No LSAT Allowed in Michigan Law School’s Special Admissions Program

Skeptical
Sep 26, 2008 5:33 AM CST

Resilience in dealing with adversity?  I smell affirmative action.

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notsokeptical
Sep 26, 2008 5:54 AM CST

In response to Skeptical, I think you smelled wrong.  There are plenty of students who have had to deal with adversity who aren’t “diverse.” 

Besides, these kids have to have a 3.8 in order to get into the program and the median G.P.A. is 3.6 for their program. 

They aren’t necessarily doing these kids any favors, especially since they CAN’T take the LSAT which will limit their ability to apply to other programs.

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Mindcrime
Sep 26, 2008 6:04 AM CST

In the wake of the affirmative action companion cases regarding the same institution, nonsosketical, I think that “skeptical” supra has a point.

As for the difficulty of obtaining a 3.8, there a numerous institutions that have sizeable number of graduates with this GPA, as grade inflation is even more rampant now than when the topic was first broached by the media years ago.

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Tester
Sep 26, 2008 6:23 AM CST

I think the article gets it right- UM wants to pad the good old GPA average.  I don’t think the LSAT is that much worse in predicting attorney competence than law school itself.  Then again this article isn’t about the value of standardized testing, but what UM is doing.  Separately, I must confess that I actually immediately understood the “Carlton Banks” reference above.

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Karl Meurlot
Sep 26, 2008 6:25 AM CST

Appears to be another attempt by the law school to get around the prior problem with the admissions process for which the law school got its hands slapped by the court.  They get a 4.0 for innovation and a 1.0 for good judgment.

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Guts
Sep 26, 2008 6:31 AM CST

mindcrime- the program only applies to U of M undergraduate students so grade inflation elsewhere is irrelevant.
Is there some study that shows minorities perform poorly on the LSAT in comparison to their GPA?  To me that seems like the only way Affirmative Action gets into this discussion. 
What a risk for an U of M undergrad.  If you go this route, it’s Michigan or bust.

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brad
Sep 26, 2008 6:43 AM CST

Right on skeptical! 

Resilience in dealing with adversity?  I ALSO smelled affirmative action.

This is just a way to find out if someone was a minority without granting them special perks and ruining their ranking because they cannot score as high on a standardized test as the “rich white kids’ that have propped this school up for too long.

U of M law is a joke and AA admissions and scholarships is racist and reverse discriminatory.

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The Chum
Sep 26, 2008 6:50 AM CST

Frankly, if they were serious about this sort of thing, they would remove names, races, and genders from their application, and conduct interviews over the phone, where the interviewer could not forward on gender information.

They won’t do that of course, because then the results, although completely non-biased to the applicants, wouldn’t look “diverse” enough, or wouldn’t have enough of x gender, or there wouldn’t be enough Zoroastrians, or whatever the cause-du-jour is for that admissions cycle.

I will grant them that refusing the applicants the ability to take the LSAT is a smart idea. Those kids that apply had better be good enough to take that risk.

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Brian
Sep 26, 2008 6:56 AM CST

About time that a school looked at the entrance requirements and decided to use indicators that have meaning. 

I remember my LSAT experience.  I had just completed the CPA exam the month before the LSAT that I had signed up to take.  After the CPA exam I was too exhausted between it and my work to consider taking the exam and was going to skip it.  My girlfriend when she realized I was going to pass on it pressed me to take it just for the practice.  I never opened the LSAT envelope or looked at the practice questions, format or anything.  In fact on the way to the exam site I was heading to the law school and my GF opened the envelope and saw the address of the site that was at the undergrad campus half way across the state from where I was going.  I did a turn and we got to the school and I never did look at the material.  Took the exam with no prep and walked out figuring there was no way I did well considering others had taken prep courses costing thousands, taken multitudes of practice exams, etc.

When the marks came out, it turned out I had one of the highest marks in the State and only applied to 1 law school and was accepted.  Of course work experience, undergrad marks, etc. also played a role, I’m sure. 

All during law school my study mates tried to find out my LSAT grades that were only divulged just before graduation and were found to be the highest of anyone in my entering class.  As for getting through school, my experience with the CPA curriculum and exam was far more relevant.  I found good study habits and attention in class, both in under grad school and law school meant something and the LSAT experience had no meaning.  In fact, some of the top students at graduation had the lowest LSAT grades.

I also am a proponent of eliminating the bar exam if you graduated from an ABA approved school.

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CAT
Sep 26, 2008 6:57 AM CST

Re: #13:  I’m not sure how a poor LSAT score can be plaguing you in job applications.  Why do you bother reporting it?  I worked in career services at a law school and don’t believe I’d encountered employers asking.  Grades—absolutely.  LSATs—can’t remember it happening.

It will be interesting to see how well this works—getting a 3.8 is no small task at U of M.  Whatever their goal with the program, if it brings up entering GPA and improves their rank, it may be a smart move.

