Top Law Schools

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You are in at all of them.

kurama20 wrote:You are in at all of them.

+1

And many more. You could probably break T20. http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com

Aim higher. Much higher. I mean this with the utmost respect: you're black, take advantage of the huge admissions bump that gives you.

Consider yourself more like a 164-166/3.9 applicant.

RETAKE THE LSAT, BREAK 165 AND GET INTO YALE

Living in MO, you'd be crazy not to apply to WashU StL.

Do any of you all know of any top ranked schools that I have courses in Tribal Law? Also, what are my chances of scholarship money at T2 vs T1 school?

i'm serious, if i were you i'd even consider putting law school off for a year to study the lsat. unless you've reached the absolute apex of your potential, you're basically throwing away a chance at hys

http://lawschoolnumbers.com/FAMU03

Your #s. In at Emory/WUSTL

With that GPA and your WE background you stand a really good shot at Berkeley and NYU. If you could get you score to just a 164+ you will get into Harvard and Stanford. I wish I had your GPA with my LSAT--- - I'd be going to Harvard.

With your interest in tax law and your background I highly recommend NYU.

How much bigger a difference does it make being a black female. For example, I look at WUSTL, and their median LSAT is 167. While, 158 is a pretty good score (in fact average for their undergrads according to a tls post i read), it's still short of their 25th percentile. How does being a black female warrant a completely different set of standards at these schools?

Also, I'm confused if I really need to go to a school like Emory because I really would like to work in the Rocky Mountain region and not a big market. Plus, Emory's tax program looked very "lite" and they did not seem to have any courses relating to Native American issues. Isn't it true that most of the attorneys in the Rocky Mountain region went to schools like CU, Arizona, and BYU?

I know that UCLA and USC also have good tribal law and tax programs, but I don't know if I'd want to pay $40,000 in tuition x 3 years

I appreciate all of the comments, and your posts have boosted my confidence a bit. I'm now considering higher ranked schools like UT Austin. It's funny. I got fee waivers from Duke and UMINN a couple of days ago, and I just assumed they were trying to boost their acceptance rates by emailing me a fee waiver only to reject me.

kdw94780 wrote:How much bigger a difference does it make being a black female. For example, I look at WUSTL, and their median LSAT is 167. While, 158 is a pretty good score (in fact average for their undergrads according to a tls post i read), it's still short of their 25th percentile. How does being a black female warrant a completely different set of standards at these schools?

Also, I'm confused if I really need to go to a school like Emory because I really would like to work in the Rocky Mountain region and not a big market. Plus, Emory's tax program looked very "lite" and they did not seem to have any courses relating to Native American issues. Isn't it true that most of the attorneys in the Rocky Mountain region went to schools like CU, Arizona, and BYU?

I know that UCLA and USC also have good tribal law and tax programs, but I don't know if I'd want to pay $40,000 in tuition x 3 years

I appreciate all of the comments, and your posts have boosted my confidence a bit. I'm now considering higher ranked schools like UT Austin. It's funny. I got fee waivers from Duke and UMINN a couple of days ago, and I just assumed they were trying to boost their acceptance rates by emailing me a fee waiver only to reject me.

Being a black female makes a huge difference---you can practically ignore the 25-75 ranges for many schools when determining you acceptance chances. In addition schools really do not care about a black applicants LSAT score as much as they do about their GPA---as long as it's high it will overshadow your score unless you did abysmally. Your GPA is quite high. To be honest if you are looking at working in the Rocky Mountain region Boalt might be one of your best bets---especially since they really don't seem to care about the LSAT for URM applicants. And for the record if you decide to go to UCLA you probably won't be paying 40k a year---they'll give you some scholarship money. I think you will get into UCLA and USC.

kdw94780 wrote:How much bigger a difference does it make being a black female. For example, I look at WUSTL, and their median LSAT is 167. While, 158 is a pretty good score (in fact average for their undergrads according to a tls post i read), it's still short of their 25th percentile. How does being a black female warrant a completely different set of standards at these schools?

Although I believe you're sincere, this seems so much like flame.

what do you mean by a flame?

hypermeganet wrote:

kdw94780 wrote:How much bigger a difference does it make being a black female. For example, I look at WUSTL, and their median LSAT is 167. While, 158 is a pretty good score (in fact average for their undergrads according to a tls post i read), it's still short of their 25th percentile. How does being a black female warrant a completely different set of standards at these schools?

Although I believe you're sincere, this seems so much like flame.

It might not be. To be honest when I heard first heard about the URM boost I was shocked. I mean the idea that being black gave me an advantage in something was pretty hard to believe at first.

But seriously, why do law schools ignore the 25-75 for URM? I just want to know what their incentive is. Does it boost their rankings or something? I know these schools all seem to be very "rankings" oriented. I know most law schools report in their class profile the percent of females and minorities in their classes.

