Kinda wish these law school numbers sites didn't exist

[BoscoBreaux]

I just looked up lawschoolnumbers.org, and while I was surfing around I clicked on someone's name and viewed their profile because they're numbers looked almost identical to mine.  166/3.4 (my GPA is slightly higher).  Both of us went to Top 15 undergraduate schools.  Both have done service work and worked as a paralegal at prestigious firms after graduation.

One difference, she's a black female, I'm a white male.  Now I don't presume to know about her essay and recs, but I think mine were pretty solid.

She's in all over the place, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, the works.  No rejections, not wiat lists.  I, on the other hand, am getting waitlisted or rejected by these schools.

I've always considered myself a pretty liberal guy and have supported AA, but I must say that being on this side of the equation sucks.

Feelin gloomy.  Should I wait and see if Bush makes AA illegal?  I've always despised American conservativism but at this rate of anger I'll be a Republican by 30.

I certainly hope that political affiliations don't change as a result of such practices. In a different post, I got attacked because I mentioned that if someone were a URM, they'd have a certain shot of admission, whereas if they were not (ie. if they were White) they would have little shot of admission with the same statistics. This is nothing new: race is a credential that makes up for inferior LSAT scores and GPAs. In general, white persons have to do better than non-whites to get accepted to the same schools. Further, the "golden children," at least as far as admissions are concerned, is persons who are Black/African American. If you have good scores, say 162-164, and belong to certain preferred races, you're likely getting a free ride to Harvard and Company. These are facts; whether the facts are justified is a question I'll leave for society to decide. The Supreme Court--hardly a liberal body--doesn't have a problem with it.
As for Bush and Republicans--was it not Bush who got into Harvard Business School with a C average and miserable boards? Can you say legacy admission?

[maricutie]

You then lumped blacks and hispanics together when discussing underperformance.  Just curious how hispanics are reflected in the various studies you cite.  Do they get a separate class or are they lumped with whites...

I don't know about this specific study, but Hispanics are usually entirely ignored in the AA discussion. (Which may or not be a good thing; haven't decided that yet myself.) The recent article in the Stanford Law Review, for example, pretty much paints a white-and-black picture of this policy. On the other hand, there was an older study done on Virginia law schools and I remember seeing that Hispanics had the same chances of admission as Whites, assuming a given GPA and LSAT.

Short answer: not enough done yet. 

[ryanjm]

Yeah, I agree with marie. There is passing mention to hispanics, but most of these studies were done in the 80's and 90's. In the limited reference to Hispanics, they clump them near blacks, but slightly above. I think most everyone is too PC now to even consider trying to get funding for a study like that now.

[ImVinny!]

Man, I would have to agree that most of the black applicants are equivalent to the white ones, we shouldn't even have the race box available to check, ya know?

[_____]

I would just like to remind Ryan that Jews are not a race (they are members of a Religion), and therefore have no ethnic checkbox, and therefore do not benefit from AA.

[mark_ede]

I wonder...

I Canada we wouldn't have such discussions, and I'm not sure whether it's good (our way at approaching race and identity is very different from the U.S) or bad (we're turning a blind eye to systemic discrimination).

In any case here's how I would put it in holistic admissions terms:

Everyone offer something to a law school (imagine you having a value). Diversity is an externality, difficult to factor into that "value" unlike more visible values (i.e LSAT, GPA etc.) especially because the odds are an African-American female has overcome systemic discrimination to get where she is (not necessarily, there are some troubling stats on who benefits from heavily weighted admissions but I digress). In any case AA serves to internalize these externalities, at least somewhat. That's my standard economic AA justification.

[pop_tort]

I just love it when your read a post from a p*ssed off person that sees ONE black female who happens to get admitted to a variety of T14 or T100 schools, and they get all in a huff like "woe is me, the black people are taking over and stealing seats at all the law schools!!! Waaaa...."

I mean, gee, it could NEVER be the other thousands of white applicants (or Asian or Latino for that matter) who could have taken their seat... just the ONE black person who they heard had equal or lesser #s...


I don't know when people will get it through their heads that the application process is more than just about numbers and and what color you are. I mean, why did we waste all that time filling out extensive apps with resumes, stellar letters of rec, lists of activities and community service, military and academic honors, well written colorful and introspective statements talking about our life experiences....hmmmm...

[Gary Glitter]

you have missed the point of the original post completely

he was not implying that this person in particular was responsible for his losing out on his school of choice - instead, and more logically, he was voicing his angst which is a direct result of a system that confers certain advantages to people based on racial distinctions. saying that "if I were a member of race Y, given my stats, I would be going to school X" is completely different from "person A, with my exact stats, who is a member of race Y, stole my spot from school X". the latter is completely irrational as evidence does not exist for such a claim and is not what the original poster was getting at. the former is a sideways way of saying "hey maybe this system acts to propagate that which it looks to remove" - i.e. racism

but whatever

as long as members of races X Y and Z feel more comfortable with lawyers of race X Y and Z there will be a need for a system that guarantees available lawyers of the various races. until the day when we all grow up and say a man is a man regardless of skin color then such systems will exist, no matter how convulted and paradoxical the rhetoric from their proponents becomes

(the answer to the equation, by the way, is X=42)

[gertrude]

amen

[pop_tort]

you have missed the point of the original post completely

he was not implying that this person in particular was responsible for his losing out on his school of choice - instead, and more logically, he was voicing his angst which is a direct result of a system that confers certain advantages to people based on racial distinctions. saying that "if I were a member of race Y, given my stats, I would be going to school X" is completely different from "person A, with my exact stats, who is a member of race Y, stole my spot from school X". the latter is completely irrational as evidence does not exist for such a claim and is not what the original poster was getting at. the former is a sideways way of saying "hey maybe this system acts to propagate that which it looks to remove" - i.e. racism

but whatever

as long as members of races X Y and Z feel more comfortable with lawyers of race X Y and Z there will be a need for a system that guarantees available lawyers of the various races. until the day when we all grow up and say a man is a man regardless of skin color then such systems will exist, no matter how convulted and paradoxical the rhetoric from their proponents becomes

(the answer to the equation, by the way, is X=42)

Well it's also just as stupid to get upset and say "if I were a member of race Y, given my stats, I would be going to school X" .... There are pleanty of minorities with better numbers and stats than other minorities who get rejected from good schools. The same way there are pleanty of white students with better #s/stats who get rejected from good schools. To use ONE example of ONE black female as grounds to lament over this system is just stupid. The bottom line is that hundreds of thosands of applicants of ALL colors are applying to law school in record amounts. Yes, there will be stories about a VERY small amount of those applicants with lower #s etc that may have made it into a highly ranked school. But to sit there and say well "if I were that race/color, the same would have happened to me as well" is ridiculous. Black people get rejeceted from Yale and other T14's too! What a shocker!