Huh. Check this out. Brown USED to have a higher representation at Yale than UC. UC’s come up and Brown has declined.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194324
As Cue says, it’s just one school. But now we have a time series.
@marlowe1 - yes, if Chicago Law took the brown applicant over the Chicago undergrad (when, after correcting for grade inflation, the Chicago applicant was objectively superior), that would be a scandal.
The reason being, law ad comms (any ad comms) are trying to gauge who will have the most success after entry. If it looks like the Chicago student has better predictors for future success in law school, and the ad comm took the weaker student, that would be an issue.
But Bluebayou and I are not saying that. We are saying that, if it looks like the potential for future success is EQUAL between two applicants, the higher gpa applicant gets the nod.
@JBStillFlying - in the old Yale law data you pulled, do you know how many brown students and Chicago students were applying to law school at the time? Did Chicago have fewer students applying then than now? Did brown have more? Were brown’s average lsats higher then, in comparison to now? What’s the context?
Also JB, what’s up with Harvard’s drop at Yale law? They had 80 back in 2010, but only 59 now.
Have the classes at brown and Harvard been getting worse? I think there may be another explanation…
-@Cue7, for 2011-12 there were 177 Brown students who applied to law school, and 175 UChicago students. Interestingly, both schools saw applicant numbers dropping from the low - mid 2’s just the years prior, but I seem to recall law application volume dropping everywhere around that time.
http://www.binarysolution.com/uploads/4/3/0/4/43043791/top-240-feeder-schools-_by_lsac-_web_version.pdf
regarding LSAT and GPA, Here is Cue’s own post from shortly after that time: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1490609-uchicago-avg-lsat-score-in-the-college.html So UChicago was 163-164’ish for LSAT. Cue has them at 3.4’ish for GPA in 2013 but IMO that’s a tad low. They were probably north of 3.5 in 2013 and north of 3.45 in 2011. Brown was 166 LSAT and 3.66 GPA per their website: https://www.brown.edu/academics/college/advising/law-school/statistics
It seems that as UChicago’s improved GPA and LSAT has helped them get secure additional spots at Yale, perhaps at Brown’s expense.
That could be it JB… or is it because law school is simply a less popular option at brown now?
Per brown’s pre law stats: https://www.brown.edu/academics/college/advising/law-school/statistics
Until 2018, brown’s number of law apps fell from the 175 # you site to the 120-130 range. Also, in 2018, when brown had 158 apps (and absurd averages of 3.7 gpa and 167 lsat), brown sent… 9 students that year to yale.
Interestingly, and perhaps a little sadly (I’m not sure why this is the case), as we agree, yale is just one school. Per the 2017 chicago outcomes report you site, we can compare numbers between brown and chicago.
In 2017, it looks like chicago had 7 accepts at yale (good!), and brown only sent 3 students to yale. But, weirdly, in the outcomes report, they only say who was accepted - not who matriculated. That same yr, chicago only had 12 accepts to HLS, and brown SENT 13 to HLS. Chicago had 24 accepts to nyu, and brown actually sent 15 to nyu. And this was a down year for brown, where they had fewer apply to law school!
What this shows to me is that… law is generally a function of gpa and lsat. Look what happens in 2018 when brown’s numbers and applicants go up to 158 apps 3.7 gpa 167 lsat. They send 9 to yale, an absurd 23 to harvard, 15 to nyu, 10 to columbia…
Did top law schools not like brown in 2017, and love brown in 2018? No, the numbers just went up.
If chicago has a yr with avgs of 3.7 and 167, it could send 9 a year to yale and 23 a year (23!) To harvard law.
It’s not that brown is valued more than chicago now or in 2011. Or that chicago is now winning places at brown’s expense, which is absurd. It’s the numbers.
What’s strange to me in all this is a sort of chicago arrogance (we are more rigorous than other places, so we should win more spots at these top places, at the expense of other top schools). If anything, the rigor deflates placement. Look at brown’s pre med data vs chicago’s. Similar numbers apply from each school - you think brown students are getting a better science education than chicago? Heck no - but their gpa mcat numbers are higher, so they place better.
