Mondo

I'm thinking of 175+ LSAT & a GPA less than 3.3...
Would Georgetown be one of those schools?
Columbia?
NYU?

Will a top law school allow for a low GPA if the person graduated from an elite university?

bluedevilmike

Yes depending on how much lower, maybe, maybe (just have to try and see), it helps but obviously doesn't guarantee anything.

chocoman

From what I know, GULC and Cornell much more so than anyone else.

hayden

chocoman may have some other info he/she is looking at. But according to the LSAT, the 3 members of the T14 with the lowest median gpa are U of Michigan, U of Virginia and Cornell. I didn't look at the 25/75 split though.

sallyawp

From what I've heard over the years, law schools are more likely to forgive a lawer LSAT score than they are a lower GPA. They view GPA as an indicator of actual success in school (versus potential), dedication and diligence.

Of course, with a 175 LSAT, nothing is out of the question.

bluedevilmike

Conventional wisdom, I think, usually runs the other way, since a high GPA with a low LSAT causes them to worry that your curriculum just wasn't very hard. There are a few (Boalt) exceptions.

BerkeleySenior

You have a chance at all except Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley.

If you get 175+ you are pretty much in at Georgetown unless you turn in feces for a personal statement.

BerkeleySenior

sallyawp...it's the other way around. This is because a high GPA might suggest your major was easy, plus classes differ by undergrad/major so the LSAT is the basis for evaluating all students regardless of alma mater/major.

The LSAT has been statistically shown to factor in 60 to 70% of your application. A statistics professor who analyzed admissions data said it was around 70% of your application.

Also there is a slight correlation between LSAT and 1L success. It does however predict 1L better than GPA does.

BerkeleySenior

To the OP, unfortunately the caliber of your undergrad factors in very little into admissions. Basically a person who goes to a CC and then transfers to number 200 undergrad but gets a 4.0 will fare better than an MIT grad with a 3.3 GPA. It's true, and unfortunate.

Plus they don't even take your major into account. I.e a person majoring in Poli Sci with a 4.0 will do better than an engineer with a 3.3.

This is precisely why the LSAT matters more.

Rock the LSAT ( get a 175+ ) and you will probably get into Georgetown, or at least one T-14.

BerkeleySenior

Here's a link to the statistics for the top law schools:

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

As you can tell, the median GPA drop is significant when going from 3 (Stanford) to 4 (Columbia) but the average LSATs stay about the same for the top 10 schools (excepting Yale and Harvard of course). The exception is Boalt, whose 25 percentile LSAT is much lower than the other T-10s.

sallyawp

You can disagree with me as much as you like, but the studies (which I have cited on this board before) that have come out in the last year or two point to a lower correlation between success in law school and LSAT scores and to a higher correlation between success in law school and GPA. What law school admissions professionals do behind closed doors when evaluating applications may be another matter entirely, but these same professionals are aware of these studies.

I was at a meeting just this past January where this phenomenon was much discussed. Yes, there were law school admissions professionals at this meeting.

BerkeleySenior

I haven't heard that before. That's interesting. I am curious though. Did those studies hold the other factor constant when evaluating the correlation between the LSAT and success in law school and GPA and success in law school?

And did it control for variables such as major and difficulty of undergrad? It seems that while the LSAT correlation would be unbiased, if they did not control for major and undergrad the GPA-success correlation would be off.

From what I have read earlier it seems that the LSAT has a greater correlation with success, although to be honest it's not that strong. The R-square is only 0.5 to 0.6.

bluedevilmike

If memory serves, LSAC's official studies indicate that the r for BOTH variables combined is ~.5, with LSAT being stronger than GPA. R^2, in that case, is like .25.

BerkeleySenior

I just looked this up and apparently we are both wrong hehe. I guess the R-square is 0.4 for LSAT-1L grades. But we are right in the fact that the LSAT is more strongly correlated than GPA.

""There is a controversy over the statistical correlation between LSAT score and first year law school grades. LSAC claims that their own research supports the use of the LSAT as a major factor in admissions, saying the median validity for LSAT alone is .41 (2001) and .40 (2002) in regards to the first year of law school.[7] Although the correlation varies from school to school, LSAC claims that test scores are far more strongly correlated to first year law school performance than undergraduate GPA.[8] LSAC claims that no more strongly correlated single-factor measure is currently known, that GPA is difficult to use because it is influenced by the school and the courses taken by the student, and that the LSAT can serve as a yardstick of student ability because it is statistically normed. Several outside studies have validated that the LSAT is a valid predictor of both Law School Grades as well as bar passage.[9][10][11]"

Law School Admission Test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

bluedevilmike

I believe those are r's, not R^2's?