Reach Schools
A reach is a school that you probably won’t get into—but might. Usually, this means that your top LSAT score and your LSAC UGPA are both below the school’s medians, or that—regardless of your UGPA—your LSAT score is below the school's 25th percentile. Other factors like character and fitness issues, multiple LSAT takes, whether or not you’ll add to the diversity of the incoming class, or being an international applicant can also affect your chances.
If your top LSAT score and UGPA are both below a school’s 25th percentile, or if one of your numbers is just below the median while the other is way below the median, the school is probably a super reach. Although you have nothing to lose by applying (except time and money), we wouldn’t recommend substituting a super reach for a more plausible reach.
Target Schools
A target is a school you have a decent chance of getting into. Usually, this means that your LSAT score and UGPA are close to the school’s medians, or that one is above and the other below. There’s not much else to say about target schools, but a word to the wise: a target school is never a sure thing. Every year, every law school denies hundreds of perfectly on-target applicants. The needs of every application cycle are different, so apply widely and apply to safeties!
Safety Schools
A safety is a school you’ll probably get into. Usually, this means that your LSAT score and UGPA both exceed the school’s medians. A school is super safe if your LSAT score and UGPA both exceed the school’s 75th percentile—assuming, of course, that you don’t have any major character and fitness issues, and that other “soft” elements of your application are solid, like your résumé and personal statement. You should consider applying to safeties even if you don’t intend to go to them because they may offer you scholarship money. It’s sometimes possible to turn an offer of aid from a lower-ranked school into an offer of aid from a higher-ranked school. Keep in mind, however, that sometimes a school will deny someone who is significantly above their medians thinking that they’re not truly interested in attending anyway. This is called “yield protection”—schools do it so they can claim to admit a lower percentage of students and protect their “yield”—the number of accepted students who, in fact, enroll.
Adding More Law School Applications
Remember: you can always add more schools to your list along the way. Once you’ve wrapped up a number of applications, adding a few more tends to be fairly straightforward—your core materials likely won’t change from school to school, and many applicants can write a strong “why X” essay in about a day. There’s also some strategy to consider in terms of applying early to rolling admissions schools and hearing back in December and January, with time to expand your school list to include more safeties if you’re not getting the offers of admission you’d hoped for. If you’re planning to take the LSAT again after having already received a score, you can also apply to safety schools with your current score (providing that it’s at or above the medians!) and hold off on those reach and super-reach schools until you’ve scored higher.
That’s it for our numbers talk. Next week, we’ll be diving into the most important factors in determining your school list.