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I'm noticing a couple of COA postings that include a "top 5 percent" requirement? How binding are these? I'm at HYS and it's hard to tell rankings precisely. Plus, even if that weren't the case, I doubt I'm in the top 5%. Wondering if it's even worth applying.

If your grades are such that you might plausibly be in the top 5% at HYS, you should absolutely apply. OSCAR postings go out to law students everywhere, and if you're in, say, the top 10% at HYS, that will likely make you as competitive as someone in the top 5% of many other schools.

Definitely apply. Those cutoffs are effectively meaningless for HYS students (or, frankly, the top 5-6 schools in general). If you have strong recommenders, nobody will care if you’re in the top 5% or top 15%.

Anonymous User wrote:Definitely apply. Those cutoffs are effectively meaningless for HYS students (or, frankly, the top 5-6 schools in general). If you have strong recommenders, nobody will care if you’re in the top 5% or top 15%.

Seconding the above. Apply. The top 5% requirement effectively only applies to schools that actually rank their students. The top schools don't do that and so while it may be obvious to tell if someone is median or below median, it is impossible to tell whether someone is top 5% or "merely" top 10% or 15%.

This is very helpful. Thanks everyone!

My COA judge could plausibly have advertised a "top 5%" requirement--and may have. Although we cared a lot about grades at HYS, I would say that the requirement did not apply to HYS students, in part because there's no way of determining who is in the top 5%.

If I had to break down what our actual grade minimums were for serious consideration, they were something like (1) top 25% from HYS; (2) top 5%-10 from T14; (3) top three in the class + law review e-board from a top 100ish school.

What kind of grades do you categorize as comfortably within the top 25% at those three schools when you're reviewing apps? If you had to guess, what would top 5% look like?

Anonymous User wrote:My COA judge could plausibly have advertised a "top 5%" requirement--and may have. Although we cared a lot about grades at HYS, I would say that the requirement did not apply to HYS students, in part because there's no way of determining who is in the top 5%.

If I had to break down what our actual grade minimums were for serious consideration, they were something like (1) top 25% from HYS; (2) top 5%-10 from T14; (3) top three in the class + law review e-board from a top 100ish school.

I would echo this.

My rule of thumb is if there's ever a question whether or not you should apply, just apply. List your GPA on your resume; be honest. Worst case scenario is they just don't hire you.

Especially when you get out of law school and job requirements are listed as "minimum of x years doing y." You'd be surprised how often people not meeting those requirements end up being hired anyway if they're otherwise a good candidate

Anonymous User wrote:What kind of grades do you categorize as comfortably within the top 25% at those three schools when you're reviewing apps? If you had to guess, what would top 5% look like?

It differs for these three schools. For top 25%, I would say that more Hs than Ps is probably good for Stanford, with a slightly more favorable ratio required for Harvard. For Yale, I would want to see something close to 2:1 Hs to Ps with many of those Hs coming in serious-looking classes.

My bet at top 5% for Stanford would probably be around 2.5:1 Hs:Ps with 2-3 book prizes. For Harvard I'd say 3-3.5:1 with a handful of DSs. For Yale, I'd expect just about all Hs, mostly in serious-looking classes. As I'm sure this illustrates, there's some judgment calls in here (how do you weigh book prizes/DSs vs Hs, for example) and a lot of fudging. And I imagine that my estimates aren't going to sync up perfectly with others'.*

* For example, I'm personally more impressed by someone from HYS who has taken slightly harder or slightly more classes and faired worse than I am by someone with a technically 'cleaner' transcript: it's possible to chart an easier course (especially at HY) towards good grades, and when I see that someone not only didn't do that, but sought out a relatively <em>difficult</em> path, it reflects well. I'm confident that my views on this specific question, although widespread, are far from universal.

FWIW, at Harvard at least, a DS counts as 2 Hs for gpa/Latin honors. So someone with 5H has the same gpa as someone with 1DS/3H/1P.

Bingo_Bongo wrote:My rule of thumb is if there's ever a question whether or not you should apply, just apply. List your GPA on your resume; be honest. Worst case scenario is they just don't hire you.

Especially when you get out of law school and job requirements are listed as "minimum of x years doing y." You'd be surprised how often people not meeting those requirements end up being hired anyway if they're otherwise a good candidate

I 100% agree with this statement. I've gone on interviews where the original OSCAR post said top 5% and I'm unranked at a school outside of the T14. I tell everyone to just apply and see what happens. I don't list my GPA on my resume though; they have my transcript for that. When I present my resume, and knowing that I have average grades, it's important to me that they only see the other accomplishments without the grade bias.

Anonymous User wrote:FWIW, at Harvard at least, a DS counts as 2 Hs for gpa/Latin honors. So someone with 5H has the same gpa as someone with 1DS/3H/1P.

And someone with that collection of grades would (depending on the credit weight for each grade) be right at the top 10% at Harvard. (Magna cum laude is usually somewhere between a 3.95 and 4.0, and that would be a 4.0 if all classes had the same amount of credits.)