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I'm very close with a member of Penn's alumni (large) donations board (Ben Franklin Society).

I'm at 169 and a 3.5 GPA from a top 20 school.

I'm familiar with mylsn.info, but I was wondering how much of a leg up my connection at Penn might give me.

Thanks

There's not much publicly available data on this kind of advantage.

I would bet it depended on how you used it. Would this person write you a letter and make a follow up call? Does this person personally make large donations, or does he just play a small role dialing for dollars?

Personally has donated a significant amount + is an active member of the board that runs/oversees the donations. No rec letter, but this person would actively advocate on my behalf.

I realize the data is lacking; I guess my hope was for some sort of anecdotal evidence from someone who had a weaker GPA/LSAT but still got accepted through some sort of connection. I'd also gladly take any anecdotes from people who had connections at other T14 schools and got in despite somewhat weaker numbers.

Also, I'm probably planning on applying ED1

even if you got in you'd be paying sticker so.. not a good idea

Are you trying to justify not studying for a June retake?

Luckily for me, price isn't my biggest concern.

I did retake the LSAT once already. First try was a 163, second was a 169. I'm not planning on taking it again.

My reasons for applying ED1 is that I think, given my numbers, Penn is probably the best school I could get into (with the connection), so I'm going all out for it (obviously I like Penn a lot and think I'd fit in well there, too).

IME, if you have the right connection to swing something like this, you know that you do. So if you're having doubts and you want to ensure that you get into Penn, you have nothing better to do than retake given that your GPA isn't great.

3.5 + median LSAT generally gets Penn

Tiago Splitter wrote:3.5 + median LSAT generally gets Penn

I don't know about that. Penn seems pretty unpredictable.

http://penn.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/1415

OP, you only need a few more points on your retake. I think it's doable. I know studying for the lsat sucks, but that third retake will be worthwhile. As someone above said, even if you get in, do you want to pay sticker?

Personally has donated a significant amount + is an active member of the board that runs/oversees the donations. No rec letter, but this person would actively advocate on my behalf.

even if you got in you'd be paying sticker so.. not a good idea

Given the former quote, not sure that the latter is relevant.

Haha i did not see the personal donation part ^^

OP who are you? what do you mean by "significant?" $10k? $100k?

i think you might have a decent shot at penn if all the string are pulled for you
to be safe, I would still retake

Who am I? Haha, just a kid with a family friend who has connections at Penn.

I don't know exactly, but probably somewhere north of 25k, south of 75k.

As far as a third retake, I'm not sure how worth it that would be because I really think the chances of my scoring the same/worse are better than the chances of my scoring higher.

If your connection is simply to the university at large and not the law school specifically, then I wouldn't expect much boost at all.

That said, at 3.5/169 ED you really don't need that much boost. Certainly have a fighting chance at getting in already