Top Law Schools

I'm not sure if this is the right board for this question, but bear with me. I have good numbers and weak softs, so I was wondering which schools in the T14 that would be friendly to applicants like me.

From what I gather, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley care more about a "holistic" application than straight numbers, while other schools care almost exclusively about your LSAT/GPA.

So, essentially, my question is which T14 schools care the most about numbers and which schools are the most "holistically-oriented?"

Thanks!

CardinalLaw wrote:I'm not sure if this is the right board for this question, but bear with me. I have good numbers and weak softs, so I was wondering which schools in the T14 that would be friendly to applicants like me.

From what I gather, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley care more about a "holistic" application than straight numbers, while other schools care almost exclusively about your LSAT/GPA.

So, essentially, my question is which T14 schools care the most about numbers and which schools are the most "holistically-oriented?"

Thanks!

I think that the common wisdom has it that high numbers are necessary, but not sufficient, for Yale. That's also pretty true for Stanford and Berkeley actually, which are basically "GPA whores." Additionally, Stanford's LSAT median is high (just not relative to its ranking).

Obviously it depends on the numbers, but if they're good enough, you could potentially be a lock to Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Virginia, Michigan, Duke, Cornell, and Georgetown.

Your softs will come heavily into play at Yale, Stanford, Boalt, and Northwestern.

Penn is kind of middle-ground. They yield protect pretty aggressively and seem to be a bit more holistic, so high numbers won't necessarily lock them up. That's not to say they won't take you on the basis of high numbers, just that you'd have to prove you'll actually attend.

Does michigan yield protect? I've looked at LSN and they seem to deny or WL a lot of applicants with good numbers.

CardinalLaw wrote:Does michigan yield protect? I've looked at LSN and they seem to deny or WL a lot of applicants with good numbers.

Mich and UVA are the two worst offenders. People on TLS say that Penn YPs too but at least statistically they don't seem as egregious: http://myLSN.info/dispresults.php?sk=2ufl6 Notice in this chart that UM and UVA have a much lower accept % than Harvard.

Re OPs question: Y, S and Boalt are really the only ones who look past the numbers. Maybe your softs matter at the margins for the rest, but being above both medians makes you almost auto admit and below both, auto ding.