Harvard Waitlist 2010 Forum

[NYC2013]

So is the wait list at harvard mostly for filling in "buckets" (term from UG admissions) ie quotas for URMs, international students, different majors, different lengths out of school, different areas of interest, etc

Or is it really a reevaluation of individuals?
So if I'm a white, upper middle class male with a great LSAT but a low GPA from Harvard's standards from a top 10 school with pretty basic Softs and average essays, are my chances pretty much 0?

Edit: According to LSN I'm one of the highest LSAT scores on the WL (179), so I guess I could fill that bucket.
But it's pretty unlikely I think, I doubt "high lsat" is a high priority on their WL but you never know I guess, especially with harvard

[justbluemyself]

Is there a general consensus about whether or not retaking the LSAT in June could help get off the WL? Maybe help us snag one of those (very) late acceptances?

[$1.99]

i called them up and they said the june lsat scores are not considered at all

[justbluemyself]

i called them up and they said the june lsat scores are not considered at all

Thanks for saving me a month of studying!

[CoaltoNewCastle]

So is the wait list at harvard mostly for filling in "buckets" (term from UG admissions) ie quotas for URMs, international students, different majors, different lengths out of school, different areas of interest, etc

Or is it really a reevaluation of individuals?
So if I'm a white, upper middle class male with a great LSAT but a low GPA from Harvard's standards from a top 10 school with pretty basic Softs and average essays, are my chances pretty much 0?

Edit: According to LSN I'm one of the highest LSAT scores on the WL (179), so I guess I could fill that bucket.
But it's pretty unlikely I think, I doubt "high lsat" is a high priority on their WL but you never know I guess, especially with harvard

I would think a 179 LSAT is definitely a bucket-filler. There should only be around 30 of us applying each year. That gives us diversity points!

[februaryftw]

So is the wait list at harvard mostly for filling in "buckets" (term from UG admissions) ie quotas for URMs, international students, different majors, different lengths out of school, different areas of interest, etc

Or is it really a reevaluation of individuals?
So if I'm a white, upper middle class male with a great LSAT but a low GPA from Harvard's standards from a top 10 school with pretty basic Softs and average essays, are my chances pretty much 0?

Edit: According to LSN I'm one of the highest LSAT scores on the WL (179), so I guess I could fill that bucket.
But it's pretty unlikely I think, I doubt "high lsat" is a high priority on their WL but you never know I guess, especially with harvard

I would think a 179 LSAT is definitely a bucket-filler. There should only be around 30 of us applying each year. That gives us diversity points!

I think it is closer to 50, plus 30 or so 180s, unless you mean approximately 30 179s applying to Harvard specifically. That said, I agree on the general point. The specific bucket is probably the "75%+" LSAT bucket, to be preferred to the "above median" LSAT bucket.

[agathon360]

According to LSAC, roughly 150,000 people sat the LSAT last year. That means 150 people would score in the top .001 percentile (e.g. the 99.9th percentile), which covers 179 and 180. A 178 is in the 99.8th percentile, which means another 150 people scored 180s, and another 150 177s. That means in total there are roughly 450 people in the world who scored above Harvard's 75%. Harvard needs roughly 150 of those 450 to complete their LSAT spread. Though I would imagine they accept more than 150, as probably the top 50 students or so with 177+ scores go to Yale (e.g. to fill out Yale's top 25th percentile)

[chanchito]

"in the world" lol basically it's the US

[ShibaDan]

lol I wouldn't care if I lived in a box if I got to go Harvard

QFT +1billion

[cahesu]

lol I wouldn't care if I lived in a box if I got to go Harvard

This + JR taking you up on offer + TV contract = interesting reality show?

[blue5385]

lol I wouldn't care if I lived in a box if I got to go Harvard

This + JR taking you up on offer + TV contract = interesting reality show?

It's like the reverse of that "Homeless to Harvard" woman's story...

[clintonius]

lol I wouldn't care if I lived in a box if I got to go Harvard

This + JR taking you up on offer + TV contract = interesting reality show?

It's like the reverse of that "Homeless to Harvard" woman's story...

bindun

[blue5385]

lol I wouldn't care if I lived in a box if I got to go Harvard

This + JR taking you up on offer + TV contract = interesting reality show?

