PRELAW HANDBOOK - Improving LSDAS and LSAC

IMPROVING LSDAS
CALCULATING UGPA

LSDAS should count a grade of A+ the same as the grade of A.

If a college does not give out minuses, LSDAS should ignore pluses from that college.

On Page 23 of the LSAT & LSDAS Registration and Information Book, where the topic is Transcript Summarization, LSDAS indicates that, Grades are converted to a standard 4.0 system in order to furnish law schools with a uniform basis for comparing applicants. Modest goals but, unfortunately, not attained. As we shall see, LSDAS converts grades to a standard 4.33 system and LSDAS favors colleges that "mickey mouse" by giving pluses but not minuses.

Suppose that, in each undergraduate course, you earned a grade of A, the highest grade possible at your college. Can you rest assured that no law school applicant has a higher UGPA than your 4.00 UGPA? The answer is "No" for there may be someone with an UGPA average as high as 4.33. How is this possible? According to LSDAS, a grade of A+ is worth 4.33 while a grade of A is worth only 4.00. To level the playing field, LSDAS should count a grade of A+ the same as the grade of A, namely 4.00.

At many colleges, a letter grade may have a plus or a minus attached to it. This leads to more accurate grading but not necessarily to higher grading since, I would guess, that the number of pluses is about equal to the number of minuses. The students who do have an advantage are the students who attend a college that awards pluses but not minuses. LSDAS should delete the pluses when calculating the UGPA of a student who went to a college that does not award minuses.

What can you do if LSDAS resists the modest changes suggested above? Simple attend a college that awards pluses, including the grade of A+, but does not award minuses.

IMPROVING LSDAS
LSDAS CAN MAKE THE LSAT SCORE
AND THE UGPA COMPATIBLE

Now an LSAT scores is given as a number between 120 and 180 and as a percentile. Our suggestion is that LSDAS do the same for the UGPA. That is, we suggest that LSDAS should
          Assigns to each possible UGPA a percentile based on the UGPAs
          of the students who in the past two years took the LSAT and
          sent their transcripts to LSDAS
and
        Convert this percentile to a number between 120 and 180 in the
          same manner that an LSAT percentile is converted to a number
          between 120 and 180.

Law schools can come up with an index number by using the following formula:
          Index Number for a law school applicant will be = K*UGPA + LSAT,
where UGPA and LSAT are numbers between 120 and 180  and K is a number chosen by the law school. The following guideline will help in choosing K.
          Law schools that want the UGPA and LSAT to count the same will choose K=1.
          Law schools that want the UGPA to count more than LSAT will choose some K>1.
          Law schools that want the LSAT to count more than UGPA will choose some K<1.

IMPROVING LSAC
CALCULATING OF THE LSAT SCORE

On the 101 question LSAT, there are 102 possible raw scores (the number correct), namely 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... , 98, 99, 100, 101. Also there are only 61 possible scores, namely 120, 121, 122, 123, ... , 177, 178, 179, 180. Looking at the Conversion Chart for LSAT Form 7LSS33 (see page 120 of the 2004-2005 Edition of the LSAT & LSDAS Registration and Information Book), we see that exam takers with 99, 100, or 101 questions correct would all receive the same score, namely 180. Similarly, we see that exam takers with 86 or 87 questions correct would all receive the same score, namely 168. Our recommendation to LSAC is that the LSAT score be a four-digit number between 120 and 180; this would allow LSAT scores like 157.2 and 179.7.

IMPROVING LSAC
CEASE REPORTING A CANCELLED LSAT SCORE

According Page 16 of the 2005-2007 LSAT&LSDAS Information Book, "Law school reports will reflect that your score was cancelled at your request; this advises the law schools that you were exposed to test questions." This made sense in the days when tests like the SAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc. were not released. Now it makes no sense.

IMCREASING INFORMATION
THE ABA SHOULD PROVIDING
MORE ACCURATE LSAT INFORMATION
FOR THE ABA-APPROVED LAW SCHOOLS

The ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools gives, for the entering class of each ABA-approved law school, the seventy-fifth percentile on the LSAT and the twenty-fifth percentile on the LSAT to three significant digits (e.g. 153). Suppose, for example, that Law School X has a twenty-fifth percentile LSAT of 157.51 and Law School Y has a LSAT twenty-fifth percentile of 158.49. Note that the twenty-fifth percentile LSAT of Law School Y is almost one point higher than the twenty-fifth percentile LSAT of Law School X but the ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools will give the twenty-fifth LSAT percentile of both of these law schools as 158. We would suggest that the twenty-fifth percentile LSAT scores of these two law schools be given to four significant digits; that is, as 157.5 and 158.5 respectively. Of course, another law school could, for example, have it twenty-fifth percentile LSAT score be 157.2 or 155.7.
For the ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, we recommend four significant digits when they publish LSAT scores for law schools.

Also it would be quite interesting to be given the average LSAT of the entering class; there is room for this. The LSAT fiftieth percentile of the entering class would also be of interest. Note that the average, the fiftieth percentile, and the average of the seventy-fifth and the twenty-fifth percentile will, in general, not be equal. Similarly, it would be nice to know the average and the fiftieth percentile of the UGPA entering class. In summary, For the ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, we recommend that, for both the UGPA and LSAT, the fiftieth percentile of the entering class and the average of the entering class be given.