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How Diversity is Measured

Race and Ethnicity

There is no single model for "minority" admissions. Racial and ethnic groups are given special consideration in a number of ways. Admissions officers will pay special attention to a number of different factors, including:

• predictive ability of the LSAT;
• adversity overcome;
• fluency in English;
• job opportunities available to the group;
• availability of lawyers of their ethnicity to serve their ethnic population.

I will try to address how these factors affect typical members of several different ethnic groups. However, if your personal background does not reflect the general socioeconomic and cultural situation for your group, the burden is on you to show this to the admissions committee, in either your diversity statement or your personal statement.

Knowing Where to Apply

The information below is a generalization of highly individualized information. It varies by regional representation of racial groups, by individual schools' philosophies, and by legal decisions -- from courts, legislatures, and executive orders -- that affect admissions policies. For this reason, every member of a minority group needs to apply to a larger number of schools, or needs expert advice in choosing schools. If you genuinely cannot afford to apply to many schools, you may be eligible for fee waivers.

Affirmative action has been seriously curtailed since the late 1990s. The Supreme Court has endorsed consideration of race as a factor in the admissions process, but racist agitators masquerading as freedom fighters, like Roger Clegg, are pressuring law schools to either drop minority enrichment programs or to force a deep silence about such programs.  Applicants (and parents of applicants) are blindly mouthing words about "unqualified minorities" without having ever looked at the reality of minority admissions.  

A larger pressure on law schools to curtail their minority admissions practices is publication of a school's 25th percentile LSAT score.  Hastings is a good example.  In 1998, they admitted more than 25% of their class through their LEO (disadvantaged) program.  Their published 25th percentile LSAT score was a 149.  The next year, they admitted fewer than 25% through that program and published a 158.  But the damage had already been done; their application volume dropped from 4300 to 3600.  ABA Guide to Approved Law Schools, 1998 ed. at p. 123 and 1999 ed. at p. 131.  Is it any wonder, then, that per cent of minorities in law school has leveled off at 22%?  

Between legal attacks on the constitutionality of affirmative action and pressure on admissions officers to raise the 25th percentile LSAT score, there is much less room at the top for applicants with low LSAT scores, no matter what their race or ethnicity.  How do I feel about that?  Really bad!  (If you want to see how bad, click here.)

Minority students who are not yet in their senior year may find the MILE program valuable.  It provides information about applying to law school, mentoring, and some free LSAT materials.  To sign up, click here.

Native Americans

Native Americans are the least represented of all applicant groups; fewer than 500 a year even apply to law school, and many of those have few or no ties to their tribal culture. To the extent that a Native American still identifies with her or his tribe, or lives near a reservation, that person may well have experienced discrimination and the effects of negative stereotyping. Native Americans have frequently been held to the lower socioeconomic classes, and have suffered from poor educational systems as well.  

If you are Native American, my best advice to you is to ignore LSAT score in choosing a law school. If your grades are in the range a school might want, and if you will have solid recommendations, apply if you can afford it. (If you can't afford it, ask the school for a fee waiver).  Another approach is to look at the acceptance grids in the Official Guide or on the LSACD.  If anyone at all was accepted with your numbers, you have a chance of being accepted.

Make sure you include a diversity statement with every application, explaining your relationship to your Native American heritage.  Have you visited a reservation? Do you know the location of your tribe? How knowledgeable are you about your tribe and its customs? The more you are familiar with your culture, the more a law school will be interested in you.  Also include your tribal affiliation and per cent of Native American ancestry, as well as your tribal or BIA registration number.

Several schools have special programs in Native American Law (New Mexico and Cornell come to mind, but there may well be other programs). If you are interested in studying tribal laws and government regulations affecting Native Americans, you should contact these schools by phone and express your interest.  Make sure you talk with a minority recruiter or someone knowledgeable about the Native American program.  

Caveat:  If there was a Native American somewhere in your family ancestry, but you can't name the person, don't know what tribe they were a part of, or have made no effort to be part of Native American culture, don't expect checking the appropriate box to make a difference in your ability to be accepted.  The vague notion that your grandfather was part Indian is not sufficient to grant your file special consideration.  If you can say, as one of my clients has, "My mother’s ancestors came from Europe, and settled in lower Michigan amongst the Algonquin peoples. My father’s ancestors were Chippewa Indian of the Anishinabeg nation, who were joined by French settlers participating in the fur trade of northern Michigan in the 1870s," then your Native American heritage will matter.  If you can't, it well may not.

African Americans and other Blacks

Admissions officers may place less emphasis on index numbers for Black applicants, because data suggests that the predictive index is less accurate for them. The median LSAT score for Black applicants may be five or more points lower than that for Caucasians, but the classroom performance may be the same. At the same time, data shows that people with an LSAT score below 145 rarely succeed, so schools will generally not go below this number unless there is strong evidence in your file that you can succeed -- a gpa in at least the 3.25 range, for instance, might offset an LSAT score of 142.  A few schools will accept people with LSATs between 140 and 145.  Virtually no law school will accept LSAT scores below 140.