It's like the reverse of that "Homeless to Harvard" woman's story...

bindun

maybe I should change my mind and enroll at NYU if the students there love it so much they'd be homeless in order to attend.

(KIDDING, CLS/HLS. also, it's actually a pretty good story.)

[CoaltoNewCastle]

According to LSAC, roughly 150,000 people sat the LSAT last year. That means 150 people would score in the top .001 percentile (e.g. the 99.9th percentile), which covers 179 and 180. A 178 is in the 99.8th percentile, which means another 150 people scored 180s, and another 150 177s. That means in total there are roughly 450 people in the world who scored above Harvard's 75%. Harvard needs roughly 150 of those 450 to complete their LSAT spread. Though I would imagine they accept more than 150, as probably the top 50 students or so with 177+ scores go to Yale (e.g. to fill out Yale's top 25th percentile)

Yeah, but we know that 179+ scorers make up less than the top .1%, because it lists that statistic for the top few scores. Really the only thing I have to work with is that old Powerscore table that they still see fit to use on their website: http://www.powerscore.com/LSAT/help/scale.cfm . It lists 179 as the 99.96th percentile and 180 as the 99.98th percentile. While that's an old scale, I don't see why it would have changed much in either direction. .0002 times 150,000 is 30, so each of those two scores would have around 30 people getting that score. I know LSN shows 15 getting each score in the list of Harvard applicants this year, but I think (and this is obviously completely speculation) that people with high LSAT scores are just a lot more likely to use LSN. It wouldn't surprise me if the number of 179's were more like 50, but I don't see any reason to believe it's not around 30. The point of this though is that this puts us in a pretty small niche for Harvard. The fact that people like LmaoZedong and Bai have been graciously withdrawing coupled with the fact that people with those kinds of LSAT scores who get into Harvard tend to have attractive alternatives makes me feel that our chances of getting in off the waitlist are decent. Although yeah the number of people who are above the 75th percentile is much higher.

I'm probably screwed anyway though because my GPA dropped by about .03 in the fall and I refuse to update my transcript!

[agathon360]

The LSAC scale was adjusted sometime in the mid-2000s (as you can tell by looking at the latest score conversion charts in Official Prep Tests). Now 99th percentile is a 173, whereas before it was a 172. And 178 used to be 99.9th percentile, but now it is 99.8th. So that shifts the numbers dramatically.

[februaryftw]

According to LSAC, roughly 150,000 people sat the LSAT last year. That means 150 people would score in the top .001 percentile (e.g. the 99.9th percentile), which covers 179 and 180. A 178 is in the 99.8th percentile, which means another 150 people scored 180s, and another 150 177s. That means in total there are roughly 450 people in the world who scored above Harvard's 75%. Harvard needs roughly 150 of those 450 to complete their LSAT spread. Though I would imagine they accept more than 150, as probably the top 50 students or so with 177+ scores go to Yale (e.g. to fill out Yale's top 25th percentile)

Yeah, but we know that 179+ scorers make up less than the top .1%, because it lists that statistic for the top few scores. Really the only thing I have to work with is that old Powerscore table that they still see fit to use on their website: http://www.powerscore.com/LSAT/help/scale.cfm . It lists 179 as the 99.96th percentile and 180 as the 99.98th percentile. While that's an old scale, I don't see why it would have changed much in either direction. .0002 times 150,000 is 30, so each of those two scores would have around 30 people getting that score. I know LSN shows 15 getting each score in the list of Harvard applicants this year, but I think (and this is obviously completely speculation) that people with high LSAT scores are just a lot more likely to use LSN. It wouldn't surprise me if the number of 179's were more like 50, but I don't see any reason to believe it's not around 30. The point of this though is that this puts us in a pretty small niche for Harvard. The fact that people like LmaoZedong and Bai have been graciously withdrawing coupled with the fact that people with those kinds of LSAT scores who get into Harvard tend to have attractive alternatives makes me feel that our chances of getting in off the waitlist are decent. Although yeah the number of people who are above the 75th percentile is much higher.

I'm probably screwed anyway though because my GPA dropped by about .03 in the fall and I refuse to update my transcript!

