Is this article accurate? Talks about T6 admissions Forum

[scandk]

I read this article recently:

http://lawschooli.com/what-is-a-good-ls ... w-schools/

Specifically, this "However, common wisdom is that no LSAT score/GPA combo guarantees a mere mortal admission to Yale, Stanford, or to a slightly lesser extent Harvard. This is why these schools are known as “black boxes”: because they have a surplus of candidates with the LSAT and GPA numbers they need for their school to stay ahead of the pack, so they are able to base a lot more of their choice of specific candidates on soft factors such as work and life experience. This makes admissions decisions at these schools much harder to predict. Columbia and UChicago are also very black boxy, though not nearly so much as the top 3 schools. NYU is generally viewed as being slightly less of a black box that Columbia and UChicago." - Joshua Craven & Evan Jones

From what I've read on TLS, Y and S are definitely black boxes, but I didn't know H and CCN were black boxes. I thought that CCN was relatively predictable/not "black boxy," and H, while a little more unpredictable than CCN, was still fairly predictable. Am I wrong about this?

[jbagelboy]

I mean, the quote you posted basically sums it up. YS are the only truly selective law schools. HCCN all rely heavily on numbers, with H having the most flexibility, CC having substantively less but still some, and NYU basically relying entirely on numbers.

Any further commentary in this thread becomes a debate about semantics. There's nothing wrong about what that quote states, its just a relative measure of selectivity.

[bizzybone1313]

Tag.

[sinfiery]

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 2&t=202906

Thank you el terrible

Cliffs:

[soj]

Tag.

stop doing this. bookmark a thread if you wanna follow it.

[scandk]

@sinfiery - Thanks for pointing me towards this, and thank you el terrible for making it.

I mean, the quote you posted basically sums it up. YS are the only truly selective law schools. HCCN all rely heavily on numbers, with H having the most flexibility, CC having substantively less but still some, and NYU basically relying entirely on numbers.

The author categorizes H, albeit to a lesser extent than YS, as a "black box" school. If they really heavily on numbers, doesn't that preclude them from being a black box school? But you're definitely right - it's all relative.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I wouldn't call H or CCN a black box. H has high standards, but it's relatively straightforward numbers-wise whether or not you'll get in. Pretty much ditto for Chicago. CLS and NYU are pretty much entirely numbers-based and being above or below a sliding GPA-LSAT scale has incredibly high predictive validity for admission at either one. To the extent that law school admission in general is unpredictable, CLS and NYU are about as straightforward as it gets. Harvard and UChi aren't all numbers but they aren't black boxes.

Yale, Stanford and Berkeley are the only schools where you basically can't guarantee yourself admission even with exceptional numbers.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

Here's some information that might be relevant. The below is, for last cycle, the acceptance rates for non-URM, non-ED applicants that were above both medians (non-inclusive) at a given school.

Yale: 64%
Harvard: 90%
Stanford: 52%
Columbia: 92%
Chicago: 92%
NYU: 98%
Penn: 88% (YPer)
UVA: 67% (YPer)
Michigan: 71% (YPer)
Berkeley: 66%
Duke: 96%
Northwestern: 88%
Cornell: 91%
Georgetown: 89%

Looking back at previous years, none of the rates appear to be significant outliers. If you account for the fact that you can get around the YPs with a convincing Why essay, then pretty much every school is 90+% for those whose numbers are not in doubt, with the exception of Yale, Stanford and Berkeley.

[Teflon_Don]

Tag.

stop doing this. bookmark a thread if you wanna follow it.

Tag.

[soj]

Tag.

stop doing this. bookmark a thread if you wanna follow it.

Tag.

like i'm going to waste time putting up with a worthless troll who apparently thinks he amounts to something because he's going to law school. next time at least be funny.

[scandk]

Here's some information that might be relevant. The below is, for last cycle, the acceptance rates for non-URM, non-ED applicants that were above both medians (non-inclusive) at a given school.

Yale: 64%
Harvard: 90%
Stanford: 52%
Columbia: 92%
Chicago: 92%
NYU: 98%
Penn: 88% (YPer)
UVA: 67% (YPer)
Michigan: 71% (YPer)
Berkeley: 66%
Duke: 96%
Northwestern: 88%
Cornell: 91%
Georgetown: 89%

Looking back at previous years, none of the rates appear to be significant outliers. If you account for the fact that you can get around the YPs with a convincing Why essay, then pretty much every school is 90+% for those whose numbers are not in doubt, with the exception of Yale, Stanford and Berkeley.

Whoa. Thanks for this as well. Makes me feel a lot better about law school admissions. I don't want to go through another admissions cycle filled with arbitrary decisions, a la undergraduate admissions. Thanks again. By the way, I loved Bale's portrayal of Bateman.