6 ms·

> The federal judiciary isn't a meritocracy. It's a pissing contest between Harvard and Yale And how do you get in to Harvard or Yale law?

by MiroF 6y ago

michaelt 6y ago
Legacy admission, of course.
- MiroF 6y ago
  People without merit getting admitted to top law schools because of legacy/donors happens, but not nearly as much as some people seem to think. Legacy admits are not necessarily without merit. My guess is that most of the low merit admits are people with significant political influence that the school thinks it would be beneficial for law students to network with (people like Hunter Biden who went to Yale law, Tiffany Trump, etc.) Those people are never going to get close to an actual clerkship though. Could those downvoting explain why?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - csa 6y ago
    > Tiffany Trump ... who went to Georgetown law (typically in the 10-20 rank range). Note that this is the best she could do when her father was running for president.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      To followup: based on the average GPA of Georgetown Law admits, Tiffany Trump would have had to make the UPenn Dean's List to have a competitive GPA. The list is public. She never showed up on that list. Ergo, she did not have a competitive GPA. It's possible she may have had a good LSAT, but she would have needed a very high score to offset the low GPA. As Georgetown Law appears to have been the most prestigious law school that would admit her, this suggests she was a "legacy" admit (meaning, admitted due to her parents or application sponsors rather than on her own merits).
      - MiroF 6y ago
        That's not what a legacy admit is defined to be.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        That's exactly what a legacy admit is defined as. What non-standard definition are you using?
        xdavidliu 6y ago
        "Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
        wtallis 6y ago
        Legacy admissions usually refers to admitting a student because they're related to alumni of the same institution. Which Trump went to Georgetown?
        scottmcf 6y ago
        Eric Trump.
      - csa 6y ago
        FWIW, I completely agree that she was admitted to Georgetown (and probably Penn, for that matter) for reasons other than academic prowess. I only highlighted her name to demonstrate that celebrity and money can only get you so far. Georgetown is a perfectly fine law school, but it’s a far cry from Harvard or Yale law schools.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      I'm not claiming it's a deterministic process, but it is worth noting that Gtown is the best in DC
- plandis 6y ago
  Last time I checked it was either Harvard or Yale that admitted about 30% of legacy students but only single digit percentages for regular people — so to some extent you are right.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    That is for undergrad, and it's worth noting that the average test scores of an admitted legacy student > the average score for all admitted students. Yield calculations have a lot to do with legacy admission rates.
    - fountainofage 6y ago
      Are you saying legacy's have an ABSURDLY higher average test score? Could you share a source on that? To explain a 30% gap in outcomes for two demographics solely by test scores would mean the test score difference is absolutely insane.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        I'll try to find a source for that, it's somewhere in the SFFA trial documents but I'll need to go back and look. But to be clear: I'm not trying to claim that there is no legacy preference and that it can be all explained by test scores. It is definitely a big factor. The only two points I was making is that 1. traditional "legacy" admissions is not necessarily the route that a lot of students without any merit are getting into these top schools - they often have separate pathways for donors and super elite individuals, like Harvard's "z-list." 2. Legacy admissions are because schools know that if they admit more legacy, they will get more donations - but it also has to do with calculations about selectivity. Harvard wants to maximize the chances that the people it admits will choose Harvard so that they don't have to admit more people to fill the class thus raising the admission rate.
        fountainofage 6y ago
        Someone said "these schools admit 30% more legacies than peasants" and you said "yeah, but legacies get better test scores than the peasants." And your clarifications really don't address that, and you even seem to back away from it now. Why even make the absurd claim about the intellectual and test-taking superiority of legacies over the peasants if it isn't significant - as you're now claiming?
- rayiner 6y ago
  Legacy admissions in law schools is much less of a thing than in undergraduate programs because classes are very small, and the school rankings heavily weight LSAT interquartile ranges.
gamblor956 6y ago
And how do you get in to Harvard or Yale law? Generally? 1) Be a legacy admit. This is the easiest way to get into Yarvard Law. 2) Be an Ivy League undergraduate. This is the second easiest way to get into Yarvard Law, because you have the opportunity to get law professors to vouch for your admission even before you apply, and the grade inflation in the Ivies means that your transcript will easily beat any student that went to a public university or college. 3) Be a token minority student (i.e., not White or any type of Asian) with excellent grades that graduates top of your undergraduate class, because Yarvard Law needs token minority admissions every year to put on their brochures. (In Yarvard's defense, this is true of almost every law school.) 4) Be rich and do things during college that most people can't do during their summers, like volunteering at the Hague, or having your parents make a generous donation to the school. 5) If there are any spots remaining after categories 1-4, excel at the LSATs, get a 4.0 GPA in undergraduate (the major does not matter), and ace the admissions interview. Generally, there are only a handful of spots remaining by this point so you are competing with thousands of other applicants for a dozen or so spots. (In this regard, Legally Blonde is actually pretty spot on: a 4.0 in a fluff major is just as good as a 4.0 in an engineering major for Yarvard admissions purposes.)
- graeme 6y ago
  Do you have a source on this? I moderate reddit’s law school admissions forum and have never once heard of legacy admissions being a factor for law schools. I’m not saying it’s not a thing: Yale in particular may have different rules since they’re at the very top. But law school admissions are heavily heavily affect by gpa/LSAT medians. School rankings rise and fall based on those, and there’s no fudging it. I just searched the forum and the consensus seems to be legacy is at most a small soft, unless the parent is a large donor. (Softs tend not to count for much in law school apps unless you already pass the medians) https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/search?q=Legacy&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/search?q=Legacy...
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    I moderate reddit’s law school admissions forum and have never once heard of legacy admissions being a factor for law schools. Harvard Law admitted to using legacy admissions in 2017, when it announced it was reducing (but not eliminating) the practice. And with all due respect, redditors' opinions are not authoritative on this matter, especially when they conflict with the actual statements of one of the institutions under discussion... But law school admissions are heavily heavily affect by gpa/LSAT medians. School rankings rise and fall based on those, and there’s no fudging it. Law school rankings are not based solely on GPA/LSAT scores. Numerous other factors go into the "rankings" and the weightings are modified every year, including the respective weight given to GPA/LSAT scores. Given that LSAT scores are no longer required at Harvard, you should be familiar with the reduction in weight given to LSAT scores in the rankings for the 2018 year and onward.

