3.6 GPA and 167 LSAT - Columbia? Forum

[MistakenGenius]

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[gnomgnomuch]

I have literally no idea what any of these schools are (except for Wellesley, I think that's the school they talked about on Family Guy as being full of lesbians), though I do approve of the Game of Thrones name Amherst Reed of House Swarthmore. 100 gold dragons says he'd end up on the Iron Throne. I'm also starting to think OP is a flame. And Nony, though I haven't heard of these places, I'm not disputing the fact that they may have very powerful alumni out there, that they may have a strong education system, or that they may have some kind of grade deflation. But that does not mean they're preftigious. The average lay person has heard of literally 0 of them unless they've seen one in pop culture, as I can attest. Heck, someone mentioned William and Mary, I'd say it's way more prestigious than any of these "LACs", and William and Mary isn't very prestigious. But none of these schools are getting any fucking boost.

Anyway, none of that matters OP. Let me make things as clear as possible. Your GPA is not going to be viewed as different from anyone else's. Someone can go to Arizona State and maybe have a more "rigorous" education than you depending on their majors and their professors. We don't know, so all GPAs are on a level playing field. That said, your GPA is not the problem at Columbia. If I magically swoop down and make your GPA a 3.8 (since that's the random number you chose), you'd still have a roughly 0% chance of admission. But you know what, I just realized that your college is sooooo prestigious, plebeians like me just aren't capable of knowing about it, like muggles and Hogwarts. So, *Bibbidi Bobbidy Boo* the Fairy GodGenius has now magically raised your rigorous GPA up to a perfect 4.0. And now, with your powerful, perfect, rigorous, magical, prestigious GPA, you will surely now have...roughly a 0% chance of admission to Columbia. Well, poo. Let me gather up all my power for one final spell and turn your 4.0, into a 4.15!!! Whew, there. Now you have...roughly a 0% chance of admission to Columbia, and I'm afraid the Fairy GodGenius' power has its limits, and I am spent, little OPrella.

And unfortunately, you only have until midnight when my magic will wear off, and you'll still be who you are right now, a stubborn fool with a 3.6 from WhoGivesAShit University who needs to retake the fucking LSAT.

180. There should be a threat of the most glorious take-downs on TLS, that thread should be stickied, and this should be the OP.

[pancakes3]

yeah well, that's just like your opinion, man.

[pancakes3]

Never understood why schools like William and Mary pride themselves on grade deflation.

Hear hear...that's where I went! Did you? If not, glad to see that its recognized for it.

lol, nah bro. 3 bars total, colonial williamsburg-adjacent, grade deflation, and no sports program whatsoever did not make it a very attractive destination for a 16 year old me. had fun when i visited though. the nerd rep is overblown.

[basedvulpes]

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[my prole called life]

Yeah dude they take into consideration what percentile your gpa falls into for your uni. That's been explicitly mentioned in interviews with addmissions people

Thanks, that makes sense.

I think I can get into Columbia. My school is a top liberal arts college, and law school officers will know the difference between Montana State vs a private liberal arts.

You're not supposed to create a duplicate account. Only one account per person. Mods please!

LOL. Et tu, lymenheimer?

[my prole called life]

.

[MistakenGenius]

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[basedvulpes]

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[Hikikomorist]

Never understood why schools like William and Mary pride themselves on grade deflation.

Hear hear...that's where I went! Did you? If not, glad to see that its recognized for it.

lol, nah bro. 3 bars total, colonial williamsburg-adjacent, grade deflation, and no sports program whatsoever did not make it a very attractive destination for a 16 year old me. had fun when i visited though. the nerd rep is overblown.

Genuinely curious (and off-topic), does W&M have a good rep? I went to a preftigious LAC and always thought of W&M as kind of a meh school, though I knew next to nothing about it. Maybe just a consequence of playing second fiddle to UVA.

I'd say it's decent. It is second fiddle to UVA, but UVA's a really great school, though I'd argue neither are super "prestigious." Being #2 in a good state is always a good thing. And once again, LACs may be fantastic schools, I have no idea, but none of them are prestigious (so you def did not go to a prestigious one). But that's irrelevant since prestige generally doesn't matter at all.

