With the newest law school admissions disclosures coming out, something caught my attention. Alabama Law's incoming class has a 3.98 median GPA, a 169 median LSAT, and a 75th-percentile GPA of 4.06. Are we genuinely producing entire classrooms of intellectual wolves in ALABAMA??? 😭 And it's not just Alabama. Look at Minnesota, California, Florida State, Ohio State, and Texas A&M. Academic credentials once considered extraordinary at elite law schools are becoming the median across numerous institutions.

For my European friends, imagine law schools across Bucharest, Warsaw, and Berlin suddenly reporting incoming academic credentials comparable to what Oxford or LSE reported fifteen years ago. Obviously, the grading systems aren't directly comparable, but that's precisely my question. Are we witnessing an intellectual revolution with hundreds of Einsteins walking around Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or have we spent decades optimizing the numbers that supposedly represent intelligence?

My argument is that American education has become an incentive system that behaves remarkably like an algorithm, rewarding numerical credentials under the promise of meritocracy. Students optimize grades and standardized scores. Schools recruit applicants who improve their admissions statistics. Those numbers influence rankings, reputation, applicant demand, and in turn increase tuition on their students. Everyone has an incentive to improve the measurement, so the system becomes increasingly efficient at producing exactly what it rewards.

Even the measurements aren't consistent. LSAC counts an A+ as 4.33, while some undergraduate universities don't award anything above an A. Two students can earn the highest grades their institutions permit, yet only one may have the opportunity to exceed a 4.0. We're comparing applicants using standardized numbers from institutions that don't even share the same grading ceiling.

Consider the University of Florida. UF Law's median GPA rose from 3.91 in 2025 to 3.97 in 2026, while its median LSAT increased from 169 to 170. Yet UF had reached No. 24 nationally in 2020 before appearing at No. 38 in the 2025 U.S. News rankings. These aren't directly matched years, and ranking methodologies change, but the contrast raises a question: What happens when a school becomes better at recruiting exceptional academic credentials without demonstrating equivalent improvements in its overall educational quality? Higher admissions medians don't automatically mean better teaching, student satisfaction, or professional outcomes.

Now look at Ohio State. Its Class of 2027 profile reported just 6% first-generation college students, while its 2025 ABA disclosures show that 90% of enrolled JD students received scholarships or grants, including 175 receiving full tuition or more. These statistics describe different cohorts, so they don't reveal individual recipients. But if first-generation representation remains that low, most scholarship recipients would necessarily come from continuing-generation families. That doesn't make those students undeserving. It raises a more important question: Who has the resources, preparation, and generational knowledge to compete for admission and the largest scholarships in the first place?

And who pays the bill? LSAC's research found that first-generation college graduates anticipated almost 20% more law school debt than continuing-generation students, while Black first-year students anticipated 43% more than the overall average. Schools can distribute enormous amounts of scholarship money while disadvantaged students remain underrepresented and disproportionately indebted. In 2022, Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken publicly criticized rankings for encouraging schools to recruit high-scoring applicants with scholarships rather than prioritize financial need. The problem isn't that nobody recognizes these incentives. People running the institutions have already called them out. Yet the financial incentives remain.

Remember Alabama football under Nick Saban? When NIL opportunities expanded, Bryce Young was reportedly approaching $1 million in endorsement opportunities before becoming the starting quarterback. Financial incentives for recruiting elite talent became increasingly visible. Law schools similarly use scholarships to attract applicants who improve institutional statistics. But here's the difference: Alabama football eventually has to play another team. Recruiting five-star athletes isn't the same as winning a national championship. So why are we treating law schools recruiting 4.0 students as though they've already produced exceptional lawyers?

This brings me to Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

In April 2026, OpenAI published Where the Goblins Came From, explaining why its models developed a strange habit of referencing goblins and gremlins. A reinforcement-learning reward intended to encourage a particular personality inadvertently favored those responses. The models learned what received rewards, and the behavior spread beyond its original context.

