Hey, surely you’ve heard the old saying: Common sense is not that common.
Actually, what I as a law school adcom would be thinking is: “The extant ranking methodology treats GPA’s equivalently regardless of where they were earned. I know that top-tier GPA’s are not the same as community college GPA’s. But the rankings don’t care about the difference. And that’s not going to change anytime soon, if ever. So if I admit too many students with middling stats whereas the competitor law schools don’t, then according to the ranking methodology, my law school’s ranking will decline relative to those other law schools. I would then surely find myself in a dreadful meeting with the Dean where I would be ordered to explain why I caused the law school’s ranking to drop. I might even get fired during that meeting. From a career standpoint, it’s therefore professionally safer for me to simply admit a student body that optimizes our ranking according to the extant ranking methodology.”
Actually, I believe this premise to be flawed. Harvard and Yale are (in)famous for high grade inflation relative to NU and Cornell and certainly more so than JHU and Chicago, which are notorious for harsh grading. I would therefore surmise that equivalently strong test-takers distributed across that complete set of schools would obtain lower average grades at the latter subset than at the former.
http://www.jhunewsletter.com/2010/11/11/low-average-gpa-at-hopkins-suggests-grade-deflation-89024/
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chicago-where-fun-comes-to-die
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Northwestern.html
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Cornell.html
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Chicago.html
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Johnshopkins.html
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html