The most crucial, vexing, and, very likely, the most subjective decision to be made by a law school admissions committee is to choose a way to combine the LSAT Score (sometimes denoted by LSATScore,) and the UGPA into the number that is "best suited to" the law school's "particular admission procedure."
Applicants who have sufficiently high admission numbers are almost always accepted whereas those who have egregiously low admission numbers are almost always rejected.
SECTIONS OF THIS CHAPTER
SECTION ONE. The first section introduces the most important admission factor, namely the ADMISSION INDEX. An applicant's admission index depends on the the applicant's LSAT score, the applicant's UGPA, and the law school's implicit choice of the number, which we denote by M. Not all law schools choose M but for those that do, and this includes most, we give the value of M chosen in Sections Three and Four. The two important properties of M are:
The smaller the value of M, the greater the weight given to the LSAT in the admission process.
Increasing the LSAT score by 1 is equivalent to increasing the UGPA by 1/M (e.g. from 2.85 to 3.85) will not change the index number.
At the risk of redundancy, we add the two following result:
The larger the value of M, the greater the weight given to the UGPA in the admission process.
Decreasing the LSAT score by M and increasing the UGPA by 1.00 will not change the index number.
SECTION TWO. In Section Two, the distribution of the values of M are noted (e.g. most values of M are between 7:0000 and 16.0000 inclusively.
SECTION THREE AND FOUR give the values of M chosen by the various law schools.
SECTION FIVE In MY may be of interest to those on a law school's admission committee.
TOPICS OF THIS SECTION
IMPORTANCE OF THE LSAT AND UGPA
WHAT CAN YOUR LSAT AND UGPA DO FOR YOU?
IMPORTANCE OF THE LSAT AND UGPA
For the other law school applicants, a more than cursory look at other admission factors may be necessary to determine the admission decision. Although it certainly happens that other admission factors may help an applicant overcome minor LSAT or GPA deficiencies, it is unlike that other factors will be able to overcome major LSAT or GPA deficiencies. Your primary focus should be on your LSAT score and UGPA (probably in that order).
The University of Kansas Pre-Law Advising says that, "The major benchmarks in the law school admission decision are a student's grade point average and a student's score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Other factors, such as extracurricular activities, work experience, recommendations, and the rigor of a student's academic experience are always relevant, but are not determinative."
WHAT CAN YOUR LSAT AND UGPA DO FOR YOU?
The first row indicates that the top ten USNews law schools, on the average, have a LSAT 25th percentile of approximately 167.5 and a LSAT 75th percentile of approximately 172.2. A similar statement apples to UGPA. One could argue, that an applicant with a LSAT of 170 and a UGPA of 3.75 and, doing well on the other admission factors, may be a good candidae at the average USNews top ten law school.
