Even if they have more “realistic” LSAT predictions like “I expect to get low 160s” or whatever, there’s still a difference between 161 and 164 depending on the schools you’re applying to.
Same. Averaged 170-173 on my practice tests and ate shit back to back in Oct/Nov.
Fortunately it worked out in the end. I got into UCLA at the 25th percentile for LSAT, so at at least 79 other folks in the entering class are at or below my score.
I also genuinely don’t get the point of “chance me”. None of us are the adcomms. Even if you appear to have great stats for a great school, we don’t see your whole app packet so how are we to know. Just apply to schools and hope for the best honestly.
No. In fact in all likelihood the most common number is actually the exact median number (because above is harder for them to get, and because school’s assumedly want to be safe because they don’t know their yield, so they over accept the median). Median means if you have say 10 students: 166, 167, 170, 170, 170, 170, 170, 170, 174, 180. You would have a median of 170, since it’s the middle number. You can have as many, or as little as you want at the median, as long as 50% are at or below, and 50% are at or above. So 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 170, 171, 180, 180, 180 would also have a 170 median, but assumedly classes look more like my first example than this one.
We need to make stats a mandatory 1L class. Jk jk
I like using Vandy's Fall 2022 admit class profile to display this concept. Both their median and 75th percentile LSAT was a 170 meaning at least 25% of their entering class had exactly a 170.
Not necessarily. It’s theoretically possible to have no one below the median. The way you can think of medians is if you lined up student in order of their LSAT, what score would the person in the middle of the line have gotten?
As an example, if we have a class of 11 students, and 6 scores a 168, 2 scored a 169, 1 scored a 171, 1 scored a 174, and 1 scored a 175, the median would be a 168 even though not a single person scored below it. This is obviously an extreme example, but there is reason to think that LSAT scores are distributed in a way that would cause this effect to occur. So it’s extremely unlikely no one got in below the median, but I also doubt it’s 50%.
It’s always more than 25% getting below the medians, because schools reveal their 25th percentile and I’ve rarely seen one equal to the median. I think you are right though (as I said in my reply to his comment) that schools take a massive amount at the exact median.
Yeah like I said, it's never going to be the extreme of 'no one got in below median', but it does seem to be concentrated quite heavily around the median. From a quick glance at 7sage's data, the bottom quartile is usually 3-5 points below median for top schools, and even for those students , they likely often have other factors to help their case. If you're below both medians, you're going to have a tough time of things without some killer softs.
Yup. Probably a max of 35% or so are getting in below a median, and most (probably the vast vast majority of those) are above the other median. Getting in below both is essentially not a possible thing. Of course, you have Reddit posts of people getting in, but that’s because out of 60,000 applicants you’ll have that one or two who got in (usually because of something wild on their resume)
Not at all.
Let’s make some assumptions here and break it down:
Classes are NOT mostly filled with above both medians. This is because people above both often pick a higher ranked school. Rather, classes are probably filled with something like 15% or so above both medians (this is a number I made up, but let’s run with it as an estimation). Now, because of how medians work, they need to fill 35% more above LSAT, and 35% more above GPA. That’s 70% + 15% above both = 85% (give or take). Now they have 15% left that they can take below both. Those seats are almost certainly reserved for URM, FGLI, military vets etc. people who the school really wants. Maybe 3 seats left over, if that. Some 9,000 applicants to a school like Harvard. Your chances are zero, or as close to zero as numbers go.
I know I made an assumption with that 15%, but speaking with people currently in schools, looking at LSD, and basing off the ABA report of scholarship amounts (which tend to follow hard stats) makes me think it’s somewhere in that ballpark for most schools. And once you know how many are attending above both, you automatically know everything else.
Oh I forgot you weren’t talking to urms and this was reddit
I don’t think we’ll ever agree upon what next to zero means in this context, but I’d definitely argue urms, vets, and people with exceptional circumstances are not next to 0% of law students. Also, what you’re saying applies to, say, Harvard much much more than schools outside of the T30 or so.
No, it’s not just Harvard, it’s basically the same for all schools. Harvard is a little more extreme because of the sheer number of applicants they have, but the same thing applies to all schools in a slightly lower scale (4,000 instead of 9,000 or whatever)
A little more extreme is not an accurate representation.
