Columbia Waitlist

TheAnxious0L

What the heck. Why is (nearly) everyone at Columbia getting wait listed, even when they have 170+ LSAT scores and a 3.6+ GPA's? I get YP, and an increased applicant pool etc etc...but this seems excessive.

Thoughts?

LSATcantwin

A lot of speculation but people seem to think waitlists are going to be a lot bigger this year because of the increased size of the applicant pool, the higher number of high scorers, the uncertainty of increasing 1L class sizes and a few other factors. People think that the WL is a way for a school to protect itself by not admitting a ton of people that won’t attend and seeing who is actually interested, while giving them a chance to protect their medians.

Seeking Perfection

Hard to know. Columbia doesn't normally yield protect as much as Penn, Michigan, and Virginia though.

http://columbia.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats/1718

Looking at the chart it seems to me that people with above a 173 and a 3.5 are doing okay. People with a 172 are doing okay with above a 3.7.

So I would guess Columbia is trying to move its median LSAT up to a 172. from 171 last year and mantain its GPA median of about a 3.70.