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Hey TLS. I'm just curious, how often do prestigious law schools (say T5) accept people with GPAs & LSAT scores below their medians who are non-URM? Is the median a huge determinant for HYS? Thanks in advance.

For non-urm's, being at or above median is the defining factor in your admission. For Yale and Stanford, you generally should be above median as a prerequisite, and have other distinguishing softs and other features to stand out.

As for "how often" people below median are admitted, see mylsn and lawschoolnumbers.com

First off don't say T5.

Secondly, no one will be able to give you an easy answer. What's the school? How far below the medians are you? Do you have any good softs? If you are at the school's LSAT but .01 below their GPA median is admission impossible? of course not.

see lawschoolnumbers for graphs of schools to see how close they stay to their medians.

What exactly can be considered distinguishable/good softs? What about working at a law firm all throughout UG -

Another question: when the LSAC reports your GPA do they have it rounded to 2 decimal places or 3---would a 3.878 be considered a 3.88, 3.87, or 3.878?

Search "good softs" on the forum. There are countless of threads that explicitly answer your question. But to give you a general idea, distinguishable/good softs are often things outside of the undergraduate circles of organization, clubs, etc... Leadership positions in student orgs are very common. Working part time at a law firm doing office work during UG isn't a great soft either. While it does show commitment and a somewhat practical understanding of what the legal field entails, it wont set you apart as many applicants possess a similar experience.

TCR here is probably to retake the LSAT. If you're that close on your GPA, you owe it to yourself to be above at least one median.

That said, Chicago seems to dip for reverse splitters, but I doubt that's you.

Retake

Forgive me for forgetting to mention that I have not taken the LSAT yet. But, by graduation, my GPA has the potential to be in the high end of 3.8X *crosses fingers*

Take

So not only have you not taken the LSAT yet, you don't actually even have a real GPA yet?

twentypercentmore wrote:So not only have you not taken the LSAT yet, you don't actually even have a real GPA yet?

I've got 3 more semesters until I graduate
Then I plan on taking the LSAT (Yes after I graduate)

KA631LGH wrote:

twentypercentmore wrote:So not only have you not taken the LSAT yet, you don't actually even have a real GPA yet?

I've got 3 more semesters until I graduate
Then I plan on taking the LSAT (Yes after I graduate)

Come back to us in about 4 years. Until then, have fun in college and get that gpa as high as humanly possible.

theres no t5