GPA/LSAT are not all that matters

HappyAlumnus
Mon, 07 Sep 2015 15:16:48 +0000

From Anna Ivey, former dean of admissions at the University of Chicago Law School:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-ivey-guide-to-law-school-admissions-anna-ivey/1103016469?ean=9780156029797

" I crack open the next one on top of the pile, a file belonging to a woman named Sarah. I scan her application form, her LSAT scores, and her college transcript in less than a minute and conclude that her GPA is just below our GPA median, and that her LSAT score is just above our LSAT median. As dean of admissions, I could easily write an “A” for accept or a “D” for deny at the top of Sarah’s file based on this hard data alone, so the fate of her application depends entirely on the remaining four minutes I spend scanning the “soft stuff” of her application: her essay, her recommendations, her résumé, and her addendum."

For those who say that GPA/LSAT are basically all that matter in law school admissions: Not so, says the former dean of admissions of a prominent law school. Soft factors count, particularly when around the median, numbers-wise.