Producing more goblins didn't prove a more intelligent model. It proved the model had become better at producing what its reward system favored.

Here's what fascinates me: AI has given us a laboratory where we can observe reward optimization at much quicker rates. Researchers train models, adjust incentives, and observe unintended behaviors within relatively short periods. Now imagine a similar process unfolding across American educational institutions over decades instead of AI training runs.

In our educational environment, Goblin = GPA and LSAT. But the deeper issue is compliance with the reward structure. Students learn to produce exceptional scores, universities reward academic performance, and law schools use scholarships to recruit applicants who improve their statistics. This doesn't mean high-scoring students aren't intelligent. It means increasingly perfect credentials don't necessarily establish equivalent improvements in independent judgment, creativity, or real-world problem-solving.

And we already have a stress test beyond admissions: the bar examination.

In fall 2025, 42,817 students entered ABA-approved JD programs nationwide, beginning an expensive professional education with no guarantee of eventual licensure. In July 2026, Florida reported a 75.2% first-time bar passage rate, meaning 557 of 2,250 examinees failed. While nationally, the numbers can increase in one location and go down in another. It reveals something worth examining: schools receive the prestige of extraordinary admissions statistics years before students confront the professional and financial consequences of the next benchmark.

And the consequences aren't hypothetical. A friend of mine graduated with $225,000 in student-loan debt, accumulating interest, and didn't pass the bar. Meanwhile, The Ramsey Show featured two married attorneys with $900,000–$1 million in combined student debt, discussing the possibility of working 80-hour weeks just to escape interest rates. One didn't pass the bar. The others did. All were still drowning in debt.

That's the difference between benchmarks and outcomes. Schools collect tuition, celebrate admissions statistics, and award degrees, but the financial risk largely falls on graduates. These incentives didn't emerge by accident, even if their consequences weren't all intentional. Money can also discourage dissent: a scientist dependent on institutional funding may think twice before challenging those controlling it. The system rewards compliance, charges for participation, and can make questioning it financially dangerous.

But here's my ultimate concern: What happens when Alabama has to play the real game? And I'm not talking about football. What happens when America's lawyers, doctors, scientists, and AI systems confront another country's professionals whose institutions spent decades rewarding experimentation, independent judgment, and actual problem-solving instead of academic benchmarks?

In AI Arena, a model rewarded for producing Goblin might dominate its training environment but get smoked by a model with stronger capabilities. What happens when a civilization spends generations mastering its benchmarks, only to encounter another civilization that spent those generations mastering the problems themselves?

Maybe Tuscaloosa really is churning out Einsteins by the hundreds. But GPA medians can't prove that. My fear is that we've optimized for Goblin because Goblin brings rankings, prestige, and money, while those with the fewest advantages carry the greatest financial burden. AI has simply given us a laboratory to recognize how a reward system can become extraordinarily successful at producing the wrong result.

I post this because it's personal, and I intend to back it up. I'm a first-generation Mexican American who's spent years developing my abilities through debate, litigation, government, and public service, only to face an admissions system that can reduce that experience to two numbers. The system rewards advantages I wasn't born with, and too often, those who break through still carry disproportionate debt.

I'm going after that 170+ LSAT, and then the bar. Not because a score or licensing board defines my intelligence, but because I refuse to let them define the limits of my potential.

NON-DISCLOSED PRIZE REWARD FOR THE WINNER OF THE CHALLENGE 👀

Hey y’all,

I saw a post recently criticizing the modern LSAT landscape and, more specifically, the culture that has developed around 7Sage, particularly the ways people have tried to find shortcuts or gain an advantage outside of actually learning the test.

While I think the post is harsh in some regards, I actually agree with the bigger point.

I’ve been on these forums and in study groups, and I’ve seen how many people go through the process looking for a leg up — whether that’s paying for tutors, looking for people to take the test for you (RedNote), seeking accommodations that they may not actually need, or finding other ways around the process.

