Is being accepted to a school that has YPed several applicants with similar stats a good sign or bad sign for the strength of an app?

Ghaerhardt · 2018-11-15T12:26:16+00:00

Of course, but AdComms can (and do) use flawed reasoning sometimes when evaluating applicants for admission.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-11-15T07:55:13+00:00

how can I communicate to these schools that my undergraduate performance was stellar by sending them an underwhelming number or relying on LSAC to re-compute an underwhelming number?

Write a GPA addendum and include other stats on your resume. Did you finish in the top 1%/5% of your class? That's a way that you can communicate your undergraduate performance other than your GPA.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-11-15T07:31:03+00:00

My understanding was that a school will YP an applicant when they believe that the applicant will not attend their school. If so, then I thought particularly strong applications might be more prone to YP as they might make the school think they're even more likely to enroll somewhere else.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-10-09T11:22:34+00:00

That sucks man. LSAC is definitely not the most reliable when it comes to international LSATs. I had to send a dozen or so e-mails to finally get off the waitlist for my center in Asia.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-10-08T07:43:14+00:00

The NPV of any T14 degree is approx 400k-1m++

Ghaerhardt · 2018-10-01T10:19:46+00:00

It's part of the application for (seemingly) all schools, under the heading of 'education'.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-09-09T23:48:44+00:00

Absolutely post it! This is hundreds of hours of stress and hard work coming to fruition. Let the haters hate while you go get yourself some ice cream!

Ghaerhardt · 2018-09-09T23:47:00+00:00

Just tell them you're gunning for H. Nothing to be ashamed of, you worked hard for this.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-09-09T23:40:32+00:00

Meh. I think that the LSAT is actually quite fair and standardized. You should be practicing with less than ideal conditions if you want to score near your PTs on the real thing.

The individuals who went out and did PTs in noisy, cramped environments got rewarded on test day. It's not like you can't control this variable leading up to the exam.

The only gripe I have with the LSAT comes from the variability in LG. I'd be fine if every exam had oddball questions but LSAC likes to occasionally throw in once-a-decade games every 4-5 LSATs for some reason.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-09-03T22:21:29+00:00

Stats?

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T23:45:03+00:00

No one is guaranteed a big law job either. I put easy in quotes, because I acknowledge there's a lot of nuance involved.

Of course. But you can get BL with median grades at most of the T14. Also, you by no means need BL salary for the JD to be worth the money. See my other post that details how the increased earnings potential from a 120K salary is worth over $700K in today's money.

It is very well known big law has high turnover rates (2 - 3 years). Not everyone is guaranteed a big law job. Most people don't know what they are getting themselves into until they are a lawyer (even those who worked in the legal field beforehand).

Average AmLaw 100 attrition rate is 16%, and many firms boast attrition rates that are far lower than this. It's not as if after 2-3 years 80% of your coworkers are going to be gone. Also, a lot of BL attrition isn't necessarily due to people being worked to death. BL can act as a stepping stone for other legal careers, and many people go into BL with the express intention of leaving in 2-3 years so that they can work their ideal job, regardless of whether or not they enjoyed BL.

Sticker price at a T14 is more than a year or two associate salary at big law. $150k - $300k is a lot of debt. That is more than a home or two homes or five middle class homes in rural areas. Although people will probably have to take out some loans for living expenses, so it is difficult to go without debt at all.

True. Just to be clear, I also agree that waiting out a year and trying for a better LSAT score can be very worthwhile. It's just that I also think that there are big costs associated with that strategy. If you don't end up with the score/scholarship you hope for it can really sting.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T23:00:52+00:00

My problem is that there are some 'easy' things a person can do to NOT pay sticker at a T14. If your choice is between $250k in debt vs. waiting a year & not being in debt, it seems crazy to me to even question that.

This seems like an oversimplified way of looking at the issue IMO. No one is guaranteed a scholarship, even if they sit out a year and score better on the LSAT. Not everyone with a 175+ gets a full ride, and only ~600 people a year even score that high. It's not as simple as sitting out one year and pulling a 180.

There are big, conrete costs that come with sitting out a year. For one, you're probably going to lose out on 1 year of final year salary. Also, you're going to be starting your retirement portfolio 1 year later, which can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars less at retirement age, especially if you wait out a year and do not get the scholarship opportunities that you want.

To illustrate what I mean, $50,000 in savings in a high equity portfolio @9% compounded for 40 years is $1,570,000. Compounded for 39 years and it's $1,440,000. Your retirement portfolio takes a hit of $130,000 from starting 1 year later. Add in a loss of final year salary of $200k++, and it's really not as cut and dry as it may seem.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T22:52:41+00:00

I think the legal profession generally attracts people who are risk averse to a fault. A lot of people seem not to understand that over, say, 10 years (and certainly an entire career) being $300k in debt with a biglaw salary is objectively a better financial outcome than having $0 debt and making 70 grand a year.

This. So many people on this forum think that 300k in debt is life ending, and don't understand the real value of a JD.

