divine angst

Beginning with foxes and Janine, posts about the LSAT have been floating around the ’sphere. Foxes thinks that schools don’t really look beyond the numbers (i.e, LSAT). Janine is glad that some schools pay attention to the LSAT to the exclusion of other numbers (i.e. GPA). Bad Glacier chimes into say that he thinks that numbers-based admissions aren’t a bad thing until prestige-whoring comes into play.

Let me add my two cents.

I did pretty well on the LSAT. I did better than the vast majority of other LSAT takers. But I didn’t do well enough to make me a lock at some othe top schools I wanted to apply to. My LSAT score was the result of ONE thing: I missed more questions on the first section of the test than I missed on the rest of the WHOLE test.

I am not making excuses for this. I earned my score, and it was a good score. Not as good as I hoped, absolutely—c’est la vie. Yes, I know it’s easy to say that now, with some good admissions under my belt. But it’s still an honest statement. I don’t think I ever considered writing an LSAT addendum or trying to excuse that first section as being due to the crappy room, or being tired, or loud people. None of those things made my score what it was—I did.

And I gradually came to realize that my score wasn’t going to ruin my ambitions.

But I still have a problem with numbers-based admissions. Yes, at least one school has obviously looked beyond the strict numbers at the rest of my application and said, Yes, we want her to be a student here. That makes me very happy—this is the way law school admissions should work!

But other schools have not. Yet. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Somehow I suspect that if the one school I’m thinking of doesn’t admit me, it will be because of the strict numbers. Oh sure, I bet my app will have been read by many people, but I still somehow think that it will be the numbers that will get me dinged. Why? They want to rise in rank. My “soft” factors, out of 13,000 other applicants, won’t set me apart enough to outweigh the possible dent to their ranking.

THAT is what bothers me.

I think foxes, Janine, and Bad Glacier make very good points—yes, numbers matter; sometimes that’s good for people; when prestige-whoring is the impetus it gets bad.

I’m going to throw in my own point, then, and say that, in the case of the latter point abot prestige, unfortunately, not all schools admit alike. Some pay more attention to “soft” factors and some don’t. And that’s what makes the whole process so maddening for me.

Here’s what I wish—that LSAT takers and admissions committees would all commit to paying more attention across the board to the soft factors. That’s a given. But if they have to consider LSAT as a big factor, remember that a single score is part of a “score band.” Statistically, the score band is a better predictor. Wouldn’t it be great if we all could tell our friends, “My LSAT was in score band 8,” instead of, “My LSAT was a 1xx, and let me explain that to you as being in x percentile, and, statistically, it’s in the same band as scores from 1xx to 1xx.”

I think people on the boards are themselves only looking at the numbers. And they wail on people with low numbers who get into good schools, berate them for being minorities, perhaps. Grow up, people. Some schools look at numbers more than others, just like some applicants think more about prestige than others.

This whole law school admissions process is pretty uncomfortable for most of us, and I know a lot of the meanness out there is probably posturing and insecurity and sour grapes. I accept that, even if I’m not strictly OK with it. I guess I just wish that we’d all admit our ignorance instead of running around being hateful about things as stupid as numbers.

As my best friend said to me when I was moaning about my own LSAT score, “You know what they call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his class? A lawyer.” I’ll amend that to add—”at whatever school.” Go to law school. Become a lawyer. Stop being bratty.