Just to add to the info, the GPA/LSAT table for Yale has 214 applicants with a 175+ LSAT and 3.75+ GPA (about 100 got in with this combo). I think if you look at the other tables which have the 175+ category available (UCLA, Texas), it gives the indication that roughly half of the 175+ scores go to people with sub 3.75 GPAs. I mean, I'm just eyeballing it, but that'd be my guess. It seems relevant given that Harvard isn't dipping into the sub 3.75 pool much this cycle.

As for that important extra digit for the percentiles, the one thing we know is that old Powerscore chart still has the 178 in the 99.9 percentile category. Without LSAT releasing the extra digit, we just don't know how many 179+s there are. It is possible it is even more than 150 if a 179 is, let's say, 99.86 percentile and they are rounding up.

Edit to add: I was curious so I compiled some data from the LSAC charts.

Yale 175+ LSATs: 358. 214 of these were 3.75+ GPA; 100 were 3.5-3.74; the rest were sub 3.5.
Texas 175+ LSATs: 66. 27 3.75+; 11 3.5-3.74; 28 sub 3.5
UCLA 175+ LSATs: 145. 50 3.75+; 46 3.5-3.74; 49 sub 3.5

Obviously these figures aren't independent from one another, but I think the UCLA data points to my above point that only about half of the 175+ scores are attached to 3.75+ GPAs. So if we also assume that Harvard wants a 176 75th percentile, that it rarely dips below 3.70, we are looking at roughly 250 eligible candidates out of the 450 176 scorers, some of whom will be selecting Yale or Stanford. In short, Harvard is pretty tied to the numbers if they want to keep that 176 75th percentile.

[blue5385]

some of the posts above were kinda TLDR for someone with little interest in number crunching (me), but what i'm getting from skimming them is that waitlisters with >75 LSATs have a good shot based on your data? since HLS seemed to focus so much on high GPAs earlier in the cycle, is it less of an issue if one doesn't have a stellar GPA at this point than it was earlier? hope that's what all this is implying.

[clintonius]

I think the gist was that they are looking to steal people who have deposited at schools in New York.

[blue5385]

I think the gist was that they are looking to steal people who have deposited at schools in New York.

upon careful reading and analysis of the information posted above.....this.

also, within this subset, they're specifically seeking people with sheep tars and colors in their TLS usernames to combat the problematic dearth of sheep and blue people in the class of 2013 so far.

[CoaltoNewCastle]

I hope there's some guy with Tourette Syndrome they let in who has just decided to go to Yale. Maybe that's my best shot.

[traficante]

Unless they sent out two Tourrette offers, with the expectation that one would go to Y. You better hope that second one goes to Stanford.

[cahesu]

I hope there's some guy with Tourette Syndrome they let in who has just decided to go to Yale. Maybe that's my best shot.

Not to be cruel, because I know you've been a punching bag in other threads, but your best shot is figuring out what glaring mistake you made in the application process and re-applying, preferably to schools which didn't see your previous app.

[CoaltoNewCastle]

I hope there's some guy with Tourette Syndrome they let in who has just decided to go to Yale. Maybe that's my best shot.

Not to be cruel, because I know you've been a punching bag in other threads, but your best shot is figuring out what glaring mistake you made in the application process and re-applying, preferably to schools which didn't see your previous app.

Ha! You got me. I sure screwed up. Really though I'm actually happy with my cycle and I don't need to keep hearing the same impractical advice over and over again. Maybe I shouldn't have said that I would literally kill or die to go to Harvard though...

[cahesu]

Ha! You got me. I sure screwed up. Really though I'm actually happy with my cycle and I don't need to keep hearing the same impractical advice over and over again. Maybe I shouldn't have said that I would literally kill or die to go to Harvard though...[/quote]

No, you're right. Congrats on the Northwestern scholarship! That is an amazing opportunity to have in your back pocket, particularly because it will allow you to ride the Harvard wait-list a lot longer than most (including me).

[CoaltoNewCastle]

Ha! You got me. I sure screwed up. Really though I'm actually happy with my cycle and I don't need to keep hearing the same impractical advice over and over again. Maybe I shouldn't have said that I would literally kill or die to go to Harvard though...

No, you're right. Congrats on the Northwestern scholarship! That is an amazing opportunity to have in your back pocket, particularly because it will allow you to ride the Harvard wait-list a lot longer than most (including me).

Thank you. Good luck on the waitlist. How long are most people here planning to ride the waitlist out?