Harvard Law has its LSAT medians posted and I am wondering what the practical implications/takeaways are for someone who wants to apply. I understand what medians are, but am just confused about what the take away would be given the much bigger difference between 50 and 75 vs 50 and 25. The numbers are as follows:
25h percentile: 170
50th percentile: 174
75th percentile: 176
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https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Standard-509-Information-Report.pdf
In: 5
Realize that Harvard has the ability to accept the cream of the crop into their law school. The cream of the crop will score very high on the LSAT, most 174 and above. These candidates also usually have stellar academic grades, great references, and many other qualities desired by a top school. If LSAT is the only thing they cared about, they could accept only candidates 176 and above.
Harvard also accepts candidates for reasons beyond just their LSAT scores. These would include the children of major donors, children of high ranking government employees or elected officials, people who have done work outside of the classroom with high impact, women who were in a Ricky Martin video (note that Elle Woods scored 179 on the LSAT), or a variety of other reasons. So a number of candidates will be accepted even if their LSAT scores are not at the top.
Because of all of this, the LSAT distribution is skewed toward the high side, but not everyone is at the very, very top.
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