LSAT

The blogosphere has come down hard on Michigan Law School's recently announced Wolverine Scholars Program. I'm excited when any law school innovates, so I chatted with Dean of Admissions Sarah Zearfoss to find out what's what. Our Q&A below:

1. Could you explain what the Wolverine Scholars Program is and who is eligible for it.

Our new Wolverine Scholars Program will invite applications from University of Michigan undergraduates who have at least completed their junior year and at most are scheduled to graduate in Winter or Spring 2009 (that is, rising and graduating seniors) who have cumulative GPAs of 3.80 or higher; review will take place during the summer, and will substitute for the usual LSAT requirement an intensive review of the undergraduate curriculum. It is a non-binding program; if an applicant is admitted, he or she is free to apply to other law schools—but since we are not requiring the LSAT of the applicants, it is of course our hope that we will attract people for whom Michigan is their first choice, and who will choose to enroll here rather than going through the hassle of applying to other law schools (including the necessity of taking the LSAT).

2. You've come under a lot of fire in the blogosphere for the program. For example, MoneyLaw, Above the Law, TaxProf, and Prof. Henderson (of Indiana) have basically accused you of a transparent attempt to game the rankings. Prof. Henderson has gone so far as to say that "the only rational explanation is that Michigan seeks a rankings payoff." How do you respond to that? If gaming the rankings wasn't your only motivation, or your main motivation, what was your reasoning behind the program?

Well, I’d have to actually say the opposite is the case—that is, a desire to manipulate the rankings would NOT have been a rational motivation for this program. Consider, if that were the purpose, whether it would make sense for a public institution whose every admission decision in recent years has been subject to FOIA requests from multiple organizations to announce something so publicly! Further, since we anticipate being able to matriculate at most 5 to 10 Wolverine Scholars—a fractional sliver of our typical entering class of 360—this couldn't be a successful route for manipulating the rankings, even if we were so inclined. That number of people couldn't possibly affect our LSAT median, and is quite unlikely to affect the GPA median by even 1/100th, let alone materially.

Instead, we were motivated by a desire to strengthen our intra-institutional ties with the undergrad community, which is our single biggest feeder and at which, nonetheless, there is a persistent, unshakeable rumor that it is impossible to be admitted to Michigan Law if one attended Michigan for undergrad. As a result, we lose a lot of people who don’t apply, thinking it’s just not worth their time—and we therefore we miss getting applications from many students who would be great additions to our class. Relatedly, we needed to think creatively about ways to increase the applications we receive from our single biggest source of in-state residents (given that we are a public institution with a goal of matriculating 20% of the class as in-state residents). Bottom-line, we had well-considered policy objectives here, and our policy decisions have never been dictated by blind obeisance to rankings.

3. If you are willing to admit X students a year without an LSAT score, why require an LSAT score from the rest of the class? Why not just do away with it completely?

We have found the LSAT to be an excellent tool for predicting first-year grades, and believe that it is an exceptionally well-designed standardized test. That does not mean, however, that there may not be limited, special circumstances where reliance is not necessary, or not appropriate. We have a LOT of data on Michigan undergrads who enroll here at the law school, and the data lead us to be very confident that we can learn what we need to about ability to succeed here from a rigorous examination of the curriculum of those students who have proven themselves able to achieve at a very high level. We just don't have that body of data for other schools.

4. Some other law schools -- including top law schools like Georgetown and Northwestern -- have admissions programs that do not require an LSAT score. Any idea why people are piling on Michigan and not on those other schools?

Michigan certainly does get people's attention when it comes to admissions issues! But I suppose it's also timing; the programs that I know of are not of recent vintage, and I do think that attention to standardized tests and to rankings has really amped up in the last couple of years.

5. Colleges and business schools innovate constantly with their admissions requirements. For example, a number of top colleges make the SAT optional, while Harvard Business School has the 2+2 program. Why do you think law schools are generally so resistant to experimenting?

I confess I have found it rather surprising that in a climate where many organizations are examining the appropriate use of standardized tests, one very small outside-the-box step by one law school should attract such apparent shocked skepticism. Law schools (and the law as a field, more generally) tend to be very conservative in their approach to any proposed changes, however, and so I suppose the reaction was not completely unpredictable. I’ve had a lot of supportive emails, though, from prelaw advisors and admissions consultants, so I’m hoping that once the initial excitement winds down, the people who really matter to us—i.e., our applicants—will see that we're trying to be critically thinking about what we're doing. That can only be a good thing from their perspective.