In addition to LSAT score, a school may make allowances for lower grades; some schools do this routinely, while others look for evidence of educational disadvantage. This may be exhibited by poverty during childhood, or by having attended an inner city public school system or a rural, disadvantaged one. Some schools simply try to achieve comparable percentiles within the ethnic and mainstream groups. Thus, if their Caucasian applicants have grades and scores around a 60th percentile, they will look for minorities around the 60th percentile for their group. (Such methods may be challenged legally, and fewer schools either use or admit to using them than did in the past.)

An African applicant may merit special attention if English was not her or his first language, and may offer unique experiences, particularly if the applicant is from South Africa. Many Black applicants have also overcome the effects of significant discrimination and poverty. If you are one of these people, see the discussions of Socioeconomic Factors and Overcoming Obstacles elsewhere in this section.

NOTE that "African American" does not apply to Caucasian or Semitic people who happen to live in Africa (just as "Hispanic" does not apply to people of German ancestry who happen to live in South America).  "African American" is a subset of black; if you are not black, you are not African American.  

Hispanics

Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans are often treated differently from other Hispanics. These two groups are usually severely disadvantaged by both finances and language, as well as by extreme prejudice in the areas in which they represent a noticeable portion of the population. Special consideration is usually given to both their grades and LSAT scores, as it is for Blacks. Because of the additional language barriers, Puerto Ricans may be admitted to law school with LSAT scores as low as 140, so long as their gpa and recommendations show an ability to perform academically at the law school level. On the other hand, applicants with lower LSAT scores may have their application scrutinized for writing skill.  If English is a problem for you, make sure your personal statement is substantially correct in grammar and vocabulary.

Other Hispanics, particularly Cuban Americans and residents of South America, are given less latitude. Some schools, including Stanford, do not treat Cuban Americans as minorities, since most Cuban immigrants to the United States were wealthy, and their children, who are now applying to law school, were raised speaking English. South Americans in the United States are similarly unlikely to be poor. If you are an exception to this rule, you should make the law school aware of it through your personal statement. If English is not your first language, you should also bring this to the law schools' attention, either through a diversity statement or in a note included with your application.

Asians

Japanese, Chinese and Koreans have a reputation for doing well academically, and are generally not treated as minorities if they were born in the United States. In fact, there have been reports of "reverse discrimination" in which Asian applicants were required to have higher LSAT scores and grades than their Caucasian counterparts. In 1988, the Justice Department investigated charges that Harvard and UCLA were limiting the number of Asians granted admission. (New York Times, Nov. 20, 1988, p. A35 col. 1.) In May of 1989, Berkeley announced a change of admissions standards to correct for (among other things) an acknowledged "disproportionately negative impact on Asian Americans." (Id., May 25, 1989, at A16 col. 3.)  For a good general discussion of the stereotypes and discrimination affecting Asian American students, see "A Quota on Excellence? The Asian American Admissions Debate," Change, v. 21 no. 6, Nov.-Dec. 1989 p. 38.

Recent LSAC data shows that this "reverse discrimination" continues as a national trend, as I discussed in my "What's New for May 15, 2002, and saved as "Unqualified Minorities?"

This tendency to exclude Asians seems to be part of the myth that they are "taking over" our institutions of higher education. In fact, in 2001, there were about 78,000 applicants to law school. Of this number, 5500, or 7%, were Asian.  In 2004, 8,500 out of 100,000 applicants were Asian, or about 8.5%.  That these numbers are viewed as an "invasion" is more evidence of our prejudices than of an influx of Asian superachievers. In 2005, Asians (and all other minorities) are declining slightly as a proportion of the applicant pool.  The median gpa and LSAT are about 3.25 and 153 for Caucasians, and about 3.3 and 152 for Asians.  

Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, and Filipino people are generally recent immigrants, facing both economic and language barriers, and are usually considered to be disadvantaged minorities. However, in collecting ethnic data, many law schools only include "Asian" as a category. You must make sure the admissions committee knows your personal and ethnic background, either in your diversity statement or in your personal statement.

The admissions officer from one east coast law school mentioned that Japanese students applied in lower numbers than Chinese or Koreans, giving them a slight advantage for diversity. I have no idea whether this is a national trend, however.  Indians, like Cubans, are often the most affluent subgroup for their ethnicity, and may receive very little extra consideration in the admissions process.

Europeans

Members of other ethnic minorities (such as Greeks or Lithuanians) are not given as much latitude, since it is assumed they had fewer obstacles to overcome. However, people from other countries, particularly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, often have unique insights into the American way of life. Feel free to discuss some of the ways your country differs from the United States in your personal statement. Whether these differences are economic, political, philosophical, or social, they will add interest to your application, and give the admissions officer some insight into the obstacles you have overcome. Your struggle with old traditions in a new country almost always makes an interesting story.