Meanwhile, I tend to laugh when I scroll through some of these posts.

I’m not saying everyone has to approach the LSAT the way I do. And I’m not making a judgment about people who legitimately receive accommodations. For this particular challenge, though, I’m specifically interested in seeing what happens when placed under the Test Desginers intended exam, with a fixed time constraint.

One thing I’ve realized is that I almost never get to actually watch someone operating at an extremely high level under a hard clock.

That’s what I’m trying to find.

I think there are people out there who genuinely appreciate the test itself, not just the final score. People who actually want to see how far they can push their reasoning ability and efficiency without looking for shortcuts.

So I’m reposting my LR challenge.

25 LR questions.

40 minutes.

You have to talk through your reasoning out loud.

And this isn't a normal PT section. It will be adaptive drilling.

One person will take the challenge live while everyone else can listen to their reasoning and follow along with the challenge dashboard. Nothing is recorded or publicly posted.

And yes, there is a non-disclosed prize for the winner. 👀

If you want to participate, I'll attach the original post with the full rules below.

https://7sage.com/discussion/62777/the-rough-challenge-announcement

Come test yourself. No shortcuts. Just the questions and your reasoning.

Hope to see some of you there.

https://7sage.com/join-group/cht_034JTOrU28fNaOLTO5TdOl

Hi Y’all! 

So far, I've been on Discord every single day grinding through the LSAT with my new internet friends, and sometimes I feel like I talk too much! So, next week I want to switch things up and make it a little more competitive and a lot more fun.

I'm going to host an LSAT LR challenge open to everyone, starting October 3rd :))!

🧠 25 LR questions

⏱️ 40 minutes

🎙️ You have to talk through your reasoning out loud.

One important thing: this is NOT a normal PT section. It's going to be adaptive drilling, so the questions will adjust based on how you're performing rather than just being a straight PrepTest section.

One person will take the challenge live while everyone else in the room can listen to their reasoning and follow along with the challenge dashboard. Nothing is being recorded. Depending on how many people sign up, this may end up going on for a few days, so I'll have a When2Meet for everyone to sign up for a time slot.

The goal isn't just to see who gets the most right. I think it'll be really interesting to watch different people attack LR and see how differently everyone reasons through it.

And yes... there will be a prize for the winner 👀

📚 Regular Study Sessions

The group is primarily for November test takers.  

📚 Every day — 8 PM EST: LSAT work / studying together

📝 This upcoming Monday: Going through all of PT 153, starting with Sec 1.

🎬 Fridays — 8 PM EST: LIVE film reviews of 7sage instructor lessons

🏆 October 3rd: We start the LR challenge

Quick note: The study group is organized through the 7Sage private chat feature, and we'll use Discord for live group sessions because it gives us the voice/screen-sharing features we need. Nothing is being recorded or publicly posted.

Honestly, I don't even love Discord, but it has the tools we need for this.

If you want to join the 7Sage group chat, the link is below. Let me know or leave a comment, and I'll privately message you the Discord link.

https://7sage.com/join-group/cht_034JTOrU28fNaOLTO5TdOl

Hi y’all,

Trying to find a few gems.

If you have a class that you thought was particularly useful or a lecture that really clicked for you, drop the name + timestamp below!

Hey everyone! I’m looking to put together a weekly 7Sage study group and am hoping to find a few people who want to join.

I’ll be hosting every Friday at 8:00 PM EST (or another time that works best, we haven't started yet). The idea is to make studying the 7Sage LIVE courses more efficient through a “show and tell” / delegated review format.

Here’s the basic idea:

• We divide up the 7Sage LIVE daily class material among the group, only picking the 3 stars & cracking 180 material.

• Everyone watches/reviews their assigned material on their own.

• We reconvene as a group for about 2 hours, with each person teaching/explaining what they covered and answering questions.