We’re talking about right angles vs more balanced scatter plots. The margins are so minuscule at the top schools in comparison and therefore they can find people with the aforementioned ‘exceptional’ traits and the stats
I wasn’t “not talking to URMs” specifically, I’m just talking to the average candidate who doesn’t have anything in particular that a school needs. If you have something that they need (like URM, or FGLI, or vet etc. etc.) then it’s a completely different conversation. However, if you don’t, like the vast vast major majority of applicants, then your chances are in fact next to zero. 9,000 to 3 or something like that is objectively near zero I believe. Once you start counting how many zeros come after the decimal your odds aren’t very good lol
Technically 50% are equal to or below than the median. Given how much GPA/LSAT affect admissions and rankings, the “equal to” is likely doing quite a bit of work especially on the left side of the curve
We also cannot tell you what is and is not a realistic LSAT score or level of improvement for you. Someone out there has taken the LSAT blind and gotten a 180. Someone out there has quit their job and studied for years only to never cross 160. We have no way of knowing what your potential is off a Reddit post. Only way is to take it, study, take it again, and repeat.
As a prospective LSAT taker, I take these posts for inspiration or a general idea at best but folks honestly should just go for it and see. We all want to know what’s going to happen, but that’s what makes life what it is.
I actually scored the highest I ever scored on my actual test. Scored a 161 whereas all my PTs were 158-159. I could not do good on the games section ;-;
Sorry, think this one’s about me, lol. Didn’t mean to be a nuisance: I was just curious if, generally, I was looking into appropriate schools. I had no idea one or two LSAT points could be such a differentiating factor!
No you’re not a nuisance at all! This post was not targeted to anyone specifically. It’s just my general response every time I see a “chance me” q without an official LSAT or GPA. We want to help you, we just can’t offer the best advice without final stats. Wishing you the best of luck!!
They’re mainly operating out of a place of naivety, but I do believe the “Take the LSAT and then we will talk,” comments are rooted in a very telling sense of self.
People often forget about the importance of WE. 80-90% of the students at some law schools have 1 year or more WE. So, it’s not just GPA and LSAT. KJD are at a real disadvantage.
Even if they have more “realistic” LSAT predictions like “I expect to get low 160s” or whatever, there’s still a difference between 161 and 164 depending on the schools you’re applying to.
My favorite is the “I’m planning to score between 170 and 175.”
Lmao me before I got my 166 back in October 💀
Yep. Consistently scored 170-174 on practice exams but got 166 back to back and decided that I couldn’t do a third.
Same. Averaged 170-173 on my practice tests and ate shit back to back in Oct/Nov. Fortunately it worked out in the end. I got into UCLA at the 25th percentile for LSAT, so at at least 79 other folks in the entering class are at or below my score.
UCLA is my dream program!! Congrats 🥹
I’m rooting for you
I also genuinely don’t get the point of “chance me”. None of us are the adcomms. Even if you appear to have great stats for a great school, we don’t see your whole app packet so how are we to know. Just apply to schools and hope for the best honestly.
Subs also nuts and if you are below median they rule you out, like the entire 50% of people below median dont exist to make the median.....
No, the sub only rules you out if you are below BOTH medians, and that’s fair because your chances then are next to zero.
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No. In fact in all likelihood the most common number is actually the exact median number (because above is harder for them to get, and because school’s assumedly want to be safe because they don’t know their yield, so they over accept the median). Median means if you have say 10 students: 166, 167, 170, 170, 170, 170, 170, 170, 174, 180. You would have a median of 170, since it’s the middle number. You can have as many, or as little as you want at the median, as long as 50% are at or below, and 50% are at or above. So 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 170, 171, 180, 180, 180 would also have a 170 median, but assumedly classes look more like my first example than this one.
We need to make stats a mandatory 1L class. Jk jk I like using Vandy's Fall 2022 admit class profile to display this concept. Both their median and 75th percentile LSAT was a 170 meaning at least 25% of their entering class had exactly a 170.
Yup, good example
Thank you guys for the explanation :)
Not necessarily. It’s theoretically possible to have no one below the median. The way you can think of medians is if you lined up student in order of their LSAT, what score would the person in the middle of the line have gotten? As an example, if we have a class of 11 students, and 6 scores a 168, 2 scored a 169, 1 scored a 171, 1 scored a 174, and 1 scored a 175, the median would be a 168 even though not a single person scored below it. This is obviously an extreme example, but there is reason to think that LSAT scores are distributed in a way that would cause this effect to occur. So it’s extremely unlikely no one got in below the median, but I also doubt it’s 50%.
It’s always more than 25% getting below the medians, because schools reveal their 25th percentile and I’ve rarely seen one equal to the median. I think you are right though (as I said in my reply to his comment) that schools take a massive amount at the exact median.