Multiracial Applicants

Since about 2000, I have had a much higher number of multiracial clients.  This may in part be due to my move from North Carolina to Seattle, but not entirely, since my clients come from all over the country. (In 2005, my five multiracial clients hailed from Arizona, Maryland, Nebraska and Virginia, as well as locally.)   

How does being multiracial affect your application?   

First, there's the difficult question of which box to check.  If a school lets you identify only one racial category, check the box that indicates the most disadvantaged group:  Native American or Black first (but see my note on "real" Native Americans above), Puerto Rican or Chicano next, other Hispanic or Asian third.  If the boxes allow for further breakdown among Asians, the recent Southeast Asian immigrants (Thai, Vietnamese, etc.) are more disadvantaged than the groups that have been in the U.S. longer.  

Next, there's the diversity statement.  You should make clear the extent to which you identify with each culture in your background.  If you grew up in a neighborhood where one ethnic group predominated, or if your family ties to one group are particularly strong, your essay should say so.  If one branch of your family disowned the other because of the interracial relationship, you should discuss this as well.  Any other evidence of ties to one community or another (such as membership in the NAACP, family vacations in Puerto Rico, and minority student groups or scholarships) should be highlighted in your essay, on your resume, or both.

If all of your ethnic heritages are of the same subgroup (i.e. Korean and Vietnamese, Mexican and Argentinian), you will almost automatically be treated as the more favored in the admission process.  If your ancestors represent disparate racial groups (i.e. Puerto Rican and Scottish), the admissions officers will tend to look much more closely at your essay and activities in making an admissions decision.  This is especially true on both coasts, where the variety of minority students abounds and the minority student groups tend to be very political.  A Chicana who speaks no Spanish may be Hispanic enough for Northwestern or Duke, but not for Georgetown or Stanford.  

If You Weren't Born in the U.S.

Residents of their country of origin who are seeking admission here as foreign students, as well as recent immigrants who are U.S. citizens, are treated somewhat differently from people born here. Foreign students who have grades above the median may be given a few points' latitude on the LSAT score, especially if they learned English as an academic subject and have only been in the United states a few years. (If this seems unfair to the mainstream applicant, imagine taking the LSAT in the language you studied in high school!) The economic situations of recent immigrants may vary greatly; the foreign student who is not affluent should make the law school aware of this. In addition, the unusual political situations in many Asian and Eastern European countries may make for personal statements showing sophistication and astuteness of political analysis, as well as unique backgrounds which will offer diversity to the entering class.

Make sure your application indicates when you learned English, and whether you spoke English or another language at home. If your parents did not learn English as quickly or as well as you did (as is often the case), you may have had unusual responsibilities as a child. Many ten year old immigrants do the banking, shopping, and paperwork for insurance and auto licenses for their entire family. If this was true for you, make sure you include it in your personal statement. If your background offered other unusual circumstances, make sure you let the admissions officer know.

2006 NOTE:  Students whose college degree is from outside the U.S. and a school not processed by Law Services (i.e., those of you who needed WES or IERS to translate your academic record) are no longer at a disadvantage simply only grades reported by Law Services are included in the calculation of index numbers.  LSAC will now accept foreign transcripts, send them to an analyzing service, and produce an LSDAS report, just as it does for those who attend college in the U.S.  Your GPA will be the one reported by  the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO). Almost all law schools have agreed to accept foreign transcripts through LSDAS,. but not 100%. Contact LSAC for a complete list.   

There is no additional fee for this service (called JD CAS -- the JD Credential Assembly Service); it is included in the standard LSDAS fee.  

Foreign Students  

Foreign students are not of any particular race or ethnicity; they are often Caucasian.  So I've put this discussion under "demographics" instead of "race."

2005 NOTE:  We're at war.  We may not be at war with your country, but it may not matter.  It is becoming so difficult for foreign students to get visas that some law schools are declining to admit them; they cause empty spaces in the class at the last minute, when school is starting and the visa hasn't been issued.  Before applying to any law school, I would suggest you try to get the admissions professional to give you an honest answer about policies regarding foreign students.  

To Be Or Not To Be (Black, White, Asian, etc.)

Should you disclose your race?  Should you not disclose?  It's amazing how often I'm asked this question.  And the answer is always easy.  There's no percentage in nondisclosure.  Refusing to answer gets you treated as if you'd answered "Caucasian."  It might make someone think you're trying to "get over" in some way, especially if you are in fact white.  So disclose.  

What about marking "other"?  

If you think your ethnicity deserves more attention than implied by the word "Caucasian," you can mark "other."  It might get you past presumptive deny at a few schools. or it might make no difference at all.  Recent immigrants from Europe might benefit from this.  

If you're doing it merely as a matter of ethnic pride, go ahead.  Many applicants (my niece and myself included) don't think "White" does justice to our ethnic mix, of which we are proud.  But don't expect it to give you any advantage in the admissions process, unless your personal statement focuses on your ethnic background and is interesting.  In other words, which box you check won't matter unless you have other material in the file to back it up.