Kurama20, see you understand. Of course, I'm a little sceptical to believe I can an actually have a decent shot at Boalt with a 158. I really want to attend law school in the fall, and I have so much going on that I don't think I want to retake that damn test. I could have easily gotten a 160. I just ran out of time on RC, but I think to get any higher would take another year of studying.

kdw94780 wrote:But seriously, why do law schools ignore the 25-75 for URM? I just want to know what their incentive is. Does it boost their rankings or something? I know these schools all seem to be very "rankings" oriented. I know most law schools report in their class profile the percent of females and minorities in their classes.

It's because so few of us score in the LSAT ranges of these top schools--on top of that I often wonder how many of us even apply to these top schools to begin with. Look at how you were not even considering applying before coming on here---I was the same exact way in high school with top undergrads. And trust me Boalt will not mind a 158 LSAT from a black applicant as long as they have a high GPA--and you do.

You're definitely right. I had a 3.87 GPA and scored in the 95th percentile on the ACT in high school, but I never thought of applying to a "top" school.

kurama20 wrote:

kdw94780 wrote:But seriously, why do law schools ignore the 25-75 for URM? I just want to know what their incentive is. Does it boost their rankings or something? I know these schools all seem to be very "rankings" oriented. I know most law schools report in their class profile the percent of females and minorities in their classes.

It's because so few of us score in the LSAT ranges of these top schools--on top of that I often wonder how many of us even apply to these top schools to begin with. Look at how you were not even considering applying before coming on here---I was the same exact way in high school with top undergrads. And trust me Boalt will not mind a 158 LSAT from a black applicant as long as they have a high GPA--and you do.

Kurama20 - What are you calling a "good" GPA? 3.5+?

kdw94780 wrote:You're definitely right. I had a 3.87 GPA and scored in the 95th percentile on the ACT in high school, but I never thought of applying to a "top" school.

You could have gone to an Ivy.

I bet less than 5% of the total LSAT taking population are black. That would mean that, assuming black testers hold to the same scale, only like 650 applicants would have a 164+. Of those, how many have a 3.8+ GPA? 20%? So, less than 150 applicants in a given cycle are black with a 164 and a 3.8+ GPA. It's not surprising that means big acceptances at the top 5 schools.

Based on my interests in native american law and taxation? What schools would you recommend I consider applying to? The only thing that makes me nervous about some schools like Duke, Emory, WUSTL, UMINN,etc is that they seem to either have few tax courses and have little to no tribal law courses. Should I put less weight on requiring the JD program have a lot of tax courses, if the LLM is becoming so standard for tax attorneys at the best jobs?

hypermeganet wrote:

kdw94780 wrote:You're definitely right. I had a 3.87 GPA and scored in the 95th percentile on the ACT in high school, but I never thought of applying to a "top" school.

You could have gone to an Ivy.

I bet less than 5% of the total LSAT taking population are black. That would mean that, assuming black testers hold to the same scale, only like 650 applicants would have a 164+. Of those, how many have a 3.8+ GPA? 20%? So, less than 150 applicants in a given cycle are black with a 164 and a 3.8+ GPA. It's not surprising that means big acceptances at the top 5 schools.

That math isn't even remotely accurate.

I don't even want spend much time discussing the normative implications of this stuff; let's just get the (hard) facts straight. From the standpoint of society at large, I personally think the numbers I've included below are nothing short of a travesty; I don't buy for a second that tests like the LSAT are inherently unfair to particular ethnic groups, but I DO think that the huge disparities that continue to exist in LSAT scores speak to how intractable the inequalities that exist really are. That said, from the perspective of a relatively qualified URM, its easy to feel a tad bit pleased at one's individual prospects as a result.

All that said, lets look at some numbers:

http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/51_gradu ... _test.html

Assume +/- 108 black students scored 165+ last year (Check the oft-posted link above)

According to ABA, HYS enrolled 103 black folks alone

What do you think the chances are for a black person with decent numbers everywhere else? Bear in mind NYU and Columbia took 33 black people each last cycle.


All that suggests, fairly or unfairly, that one should err on the side of optimism when trying to predict a urm's shot at a given school.

And for everyone that secretly became infuriated by that last post, it also suggests that your anger, strictly in terms of pure stats, is probably unwarranted. I totally understand arguments based on AAs inherent fairness or efficacy, but lets be realistic; the pool of blacks that are competing for t14 spots is soooo minuscule that it is laughable to think that some urm "stole" a particular spot at a given school.

talibkweli wrote:And for everyone that secretly became infuriated by that last post, it also suggests that your anger, strictly in terms of pure stats, is probably unwarranted. I totally understand arguments based on AAs inherent fairness or efficacy, but lets be realistic; the pool of blacks that are competing for t14 spots is soooo minuscule that it is laughable to think that some urm "stole" a particular spot at a given school.

+1
Good point and smart attitude... even if one were to accept the premise that the current system favoring URMs, or is unfair.