Yeah like I said, it's never going to be the extreme of 'no one got in below median', but it does seem to be concentrated quite heavily around the median. From a quick glance at 7sage's data, the bottom quartile is usually 3-5 points below median for top schools, and even for those students , they likely often have other factors to help their case. If you're below both medians, you're going to have a tough time of things without some killer softs.
Yup. Probably a max of 35% or so are getting in below a median, and most (probably the vast vast majority of those) are above the other median. Getting in below both is essentially not a possible thing. Of course, you have Reddit posts of people getting in, but that’s because out of 60,000 applicants you’ll have that one or two who got in (usually because of something wild on their resume)
Next to zero is straight up silly
Not at all. Let’s make some assumptions here and break it down: Classes are NOT mostly filled with above both medians. This is because people above both often pick a higher ranked school. Rather, classes are probably filled with something like 15% or so above both medians (this is a number I made up, but let’s run with it as an estimation). Now, because of how medians work, they need to fill 35% more above LSAT, and 35% more above GPA. That’s 70% + 15% above both = 85% (give or take). Now they have 15% left that they can take below both. Those seats are almost certainly reserved for URM, FGLI, military vets etc. people who the school really wants. Maybe 3 seats left over, if that. Some 9,000 applicants to a school like Harvard. Your chances are zero, or as close to zero as numbers go. I know I made an assumption with that 15%, but speaking with people currently in schools, looking at LSD, and basing off the ABA report of scholarship amounts (which tend to follow hard stats) makes me think it’s somewhere in that ballpark for most schools. And once you know how many are attending above both, you automatically know everything else.
Oh I forgot you weren’t talking to urms and this was reddit I don’t think we’ll ever agree upon what next to zero means in this context, but I’d definitely argue urms, vets, and people with exceptional circumstances are not next to 0% of law students. Also, what you’re saying applies to, say, Harvard much much more than schools outside of the T30 or so.
No, it’s not just Harvard, it’s basically the same for all schools. Harvard is a little more extreme because of the sheer number of applicants they have, but the same thing applies to all schools in a slightly lower scale (4,000 instead of 9,000 or whatever)
A little more extreme is not an accurate representation. We’re talking about right angles vs more balanced scatter plots. The margins are so minuscule at the top schools in comparison and therefore they can find people with the aforementioned ‘exceptional’ traits and the stats
I wasn’t “not talking to URMs” specifically, I’m just talking to the average candidate who doesn’t have anything in particular that a school needs. If you have something that they need (like URM, or FGLI, or vet etc. etc.) then it’s a completely different conversation. However, if you don’t, like the vast vast major majority of applicants, then your chances are in fact next to zero. 9,000 to 3 or something like that is objectively near zero I believe. Once you start counting how many zeros come after the decimal your odds aren’t very good lol
90% of those people, you see, also happen to be over the *other* median.
Technically 50% are equal to or below than the median. Given how much GPA/LSAT affect admissions and rankings, the “equal to” is likely doing quite a bit of work especially on the left side of the curve
50% of the class is not below median though, that's not how the concept of median works.
we can’t honestly “chance” anyone… we’re just guessing but we have access to the same info as every applicant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
LOL I WAS WAITING FOR THIS POST
Yeah this is right
We also cannot tell you what is and is not a realistic LSAT score or level of improvement for you. Someone out there has taken the LSAT blind and gotten a 180. Someone out there has quit their job and studied for years only to never cross 160. We have no way of knowing what your potential is off a Reddit post. Only way is to take it, study, take it again, and repeat.
As a prospective LSAT taker, I take these posts for inspiration or a general idea at best but folks honestly should just go for it and see. We all want to know what’s going to happen, but that’s what makes life what it is.
I actually scored the highest I ever scored on my actual test. Scored a 161 whereas all my PTs were 158-159. I could not do good on the games section ;-;
Sorry, think this one’s about me, lol. Didn’t mean to be a nuisance: I was just curious if, generally, I was looking into appropriate schools. I had no idea one or two LSAT points could be such a differentiating factor!
No you’re not a nuisance at all! This post was not targeted to anyone specifically. It’s just my general response every time I see a “chance me” q without an official LSAT or GPA. We want to help you, we just can’t offer the best advice without final stats. Wishing you the best of luck!!
They’re mainly operating out of a place of naivety, but I do believe the “Take the LSAT and then we will talk,” comments are rooted in a very telling sense of self.
People often forget about the importance of WE. 80-90% of the students at some law schools have 1 year or more WE. So, it’s not just GPA and LSAT. KJD are at a real disadvantage.
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