Targeting a Score

There seem to be two basic approaches in planning one's LSAT strategy. The first involves studying test questions and hoping you'll get a score that you like. The second involves arbitrarily picking a high score and determining to get it.

Neither of these is the best approach.

• If you start with no target at all, it's easy to become discouraged with the score that might seem low to you, but is in fact sufficient to gain you admission at a school you like.
• if you start by setting an unreasonably high goal, you can become discouraged when that goal, like the end of the rainbow, is endlessly beyond your grasp.

I'm a great believer in reality-testing: the best way to target a score is to look at the LSAT scores needed to gain admission to some schools that interest you.

If you've already read the "Preliminary Research" section of this web page, you've begun to think about law schools in terms of a "good fit" rather than in terms of a US News ranking. You should have found a number of schools that interest you with varying numeric requirements for admission. Once you have some schools in mind, you can set a goal of reaching a high enough score for the lowest school on your list, then raise your expectations as you raise your score.

In order to work this pragmatically, you'll need to find accurate data about the LSAT score you might need to be admitted to various schools.

The first and best source of data (as you may have surmised by the number of times I cite it) is the ABA-LSAC Official Guide 2011 . I buy one or two of the current copies each year, and keep old ones for comparison. But Law Services is kind enough to give you this data for free!

All you have to do is

1. Go to lsac.org but do not log in
2. Look for "Choosing a Law School" in orange, in the middle column near the top.
3. Immediately below that is the Official Guide link.
4. Click on the bottom link, "All law schools."
5. Choose your school and you'll see two links -- dark blue bars with white letters. One says "ABA Law School Data" and the other says "Law School Description."

Click on either one and you've struck gold; click on both and you'll have as complete a look at the schools as is possible.

For 2011, you can click on this link and bookmark it; otherwise you may never find it again!

For each school there are two pages of ABA data, a true gem. Since this is data the law school reports to the American Bar Association, it is as reliable and accurate as any data you can find. I use these two pages as my primary source for a half dozen different pieces of information, but the one that concerns us now is a school's median GPA and LSAT. USNews purports to rank using the median, but doesn't publish that data. More importantly, a good general definition of "presumptive admit" is "both GPA and LSAT above median." So start with the medians published here.

Uh, which medians? Full time, part time, or total?

• If a school doesn't have a part-time program, full-time and total will be the same.
• If you're applying to the full-time program, only look at full-time data.
• If you're applying for part-time, look at the "total" data; many schools are restricting their part-time programs, so old part-time data is misleading.

LSAC Data (Law School Descriptions)

The LSAC pages don't have nearly as much cool stuff as the ABA pages do. My cynical reasoning is that this information is

a) voluntarily provided, and
b) not audited.

Schools use these two pages primarily to market themselves, their campuses, and their special programs. There is no uniformity, no neat lines and tabulations to help you find what you're looking for; all you can do is read.

However, there is one very important piece of information in the LSAC portion of the book -- the Applicant Profile. This normally comes in one of three versions:

Numerical: the school tells you how many people applied and how many were admitted.in various gpa and LSAT combinations. Although most schools use 5 LSAT point and .25 GPA increments, other schools design their own scale, intending to be more meaningful and usually succeeding.

Bar Graph: This grid, instead of showing numbers, shows shades of gray labeled with vague words like "Probable," "Very Likely," "Possible," "Some Chance," "Low Probability," "Unlikely." None of these words is defined anywhere. If I thought I could get away with it, I could write a really funny Dave Barry routine about these words, but I know how far I can go in writing, and that's too far.

Nonexistent: a too-large group of schools feels that any representation of likelihood is misleading.  I can't help it; I know I'm supposed to bite my tongue, but I cannot imagine any situation, in any world, where NO information is more helpful than SOME information. I mean, really: would you rather be in a totally black room rather than a room with one dim light bulb, just because the light bulb casts unrealistic shadows? The law schools that choose this option give reasons, none of which I believe for a minute. (Okay, go get the noose, guys. But what do you expect from a woman who devotes hundreds of hours a year and countless web pages to data analysis?)

Schools have the Constitutional right to shout about transparency while playing hide and seek. Think what you will and use the ABA data if that's all you have.