Top Law Schools

My Academic Summary Report showed up yesterday and in it was this gem:



It also said that the average LSAT score from graduates of my undergrad was 142. Ouch. We're a small but specialized school with a national reputation in criminal justice. All lot of the students go on to law school afterwards (looking at these numbers, I'm not sure how).

Has anyone seen a distribution on their Academic Summary Report that even compares?

steakandchicken wrote:
It also said that the average LSAT score from graduates of my undergrad was 142. Ouch. We're a small but specialized school with a national reputation in criminal justice. All lot of the students go on to law school afterwards (looking at these numbers, I'm not sure how).

Wut.

The reason students from your UG can go to law school is because law schools have no standards. The bar for admission is managing to show up on time to a testing center with ID. I guess it's fortunate that this keeps some people out.

Wormfather wrote:Also, I'd bet hard money that there's a shitty adviser behind this. Someone who's telling kids to "just go ahead and take the LSAT, your entire undergrad has been prep" or "you go to [school name], that's going to matter way more than your LSAT"

Since I've graduated they've started a Law School Prep program that gives free LSAT tutoring. Now I understand why.

.

Wormfather wrote: As for your situation, apparently criminal justice majors are among the worst LSAT scorers, sorry.

--LinkRemoved--

No need to pity me. I wasn't a CJ major. I was PTing consistently in the 169-173 range so (most likely) I won't be bringing that 142 average down. That's all the comfort I have right now as I wait for that Dec 2012 score.

Wormfather wrote:

ohpobrecito wrote:The average for mine is 148. Crazy.

How do you find the average?

It is on your Academic Summary Report under transcripts in LSAC.org in that big (well big on mine) chart under LSAT College Mean.

Is there any way to see other schools? I don't think I can check because I haven't submitted my transcript yet.

ED: And wow OP, your school had over 50% in the bottom 20% .

How do you access this report? Do you have to have purchased CAS? (COZ I haven't)

willwash wrote:How do you access this report? Do you have to have purchased CAS? (COZ I haven't)

Yes, you have to have bought CAS and submitted all your transcripts in prep for applying, because it shows up on your academic summary report.

steakandchicken wrote:My Academic Summary Report showed up yesterday and in it was this gem:



It also said that the average LSAT score from graduates of my undergrad was 142. Ouch. We're a small but specialized school with a national reputation in criminal justice. All lot of the students go on to law school afterwards (looking at these numbers, I'm not sure how).

Has anyone seen a distribution on their Academic Summary Report that even compares?

John Jay?

Here's a breakdown of average LSAT by undergrad:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 2&t=196480

Our mean is a 147

cowmater wrote:

steakandchicken wrote:My Academic Summary Report showed up yesterday and in it was this gem:



It also said that the average LSAT score from graduates of my undergrad was 142. Ouch. We're a small but specialized school with a national reputation in criminal justice. All lot of the students go on to law school afterwards (looking at these numbers, I'm not sure how).

Has anyone seen a distribution on their Academic Summary Report that even compares?

John Jay?

The OP is most likely talking about John Jay as their lsat median is 142-143 and specializes in Criminal Justice. And I wouldn't say it has a national reputation...it's definitely known in NYC so it's a local school and even then the local reputation isn't terrific.

However, it is not a small school. An Undergrad with over 15K+ student body is not a small school. Maybe small school in terms of the actual size and buildings, but student body is large. And OP is not wrong when she says a lot of students attend law school out of John Jay, but the quality of the LS they attend aren't great and reason why JJAY have a lot of students going to LS is because they try to recruit them by claiming few of their majors are terrific for law school preparation (Humanities and Justice Studies + Political Science/Government).

Majority of John Jay students attend Pace, NYLS, and CUNY Law. Very very few students attend top schools.

Shucks, this thread is not as much fun as I intended. I posted the distribution, not so you all could speculate as to which school it was from and then pick apart my description of the school, but so that we could all find some humor in how poorly this school's students perform. Clearly, they're not going to top law schools.

We're all in need of some levity as we await our scores/decisions. I don't really care to talk about how flawed the law school admissions process is (notice I did say I am surprised they get into LS at all), or how poorly CJ students perform, or what constitutes a small school. I did not expect people on TLS to be incapable of understanding sarcasm (obviously, it's a gem because its pathetic) and to find more joy in debating whether John Jay is a degree mill or nationally known (that "degree mill" graduated you with a 3.27 GPA? I don't know why you talk about it like you didn't go there?) than to post their own distributions and discuss where we think we'll fall.

