Law School Discussion

You have a great GPA from a good school so if you do well on your lsat you should be able to get into a great school. I think if you break 170 you'll be a lock anywhere except Harvard, Yale and Stanford which are hard to predict. the three best way to see where you fit in once you get your score is:

1. look at the 25/75 data on law school from publications like USNews...generally you need to be above both the 25th for lsat and gpa to have a competitive shot at a school UNLESS you are a underrepresented minority in which case your lsat (according to Montauk counts for about an extra 8-10 points)

2. Go to lawschoolnumbers.com and look at the graphs for the schools you are considering...they'll give you a good idea of what cutoffs are and what schools generally accept/deny at

3. go to http://www.prelawadvisor.com/YesPoints.htm and see where you fit in, I'd say rochester is about the same level school as georgetown so your lsat will give you a good idea

but all in all, the whole application is evaluated so theres no guarantees really or exact way of prediction, these are just good guides

Hurley,

When looking at your undergrad do you beleive schools count factors such as amount of credits per semester and departmental honors highly?

I graduated with majors in Economics and Political Science and a minor in Philosophy in only three years. To do this overloaded every semester and started taking upper class course freshman year. In addition I did two research theses to gradaute with honors in both majors. Do you think they will count this stuff highly or not? I finished with a 3.61....will they count this higher than a regular 3.61 since I did a tougher load, etc. I know I could have gotten like a 3.8+ if I took a normal load and easier classes....she I put this in an addendum?

Thanks,

Anthony

Thanks for the input everyone. The reason I'm applying to so many schools is frankly because I'm scared (like abs) of applying to too few and getting screwed or unexpected rejections for whatever reason. The other reason is because if I get into lets say 3 or 4 schools I really like I can try to bargain for more money. i.e. you can tell your top choice that you want to go there but go money (if you did) from lower schools and ask your top choice for some money. It might work and to me its worth a shot so I am applying to a lot of schools to see what happens.

I think in general unless you are lower than a schools 25 percent on both gpa and lsat or higher on both for the 75 percentile you can't really say with too much certainty what will happen because so many other factors come into play. and at schools like Harvard, Stanford and especially Yale these considerations are given more weight so there really are no guarantees. I figure this is the one time I will be applying so I'm trying all the top 15 (except Northwester because they require work experience, look at their website) so I don't have any regrets.