote:engineering major too

I knew it!

wardboro wrote:I think that by LSN he means the ABA reported numbers from a year ago rather than the self-submitted data. Ideally we should use the most recent ABA reported numbers (those can be pulled off the TLS rankings page.)

EDIT: Clarification, I think he used the Law School Guide numbers of LSN rather than the LSN data itself.

Yes, that is exactly what I did.

The TLS rankings page only gives the 25th and 75th percentiles though.

ran wrote:

oakroom wrote:Nitpick: "medium" ≠ "median"

Dammit... engineering major too, now this is embarrassing.

Nice catch.

If we're going to nitpick, isn't Boalt now officially known as Berkeley?

Due to these numbers coming from LSN, they are skewed toward the higher end of applicants. Perhaps you substitute in the LSAC data which is published for free on it's site.

This IS LSAC data. It's a year old. But it's LSAC data pulled off the Law School Guide on LSN.

MTal wrote:Due to these numbers coming from LSN, they are skewed toward the higher end of applicants. Perhaps you substitute in the LSAC data which is published for free on it's site.

Read the posts above yours.

This is awesome, ty

Another suggested tweak -- if you're looking for them -- is to just eliminate the parts of the graph that have no data points (i.e. above 174 LSAT and 3.95 GPA). That way you wouldn't have certain points hanging off the edge.

Rosstafarian wrote:Another suggested tweak -- if you're looking for them -- is to just eliminate the parts of the graph that have no data points (i.e. above 174 LSAT and 3.95 GPA). That way you wouldn't have certain points hanging off the edge.

Thanks -- will do =)

edit: Done.

Nicely done! This is one of the most helpful graphic representations of law schools' statistics that I've seen.

Robert398 wrote:How do you know the Harvard/Yale entering class median GPA??

Bump: I thought H and Y did not disclose the median GPA of their entering class

I got the numbers from the ABA-LSAC guide. As for where the guide got it from, I have no idea.

Robert398 wrote:

Robert398 wrote:How do you know the Harvard/Yale entering class median GPA??

Bump: I thought H and Y did not disclose the median GPA of their entering class

I'm pretty sure in those cases, the ABA just averages the 75th and 25th percentiles.

Ben Matlock wrote:

Robert398 wrote:

Robert398 wrote:How do you know the Harvard/Yale entering class median GPA??

Bump: I thought H and Y did not disclose the median GPA of their entering class

I'm pretty sure in those cases, the ABA just averages the 75th and 25th percentiles.

Harvard has 3.72 - 3.86 - 3.95. That can't be an average.

Also, I've tried out the idea of putting the 25th / 75th percentiles onto the graph, but it starts getting really cluttered in the T10-20 range. I'll try making that graph for a smaller set of schools.