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a
Sep 26, 2008 7:08 AM CST

I have worked for 4 different firms.  No one ever asked me about an LSAT score.

By the 3rd job switch, they didn’t care about what my grade point was either.

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jg
Sep 26, 2008 7:12 AM CST

Firms should cancel OCI there?  Please.  Most big law firms WANT affirmative action a law schools and business schools.  And why is that?  For the same reason that law schools want it - there is a benefit from diversity and diverse background experiences.

And don’t cry affirmative action for students who have to get a 3.8 at Michigan undergrad, which I would imagine is a very high bar.  The real motivator behind this policy is probably that UM, like all state schools, tends to have lower LSAT and GPA scores because UM has to take 25% in-state students.  This way, UM can avoid the drag that these students have on their statistics.

This also makes sense in that UM admissions is going to be very familiar with what it means for a student to get certain grades in certain classes from certain professors.  The admissions officers can derive more information from a UM transcript than from college transcripts in general.

I think this is a smart way to meet their in-state quota and not get penalized by US News.

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My Name
Sep 26, 2008 7:14 AM CST

Let’s look at this from another perspective.  How many UM students exist? 
How many UM students have a 3.8 GPA?
How many of these students are eligible for the Wolverine Scholars Program?
After graduation, how many of these eligible students actually plan to go to law school?
How many of these eligible students wish to go to UM Law?
Ultimately how much of the UM student body REALLY gets affected? 
I would think a student with those kinds of credentials at 20, 21 or 22 years old would be able to make a somewhat intelligent decision as far as their academic career is concerned.  Weigh the options and decide whether to take the LSAT from there.  If they take the LSAT, that just means they’re no longer eligible for the Wolverine Scholar Program.  The reference made by poster #19 doesn’t indicate they can’t apply to UM Law in the “traditional” fashion. That’s my $.02.

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Jim Eddington
Sep 26, 2008 7:26 AM CST

@24 who said: “For the same reason that law schools want it - there is a benefit from diversity and diverse background experiences.”

Ummmm, if there is one, that certainly isn’t true simply because you happen to repeat the mantra they use to defend such practices.

I’ve hired any number of attorneys in my time, and never once can I say that some irrelevant physical trait, ever had any bearing on their ability to practice law. Why is that? Because physical traits don’t have any bearing on someone’s ability to practice law.

The only way one can claim that x physical trait leads to “diversity” is if they stereotype that person because of that trait. Which, of course, is just as wrong as stereotyping anyone for any unrelated physical trait.

That’s just idiocy. “Appearing in broad daylight with police everywhere, ladies and gentlemen, there’s only one word for that: idiocy.”—Kent Brockman

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Michigan Law Grad
Sep 26, 2008 7:32 AM CST

LOL, I have two comments:  first, the reason why the law school is dropping the LSAT for undergrads is because most of the students are from in-state, and having attended an out-of-state private university, the average GPAs/LSATs for in-state students is LOWER than for those like I, which means one thing, and one thing only:  the overall LSAT scores will increase significantly, which will translate into a higher metric for, you guessed it, the USN≀ rankings!!!!  Michigan Law has dropped in the rankings and all of us are very upset over it.  Second, and this addresses the 3.8 threshold, Michigan is a very large public school, and like UCLA and Cal, and to a lesser extent Virginia and North Carolina, the kids have to devour each other to gain the attention of their professors to get good grades and letters of recommendation.  There is little grade inflation at Michigan, merely because of the literally thousands of undergrads who compete brutally for good grades….thank goodness I had the good sense to attend a private college!

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Mark Johnson
Sep 26, 2008 7:40 AM CST

The assumption that a high undergraduate GPA equates to a high law school GPA is not exactly a “given.”  Maybe I’m an oddity, but both my UGPA and my LSAT were at approximately the median for my class.  Somehow, I graduated No. 1.  There is no perfect indicator of law school success, but I agree with other commentors that this smells of affirm. action and an attempt to game the rankings.

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BigLaw
Sep 26, 2008 7:51 AM CST

I’m sick of all these whiners complaining that LSAT scores and GPAs aren’t accurate predictors of performance.  So what is a law school (or for that matter, a potential employer) supposed to do, magically peer into the goodness of your soul?  Get over it.

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Elwood
Sep 26, 2008 8:04 AM CST

One point being missed in all of this is the fact that Michigan takes, by far, the lowest percentage of in-state students of any public related law school in the country and less than many highly ranked private law schools. At last count it was below 25% and dropping to less than 20r;om Michigan. In comparison, UVa. takes maybe 70r;om instate and only about a third of its students from out of state .Because Michigan is a relatively large State, there really is no need to hide ther elatively low number of in-staters’ LSATs. To the extent it can be determined, the statistics for the in-staters is very comparable to the out-of-staters- in marked contrast to UC Berkeley or UVa. Consequently there has to be another motive here.

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Ann
Sep 26, 2008 8:27 AM CST

You cannot criticize the percentages of in vs. out of state without also noting the percentages of applications for each.  Does anyone have those numbers?