The only sort of exceptionalism I’ve ever seen like this is in the PhD world - and even then it seemed slight. In the prof world, from all I can see, chicago is a valued brand, but so are brown and penn and georgetown and yale and stanford… if chicago doesn’t have the numbers, the top places will respond accordingly.
@Cue7 - I wonder if bimodal (humps at the 75%+ & 25%-) of the incoming freshman are at play here? I know that Harvard & Stanford have so many perfect standardized test scorers (they reject 2 out of 3 and also back to the topic?) while Brown & the lesser Ivies do not and I suspect UChicago is somewhere in between. So even though UChicago’s entering freshman might have had higher stats than any other Ivy+ (not counting Caltech because of its STEM focus and I suspect the total number of Law School aspiring students are very low relative to your population even though they may have a high percentage relative to their own population). So the skew in the higher numbers of admits from HLS for example are not just because they’re Harvard but because they have significant numbers in the +2sigma rather than UChicago’s +1sigma?
I guess the dataset you’re quoting with average GPA and LSAT may have those in the 75%+ as well as first generation, etc., in the 25%-? Shouldn’t we ask if the dataset you’re using may have some nuances that’s not apparent?
Trying to tie the last several pages of discussions back to topic?
To me what calls for explanation in this blizzard of statistics, theories and would-be correlations is that (a) a comparable number of Chicago undergrads take the LSAT; but (b) lesser numbers attend the top six law schools. Cue ties this directly to grade deflation; it is, so far as I can tell, the only explanation he offers. I am always more interested in cultural factors. I offer a few here.
One of them does tie to grade deflation. That’s a phenomenon that kids who come to Chicago know about and accept. Kids who are mostly concerned with making grades do not come to Chicago, or not in the same proportions as to Brown or Penn. That’s just one of many reasons there are proportionally fewer pre-professional types composing the Chicago student body. The culture of hard courses and hard marking is an engrained one, attested to by many, including Cue himself. Other schools do things differently; they may even inflate grades to attract pre-professonal kids. Or perhaps they just want to make life as pleasant as possible. That’s not the Chicago way - despite the ameliorations of recent years.
But what about the relatively large numbers of Chicago kids who take the LSAT? I have to wonder whether those numbers are proportional with applications to top-six law schools. Culture makes a difference. In a previous comment I described the elite-law-school-or-bust fellow I knew at Chicago. And I knew him very well - he was an apartment mate of mine. He was a real outlier at Chicago; indeed he actually didn’t like either the school or ultimately his classmates very much. He was utterly focussed and ruthless in doing what he needed to do to get to an eastern top-six law school. He might have been a bit like Cue. Some of the wranglings and mental fisticuffs between him and me were like that. Yet I, the quintessential U of C type, also too took the LSAT in my final year, and I too applied to and was accepted into a law school. But I did not apply to a top six but to the U of Texas. Ultimately I did not go. Law came at a later stage of my life. It was never a burning passion for me as a subject of intellectual interest, though I liked well enough being able to make a living, use my mind, and encounter people and situations in the great world of the human comedy. Mine was the more characteristic attitude to the law among Chicago undergrads.
Cue talks about all his friends who were focussed only on going to the very best of all grad and professional schools. Perhaps his friends were different from my friends. He sounds more like the J. than the M. of my tale above. We all view the world and our own school days through the prism of personal experience. Still, I’d take the evidence offered on this board from young @surelyhuman and the descriptions of their kids by @Mom2Melcs, @JBStillFlying , @BrianBoiler , @milee30, @uocparent, @hebegebe , @lea111 , and almost every other student and parent we hear from - not least @MohnGedachtnis.
