How do you determine if a school section stacks? Forum

[bobbypin]

How do I find this information?

[stillwater]

Inquiry 1: Is the school shitty?

Inquiry 2: Does the school have scholarships with stipulations (i.e. scholarships that are not kept by only staying in good standing)?

Inquiry 3: Is the school called Seton Hall, run by the infamous Valvoline Dean?

If 1 and 2 are true, you should be suspicious.

If 3 is true, you know they be stackin'.

[rinkrat19]

I don't know if there's any for-sure way to find out, besides word-of-mouth.

A high 1L attrition rate isn't a good sign, although that's not just caused by 1Ls losing their scholarships. (It's not caused by anything good, though, so high attrition is an overall red flag.) The LSAC data page for each school lists attrition rates.

[Richie Tenenbaum]

1) I doubt any school actually does this.
2) Even if a school does this, why would they admit to doing it?

What might be helpful though is to see how many people get scholarships with a GPA/rank requirement. That might answer your question for you in trying to see how many people will necessarily lose their scholarship, if the school gives out more of these schollies than the requirement will allow to be kept.

[BullShitWithBravado]

1) I doubt any school actually does this.
2) Even if a school does this, why would they admit to doing it?

What might be helpful though is to see how many people get scholarships with a GPA/rank requirement. That might answer your question for you in trying to see how many people will necessarily lose their scholarship, if the school gives out more of these schollies than the requirement will allow to be kept.

To be on the safe side, don't accept a scholarship if it has stipulations.

[nickb285]

.

[Tiago Splitter]

If only half of them still had their scholarship by 2L, there's section stacking afoot.

Half of the people with scholarships losing them tells us nothing about whether section stacking takes place.

[Richie Tenenbaum]

1) I doubt any school actually does this.
2) Even if a school does this, why would they admit to doing it?

What might be helpful though is to see how many people get scholarships with a GPA/rank requirement. That might answer your question for you in trying to see how many people will necessarily lose their scholarship, if the school gives out more of these schollies than the requirement will allow to be kept.

To be on the safe side, don't accept a scholarship if it has stipulations.

No, scholarships with stipulations are bad because trying to predict how you will do in law school can be very difficult. (Whether conspiracy theories about section stacking are true just turns the issue of scholarships with stips from a bad decision to a horrible decision.)

[nickb285]

.

[wannabelawstudent]

Can someone explain what section stacking is?

[rinkrat19]

Can someone explain what section stacking is?

Putting all (or many of) the scholarship recipients in one section and having a high GPA stipulation on the awards so it's mathematically impossible for them all to keep their scholarships after 1L year.

[wannabelawstudent]

Can someone explain what section stacking is?

Putting all (or many of) the scholarship recipients in one section and having a high GPA stipulation on the awards so it's mathematically impossible for them all to keep their scholarships after 1L year.

Which schools are known to do that?

[Rahviveh]

Can someone explain what section stacking is?

Putting all (or many of) the scholarship recipients in one section and having a high GPA stipulation on the awards so it's mathematically impossible for them all to keep their scholarships after 1L year.

Which schools are known to do that?

Its something that has never been proven to take place. So nobody knows for sure

Quite simply you should just avoid any scholarships with stipulations

[ajax]

Don't give a school a financial incentive to fuck you, because you better believe they'll fuck you. Many people unfortunately only learn this lesson after taking out 200k plus in debt that cannot be discharged outside of death.

[scifiguy]

define "stacks"

[A. Nony Mouse]

define "stacks"

http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 1#p6349844

(Or conversely, the post 2 posts above yours, rather than a few further back than that...)

[suralin]

define "stacks"

[Ti Malice]

It's nothing dispositive on the issue, of course, but this Quinnipiac 1L says that his school section-stacks pretty heavily: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 4#p6461024. I'm surprised anyone thinks that these TTTs would be above this sort of thing.

QU has two day sections and they section stack the scholarship recipients pretty heavily. If you're there with a decent scholarship and you're in the scholarship heavy section it's going to be pretty difficult to keep your scholarship. The other section it's a little easier to make top 50% if you're a scholarship kid against non-scholarship kids.

[BearsGrl]

I went to a school that section-stacked, if by section-stacked we mean put in folks with scholarships (and GPA stips) with no scholarship offered.

And I would say the two items listed above were true: high attrition rates and scholarships w/stips.

[atay]

How do I find this information?

Were you asking this about Willamette? I asked a prof from there point blank in an email and this was his response. If you're asking it about a different school my advice would be to ask someone there.

"I've heard that very weird scholarship rumor before. I'm glad you raised it because I'd like to put it to rest. It's absolutely untrue. The school does not stack up scholarship recipients in one class in an effort to weed them out. It's impossible to do that. The assignment of students to sections, etc., is completely random- and is done by the registrar, who has no knowledge of aid offers. (Those offers are held as strictly confidential by the school- and stay within the admissions office and the dean's office. We run a tight ship on that front.) My guess is that one year way back, some group may have observed this as a random phenomenon and extrapolated it as a policy. And now it is an urban legend!"

[Shmoopy]

-

[Richie Tenenbaum]

Were you asking this about Willamette? I asked a prof from there point blank in an email and this was his response. If you're asking it about a different school my advice would be to ask someone there.

"I've heard that very weird scholarship rumor before. I'm glad you raised it because I'd like to put it to rest. It's absolutely untrue. The school does not stack up scholarship recipients in one class in an effort to weed them out. It's impossible to do that. The assignment of students to sections, etc., is completely random- and is done by the registrar, who has no knowledge of aid offers. (Those offers are held as strictly confidential by the school- and stay within the admissions office and the dean's office. We run a tight ship on that front.) My guess is that one year way back, some group may have observed this as a random phenomenon and extrapolated it as a policy. And now it is an urban legend!"

The bit about the firewall between admissions and the registrar seems irrelevant, because scholarships are strongly correlated with GPA/LSAT. All they have to do is put the people with the highest GPA and LSAT into the same sections. This might not even seem like a bad idea on the face to some people -- at my UG, incoming SAT verbal/writing scores determined which "tier" of first year writing seminars you could choose from. Probably so the smart people could talk about BS theory instead of learning how to write with the tards. But we also didn't have scholarship stipulations.

Info about GPA and LSAT would come from the same place that scholarship info would come from--admissions.

While it's always possible that this might be happening, I remain pretty unconvinced without any data to back up the claim (preferably data over multiple years).

[Shmoopy]

-

[09042014]

Even if TTT's section stacked, it would only effect your chances by a small amount. At each individual law school the difference between a full ride, and being the last person who sucked the adcom off to get off the waitlist is too small to make a significant rise the quality of section.

[Shmoopy]

-