Great, I'm pretty average. No huge surprises there.YCrevolution wrote:The average LSN application would list an applicant (who received a decision)* with a LSAT of 162 and a GPA of 3.47.OperaSoprano wrote:I might be misreading the data, but it appears that the people who've self selected to report their numbers have done much better than they "should have." Are we all that much savvier than the average law school applicant?
In particular, I'm thinking of applicants who want to attend schools in their strong consider range. In my experience, if someone is able to demonstrate that he or she really wants in at a strong consider school, that person will very likely be admitted. This is what happened in my own cycle, and I've seen it happen over and over again.
Is there any way to account for "persistence" factors like visiting, interviewing, Why X letters, and LOCIs? IMO these can often trump softs, and at the end of the cycle, when WL decisions need to be made quickly, they can occasionally even trump numbers. Deadatheist's recent admission to Hastings (160/3.63, non URM) is a perfect example. She worked for this, probably even harder than I worked for Fordham, though LSP called her a weak consider. I believe her persistence must have been a contributing factor in her WL admission.
I'm not sure how you could quantify this, but do you think it's credited?
I mean, I'm sure you remember the dramatic mess my cycle was, and I was decently above the median.
*This is different than the average applicant since many applicants applied to multiple schools, and I haven't filtered that out.
Persistence for applicants, particularly waitlisted applicants, probably helps a bit (quite a bit if you're really persistent), but unfortunately I don't have any easy way to account for it. Looking at the info submitted through LSP, some people definitely do far better (and in some cases, far worse) than their numbers would suggest.

I meant that the average applicant (not necessarily an applicant with average numbers) probably knows a lot less about this process than we do. If such knowledge is correctly applied, miracles are very possible.
I know you probably can't incorporate the persistence factor into your spreadsheet, but don't you ever look at the data and wonder what accounts for such surprises? I'm endlessly fascinated and honored when people choose to tell me their stories.