GPA/LSAT are not all that matters

HappyAlumnus
Tue, 08 Sep 2015 01:29:07 +0000

bluebayou, your logic is fine.

What gets me is that people just need to be told the full, unvarnished truth when they ask on this board, as people may well pay a lot of attention to the advice that they’re given. Giving someone a shorthand description of the truth, or part of the truth, can do more harm than good.

I faced a tough decision about law school and ended up turning down one school and attending another. The person who gave me some advice that was the last piece of advice that I got before turning down the school was a prominent lawyer, so I valued the advice a lot and made a major life-changing choice based on it. Advice matters, and its impact cannot be overstated.

GPA and LSAT are certainly the main criteria in law school admissions, but they’re not the only criteria, particularly for applicants on the margins.

Demosthenes admitted on this board that Demosthenes’ advice about GPA/LSAT alone mattering is really given on the assumption that the person asking for advice not a superstar, and the advice for a superstar would be different. (Search for the term “unicorn” and you’ll find the post.) That really bothers me, since someone asking for advice should just be told the full story and be allowed to then apply the correct advice to his or her own situation; why give someone only a partial truth, assuming that the person is mediocre? Just how would the recipient of the advice feel about that?

In addition, telling someone that where you go to school makes no difference at all could result in someone choosing a lesser school. In my experience, having gone to one school (for grad school) that was much more selective/prestigious than the other, the difference in selectivity/prestige made a huge difference in my life, since being surrounded by superstars at the more selective/prestigious pushed me to accomplish more than I’d ever have otherwise accomplished. I don’t want to deny people those advantages.