I've decided that I need to be posting more of the discussions I have (largely by email) over the course of the day. I yak all day long about things that might be of interest to readers of the Ivey Files, and I need to get over the fact that reproducing things I've written in an email will by necessity offer up writing that is less than polished (although Lord knows that's true for blog postings as well).

So, just today, I was chatting with some people who were commenting on the habit of finance employers to ask job applicants for their SAT scores (as well as LSAT or GMAT scores, as the case may be). On the one hand, we laughed our butts off -- we're in our mid-thirties and can't imagine that a test we took back in, oh, 1989 (!!) could possibly say anything meaningful about us. Can SAT scores say anything meaningful about someone who just graduated from college? Maybe yes, maybe no. Some argued that SAT scores do say something about raw horsepower under the hood, while others argued that good SAT scores just prove you're good at taking the SATs. Either way, to people who aren't routinely dealing with recruiting practices in the the finance world, it seems weird to ask for the scores.

However, if employers are asking for the scores, then employers obviously see some value in that information, and I'm very curious where that value comes from.

From one of my emails:This is, I suspect, also a reflection of the fact that college grades, and college transcripts  as a whole, don't really mean squat [to the interviewer].Unless you have very inside-baseball *and* recent knowledge of a school's grading practices, as well as knowledge of the grading practices and substantive difficulty of individual courses and professors, transcripts really mean nothing. When I look at a transcript, I have no idea whether PHYS 325 is string theory or "Physics for Poets" (as the gut physics class was called at Columbia in my day). And when I was still on the job market, I was bummed that my law school transcript didn't say who taught my Financial Accounting class at the business school -- it was Roman Weil, and that actually means something to some people, but I never got the benefit of that on my transcript.

The uselessness of transcripts also leads to over-reliance on the name brand of the school to signal something about the applicant.We went on to discuss grade inflation more generally, and I recalled a Boston Globe article from the early 2000's about the fact that 91% of Harvard undergraduates had graduated with honors that year. (The rest of the ivies are pretty inflationary too, so I'm not just picking on Harvard, although it has seemed to be the worst offender.)

So I throw that out there, because transcripts are so unhelpful not just in the job hiring process, but also in the graduate school admissions process.  When applicants complain about the seeming over-reliance on standardized test scores, understand that most transcript are in fact very, very hard to interpret in any meaningful way.

Learned about this cool new test prep service based in NYC -- it promises a "holistic" approach to test prep, so you're not just learning how to ace the test (SAT, GMAT, LSAT, etc.), but also learning how to tackle your test anxiety and stress using tools like hypnosis. I haven't ever tried a holistic approach to test prep, but given the number of applicants I hear from who feel absolutely crippled by their test anxiety, I thought I'd share it with you here. Apparently the founder (Bara Sapir) also has a 5-CD course coming out.

More info here.

I received an interesting question recently from Nick, instructor at Mentor Test Prep in DC:

Several LSAT students have asked me what sort of discount an LSAT score that is won under accommodated testing conditions (usually extra time) is given in the minds of law school admissions officers.

I've told most of them that you likely won't hear it from the lips of admissions officers, but I imagine there would be a not-insubstantial discounting of that score, given the implications for the student's ability to excel under the strict timing requirements of law school exams and later practice.

Would you care to tackle that one?  I'm operating on pure gut instinct, and I'd like to be able to speak with some measure of authority on this matter.

This is a controversial topic, and I’m sure I’ll be receiving some hate mail in response, but here goes.

First: As an applicant, purely for admissions purposes, you're likely better off applying with a higher accommodated score than a lower unaccommodated one. (For human development purposes, though, I agree with Paragon to Pieces that accommodations can have a corrupting effect.) Law schools care an inordinate amount about the numbers, no matter what they say publicly. They don’t have to report accommodated scores to the ABA (and by extension to US News), but even so, higher numbers are always better. What an applicant has to worry about is how he stacks up with his higher accommodated number against someone with the same unaccommodated number. Better to be in that particular horse race, though, than to be outside of striking distance because of a lower number.

Second: Plenty of admissions officers are skeptical about accommodations for learning disabilities. They won't say that, but it's true. LSAC might accommodate someone who has trouble “processing information quickly” (or some variation on that theme), and law schools might accommodate such a person in the classroom. The real world won’t, however, and I worry – and plenty of admissions officers worry – about how people who lack skills that are fundamental to practicing law are going to do when they’re outside of the protective cocoon of law school.