> The federal judiciary isn't a meritocracy. It's a pissing contest between Harvard and Yale And how do you get in to Harvard or Yale law?

by MiroF 6y ago

> The federal judiciary isn't a meritocracy. It's a pissing contest between Harvard and Yale And how do you get in to Harvard or Yale law?

michaelt 6y ago

Legacy admission, of course.

MiroF 6y ago
People without merit getting admitted to top law schools because of legacy/donors happens, but not nearly as much as some people seem to think. Legacy admits are not necessarily without merit. My guess is that most of the low merit admits are people with significant political influence that the school thinks it would be beneficial for law students to network with (people like Hunter Biden who went to Yale law, Tiffany Trump, etc.) Those people are never going to get close to an actual clerkship though. Could those downvoting explain why?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- csa 6y ago
  > Tiffany Trump ... who went to Georgetown law (typically in the 10-20 rank range). Note that this is the best she could do when her father was running for president.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    To followup: based on the average GPA of Georgetown Law admits, Tiffany Trump would have had to make the UPenn Dean's List to have a competitive GPA. The list is public. She never showed up on that list. Ergo, she did not have a competitive GPA. It's possible she may have had a good LSAT, but she would have needed a very high score to offset the low GPA. As Georgetown Law appears to have been the most prestigious law school that would admit her, this suggests she was a "legacy" admit (meaning, admitted due to her parents or application sponsors rather than on her own merits).
    - MiroF 6y ago
      That's not what a legacy admit is defined to be.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        That's exactly what a legacy admit is defined as. What non-standard definition are you using?
        xdavidliu 6y ago
        "Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
        wtallis 6y ago
        Legacy admissions usually refers to admitting a student because they're related to alumni of the same institution. Which Trump went to Georgetown?
        scottmcf 6y ago
        Eric Trump.
    - csa 6y ago
      FWIW, I completely agree that she was admitted to Georgetown (and probably Penn, for that matter) for reasons other than academic prowess. I only highlighted her name to demonstrate that celebrity and money can only get you so far. Georgetown is a perfectly fine law school, but it’s a far cry from Harvard or Yale law schools.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    I'm not claiming it's a deterministic process, but it is worth noting that Gtown is the best in DC
plandis 6y ago
Last time I checked it was either Harvard or Yale that admitted about 30% of legacy students but only single digit percentages for regular people — so to some extent you are right.
- MiroF 6y ago
  That is for undergrad, and it's worth noting that the average test scores of an admitted legacy student > the average score for all admitted students. Yield calculations have a lot to do with legacy admission rates.
  - fountainofage 6y ago
    Are you saying legacy's have an ABSURDLY higher average test score? Could you share a source on that? To explain a 30% gap in outcomes for two demographics solely by test scores would mean the test score difference is absolutely insane.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      I'll try to find a source for that, it's somewhere in the SFFA trial documents but I'll need to go back and look. But to be clear: I'm not trying to claim that there is no legacy preference and that it can be all explained by test scores. It is definitely a big factor. The only two points I was making is that 1. traditional "legacy" admissions is not necessarily the route that a lot of students without any merit are getting into these top schools - they often have separate pathways for donors and super elite individuals, like Harvard's "z-list." 2. Legacy admissions are because schools know that if they admit more legacy, they will get more donations - but it also has to do with calculations about selectivity. Harvard wants to maximize the chances that the people it admits will choose Harvard so that they don't have to admit more people to fill the class thus raising the admission rate.
      - fountainofage 6y ago
        Someone said "these schools admit 30% more legacies than peasants" and you said "yeah, but legacies get better test scores than the peasants." And your clarifications really don't address that, and you even seem to back away from it now. Why even make the absurd claim about the intellectual and test-taking superiority of legacies over the peasants if it isn't significant - as you're now claiming?
rayiner 6y ago
Legacy admissions in law schools is much less of a thing than in undergraduate programs because classes are very small, and the school rankings heavily weight LSAT interquartile ranges.

