Okay, so there's a lot of discussion on these boards about GPAs being comparable or not comparable between colleges and universities. Since we've got a lot of people on this site, with a little help from the LSAC, we can see grade trends and how they relate to LSAT scores. Is a 3.5 from an Ivy comparable to a 3.5 at a 3rd tier public? Let's find out.
If you check out the "Academic Summary Report" from the LSAC website (after you log-in, go to Account Status -> Transcripts and you'll see it there), it gives you information about all applicants from your undergrad granting institution within a few years of when you attended.
I'm not interested in the individual applicant (your) data, but the aggregate data from the schools. Let's do the top half (until you can add up the percents and come out greater than 50), to make it easier.
I went to a top 5 Liberal Arts College.
LSAT % distribution:
95+ : 30
90-94 : 17
85-89 : 12
This means that 30% of LSAT takers from this college scored 95th percentile or higher. 47% scored 90th percentile or higher, and we stop at the 85% percentile, which includes 59% of test takers from this institution.
GPA % distribution:
4+ : 0
3.8-3.99 : 3
3.6-3.79 : 15
3.4-3.59 : 22
3.2-3.39 : 21
GPA College Mean (under transcript analysis) : 3.25
As one can see, LSAT scores are high, but GPAs are fairly low, since almost twice as many people score higher than the 95th percentile than have a GPA greater than a 3.6.
Thanks for participating! If a lot of people post this data, I think we can learn a lot about relative grade inflation, or the lack thereof. Right now, I don't think it's necessary to post the actual school names, but if other people are interested, I wouldn't argue against it.
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