Third: Admissions officers generally don’t like to read the reports that explain what the disability is, or what the specific accommodations were. All they look at is the asterisk next to the LSAT score designating it as accommodated. There are universities whose in-house counsel won’t even let admissions officers read the underlying reports. Why? Because knowing what the disability is opens admissions officers up to lawsuits under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Universities prefer to live in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell regime.

Fourth: What all that means for applicants is that if your disability is a physical one (rather than a learning disability), it’s in your interest to write an addendum explaining the nature of the disability. Someone who’s in a wheelchair is still going to have an easier time practicing law than someone who has trouble processing words quickly. If your disability is a learning disability, keep your mouth shut. Do not volunteer any information about the disability; just take the upside of the higher score, and the upside of don’t-ask-don’t-tell.

Fifth: This whole issue is likely to go the way of the dodo. As a result of lawsuits (naturally), neither the GMAT, the GRE, nor the SAT designates scores as accommodated anymore. The days of asterisked LSAT scores have to be numbered. See here, here, and here.

More Ivey Files postings on this issue here and here.

Interesting posting at blog 'Number 2 Pencil' here. (Her "About Me" page is interesting too.)

Article by an attorney who specializes in accommodations issues here.

Article in favor of non-designated scores here.

Some moron tried to buy an advance copy of the LSAT exam from two LSAC employees by leaving a hundred dollar bill under their windshield wipers in the employee parking lot. How profoundly stupid on so many levels, not least: did he really think they'd be tempted to compromise their ethics and jeopardize their jobs for a hundred bucks? What planet does he live on? (In the sting, he upped the amount to $5,000, which changed hands in a McDonald's parking lot. Classy.) He is now being charged with four felonies.

As an admissions officer I once busted a guy after I suspected that his LSAT report looked phony. Indeed it was, although I have to give him props for the quality of his forgery. It turns out he had broken into our offices to doctor his file, and things proceeded to their sad conclusion from there. Even sadder: he likely would have gotten in without the fraud, breaking and entering, etc.

It's depressing that people do such stupid things, with such alarming consequences, all just to get into law school. Law school!

Note to would-be cheaters: If you get busted, no legitimate law school or state bar will touch you with a ten-foot pole. Your career will be over before it even starts.

I'll put this one in the "what was he thinking" file...

Here’s a little secret that law admissions officers don’t want you to know. If you go up to them at a law school forum and ask, “Should I write an addendum about [insert blemish on record here]?” they will almost always say, “Yes, that’s a fabulous idea, I really want to hear about that sad tale in your application,” even if they complain bitterly to themselves about all the many stupid, whiny, zero-value-adding addenda they receive year after year after year.

Why? Because saying “yes” gets you out of their hair much faster, and it gets you out of their hair faster because that’s the answer you wanted to hear. Because saying “yes” means they get to watch you walk away happy and eager to apply and full of warm and fuzzy feelings about how kind and sympathetic those people at School X are.

If they say “no,” they’ll have to spend all this time deflecting your follow-up questions, and tapdancing around the fact that your reasons for flubbing your first LSAT are pretty dumb, or that there’s really little you can say in an addendum to mitigate a GPA that is way too low for them. It’s much, much easier to say “yes” and then ding you later when they’re not looking you in the eye.*

Reason number two: Remember that they want to drum up as many applications as possible and ding as many as possible to help their rankings, so scaring you off with a “no” would not be in their self-interest. They want you to think that you can talk your way out of a deal-breaking blemish with a simple addendum. But think of it this way: How irritating would it be to read gazillions of essays from people about how they really do look like Angelina Jolie, that the stupid mirror is “undermeasuring” them? That’s what a lot of applicants are effectively doing in their addenda, and you bet it gets irritating to read those over and over again.

Bottom line: Most addenda I’ve seen do more harm than good. I hope this gives some peace of mind to the applicants who drive themselves into a tizzy over the conflicting advice they’re getting about addenda, for example on this recent discussion board thread.

* Keep in mind that there are things you can do to mitigate a bumpy transcript, for example taking more courses to show them a cleaner, more recent set of grades, but doing is very different from talking, and addenda are usually all talk. And as I’ve written about in more detail in my book, I’ve rarely ever seen an effective LSAT addendum – didn’t prepare for the first one? Forgot to cancel? Decided not to cancel and took your chances after some guy’s cell phone went off during the entire reading comp section? None of those reasons reflects well on you in an addendum; just let the higher score speak for itself. Arguing in favor of the higher score is much less important now anyway since the ABA stopped requiring schools to average scores back in June 2006. Schools have a huge incentive to take your highest score, regardless of what they say about taking a “holistic” view of all your scores.

