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Law School Medians

theLSATstruggstheLSATstruggs Alum Member
in Law School Admissions 95 karma

Hi Everybody,
I have a pretty dumb question for all you 7Sagers out there....
So I know what a median is (I think) - half of the applicants accepted had stats above that number and and half had stats below that number. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
If you have the median LSAT and GPA for a particular school, should you feel pretty good about getting accepted to that school or should you feel more like you have a 50/50 shot? Now I know acceptance depends on other soft factors - work experience, personal statement, LORs, etc., but I am pretty average when it comes to those things. I have 3 years work experience as a paralegal, I am not a URM, my essays and LORs will be well written but won't have anything absolutely incredibly special to say.

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Comments

  • MissChanandlerMissChanandler Alum Member Sage ⭐
    3256 karma

    I believe your understanding is correct! I think if you are at both medians then that school should be a "target" school for you. Meaning, not sure enough that it's a safety school but there's a good enough chance that it's not necessarily a reach. I think I would feel better than 50/50 applying to a school where I was at both medians.

  • eRetakereRetaker Free Trial Member
    2043 karma

    You should have a really good shot, better than 50/50 generally. The rankings actually only consider a school's medians and not its 25ths or 75ths so although schools publish those as well, they aren't as important as maintaining the medians. Schools maintain their medians by filling their class with reverse splitters and splitters so your profile of being at 50th will kill two birds with one stone. There was some redditor that did a model of people's LSN profiles and he found that those with both GPA and LSAT just a tiny bit below the medians have a lower chance of getting in that those that are significant splitters or reverse splitters just to give you the sense of how important the medians are.

  • gkoebel1gkoebel1 Member
    edited September 2018 122 karma

    I have been thinking the same thing recently. What do you guys think of a reverse splitters chance at a school outside the T-14 ? As in a 25th LSAT and a 75th GPA ?

  • Rigid DesignatorRigid Designator Alum Member
    1091 karma

    Not quite right when it comes to medians. When a school has X median it means that when you put all admitted students' scores in a line, from lowest to highest, the middle score is X. This means that it's possible that >50% of the class has X or higher.

    Consider the following example...

    1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

    3 is our median.

    Now consider...

    1, 3, 3, 3, 3.

    3 is still our median, but it's also the most common score.

  • MissChanandlerMissChanandler Alum Member Sage ⭐
    3256 karma

    @"Rigid Designator" I think what happens a lot of the time is that people use "median" and "50th percentile" interchangeably regarding schools' admission, which as you pointed out, is inaccurate.

  • tekken1225tekken1225 Alum Member
    edited September 2018 770 karma

    I don't know why they use the median when they list their LSAT and GPA. So misleading.
    They should put their 50th percentile LSAT and GPA. I mean they already put up 25th and 75th percentiles scores anyway.

  • samantha.ashley92samantha.ashley92 Alum Member
    1777 karma

    So if you put all of the scores on a line in order, the median is the middle number. For example: the median of numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 is 5. However, average (mean) score is 4.2. To echo @tekken1225, it can be misleading based on the number of outliers. Also, if you have the medians, or even averages, that doesn't necessarily give you a 50% chance of getting in. There are soft factors to think about, as well as the acceptance rate.

  • Leah M BLeah M B Alum Member ⭐
    8392 karma

    I feel like personally, if I was right at both medians, I would feel more like 50/50 getting in. Depends on the school though. The more competitive, the lower the odds since they just take so few people. They won't necessarily take every, or even most, candidate that comes in right at median. I think for schools outside of the T14 and probably even more so below the T20 or so, I would feel like it's better odds if you were at median.

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