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Law in the Internet Society
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Even though I’m a few years removed from applying to law school, it still strikes me how opaque the entire process is. The Columbia Law admissions website emphasizes that the school reviews applications “holistically” by looking at not just grades and test scores but also “personal qualities considered requisite to scholastic success, professional distinction, and public service”.
And yet nothing about my experience and the experience of others seems to back this up. If we’re being honest, there was nothing in my application that spoke to “personal qualities”, “professional distinction”, or “public service”. What I did have was a high LSAT score in a year where the number of high scores dropped 20%. That, along with a good (but not great) GPA, was enough for admission to some of the most selective law schools in the country, including Columbia.
My results were just another version of the same story told hundreds of times on online forums and in pre-law societies. The message: law schools don’t really care about your extracurriculars, work experience, or personal narrative. It’s all a game – put together the highest GPA and LSAT you can, then wrap it up in a clean application. While the admissions office might paint a picture of the perfect applicant as a bright and well-rounded student who is engaged in his or her community, the applicant they’re most likely to admit is the one who spent all summer holed up in their room, drilling logic games until they can get a perfect score on that section. There is an “efficient” way to go about preparing an application – namely, to study for the LSAT at the expense of everything else. Columbia’s website suggests that volunteering or being a part of student governance makes a meaningful difference, but it really doesn’t move the needle. Raising your LSAT from a 170 to a 173 does.
This isn’t necessarily an indictment of the way Columbia and other schools select their students. It’s a difficult task for an admissions office to pick offerees based on their “personal qualities” when they’re given a stack of paper applications to choose from. Different members of the admissions committee might have different ideas regarding what “personal qualities” they see in a particular file, but it’s hard to disagree over whether one number is bigger than another. Plus, schools are concerned with their public image, which is inevitably tied to the GPA and LSAT medians they publish every year. Every law school claims that their students are special, that they picked the leaders and visionaries of tomorrow. Of course, all of that is unverifiable. What is easily verifiable is what the school’s medians are and how that compares to the medians of their peers.
But, even if we assume that the school’s admissions standards are correct, it still begs the question: if this is what the school wants, why don’t they just ask for it? If what they’re really looking for are the most impressive numbers on paper, shouldn’t they tell applicants to focus on those numbers?
To illustrate this point, I’d draw a comparison to another opaque selection process – EIP. Much like applying to law school, it’s a competitive and stressful process that people learn about through rumors and gossip. But, to its credit, I’ve always felt like law firms were remarkably clear about what they expected out of the students. Only three things really mattered in getting an offer – your grades, whether or not you were on law review, and your performance in purely behavioral interviews. I was told unequivocally that other things which seemed important (your extracurriculars, where you spent your 1L summer, what law you “know”) really didn’t matter at all.
In turn, I think law firms got what they asked for. Every 1L hears that their grades this year are paramount, and most end up prioritizing their GPA over all else. Before EIP, interviewees do the preparation necessary to perform well during an interview. The 1Ls don’t spend their time preparing for things firms don’t consider. The students who join organizations do so out of a genuine interest or passion, not because they can add it as a resume line item. Again, one could question whether firms are best served by enforcing somewhat arbitrary grade cutoffs (although it's probably even more difficult for law firms to make informed choices about candidates than law schools), but they do a good job of indicating to students how important those cutoffs are.
Ultimately, I see a mismatch between the stated policy of law schools, including Columbia, and their actual desires. If they ask for well-rounded students, they should actually value qualities that indicate well-roundedness. If they want the students with the best stats, they should make that clearer from the outset. The current paradigm of paying lip service to certain qualifications while actually making decisions based on others does a disservice to both the school and potential students.
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