I came across this new blog today: Journey to Law School. I first learned of it because David (the blogger) had been kind enough to link to one of my Vault articles about law school personal statements, so I checked out his blog and really liked what I saw. A sample:The LSAT market is huge~ Each year approximately 120,000 people take this exam. Of them only 1% (1200) get 172 or above. The number of people taking the exam is growing each year. In short, the number of people with 172 and above is steadily increasing. Admissions to law school, in general, will become harder and harder.

The growing number of applicants, in part, is because law school is the default option for many. Why is law the default industry for failed pre-meds, post-college vagabonds, and unemployed liberal arts majors? Well, unlike business school, it doesn't require work experience, and unlike med-school, it doesn't require P-chem. Applying to law school is easy~ All you need is an undergrad degree, a respectable GPA and... you need to take the LSAT.

The LSAT, despite what people say, is the great equalizer. Honestly, it is a difficult test, and though I firmly believe that ANYONE can do well on it, it comes only after great sacrifice and due diligence. The LSAT can be studied; people can learn to think more logically (unfortunately, many people's minds do not think very logically...I know, I've taught this thing).

And despite all the moaning and whining out there, I truly believe that the LSAT is a perfect test (as perfect as it can get). It really does a good job of testing people's reading and thinking skills. In teaching this test to hundreds of students, I've seen it crop out the bright from the dense, the quick and keen from the slow and dull.

But even dense, slow and dull, can be made bright, quick and keen, given enough time and patience.

Sue Shellenbarger's most recent "Work & Family" column in the Wall Street Journal -- "Young Workers With Dyslexia, ADD Find Office Less Accommodating Than School" -- resonated with me. She notes that employers have not kept pace with the recent growth in diagnoses of learning disabilities and the accommodations Gen Y students have grown accustomed to at school.

I have mixed feelings about her call for more accommodations. I would guestimate that at least half of the Gen Y college students and recent grads I work with have been diagnosed with a learning disability, which makes me wonder whether something still counts as a disability when it seems increasingly to be the norm.

I also wonder -- and worry -- about the students who receive such generous accommodations in college (from both their schools and their parents) that they emerge from college convinced they can't handle even basic tasks. I worked with a recent college graduate a few years ago who refused, based on his disability, to assemble a list of graduate schools he was interested in and their deadlines. That's it. School, deadline. School, deadline. Repeat twelve times. I even showed him where to find the deadlines on the grad school websites. He was convinced he couldn't do it and reacted with shock and anger when I told him I wouldn't do it for him. I felt like the first person to say to him, "you must do this yourself."

Perhaps I was. I didn't need to ask him how he'd graduated from college -- a good one
-- with that (perceived) incapacity, because I knew that his parents
and school administrators had basically absolved him of having to do
anything for himself. I did, however, ask him how he would ever hold down a job if he couldn't handle a task as rudimentary as that one. All those accommodations had really set him up for failure. It was depressing. At what point are these accommodations exacerbating learning disabilities, and creating life disabiltities? Consider the accommodations that Shellenbarger recommends employers make available for this influx of learning disabled millennials:

• tape recorders to record or dictate information
• frequent short breaks
• quiet workspace
• specific filing or organizational systems
• varied presentation methods during training

The one that I find most unrealistic is the fourth -- since when is it the boss's job to keep an employee organized? Even the article, which is very pro-accommodations, quotes a Disabilities Act lawyer about employees who "have an undue sense of entitlement":

Attorney Patricia H. Latham of Washington, D.C., tells of a client with ADD who kept arriving to work late. "They're angry with me, and I don't think they should be, because that's part of my problem," the woman said and asked Ms. Latham to write her bosses a letter. Ms. Latham refused, telling the woman, "your employer doesn't have to put up with your being late to work."

There's no question in my mind that colleges and the parents of Gen Y feed that completely bonkers sense of entitlement and incapability. Could there possibly be a worse way to prepare college students for the working world?

The article also made me ponder the number of people who manage to wrangle learning disability diagnoses to secure accommodations on their standardized admissions tests. I know for a fact that some people game the system, and somewhere licensed professionals all sign off on this stuff, which makes it awfully hard to tell applicants, "that's bad -- don't do it." Interestingly, after being sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the makers of the GMAT exam no longer indicate on their score reports whether the test taker has been accommodated. LSAT score reports still do, but surely some litigious applicant (or more likely the applicant's parent) is putting a stop to that as I type.