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Jade
Sep 26, 2008 8:42 AM CST

affirmative action? if someone gets a 3.8 at u of m, their subsequent successes are not based on affirmative action!

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Double Skeptical
Sep 26, 2008 8:45 AM CST

I concur with commentator no. 3.  Another poorly conceived attempt to use affirmativeaction in the admission process.  One has to wonder why the academic community never gets it right.

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Andrej Starkis
Sep 26, 2008 9:10 AM CST

Having taught for some years at a private (non-ABA-approved) law school that has never required the LSAT—and doesn’t consider it in admissions even if an applicant has taken it—turns out well-trained lawyers, and costs about a third of what other private law schools charge, Michigan’s move and all the comment above are mildly amusing.  The LSAT is a convenience tool for admissions staffs and a manipulable element in the great ratings-game myths.  It may have some utility in assessing baseline ability to handle law school and the bar exam, but that baseline is far lower than most schools would admit.  I’ve been doing a bit of research with the LSAT and bar-pass results of those of our past students who had taken the LSAT and thereafter took the bar.  The preliminary findings suggest that while bar-pass results fall off dramatically for LSAT scores under 140, above 145 there is little significant difference in bar pass rates.  What differences I found even suggest that those who scored 145-149 had a slighly better bar-pass record (over 80% on the Mass. bar) than did those between 150 and 155. Motivation perhaps.

It’s been encouraging lately to see not only the beginnings of a move away from the LSAT (like the undergraduate moves away from the SAT), but also the movement in many law schools toward actually training lawyers to be lawyers, as we’ve been doing against active ABA opposition for over 20years.

It’s always nice when others discover (though they’re unlikely to admit it) that what you’ve been doing all along has been right.

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EastCoastLawProf
Sep 26, 2008 9:26 AM CST

Rather than assuming they’re just playing a rankings game, how about seeing this as a great way to connect with students who are more likely to stay in Michigan, thus providing a greater good to the state?  Instead of losing some of the top undergrad students, they’re keeping the ones who won’t have geographical limitations against Michigan in their final determination.  The article could do a better job of indicating that the application would be submitted BEFORE most students would have taken their LSAT.  This just takes the “Wolverine Scholars” out of the general pool that might otherwise decide to apply to a Yale, Chicago, or Columbia, and deepens those students’ connection to Michigan (the school, and, possibly, the state, which has recently made a push for growth that could be helped by maintaining some of our country’s best lawyers to support revamped industries in the state). 

As for those who have commented on affirmative action, there is no indication that a student with a 3.8 or higher GPA who yields her or his opportunity to apply to any school in the country in order to attend Michigan law is somehow manipulating the system by (somehow, unfairly) being of a historically discriminated against group (be it based on race, sex, or some other determinant), and having the burden of explaining the overcoming of adversity in their admission application.  This type of accusation asks us to ignore our better angels, and to vilify any program that might disproportionately (to their numbers in our society) benefit groups concerning which there have been past findings of de jure or de facto discrimination.  I would hope members of our profession would consider: (1) that there’s no indicator of preferences in the Michigan proposal (other than to Michigan undergrads with a high GPA), and (2) that the claim of reverse discrimination where there exists the vaguest specter that some previously discriminated against groups might face lesser discrimination by a process change calls on us to engage in a discriminatory investigation to insure that such groups are NOT helped.  I would note that the second point is not implicated here, as there appear to exist valid grounds for this program that are completely race/gender/religion/etc. neutral.

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Skeptical of Skeptical
Sep 26, 2008 9:35 AM CST

So let me see if MY issue spotting is still sharp:

you see the phrase “adversity” and you automatically assume “minority” ...

As a minority myself, I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that although there has been a historic adversity faced by minorities, there are still many non-minorities who face adversities as well ... a quick glance at the racial make-up of welfare recipients would illustrate that point.

Further, as someone else posted earlier, this is NOT an edge by any stretch of the imagination. Not only is carrying a 3.8 after (a typical) 4 years at any undergraduate school (much less Michigan) daunting in of itself, but to add that the applicant CANNOT even sit for the LSAT (thus eliminating every other accredited law school as an option) is, in a word, stupid.

Considering, for example, that a Michigan undergrad with a 3.9 is not guaranteed admission to the Law School but will only be considered ... AND ... that there is no indication (at least in the report above) of how many 1L seats will be filled by those “Wolverine Scholars” then, unfortunately, I’m still left with that one word ... stupid.

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Jacqueline Sharp
Sep 26, 2008 9:43 AM CST

I have but one comment, no test or series of tests, not the LSAT nor the bar exams which admit new attorneys to practice for that matter are fair predictors of ability or success.  That said I do think that U. of Michigan should realize that potential students are forced to take the LSATS by necessity; alternative schools where they apply may require it.  Hence, in issuing the warning that their admissions department will not look at such applications seems to be self-defeating.  Only the least bright will forego the LSATS.

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