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sorry i've posted earlier but this new info i got was in the mush of an all over the place thread.
so im 3.87/171 at top 20 UG--i only want to go t4 which means basically cls, or outside chance at hls, sls--after that it's penn

so assuming the goal is purely getting into highest ranked no location/scholarship factors--

so i found statistics from my UGs last full cycle

out of 50 kids who applied to hls from my school 7 were accepted (better than i expected) with avg lsat of 171.9 and ugpa 3.9. I'm slightly below that, but does that change the equation for me a little? My softs almost positively make me one of the strongest candidates among other kids at my school. But at the same time the stats don't indicate urms so they could be very skewed...my thinking is that among my classmates ive got a good shot, so if they are bound to pick at least 2-3 from my school i stand a shot (but are my stats good enough to get me a look beyond the numbers?)

on the same token at my school 12 kids got into columbia with an avg of a 172.5 and a 3.8, which im below and above slightly, respectively. but of those 12 only 3 matriculated, something im sure columbia hates so do my chances go up even more if i ED there?

on a side note we had 2 yallies and 1 sls, but no scores were reported because there were only two/one...i guess they don't want kids to know

my schools mean lsat was a 159.4 and mean college gpa was 3.41


does this have any impact? or should i stick with columbia ED

also nonURM but south asian, diversity statement, boost?

Where you went to UG matters much less than you think. Go to lawschoolpredictor.com and lawschoolnumbers.com to get an idea of where you stand. If you want to go to Columbia, I would certainly ED there. As for the diversity statement, I wouldn't do it unless you (1) were from a place that really is underrepresented or (2) have a really good topic to write about.

Softs don't really matter. If you want to secure a place at Columbia and/or HLS, retake and get >175. HTH.

Obviously I'm super busy at work right now. Ran a search for people with 171 LSAT and GPA between 3.84 and 3.90. Got 11 results for this last cycle, eight of whom applied to CLS. Of those, two were accepted, three waitlisted, and three still list as pending. In the same group of 11, seven applied to HLS, which turned up two acceptances (one of which was a person who didn't list applying to CLS, the other was a person who was WL'd at CLS. The latter also self-identified as Hispanic, non-Mexican or PR, and wrote a DS. Not sure if that played a part), two waitlists, two rejections, and one that's still pending.

My point being... I actually have no idea. Yeah.