Top Law Schools

Around five years ago I heard of individuals with a 2.7/178 landed a spot in the lower Top 14 (i.e. Georgetown, Northwestern, UVA, Michigan), especially if they had a compelling reason for the lower gpa and work experience and time from graduating. This doesnt appear to be the case nowadays with these numbers.

1). Would I likely have a chance at UCLA, Georgetown or Vanderbilt with those numbers?
2). If I do land a top 20, how difficult is it after 1L for an individual to transfer from Top 20 to T14

1) Do people still use the site law school data? I'd take a look there to see if there have been any comparable admits. Worth shooting your shot if some are at least close on GPA. That said, not sure how much value there is for a 178 over mid-170s and I think the 2.7 will be a big hurdle any way you cut it. Not worth it for you to put those schools on a pedestal anyway because [see below]

2) Not quite responsive but I don't think there's going to be a lot of incremental value added transferring from a t20 to t14. If you do well enough to transfer at somewhere like Vandy you can likely achieve most of the same outcomes from that t20. I'm sure it's feasible from the top portion of the class; check around the transfer threads here for more detail

Here is a search of 170-180, 2.5-2.99, excluding URMs, for the last 4 admissions cycles (starting with 2019-20). You can play around the parameters as you like!

https://www.lsd.law/search/Ya44U

If you're dead set on T14/20, appears that Penn, UVA, Northwestern, Georgetown, UCLA, Vandy, Texas & WashU all give you ~50% for the waitlist. But straight acceptances are quite rare, except at WashU where you've got a shot. So, I guess one plan is to focus on writing compelling applications to those schools, play the waitlist game among these admittedly large waitlists, and hope LSAT medians start hurting.

Otherwise based on the list, seems several strong regionals are open to you, e.g. Georgia, Florida, Wake Forest, Emory. Needless to say some are more portable than others.

And of course, don't start at a school you wouldn't be happy graduating from.

Super splitters tend to have very unpredictable admissions cycles. Might as well apply broadly and see what happens, perhaps omitting notoriously grade-selective schools like Yale/Stanford/Berkely.

Law school data is good for “scaring people straight” and making people “come to Jesus” regarding the need for high numbers but…

Agree with the other posters - if you are a super splitter then spend the extra money and put in the extra time to apply broadly. The time and money spent will be worth it’s weight in gold. Admissions for Deep South GPAs are too idiosyncratic and sample sizes are too small to predict beforehand. You’d have to apply to find out (and then you’ll be the expert regarding your score and gpa combo).

lawschoolsplit2023 wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:11 pm

Around five years ago I heard of individuals with a 2.7/178 landed a spot in the lower Top 14 (i.e. Georgetown, Northwestern, UVA, Michigan), especially if they had a compelling reason for the lower gpa and work experience and time from graduating. This doesnt appear to be the case nowadays with these numbers.

1). Would I likely have a chance at UCLA, Georgetown or Vanderbilt with those numbers?
2). If I do land a top 20, how difficult is it after 1L for an individual to transfer from Top 20 to T14

Apply to all of the Top 14 except for Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley (as noted by another poster).

5 years of post undergraduate work experience and the fact that you were battling cancer during your undergraduate years should excuse your low GPA.