These Chicago types do not exhibit the professional narrowness and ruthlessness required to get into the very top grad and professional schools; they do not make a fetish of marks; they are not swayed by the siren songs of power and prestige. It may even be, as Mohn says of applicants to Yale, that they don’t go out of this College to rack up the big accomplishments over and above marks that Yale Law prizes. They remain as they were when they came to Chicago - that different type of kid described by Mom2 - not the ones with the ambition to conquer the world and seamlessly join and perhaps run the Establishment. Those will go to Harvard and Yale. The Chicago kids have their own form of ambition, a quieter one - to understand the world, perhaps oppose it, no doubt ultimately to make their peace with it. To live an honorable life on their own self-made terms.
So, returning to my hunch: the kids taking those LSATs at Chicago, I hypothesize, are both less likely in the first place to be making applications to Harvard, Yale or even Chicago Law and, even if they do, perhaps their applications are less likely to be successful. They lack the killer instinct required to climb the greasy pole. Of course the pole is always less greasy for those who start climbing it with an ivy league degree and inflated grades. Cue and I can at least agree on that.
@marlowe1 - you present a thoughtful set of cultural factors that could explain why (probably) fewer chicago grads head to top 6 law schools. But I think I need to explain the motivations of those in my circle a little better.
I readily agree that when I was at Chicago, for most students, brand mattered less. Chasing money, status, etc. didn’t seem to be “in the air.”
But almost uniformly, my cohort sought the most dynamic academic settings. They were drawn - like moths to a flame - to those areas that offered excellent academic environments. My friends were curious, and most sought those experiences after college.
So, my friends who went for PhDs typically applied to the places that offered such an experience. And, they had what these places sought. So they went off to Princeton or Berkeley or MIT (and they typically enjoyed their grad programs, btw).
My friends who were curious about law or medicine, btw, often went through the same analysis. What were the places that offered the most promising research opportunities, the chance to work with phenomenal professors, etc.?
But… guess what? They were then typically drawn to places like Yale and Chicago and Columbia. Unfortunately, they didn’t have what these places sought.
Marlowe, I don’t think there’s much difference between what our pre-phds and our pre-law types seek. Chicago undergrad just has less of what the law schools seek.
@marlowe1 & @Cue7 - I’m in agreement with you two on the affinity to the Ivy League but wonder if sampling size ranging from 10’s to 50’s are really normal (Gaussian)? I know it seems straight forward to treat LSAT that way but have you put a finger on why the median SAT score is higher at UChicago than any of the Ivy+ including Harvard where it has more 1600’s? Could the LSAT scores be skewed like the SAT as well? Let’s assume for a second that there was a population of 2 from Harvard. One with a 175/4.0 and another 165/3.8. The average of 170/3.9 line up with your typical students at many of the Ivy+ but there had to have been something really special with the 165/3.8 kid that got him/her in. Take Kyle Kashuv (1550) & David Hogg (1270) from Marjory Stoneman who both got into Harvard but clearly, Hogg had something else going for him. I know I can’t make sense of the statistics associated with many of the Ivy+ for undergraduate admission with population sample about 2000 per class per school and am surprised you guys can draw conclusions based on 1/100 of that?
P.S. Caltech’s 25% to 75% SAT scores from 2018 of make perfect sense to me?
Verbal: 730-780 (755 midpoint)
Math: 750-800 (775 midpoint)
Total: 1530 (755 + 775)
@Waitlistedparent - you bring up great points re the distribution of test scores at Chicago vs. its peers (especially for the LSAT). I just don’t know think we know.
Even for the SAT, we do have some sense why Chicago’s avg. SATs are higher than Harvard’s or Princeton’s. Chicago’s institutional priorities are a little different (perhaps more akin to the technical schools like CalTech and MIT), and there’s less weight given to other factors (like athletics).
So, the sliding scale at Harvard may be different than Chicago. Harvard, for instance, may look at a great squash player with lower SATs more closely than Chicago.
In terms of Chicago GPA, my guess is that everything is just shifted to the left of the scale (there are fewer 3.9s at Chicago than Harvard, or Brown). And, again, I posit that having fewer high GPAs (but probably similar number of high LSAT takers) “hurts” Chicago’s placement at top six law schools (or med schools, or whatever places are GPA-oriented).
