Where other schools try to game U.S. News rankings by boosting their GPA and LSAT medians through conventional means, WashU follows the mathematical logic of ‘medians’ to almost farcical ends. Where Harvard sees someone with a 177 and a 2.9 and hesitates, wondering if this brilliant slacker-savant will actually be a good student despite their facility with the LSAT, WashU says: Admit!

It works because a median is, well, a median. If you admit a hundred people with a 3.2 and a 175 and then a hundred more with a 4.0 and a 161, you’ve set yourself up to have a class whose medians are 175 - 4.0. All of the ranking-impact of Stanford, and with applicants who will be grateful for the chance.

Two kinds of people end up at WashU: those with nosebleedingly high LSAT scores whose academic records frighten off more traditional top schools and those with picture-perfect GPAs who couldn’t crack into the upper 160s. In prioritizing these lopsided candidates, WashU supermaxes its medians at a bargain.

In fact, the whole law school admissions process can seem like a game WashU plays ruthlessly to win. They’re known for giving flashy merit scholarships tied to tight “commit now or we’ll find someone else” deadlines. They make their application recklessly easy: give us anything or almost nothing, they say. We’ll look at whatever.

On the flipside, don’t expect WashU to pay you much attention if you don’t have one of the numbers they’re looking for. The 171, 3.85 candidate doesn’t do anything for their admissions metrics, even if they’re likely to be a much more consistently well-rounded law student.

One specific insider tip is especially relevant. Traditionally, WashU plays its median game in a certain order. It secures its LSAT median first by admitting high-scorers earlier in the cycle, then sees where its GPA median ends up and scoops up reverse-splitters to balance out the scales. That means if you’re a traditional splitter (your LSAT is high but your GPA is low), you’ll want to apply by early November. If you’re a reverse splitter, you can take your time—they’re likely to hang onto your file to make a decision on it a little later anyway.

WashU interviews candidates. Very often, these interviews are recruitment tools: don’t be surprised if an offer comes very quickly afterwards, sometimes with an ‘exploding’ scholarship offer attached (e.g. a scholarship offer with a commitment deadline.) If WashU asks to interview you a second time, it’s probably because you have the stats they desperately want but didn’t make a good impression at first and they want to give you one more chance before passing on a valuable game piece.

There’s one last twist: WashU lets you redact either your GPA, your LSAT, or both. But whether or not you should is usually a question with a right, if counter-intuitive, answer. They’ll be harder on you if you redact one of your numbers, but it’s still sometimes the right call, though probably less often than you’d guess.

• WashU’s application is completely open-ended and open for submissions almost all year. Give them the best version of your materials from other schools (your Harvard Application, if you’re following our recommendation of applying to Harvard first). You can throw in a Why WashU if you feel like it—they’ll probably be flattered.
• You’ll need to decide whether or not you should redact one or both of your scores. Here’s how to think about it. They’re probably not going to admit you unless you have one of the super-high numbers they’re looking for. You’re probably not super interested in WashU unless your other number is kind of bad. Should you redact the bad number? It depends on how good of an addendum you can write. If you can explain why your undergraduate GPA was low in a way that makes you seem human, humble, and ready to make amends, let them see your grades and take the assessment on the chin. If there’s no good explanation and your bad number is below their 25th percentile, redact but make sure the rest of your application is strong. On balance, it’s harder to explain a lower LSAT score, so reverse-splitters are likely to find themselves redacting more often. In other words, are you a 175 who didn’t prioritize your college classes? Don’t redact and fess up. Are you a 4.0 embarrassed of your LSAT performance? Consider redacting it and standing on the strengths of your other accomplishments. It’s very rare that you should redact both numbers, unless you’re running on truly excellent softs and want to shoot your shot without either an LSAT or GPA.