Law School Admissions

FCCDAD
Wed, 15 Apr 2015 15:32:58 +0000

Here is a VERY rough approximation of what most law schools look at when evaluating applications:
60% LSAT score
30% cumulative GPA
10% everything else: major, work experience, background, prestige of undergrad, etc.

There are a very small number of schools (Yale, Harvard, Stanford) that get enough applications with top LSAT scores and GPAs that the “everything else” becomes the only real basis to distinguish among them. There are also a small number of schools (Boalt Hall comes to mind) that are known to place as much emphasis on grades as on test scores, and neither can overcome a deficiency in the other.

But most schools will be inundated with applications from 3.3 - 3.7 GPAs that simply aren’t directly comparable to each other - different undergrads, different majors, different classes for the same major, or different professors for the same class - and rely mostly on the LSAT to determine which students they want.