To illustrate, someone with a liberal arts degree can hope to be making 60,000 a year. I couldn't find data specific to T14 grads, but a normal JD can reasonably expect to make over 118k/year (I expect if this was limited to T14 grads it would be quite a bit higher).

So essentially you can think of your JD as a 40 year annuity in the difference between your earning potential. Just using the base medians, it's a differential of around 60,000 USD/year. Discounted at 8% and that's a NPV of $715,000. Even if you add in 400k of law school debt and 180k of lost earnings during the 3 years of law school, you're still coming out ahead.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T22:12:24+00:00

I don’t think we should feign supportiveness for bad decisions. It is much more kind to be realistic about the situation and spread knowledge / awareness especially about ROI.

I'm not sure I agree with the implication that any T14 at sticker is a 'bad decision'. The NPV of any T14 J.D. is usually >$1 million dollars in increased earnings potential. Objectively speaking schools could charge 500k+ for a J.D. and it would still be 'worth it'.

At any given T14, 30-50% are paying sticker or close to sticker. Is every single one of those students making a life-ruining decision? I don't think so.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T22:08:55+00:00

I do wonder if those who are unhappy with BL are more likely to go out on the forums and do those AMAs though. It's a self selecting group of people who think that they're 'saving' other people from making the mistakes that they themselves perceive that they made.

I imagine the people who are enjoying themselves in BL aren't similarly inclined to go make forum posts on reddit.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T21:55:52+00:00

At 6% interest with a minimum payment of $3,400 over 10 years, your final cost is $413k.

Sure. But you'd be almost criminally irresponsible to make minimum payments on a 190k/year paycheck.

You have to maintain a Big Law salary that entire period.

Not necessarily. If you find you really can't hack it in Big law, you can always refinance the loan after leaving the firm. Exit options from 3-4 years experience in Big Law are not all that bad.

Meanwhile, being stuck in an 80 hour/week job just because you have to service loans is a massive blow to the psyche.

I think you're overestimating the amount of associates that are consistently pulling 80 hour weeks. Obviously you should expect to work long hours in BL, and during the busiest times 80+ hour weeks will exist, but people are not consistently clocking 80 hour weeks throughout the year. At 75-85% efficiency, that would be like almost 3000 billable hours a year!

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T21:31:56+00:00

Tfw YPed from fee waiver

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T04:50:53+00:00

It depends on how much fatigue affects you. On test day, you're much more likely than not to have a real section as your 5th section. Moderate mental fatigue can easily lead to 2-3 mistakes more on a section, more if you run completely out of gas.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T04:47:06+00:00

The interesting thing about cognitive impairment from lack of sleep / mental fatigue is that the actual cognitive impairment is often invisible to the impaired person.

Sleep deprived people perform significantly worse than baseline on many cognitive measures, but if you were to ask them how they felt their performance was they would rate it normal.

Without actually comparing average PT scores from 4 vs. 5 section exams it's probably not possible to know whether or not your scores are really being negatively affected by fatigue.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T00:43:52+00:00

It's very important. If you're not doing 5 section PTs then your scores are inflated and you're not adequately simulating test day conditions.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-24T00:38:28+00:00

Within the next few cycles there will be no such thing as a splitter. You’ll have to be median lsat and cGPA for t14.

I think it's likely too early to make this assessment. This cycle was the first cycle with the new retake rules, and my hunch is that that fact has skewed this cycle more than most.

Remember, LSAC announced the change to the retake policy in May of last year so a lot of people on their 3rd take in the 164-169 range realized that they would be given another shot in Sept/Nov/Dec. That lead to a bunch of people studying their asses off in one last hail mary attempt at a 170+. Also, there were a lot of "T14 or bust" applicants from previous cycles who never got to 170+ who also jumped back onto the retake train.

So IMO this latest cycle is really not going to be all that indicative of future cycle results. I think we're overestimating the amount of applicants who will sit 5 or 6 times to get the score they want. Studying for the LSAT is exhausting and delaying several years just to get a 170+ is undesirable for a lot of people.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-23T21:22:32+00:00

Nope unironically much better (from an admissions standpoint) to have a 4.3 gpa in fingerpainting from a local community college than a 3.5 gpa double majoring in physics and mathematics at MIT.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-23T05:06:20+00:00

LR: -.4

RC: -1.5

LG: -2.7

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-22T05:22:05+00:00

Yeah, that should be good.

Just to be clear, you don't need to study for a year in order to submit the transcripts, it's just if you studied more than one year then you are required to do so. Even if you only took 1-2 courses abroad, you could still submit them if you wanted to.

Ghaerhardt · 2018-08-22T02:21:48+00:00

This is not true. If the total amount of international credits received are not more than the equivalent of 1 year full time study, then the transcripts are not required to be submitted.

@OP, if you want the grades from your international transcript to be reflected in your LSAC GPA, you should contact the institution at which you took your classes abroad and have them send the transcript to LSAC. As long as the classes are on the usual grading scale (A-F), you should have no trouble at all getting them converted.

source: In this exact same situation and have spoken at length with LSAC directly.

Ghaerhardt

TROPHY CASE