Thanks to the user who pointed the other thread and spreadsheet. That is exactly what I was looking for!

steakandchicken wrote:I posted the distribution, not so you all could speculate as to which school it was from and then pick apart my description of the school, but so that we could all find some humor in how poorly this school's students perform. Clearly, they're not going to top law schools.

It might seem funny, but the problem is that AdComms have access (from LSAC) to see what the average LSAT at a school is. If they've never heard of your school, they can do a quick look-see at how students from that school perform on the LSAT.

Really drains the humor from the situation if you're from a low-average school.

TripTrip wrote:

steakandchicken wrote:I posted the distribution, not so you all could speculate as to which school it was from and then pick apart my description of the school, but so that we could all find some humor in how poorly this school's students perform. Clearly, they're not going to top law schools.

It might seem funny, but the problem is that AdComms have access (from LSAC) to see what the average LSAT at a school is. If they've never heard of your school, they can do a quick look-see at how students from that school perform on the LSAT.

Really drains the humor from the situation if you're from a low-average school.

I don't really understand why being someone who performs really well on the LSAT despite being in an environment where most students do not do well would be a bad thing.

TripTrip wrote: It might seem funny, but the problem is that AdComms have access (from LSAC) to see what the average LSAT at a school is. If they've never heard of your school, they can do a quick look-see at how students from that school perform on the LSAT.

Really drains the humor from the situation if you're from a low-average school.

Yes, I understand that is the purpose of the Academic Summary Report. It helps give the adcomm perspective. Looking at the distribution, they might think my degree is a joke or that I went there solely to be a top performer (big fish in small pond) or whatever they want to think that I have very little control over.

Hopefully everything else I've done and my PS will demonstrate that I'm not to be judged by the performance of peer graduates. I've prepared the best I could, taken the LSAT and I'm waiting for my score. If an admissions committee sees that I come from a school with poor performers and that takes away from what I hope is a solid LSAT in the 95th+ percentile, what can I do about that now? Nothing, but laugh and try to see if anyone else has a distribution like this one. Where no one, in the history of the school, has scored higher than ~ 163, and most people score ~ 120-140.

I thought that other people from low-average schools would feel better seeing these numbers...but this thread seems to make people want to talk gloom and doom instead of providing a nice boost. Bah humbug!

That's an interesting distribution to me. I scored 168,166.

steakandchicken wrote:Shucks, this thread is not as much fun as I intended. I posted the distribution, not so you all could speculate as to which school it was from and then pick apart my description of the school, but so that we could all find some humor in how poorly this school's students perform. Clearly, they're not going to top law schools.

We're all in need of some levity as we await our scores/decisions. I don't really care to talk about how flawed the law school admissions process is (notice I did say I am surprised they get into LS at all), or how poorly CJ students perform, or what constitutes a small school. I did not expect people on TLS to be incapable of understanding sarcasm (obviously, it's a gem because its pathetic) and to find more joy in debating whether John Jay is a degree mill or nationally known (that "degree mill" graduated you with a 3.27 GPA? I don't know why you talk about it like you didn't go there?) than to post their own distributions and discuss where we think we'll fall.

Thanks to the user who pointed the other thread and spreadsheet. That is exactly what I was looking for!

Did I really? I thought it was obvious that I went to that school if I have that much knowledge about the school. No pretending here. Oh and I understood the point of your thread but this is an internet forum and we're allow to talk about what we want (even if i'm coming off as a troll). I might have been a bit off-topic but you mentioned how is it possible for these students to go to law school (even if it was rhetorical) and I gave a reason.

There are plenty of schools that have very low LSAT mean. And one thing you're forgetting about students going from John Jay to law schools is that there are many URMs coming out of that school.

If it makes you feel any better, I know few classmates who attend T10 school, T20 school, Hastings, and Fordham. Couple of them had mid 160 LSAT scores from what I know (I don't know about the other two) so it's not accurate to say the school never had 163+ scorers. I'm guessing LSAC rounds off the percentage and comes out to 0% instead of 1%.

The average is about 135 and only 1% scores above 155.

Anonimo wrote:The average is about 135 and only 1% scores above 155.

lmao is that a middle school?

And here I felt bad about my school's 147