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« on: September 26, 2005, 03:36:59 PM »
I'll admit that if your numbers are sufficiently high, you will have a significantly easier time with apps. But, it is not true to say that if you nail a 99th percentile LSAT and have a 3.75+ GPA youll waltz into most schools (referring here to t14). First, 3.75 isn't exceedingly high and part of what I meant by "numbers aren't everything" is that not all numbers are equal. A Harvard UGrad GPA isn't worth as much as a numerically equal Michigan or Cal or UCLA GPA due to grade inflation (don't believe there's inflation, do some research on avg. grades issued at the top schools). Second, many students from public schools talk about their GPAs unweighted since most publics don't count A+ as 4.33, whereas most privates do. People need to be clear whether they're talking weighted or unweighted when it comes to GPA for admissions. The LSAC does equalize GPA values for letter grades, but it's not always clear in some statistics whether the LSAC calculation is being used. Third, this site is not representative of an unbiased sample of applicants and there are indeed far more than 2 people with 175+ 3.75+ numbers getting rejected from Harvard every year. Finally, if you want real proof numbers aren't everything, consider the fact that Yale accepts approximately 250 people per year, about 50 of which turn them down. Yet, Yale's class, surprisingly, is not all 4.0 180s. Rather, it is, in fact (relatively) far from it. Yale itself admits that if it wanted a class of entirely 180 4.0s, it could have it, but Yale chooses not to, meaning they do infact turn down a (again, relatively) significant number of people with perfect numbers (or very close to it) in favor of individuals that are a little more interesting but a little weaker numbers-wise. Harvard and bigger schools will obviously take more higher-number students, but they too turn down many near-perfect-numbers applicants in favor of others, so numbers are not a guaranteed walk by far (with the exception of NYU which is a numbers whore). The lower you go on the rankings, the more numbers will help, but no matter how great your numbers are, they will never be a guarantee, and at many schools are indeed a factor which mostly only prevent admission but do not gain it.