Completely ignoring quality of education, If I were naming all the truly prestigious schools, it would have to be: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell (exclusively because of Andy from The Office), MIT, Duke, maybe Stanford, West Point, and Johns Hopkins (only for their medical school). Outside of that in the next tier, you have your Vanderbilt, Berkeley, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.

Ooh, also, house motto for Amherst Reed of House Swarthmore. "Ours is the Rigor"

This simply isn't true among professional circles. There's no way Amherst has less prestige than Berkeley. And Duke and Cornell over Stanford?

[CanadianWolf]

Pretty sure that Chicago, Northwestern & Williams fit in there somewhere.

To some extent, a school's endowment should figure into a rating & ranking system. The largest national university endowments are:

1) Harvard $36 billion
2) Yale $24 billion
3) Stanford $21.5 billion
4) Princeton $21 billion

5) MIT $12.5 billion
6) Northwestern $9.8 billion
7) Michigan $9.7 billion
Penn $9.6 billion
9) Columbia $9.25 billion

10) Notre Dame $8 billion
11) Chicago $7.5 billion
12) Duke $7 billion

13) Emory $6.7 billion
14) WashUStL $6.65 billion
15) Virginia $6 billion
16) Cornell $5.9 billion
17) USC $5.6 billion
18) Rice $5.5 billion
19) Dartmouth $4.5 billion
20) Vanderbilt $4.1 billion
21) Johns Hopkins $3.5 billion
22) NYU $3.4 billion
23) Pittsburgh $3.4
24) Minnesota $3.2 billion
25) Brown $3 billion

(Georgetown has a relatively small endowment.)

[pancakes3]

There are stronger regional biases for UG. I can def see some people preferring Duke over Stanford. I can also see someone preferring UMich over Berkeley.

There are also sector/program skews - CalTech, MIT, GaTech, Stanford > just about any school for engineering. Target UG finance programs feeding Ibanking. NW Journalism. USC Film.

There are also era/boomer biases. ND gets fetishized but that old gray mare ain't what she used to be. UVa's always been a good school but it's a much better school it is today than it was in the '80's.

[BigZuck]

Impressed it took 4 pages before this became a full blown prestige thread

[Hikikomorist]

Pretty sure that Chicago, Northwestern & Williams fit in there somewhere.

To some extent, a school's endowment should figure into a rating & ranking system. The largest national university endowments are:

1) Harvard $36 billion
2) Yale $24 billion
3) Stanford $21.5 billion
4) Princeton $21 billion

5) MIT $12.5 billion
6) Northwestern $9.8 billion
7) Michigan $9.7 billion
Penn $9.6 billion
9) Columbia $9.25 billion

10) Notre Dame $8 billion
11) Chicago $7.5 billion
12) Duke $7 billion

13) Emory $6.7 billion
14) WashUStL $6.65 billion
15) Virginia $6 billion
16) Cornell $5.9 billion
17) USC $5.6 billion
18) Rice $5.5 billion
19) Dartmouth $4.5 billion
20) Vanderbilt $4.1 billion
21) Johns Hopkins $3.5 billion
22) NYU $3.4 billion
23) Pittsburgh $3.4
24) Minnesota $3.2 billion
25) Brown $3 billion

You should also consider per-student figures to get a fairer picture. There's obviously a huge difference between Brown and Minnesota in terms of how far those $3 billion go.

[emkay625]

Pretty sure that Chicago, Northwestern & Williams fit in there somewhere.

To some extent, a school's endowment should figure into a rating & ranking system. The largest national university endowments are:

1) Harvard $36 billion
2) Yale $24 billion
3) Stanford $21.5 billion
4) Princeton $21 billion

5) MIT $12.5 billion
6) Northwestern $9.8 billion
7) Michigan $9.7 billion
Penn $9.6 billion
9) Columbia $9.25 billion

10) Notre Dame $8 billion
11) Chicago $7.5 billion
12) Duke $7 billion

13) Emory $6.7 billion
14) WashUStL $6.65 billion
15) Virginia $6 billion
16) Cornell $5.9 billion
17) USC $5.6 billion
18) Rice $5.5 billion
19) Dartmouth $4.5 billion
20) Vanderbilt $4.1 billion
21) Johns Hopkins $3.5 billion
22) NYU $3.4 billion
23) Pittsburgh $3.4
24) Minnesota $3.2 billion
25) Brown $3 billion

(Georgetown has a relatively small endowment.)