My Dad is good friends at work with a recruiter who is very familiar with two elite schools and tracks academic achievement at these two schools for purposes of recruitment. This person gave him some interesting stats in terms of comparing GPA at these two schools
Seniors Median GPA
UChicago: 3.6
UPenn: 3.4
% of Seniors with GPA over 3.9
UChicago: 8%
UPenn: 10%
% of Seniors with GPA over 3.8
UChicago: 22%
UPenn: 20%
% of Seniors with GPA over 3.7
UChicago: 37%
UPenn: 29%
I found the numbers a little surprising and unexpected, so thought I would share it here.
@surelyhuman - that’s not apples to apples. Penn undergrad has an engineering and nursing school (two schools that “deflate” GPAs considerably). That may bring the overall GPA down a bit.
Do you know what the distribution looks like for Penn CAS (College of Arts and Sciences) vs. Chicago undergrad?
FWIW, Penn offers good pre-law stats. I would also put them as good (like Brown, not Harvard or Yale): https://careerservices.upenn.edu/law-school-statistics-for-penn-applicants/
Putting Penn aside, if your numbers for Chicago are recent, I am surprised. Having a median GPA of 3.6 for seniors is super high.
@JBStillFlying might say this is understandable, given how strong incoming classes are. But, as I said above, when I was at Chicago (mid-90s), we still had a #16 incoming class, in terms of SAT strength. Now, that’s #2. A big jump, BUT:
In the mid-90s, per gradeinflation.com, Chicago’s avg GPA was probably around 3.1. In around 20 years, if the avg GPA went up to 3.6, that’s a big increase. Perhaps bigger than the increase in class strength.
Maybe there is something to President Zimmer et al. putting pressure on faculty/admin to do two things:
1.) Retain and Graduate students
2.) Inflate grades
Even just academically, is Chicago still Chicago if half the class gets an A-?
So many layers to this onion!
@surelyhuman - thank you for sharing. I saw that GPA has been going up for many schools including Cal (used to be notorious for deflated GPA’s) and UChicago so “where fun goes to die” sarcastic self deprecation is likely no longer applicable in 2020?
@JBStillFlying - how are brown and chicago’s stats even for the T5? They have similar success at yale (almost 20 each at YLS), but unless we think chicago is sending a dozen to hls, 10 to CLS, etc, where are you getting that?
Even in a “down” yr for brown, they still sent 13 to HLS in 2017. Our 2017 data for chicago shows no such success.
When the avg lsats are very close (as they are w brown and chicago), but there is some gap in gpa (high 3.5 vs. 3.7), why would placement stats be similar?
Also, I’m confused why we wouldn’t consider the entire T15, and just T5. I’d consider anywhere in the T15 to be top placement.
I guess, JB, i would agree that brown and chicago are “even” in placement if 2017 (the yr chicago offered an outcomes report) was a bad pre law year for chicago.
Is that what you think could be happening? Only getting 12 accepts at HLS, or a small number at Columbia (especially compared to brown’s numbers for 2017), seems pretty middling. Do you think the data from 2016 or 2018 look that different, and that’s why you think chicago is more even w brown?
Otherwise, there isn’t really a better way to look at it… 12 HLS accepts or 8 stanford accepts for an elite school isnt good. In fact, only 16 accepts at chicago law - the home law school - is pretty bad.
As a comparison, for yale law to get 30 yale undergrads a year, w their 80% yield rate, they probably have to accept close to 40 yale college grads a year.
Chicago law accepting only 16 chicago college grads in a given year is… not that good.
@Cue7 The Penn numbers don’t include Engineering and Nursing. This recruiter only focuses on CAS and Wharton, but I don’t have the breakout between those two.
@surelyhuman - that’s fascinating. As the incoming classes at Chicago and penn are pretty similar, does chicago now have more grade inflation than Penn?!
@Cue7 The numbers are very recent and seem to suggest as much, which is very surprising.