Law School Admissions Probability Calculator (based on LSN) Forum

[palm23]

Basically, a simple site.. you type in your LSAT and GPA, and it returns the list of law schools. It shows your estimated chance of admission, along with the record of those with similar stats, along with how many worse applicants got in and how many better applicants have been rejected.

All the data is from LSN.

http://www.hourumd.com/

[jnw1184]

This law school calculator is the depressing thing I've ever seen. I enjoy using TLS Stats to find those applicants who are similar to me and see how they fared:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/stats.php

[nipplehead]

that's a real cool site. However, if you plug in your stats on the what are my chances forum you will get 10 educated responses. Much better than a Law School Admissions Probability Calculator.

[alexb240]

Wow, that seems to be a great site. Were you involved in making it? If not, how did you find it?

Edit:
I think it can be depressing because it starts at the school with the lowest chance of acceptance. It'd be nice if it included some demarcation for URMs, but still a very nice site.

[Arbit]

It's a site like this that caused me to panic after my first round of applications was sent in and apply to 8 more schools.

Now that I'm into 2 schools that I was supposed to have 2%< chance at, it's kind of funny to look at these numbers again.

I found better than any law school calculator was to review the law school rankings on this site, which include the LSAT and GPA of all of the schools, and then read the in-depth profiles of the top law schools and find out what they are looking for. After viewing all of that I could accurately predict what my chances of admission were. View:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html

[alexb240]

Are you an extreme splitter or URM? I think these calculators may be less useful in predicting those people's cycles. If you have some outstanding soft factor(s), then that's probably going to diminish the usefulness of these tools as well. I'd best most applicants would find these calcuators to be rather accurate, however.

[Da Stain]

Seems kind of fishy.
FWIW,

WUSTL- 22%, admitted after a week
W&M- 18%, admitted after 2 weeks
GMU- 48%, called on 2nd day of acceptances.

GULC- 3%, preferred WL

The "record" column for me is higher by a lot than my "chances" column.

Take that with a grain of salt, just like LSN.

If anything, use the record column, not chances.

[nipplehead]

oddly, more people with similar #s to me have gotten into Yale than Stanford

[awesomerossum]

I think the 'record' column is a better indicator of one's chances, imo.

If 50% of those with your numbers got in, then you have a 50/50 chance.

Is it that simple?

Probably not.
Because my math sucks donkeykong balls.

[sarahs5]

wow, this is what i spent hours on lsn trying to figure out. haha. makes me feel good about safety schools but majorly depressed about reach schools. apparently i have a 3.29% chance of getting into stanford. bummer.

[palm23]

alexb240, right now it ignores URMs. At first, I was considering an option to either exclude or include them, but the algorithm is pretty slow right now, so I make heavy use of caching (which means that I can't allow a lot of different options for now.)

The algorithm right now looks at every applicant for a certain school, and it notes your distance from them (giving proper additional weight to LSAT scores.) Then it adds these distances up, essentially, with some modifications depending on the direction and such, and outputs an estimate of your chances.

In the end, though, columns like "Record" might actually prove more useful to chances. That's just a straight breakdown of how people with similar LSAT's and GPA's did. The other ones are straight-forward, too: how did people with higher LSAT's and higher GPA's do when applying? Etc.

[johnyk]

ARBIT are you an URM though?? The site is a pretty good law school calculator.

[alexb240]

Very nicely done. I like it a lot.

[Arbit]

Are you an extreme splitter or URM?

Nope and nope. My soft factors were good, but nothing jaw dropping.

Then again, one of the two aforementioned schools I got into is Boalt, which is kind of screwy anyway.

I don't doubt that this is a useful tool for most people, but for me the Law School Calculators made the early part of the admissions process much, much worse.

[Son of Cicero]

Now we have to decide at what % it becomes uneconomical to apply to a school. I'm passing up on my 5% at Yale and 9% at Stanford (more out of laziness and hopelessness than money issues).

[Peachykeen21]

In the end, though, columns like "Record" might actually prove more useful to chances.

I'll take your and rossum's word for it on that. Mainly bc it makes me feel better about myself

[nipplehead]

it says i have a 48% chance at Stanford even though the record is 0-13

i think i'll hope the chances is more accurate

[lisasays]

How representative is LSN of the general applicant field?

[palm23]

How representative is LSN of the general applicant field?

Not very, because it is skewed toward better schools and applicants who are better prepared. However, with the amount of data it has, it is pretty accurate for the schools it does have a lot of data for.

The median applicant on LSN has an LSAT of ~163 and a GPA of ~3.52. I don't know what the general applicant field has.

[sarahs5]

yeah, i feel like the people who join lsn may have higher numbers than the general population. even if the people who join lsn aren't totally representative, i still like this 'calculate your chances' site because it keeps my expectations low. if i don't get in, i'll be expecting it, and if i do get in, it'll be a pleasant surprise.

[rabbit9198]

To the OP, awesome.

Also, what does it mean 'stats similar to yours' - how far below/above does it go? I'm guessing it's more complicated than a simple range, but some detail would be appreciated.

[palm23]

1 LSAT point above, 1 LSAT point below, and a GPA within .04 inclusive.

[babs22pa]

Umm... I don't think these numbers are correct. I should have a much better chance at some of these schools than is being said by the Law School Calculator.

Why do I have a 37.79% chance at NYU, if the record for people with my numbers is 92.39%?

[legalscholar]

SPAM

[Framboise]

I wish I knew about sites like this and other sites with Law School Calculator before I sent in my applications. I wasted a lot of money applying to way more schools than necessary.