Numbers aren’t everything. Just as your LSAT and GPA don’t tell your whole story, publicized school rankings also fail to give you a full account of which schools are right for you. But, of course, school medians and rankings are very important for determining your chances of getting into a certain school, so any discussion of where to apply should at least start with a consideration of the “hard” factors.
What are GPA and LSAT Medians?
Your GPA and LSAT are important factors in getting a sense of how you compare to other students at each law school, and what your odds of admission might be. Law schools are required to disclose six critical numbers about each entering class: the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile LSAT score (based on each applicant’s highest score), and the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile undergraduate GPA.
An LSAT median is the LSAT score that falls in the middle of an incoming class's distribution of LSAT scores. Half the scores are above the median and half the scores are below it. If your top LSAT score is below the median, you'll probably need to make up for it with an above-median GPA. If your top score is above the median, you are more likely to get in. But keep in mind that a median is not an average, so being close to a school’s median doesn’t necessarily matter. You either hit the median or you don’t, and one point makes a difference.
Why Medians Matter
In assessing where you match up to a given school, the LSAT median counts most. Specifically, a school’s LSAT median counts for 5% percent of its US News & World Report rank (more on US News & World Report below). The UGPA median (aka the 50th percentile of undergraduate GPA) matters second most: it counts for 4% percent of a school’s USNWR ranking. This means that schools who are mindful of their USNWR ranking have strong, external incentives to keep their medians high by admitting students with the right numbers.
GPA-wise, you might also have a set-in-stone UGPA if you’ve already graduated. If you’re still in college, you should prioritize your remaining coursework so that your UGPA remains as high as possible. Otherwise, the LSAT is your best chance to have control over one of your two most important “hard” factors.
We think it’s a good thing to think about your numbers, once they’re solidified, as something you have limited control over. You’ve done the hard work and your LSAT score and UGPA are now just a useful metric to see what types of schools might be a good fit for you.
Of course, medians may change from year to year, and there are always outliers, but your scores and a school’s medians should be your starting point as you put together a balanced list of reach schools, targets, and safeties.
How Much Should Ranking Matter to You?
While we understand that ranking is important to many applicants, we also believe that all of the factors mentioned above are just as crucial in evaluating potential schools and ensuring that you end up somewhere that will be best suited to you and your goals.
If rankings and reputation are important to you, US News & World Report offers what is widely considered to be the definitive ranking of law schools in the United States. You’ll often hear people discuss the “T14”—the fourteen highest-ranked schools. A school’s exact ranking may change but the group of schools in this top tier tends to remain fairly constant from year to year. These schools have a strong reputation globally and as a result, graduates tend to do fairly well in the job market, including for federal clerkships and academic placement.
However, this ranking system has been controversial for its heavy weighting of LSAT and GPA medians, which tend to lead to equity issues in recruitment and financial aid, and for the ways in which it discourages law schools from supporting students who wish to enter lower-paying public service roles after graduation. A number of law schools, including Harvard and Yale, have publicly withdrawn from USNWR’s ranking system as a way to challenge these shortcomings. USNWR updated their ranking criteria in 2023 in an attempt to address some of these concerns and adjust for the lack of information they will receive from the schools that have withdrawn. Still, we want to emphasize the value in looking beyond rankings and considering other aspects of prospective law schools as you put together your school list.
Now that our hard-core numbers talk is out of the way, let’s move on next week to an even more practical question: how many schools should you apply to?