Booming Stats (LSAT AND GPA)

ariesathena
Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:39:17 +0000

Um… tired_student: the LSAT percentiles are almost EXACTLY the same year to year. A 170 is almost always 98th percentile, give or take about a tenth of a percent.

Now, what happens is that more people take the LSAT in some years than others. So some years, with the 100,000 who take it (the low), there are, logically, only a thousand people who get 171+. Now, when a lot of people take the exam (150k or more), there are roughly 1,500 people who score above a 171. Percentile is the same, absolute numbers getting into that percentile is differnet. Note as well that the bottom 1% fluctuates between 1,000 students and 1,500 students.

So what happens is that schools don’t take more people - let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, that a certain clump of schools take the top 3,000 scorers. In some years, the top 3,000 people will be 167+ (top 3%); in other years, it’ll be 170+ (top 2%). That is the reason for the fluctuation in the LSAT, NOT any change in the absolute percentile.