<p>A friend recently asked me how much receiving the Truman would help his chances at LS admissions, and to be honest I had no real personal experience with the issue since I had never known of a student winning a fellowship applying for Law School except for two who ended up going to YLS; however, they both had spectacular numbers so I wasn’t sure how much I could factor in their fellowships as dominant factors. </p>
<p>Basically, could anyone please inform me of the weight the following fellowships would have in law school admissions:
Rhodes
Marshall
Truman</p>
<p>If possible, even quantifying these as rough estimates in terms of LSAT points (or a range of LSAT points) would be useful. </p>
<p>If you were selected to receive one of these fellowships, my guess is that you would be qualified to get into law school anyways. You’d probably have an awesome GPA to even get them and would therefore have the brains to do well on the LSAT.</p>
<p>A few tears agio, Yale Law School allegedly denied admission to six Marshall Scholars in a single year. Although nobody is told why they didn’t get in, my understanding is that the applicants involved had less that stellar LSATs. </p>
<p>While all of those are wonderful credentials, they don’t give any boost to your LSAT. </p>
<p>Now, I realize it was Yale Law, but I doubt that any LS is going to say that being a fellow of this sort is worth X points on the LSAT.</p>
<p>While I agree, I don’t think any school would say being a URM is worth X amount of LSAT points either, but it’s been posted on this board many times before that being AA URM is worth approximately 10-13 LSAT points, Hispanic 3-5, etc. </p>
<p>Again I’m not looking for some formula they use, but more just an approximation we can use on our own behalf. </p>
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<p>This was most definitely the case with the two previous scholars I had known, but my current friend has a 3.7 GPA which is by no stretch horrible, but at the same time not the best GPA at the competitive levels of HYS. He has also been struggling a bit on LSAT practice tests, so I was just wondering if there’s any sort of precedent for things like these.</p>
<p>i think their role is more to “seal the deal” once you are in the range at YLS numerically. IE if you have a 174, 3.9 you are in the running at YLS, but by no means guaranteed admission. If you couple those stats with a prestigious fellowship, I bet your chances are very high even at YLS.</p>
<p>Well, several thousand URMs apply to law school every year, and we have a lot more information about their stats and acceptance rates than we do for the few dozen Rhodes/Marshall/Truman scholars that may apply. That’s why it’s impossible to quantify the impact of these fellowships. Ultimately, the only thing you can tell your friend is that it might help him get some unexpected acceptances, but isn’t going to be enough to get him into the top schools by itself.</p>
<p>Yeah. I’d have to agree with posts #5 and 6 here. It’s impossible to say for sure, but if I had to guess I’d put it in “seal the deal” range as well.</p>
<p>Excellent point. Sorry, had never thought of that. </p>
<p>I’m surprised they are weighed so lightly though (in reference to the “seal the deal” range). I had expected that something like a Rhodes would’ve allowed someone with a 3.9/169 to slip into HYS, or the rough estimate of at least 6-7 LSAT points + a strong soft factor boost. Guess I was mistaken. </p>
<p>In any case, would ranking these in Rhodes -> Marshall -> Truman be an accurate indication of the help given by the respective fellowships?</p>
<p>Nah, the proper way to view this is as basically a top-tier EC – about the same as an Ivy’s student body president or extensive international experience or something like that. My intuition is that it’s FAR SHORT of what it would take to get a 169 into HLS. (A 172, maybe.)</p>
<p>But, as post #6 does a good job of explaining, it’s hard to demonstrate that with any degree of accuracy.</p>
<p>Interesting. Seems as though I strongly overvalued them, then. </p>
<p>By the way, would being and Ivy’s Student Body President really be seen on equal footing of a Truman? That’s quite surprising to me. BDM, on a slightly related note, do you know if being the Student Trustee of a school would be seen in a similar light? Soft factors are one of those things I was never too sure how to value, to be honest.</p>
<p>Don’t focus too much on/worry about the soft factors. Do what you want to do. Get the numbers you need. No one here can give you a precise answer (and I doubt even an admissions officer could, either). If your numbers are borderline for a school, and you’re curious as to whether your softs will get you in, just apply anyways; the worst that can happen is that you will waste an application fee.</p>
<p>If anything I’d think student body president would be valued more highly than a scholarship. A scholarship is selecting based on pretty similar things that GPA and LSAT already test for. Student Body President is a whole other set of skills.</p>
<p>I’d think being a student trustee would be similar to SBP, but somewhat less. That’s obviously just guesswork on my part.</p>