• Rather than everyone individually spending 7–8 hours going through the same material, the goal is to condense that into roughly an hour of individual studying + 2 hours of highly efficient group review.

Obviously, it would be ideal to have people with 7Sage Live since that gives us access to the full course, but there’s also a substantial amount of free content available, so I’m open to including people without Live as well.

The goal is basically to help each other get through the material faster, reinforce concepts by teaching them to others, and have a consistent group to review with every week.

If you’re interested, feel free to comment or message me!

I’m putting together a Discord study group for anyone who wants some extra accountability, structure, and company while studying.

I’m not posting the Discord link publicly. If you’re interested in joining, message me directly and I’ll send you the invite.

🗓️ First meeting: Today at 8:00 PM

The packet with the 25 questions was sent out beforehand. If you have time to work through them quickly before the meeting, feel free to do so, but it’s totally fine if you haven’t finished them. We’ll go through the questions together during the session and establish a consistent rhythm for future meetings.

We’ll start with a brief introduction and go over our goals, then get into the 25 questions together.

I’ll personally be in the call every day for the next 66 days, with only minor exceptions for family events. The goal is to build a consistent routine where we show up, stay accountable, and get the work done together.

If you’re interested, send me a message and I’ll get you the invite. 📖💪

I wanted to share this as a PSA for anyone participating in or organizing study groups on 7Sage — and, hopefully, as constructive feedback for 7Sage itself.

I recently created a free study group for the November LSAT. The goal was simple: get people together consistently, review PTs, work through difficult questions, and help each other improve. Around 20 people joined.

Then someone joined and immediately began soliciting members for a paid course.

I’m going to link their profile below. Please do your own due diligence before giving anyone money or personal information. I’m not interested in making accusations beyond what I can personally document.

https://7sage.com/discussion/profile/Ethan%E2%80%8C

What really frustrated me, however, was trying to figure out how to deal with the situation.

As the person who created the group — and therefore has some responsibility for the environment and the people I invited into it — I expected to have some basic ability to moderate it.

Instead, I couldn't find a way to remove the person from the group, and I couldn't find a straightforward way to report the behavior.

I also tried to communicate with 7Sage about it, only to discover that there doesn't appear to be an actual human being available to talk to. You're essentially left dealing with an AI/bot support system.

That was really disappointing.

There is a tremendous amount of money involved in LSAT preparation. Students are spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on courses, tutoring, and prep materials. If you're going to provide a community environment where students organize study groups, I think there should be some basic safeguards:

• The ability for group organizers to remove disruptive or inappropriate members

• A straightforward way to report suspicious behavior

• A way to contact a human when there's a legitimate moderation issue

• Most importantly, some protection against unsolicited commercial solicitation

I won't go into the full extent of the gray market surrounding LSAT preparation — and the ecosystem that LSAC inadvertently props up — at this time. But please, be extremely careful before spending money on a third party. Do your research, verify who you're dealing with, and don't assume that someone offering a product or service through an LSAT community is automatically legitimate.

I also found that the platform lacks some of the collaborative tools I was hoping to use, particularly around screen sharing, marking things up together, and whiteboard functionality.

https://7sage.com/discussion/62242/question-for-people-who-use-discord-for-study-groups

I genuinely wanted to keep the group on 7Sage. I don't particularly like moving people onto third-party platforms (not even to mention all the drama with discord), which is why I tried to make this work here in the first place.

Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable organizing a group when I can't adequately moderate it.

So I'm dissolving the original group and moving the new one to Discord.

But I don't want the takeaway from this to simply be “7Sage bad, use Discord.”

I actually like what 7Sage provides. I have personally paid real money for this resource, I still will continue to pay money for this resource and the reason I created the group here in the first place is because I believe there is tremendous value in students being able to help each other.

That's exactly why I hope someone at 7Sage sees this as an opportunity for improvement rather than simply a complaint.

If students are going to use the platform to build communities, they should have the tools to keep those communities safe, useful, and focused on studying.