gamblor956 6y ago

And how do you get in to Harvard or Yale law? Generally? 1) Be a legacy admit. This is the easiest way to get into Yarvard Law. 2) Be an Ivy League undergraduate. This is the second easiest way to get into Yarvard Law, because you have the opportunity to get law professors to vouch for your admission even before you apply, and the grade inflation in the Ivies means that your transcript will easily beat any student that went to a public university or college. 3) Be a token minority student (i.e., not White or any type of Asian) with excellent grades that graduates top of your undergraduate class, because Yarvard Law needs token minority admissions every year to put on their brochures. (In Yarvard's defense, this is true of almost every law school.) 4) Be rich and do things during college that most people can't do during their summers, like volunteering at the Hague, or having your parents make a generous donation to the school. 5) If there are any spots remaining after categories 1-4, excel at the LSATs, get a 4.0 GPA in undergraduate (the major does not matter), and ace the admissions interview. Generally, there are only a handful of spots remaining by this point so you are competing with thousands of other applicants for a dozen or so spots. (In this regard, Legally Blonde is actually pretty spot on: a 4.0 in a fluff major is just as good as a 4.0 in an engineering major for Yarvard admissions purposes.)

graeme 6y ago
Do you have a source on this? I moderate reddit’s law school admissions forum and have never once heard of legacy admissions being a factor for law schools. I’m not saying it’s not a thing: Yale in particular may have different rules since they’re at the very top. But law school admissions are heavily heavily affect by gpa/LSAT medians. School rankings rise and fall based on those, and there’s no fudging it. I just searched the forum and the consensus seems to be legacy is at most a small soft, unless the parent is a large donor. (Softs tend not to count for much in law school apps unless you already pass the medians) https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/search?q=Legacy&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/search?q=Legacy...
- gamblor956 6y ago
  I moderate reddit’s law school admissions forum and have never once heard of legacy admissions being a factor for law schools. Harvard Law admitted to using legacy admissions in 2017, when it announced it was reducing (but not eliminating) the practice. And with all due respect, redditors' opinions are not authoritative on this matter, especially when they conflict with the actual statements of one of the institutions under discussion... But law school admissions are heavily heavily affect by gpa/LSAT medians. School rankings rise and fall based on those, and there’s no fudging it. Law school rankings are not based solely on GPA/LSAT scores. Numerous other factors go into the "rankings" and the weightings are modified every year, including the respective weight given to GPA/LSAT scores. Given that LSAT scores are no longer required at Harvard, you should be familiar with the reduction in weight given to LSAT scores in the rankings for the 2018 year and onward.