Subtle anti-UT trolling. UT's endowment is $25 billion. : )

[CanadianWolf]

Endowment per student rankings:

1) Princeton
2) Yale
3) Harvard
4) Stanford
5) Pomona College
6) Swarthmore College
7) Amherst College
MIT
9) Williams College
10) Grinnell College

11) Rice
12) Wellesley College
13) Dartmouth College
14) Berea
15) Notre Dame
16) Bowdon College
17) Univ. of Richmond
18) Smith
19) Northwestern
20) Univ. of Chicago
21) Duke
22) Emory
23) Trinity Univ. (Texas)
24) WashUStL
25) Middlebury College
26) Virginia
27) Penn
28) Brown
29) Columbia
30) Vanderbilt
31) Cornell
32) Michigan
33) Univ. of Rochester
34) Case Western Reserve
35) Johns Hopkins
36) Boston College
37) TCU
38) Tufts
39) Lehigh

[CanadianWolf]

@emkay: No. The University of Texas system wide endowment is about $25.4 billion. I also did not use the Texas A&M system wide figure or the Univ. of California figure as each covers multiple schools. Same with respect to Penn State & Illinois.

[A. Nony Mouse]

People at truly prestigious schools don't care what the hoi polloi think of their schools.

(I'm mostly being a snot. But I don't think "name recognition" and "prestige" are always the same thing.)

[CanadianWolf]

Georgetown University's endowment is about $1.4 billion--which is modest in relation to its stature.

[emkay625]

@emkay: No. The University of Texas system wide endowment is about $25.4 billion. I also did not use the Texas A&M system wide figure or the Univ. of California figure as each covers multiple schools. Same with respect to Penn State & Illinois.

Even if you divided the total endowment of some of the systems up by the number of campuses, they'd still be on the list. (Does what I'm saying make sense?)

[CanadianWolf]

Yes. I'm trying to divide up the Texas system wide figure to estimate an endowment amount for UT-Austin. The UT system has at least 7 different schools ( Austin, Arlington, Dallas, El Paso, Tyler, San Antonio & Permian Basin).

Based on student enrollment figures UT-Austin would be assigned about 30% or a slight bit more of the total $25.4 billion endowment ( about $7.7 billion). Clearly, UT-Austin is a very wealthy school.

[BigZuck]

Impressed and surprised at how well endowed Minnesota is

[A. Nony Mouse]

Impressed and surprised at how well endowed Minnesota is

It's a relatively pro-education state, and I'm told that in the 80s the state threw money at the U.

[lowschaal]

Haven't checked in a few days. I didn't expect the thread to blow up.

GPA was the only real concern. It would be better if I had a 3.8.

I don't base on the data collected from the websites, because those are limited data and do not capture the entire pool. Some of your responses reiterates that fact, from what you've claimed to know about all past applicants. I will say I can provide at least 5 counterexamples, and I fit in with those same applicants.

I had reasons for believing I can get into Columbia with my numbers, and was testing if TLS is truly accurate in its predictions. Thanks for the advice to those who genuinely helped. To those who merely flamed, I hope you don't end up at my school.

[TheBananaStand]

Endowment per student rankings:

1) Princeton
2) Yale
3) Harvard
4) Stanford
5) Pomona College
6) Swarthmore College
7) Amherst College
MIT
9) Williams College
10) Grinnell College

11) Rice
12) Wellesley College
13) Dartmouth College
14) Berea
15) Notre Dame
16) Bowdon College
17) Univ. of Richmond
18) Smith
19) Northwestern
20) Univ. of Chicago
21) Duke
22) Emory
23) Trinity Univ. (Texas)
24) WashUStL
25) Middlebury College
26) Virginia
27) Penn
28) Brown
29) Columbia
30) Vanderbilt
31) Cornell
32) Michigan
33) Univ. of Rochester
34) Case Western Reserve
35) Johns Hopkins
36) Boston College
37) TCU
38) Tufts
39) Lehigh

The current US News rankings actually do effectively account for this. Something like 10-15% of the ranking is based of expenditures per student--and that's calculated differently that just endowment per student because having a large per capita endowment doesn't necessarily mean you're spending it on students (could be spending it on fund management fees, letting it sit, etc.)

Seems like a pretty good metric, but the downside is it's also contributing to rising costs because schools are taking on some silly and not very helpful projects to pad their figures.