I learned something from this process, even if I wish I hadn't had to learn it this way.

I'm still going to try to build the community I originally set out to build. I just have to do it somewhere else for now.

Hopefully, something positive ultimately comes from the experience.

Alright, round two.

I’m putting together a new study group for the November LSAT, and this time we’ll be using Discord.

The idea is pretty simple: I want a group of people who are actually willing to show up consistently and work.

One thing I’ve noticed with a lot of study groups is that they start strong. Everyone is excited, deadlines get set, and then, over time, they can fade.

My theory is that there needs to be an anchor.

So I’m volunteering to be that guy.

I’m committing to being on every single day from September 9th until the LSAT, at a consistent time. You absolutely do not have to attend every day. The point is that there will always be someone there to study with.

What we'll do

The format will be pretty straightforward:

• Review practice tests

• Go through questions people struggled with

• Discuss wrong answers and why we missed them

• Work through difficult LR/RC questions together

• Screen share and mark things up

• Talk through approaches and strategies

• Generally figure out how to get more questions right

The only real requirements are that you have a microphone, Discord, and a willingness to participate in good faith.

You don't need to be there every day.

Why Discord?

Honestly, I wasn't sold on Discord either. I’m personally not a huge fan of third-party apps, and I don’t love the tradeoff of moving off this platform. I also had never personally set anything up on Discord before.

I originally wanted to keep everything inside 7Sage, which is why I started the group here. But after actually trying to organize everything, I think Discord makes more sense for what we’re trying to accomplish.

Being able to screen share, talk through questions in real time, have some basic moderation, and use collaborative tools should make the actual study process much easier.

This is also important to clarify: this is a different tool with a different purpose than the 7Sage Class feature. I’m not trying to recreate the class feature on another platform. The goal here is to have a consistent, review group where we can actually work through questions together.

Start date: September 9th.

Hey everyone, I’ve noticed a few 7Sage study groups that frequently collaborate eventually end up shifting over to Discord, and I’m trying to understand why.

I’m not really a gamer, so Discord isn’t something I’ve ever used much. Is there an actual benefit to using Discord for LSAT study groups, or is it more of a “this is what we’re comfortable with / already have” situation?

The main thing I’m trying to figure out right now is screen sharing and working through questions together where you can use markings. I haven’t actually joined the study group feature on the 7Sage platform yet, so I don’t know what the built-in group calls are like or what features they have.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to pull up a question, share my screen (similar to Zoom), and have everyone mark things up, write on a whiteboard, or otherwise work through the problem together.

Is that something the 7Sage group feature already allows? Or is Discord significantly better for this kind of thing?

Basically, I’m just trying to figure out the best setup before I get too far into organizing the group.

Of note: we start 9/9 if anyone is interested in joining the study group.

If anyone has experience with both 7Sage groups and Discord, I’d appreciate hearing what you prefer and why. - I may reach out and ask more specific questions if you came across a way that worked.

So, for real this time.

Over the past month, I’ve been on the site and observing the forums. One thing I’ve noticed that can be a real game-changer is the group feature, but it’s entirely about execution.

I’ve seen some of these 7Sage groups work really well. But, I’ve also seen a ton of them start strong, set deadlines, and completely disappear.

My thesis: there has to be an anchor. One person who shows up consistently.

So I’m offering to be that guy. On some real actual unemployment activities. I’m committing to being on every single day until the LSAT, at a consistent hour.

We’re starting September 9th (9/9).

Only requirement: you need a microphone. Please do give your best effort once you’re in the call. You do not need to be there every day, but when you are there, be positive and ready to work.

The format will be straightforward: reviewing tests, going over specific questions/points, and working on getting more questions correct.

Overall, I’ve seen people with higher scores decrease, and people with lower scores improve. If we can put in real effort consistently for the next 60+ days, I genuinely think we can see improvement.

And before you ask, why not the class feature?

This is a more specific tool for studying and reviewing.