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Dear JY,
I love your website. The explanations for the logical games are carefully thought out and well presented. I wished I knew about your website before I spent $3000 on testprep material from Kaplan and Powerscore. Sage7 appears to have a far superior lesson plan for the LSAT.
So far, I have completed about 100 games and I plan on doing all 340 games. However, I am struggling with sufficiency/ necessary and formal logical concepts. Does the either the LSAT Ultimate or Premium cover these concepts in greater detail than what I can find in my Power Score books?
As an older research scientist (and patent analyst) with several graduate degrees and significant experience in academia, I find the process of law school admissions quite myopic and certainly not holistic; despite what some adcoms might say publicly. Lawyers I know say the process is flawed: “Just get the best scores possible and get into the most reputable (based on rankings) school possible; UT Austin law top 50% makes it much easier to get a job than a top 5% at Texas A&M.”
In your opinion, how heavily weighted is the LSAT score above anything else in your application?
After applying to several schools in 2010, I got the impression there is a minimal threshold of either an Index or LSAT score before they will review an application. I would predict they triage applications based on LSAT scores (e.g. 170s vs 160s vs 150s vs 140s stacks) until they fill up their class. In 2010, I was accepted at two private schools ranked about 80th and 120th with a 154 and about a 3.20 total GPA. However, I wasn't offered any financial aid. So, I decided not to attend because of the debt and the difficulty in finding a job from those schools.
Since then, I have worked for a patent litigation firm as a scientific adviser and passed the patent bar exam.
My goal is to get my LSAT score between the 25%-75% admissions profile of all my target schools (ranked 20-100) and then just let my applications fly.
Given the expense of law school, how associates are hired (based on class rank and perceived school reputation) and that only a few big firms which do IP work in the life sciences, I am only going to aim for law schools ranked between 20-100 (mostly 20-50). Otherwise, it might not be a prudent investment to attend a lesser ranked school (or at least until I can obtain the right LSAT score to get in the right school with financial aid). I predict I will need about a 160-165 before my application would be considered or even possibly read by these schools. In my opinion, a tier 3 or 4 school is not worth the 100-150 K in debt and the lack of job prospects.
Recently, I contacted a highly regarded admissions consultant and got into a rather contentious discussion about the relevance of the LSAT in the admissions process. Further, we talked how rankings influence a student's ability to get a job after graduation. In my opinion, this over-emphasis on LSAT scores seems rather silly and doctoral programs never place so much weight on one's GRE scores. She kept arguing that the LSAT is a good indicator of first year grades. As I laughed, I told her that's manure and certainly not worth $250 per hour.
I pointed out that the correlation coefficient between LSAT scores and first year grades is roughly 0.36 median with a margin of error between .12 to .56. The correlation coefficient between LSAT scores and the bar passage rate is even lower. Law school grades and bar passage rates seem to be more strongly correlated. As a scientist who has performed correlation analysis on medical data, any statistician will tell you that a correlation less than 0.40 is rather meaningless and that there is no relationship between the two events. Plus, the margin of error is rather large. The distinctions adcoms (and students) try to make about subtle scores differences is just flawed based on the LSAC statistics.
So why do administrative legal professionals make these conclusions about LSAT scores, law schools grades, rankings, and bar passage rates?
Are they just trying to protect their jobs and voice their support for the standardized test industry?
Don't they understand the LSAT is teachable with practice and favors rich students with a lot of money to pay for tutors and LSAT prep classes?
My boss, a partner, remarked to me about this: "the most qualitative profession chooses the most quantitative approach for admissions into the profession."
References:
http://www.lsac.org/jd/lsat/your-score/law-school-performance
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/09/law-school-gpa-.html
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-interpret-a-correlation-coefficient-r.html
(see the last section on interpreting coefficients)
I am glad someone understands the mathematical point that I am making. The main reason adcoms and test administrators give to justify the weight of LSAT scores in admissions is this correlation study by the LSAC. Some experts even try to make a correlation between LSAT scores and bar passage rates. Do law school administrators actually try to understand the details of these studies or do they merely accept the conclusions to justify their decisions?
Maybe the real reason behind this false narrative is that they don't want to say: "We weight LSAT scores significantly because we are overly concerned about our rankings in the US News and World Report (USNWR)." If the process was truly holistic w/o consideration of rankings, I would contend LSAT scores would carry considerably less weight. This fascination with rankings is beyond me; It actually says something about the quality of education one receives and the quality of the law graduate from that school? It seems to me that how well a student does in their classes and the background of their instructors has a lot more to say about the qualifications of a law school graduate, not what the USNWR has to say. We all know who is going to be ranked in the top 50 or that Yale is a better school than Arizona Summit Law School. Do we really need a poll to tell us this? Also, some schools might have a great area of expertise, like IP, that is less regarded in the overall rankings but does this indicate that a graduate from the lesser school is going to be less qualified as a patent attorney than a graduate from a higher ranked school. For example, a top 15% candidate from the University of Houston (a highly regarded IP program) vs a top 50% candidate from UT Austin? Who is more qualified? There are many partners who would only interview the UT Austin graduate for an associate position. Does anyone see the silliness of the rankings?
Of note, before the rankings in the 70s and 80s, many schools didn't require LSAT scores. My boss graduated from Case Western Law School at the top of his class and he wasn't required to take the LSAT. Another partner I know graduated from UT Austin in the 70s and he wasn't required to submit LSAT scores. The significance weight of LSAT scores coincidences with the evolution of the USNWR rankings. Hmm; sounds more holistic then?