ABA Committee to Offer 2 Approaches to LSAT Requirement Forum

[LSAT Blog]

From http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/ ... quirement/

An ABA committee has tentatively agreed on two alternative approaches to the current requirement in the Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools that all law school applicants must take a valid and reliable admissions test.

The first approach would keep a pared-down version of the current requirement in the standards. The second would eliminate the requirement altogether...

Those who want to do away with the requirement note that the ABA has already granted variances to several schools that have allowed them to admit a limited number of students who haven’t taken the LSAT. They also point out that no other accrediting agency requires schools to make students take an admissions test.

"It ought to be up to the schools to decide who they want to admit, and based on what factors," says committee member David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Yellen also says it doesn't make sense to keep a requirement in the standards that is slowly being "chiseled away" through variances...

[09042014]

LOL just LOL. TTT's want stuff themselves with even more idiots.

[Tom Joad]

"It ought to be up to the schools to decide who they want to admit, and based on what factors," says committee member David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Yellen also says it doesn't make sense to keep a requirement in the standards that is slowly being "chiseled away" through variances...

Like the schools don't get to pick who they accept already?

[LSAT Blog]

How would U.S. News deal with schools that had no LSAT scores to submit? Or schools that accepted a significant % of students with no LSAT scores? If they weren't "punished," seems like we'd be in reverse-splitter heaven...

[09042014]

How would U.S. News deal with schools that had no LSAT scores to submit? Or schools that accepted a significant % of students with no LSAT scores? If they weren't "punished," seems like we'd be in reverse-splitter heaven...

Treat no score like a 120.

[MLBrandow]

LSAT Blog,

Currently, selectivity accounts for 25% of the weight in the rankings, of which LSAT is half (12.5%) and Median UGPA (10%) and Acceptance Rate (2.5%) make up the other half.

According to their methodology, both UGPA and Acceptance Rates would be weighted double in the absence of LSAT medians.

Methodology for US News Law School Rankings

But surely they must amend this criteria because if they don't, all law schools caring about their rankings would be encouraged to admit as many 75%+ GPA applicants as possible, discouraging them from taking the LSAT at all, while at the same time taking as many 75%+ LSAT applicants.

Or a school trying to shoot up in rankings might only admit one student with a 170, and then that would be the 25th-75th score range.

It seems like a big can of worms to me.

[LSAT Blog]

How would U.S. News deal with schools that had no LSAT scores to submit? Or schools that accepted a significant % of students with no LSAT scores? If they weren't "punished," seems like we'd be in reverse-splitter heaven...

Treat no score like a 120.

Ha, that would be fitting.

surely they must amend this criteria because if they don't, all law schools caring about their rankings would be encouraged to admit as many 75%+ GPA applicants as possible, discouraging them from taking the LSAT at all, while at the same time taking as many 75%+ LSAT applicants.

Or a school trying to shoot up in rankings might only admit one student with a 170, and then that would be the 25th-75th score range.

It seems like a big can of worms to me.

There's widespread agreement that any reputable school would still require the LSAT of all applicants.

Bottom-tier schools, on the other hand, have little to lose in terms of credibility and would gladly take tuition money from those who would've been unable to break 140. If this went through, they'd even be able to do so without taking a hit to their LSAT medians.

When the ABA considered this last year, Bob Morse wrote, "[T]he LSAT will remain a heavily weighted factor," but didn't really give specifics.

I've emailed him to ask for his further thoughts and written a post about it in the meantime.

I'm curious about whether the ABA will actually go ahead with this. The last thing they need to be do is provide yet-another piece of evidence that they're unable or unwilling to properly police law schools (apologies for the accidental alliteration).

[KevinP]

I read an article a while back about the ranking methodologies of US News, and in the article, I remember reading that some schools initially refused to give the necessary stats when U.S. News started rankings. So what U.S. News did was simply leave those schools out of the rankings until the schools complied.

Not sure if it would be applicable here, but I'd be in favor of not ranking schools that don't require the LSAT. (DF's idea of counting no LSAT scores as 120s also sounds good).

IMO, I think we can all agree that getting rid of the LSAT is not the way to go, especially amidst a decline in applicants and especially since the difficulty of GPAs vary wildly (engineering majors tend to already get screwed under the current system but at least the LSAT can act as somewhat of an equalizer).

Currently, selectivity accounts for 25% of the weight in the rankings, of which LSAT is half (12.5%) and Median UGPA (10%) and Acceptance Rate (2.5%) make up the other half.

There was LSAC study a few years back on the effects of U.S. News rankings on law schools, and it referenced a study that showed that 90% of the differences in rankings can be explained by the median LSAT of the entering classes. In turn, this implied that the other statistics tended be to pretty marginal. Not sure if this is still true, but I would guess that selectivity accounts for the differences in rankings more than 25% even if it is only used as 25% of the calculus.


tl;dr; ABA is lulzy.

[LSAT Blog]

KevinP, those are all great documents you referenced. Here are the links to what I found:

Study (1998) suggesting 90% of differences in rankings are based on median LSAT: --LinkRemoved--

LSAC study (2007) about effects of rankings on law schools: http://www.lsac.org/LsacResources/Resea ... -07-02.asp

From the LSAC study, page 5 (PDF):

Initially, some schools refused to send this material to USN, but USN responded by estimating the missing information. Representatives of these schools...complained that these estimates were coercive since they were almost always conservative, ensuring that schools that did not provide the information to USN were ranked lower than they would have been had they submitted the information.

Today, US News says:

Unranked means that U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for that law school. The school or program did not supply U.S. News with enough key statistical data to be numerically ranked by U.S. News. Schools or programs marked as Unranked are listed alphabetically and are listed below those marked as Rank Not Published.

I'd be in favor of not ranking schools that don't require the LSAT. (DF's idea of counting no LSAT scores as 120s also sounds good).

I agree - preventing the public from knowing the potential LSAT scores of their students would remove the one number that allows schools to be adequately compared.