At any educational institution there is going to be a group of students who are completely unprepared to succeed. This doesn't have to be simply a lack of intelligence; it could be that the prior experience and education laid an insufficient foundation for success, poor study habits, or an inability to adapt to meet the requirements of the school. I saw this while teaching English 101; I saw this in my kid's kindergarten class; and I certainly saw this in law school. I would say that about 50% of my entering class had no business being in law school whatsoever, and I spent many hours in Civ. Pro, Torts and Contract wishing that they would just gtfo already. Unsurprisingly, 1/3 of my class did not return for the 2nd year, and only about 50% graduated. I am not sure that the LSATs of the students who dropped out were markedly different from those who remained. What I do know is that I would not refer a client to or recommend for employment the vast majority of my classmates, even the ones who graduated and passed the bar. I will defer to the judgment of those in the T14 as to whether they feel the same about their colleagues.

W/r/t to the elite from my class (mostly I am thinking about my law review colleagues, but there were a handful that didn't do law review) it is a different story. I have tons of respect for them and would welcome the chance to work with them again. I don't know what their LSATs were, but I suspect that on average (a) they scored better than the average student in my school, and (b) they did not have scores that could get them into the T14.

this whole thing started because PBM is considering different law schools -- some where his LSAT "belongs" and some where his LSAT is much lower than virtually everyone else's.

if u want to get sugarcoated candyland advice, go to TLS. i'm not gonna sit here and watch someone bet $200,000 that he can get good grades vs. smarter people.


how is that racist? URMs almost always end up at schools that they don't belong at (lsat-wise) bc of AA. then they have a hard time getting good grades, as evidenced by the lack of URMs on law review. it's pretty compelling evidence that lsat matters if u ask me.

and i agree that not all TTTs are created equal and that there's more to good grades than LSAT scores. i don't think anyone is saying otherwise. all i'm saying is that ALL THINGS EQUAL, the 175 is usually going to beat the 159. we're not talking about situations where the 159 got high during the LSAT or the 175's mom dies during finals. it's silly for the 159 to assume that he's gonna "work extra hard" to beat everyone because everyone goes into school thinking the same thing.

I know I'm bias, but Wake is definitely an elite undergrad. and im not trying to derail, but those of you who dont think it is are probably misinformed about the school (probably because its so small and because Duke is right next door)

There is the saying don't discuss religion or politics in polite company - I have found that a serious discussion about the nature and measurement of human intelligence causes more hard feelings than those two topics combined.

Otherwise, I think disko's advice is well taken. The bottom line is that paying full sticker to go to any law school is massively risky, and to the extent that getting a job that justifies the debt load depends on crushing gradewise, putting yourself in a position where you are one of the least credentialed at your school is riskier still.

But the issue here is whether he could succeed if he was competing against JR for a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader.

disko i told a bunch of GULC students last night about how you lived in new york your 3L year. instead of expressing disbelief, most of them were surprised at first, then thought about it and then realized it's entirely practical/plausible.

haha nice.

did u say "friend" or "guy from that internet site i post on"

i always get weird looks when i go with #2

That's why I always just use "a guy I know" when referring to internet people IRL.

^^ exactly this.

I have no dog in the fight one way or another, but the ranking system for undergraduate schools is so terribad that without fine tooth comb analysis, the ranking system really fails once you get past the super elite schools (doubt anyone is gonna argue Harvard/Yale/Princeton being top 3 etc). The point of being elite is ACTUALLY being elite, not just getting in the top 25 of US News rankings.

For example, comparing it to the small liberal arts college down here (New College of Florida) both schools have the same 25th/75th ACT scores of 27-31, Wake's SAT is 1220-1400 vs 1220-1410 for NCOF. These are essentially peer schools, yet New College is ranked 94th. And I don't feel like going through all of them 1 by 1 but I have a feeling NCOF is not the only school like this.

You are not going to find any 2 law schools ranked 70 places apart with the exact same statistics like that.

But then there is sometimes that weird moment if someone asks where you know them from. "Oh uh...the uh....the Internet."

yea i said a guy i know

i was afraid someone would ask what his name is. i already decided i'd say richard (disko sounds like dick obv) lol.

lol just make up a name. at that point you kind of have to imo.

question:

will applying for need based fee waivers look bad on my application? i want to say no but maybe spending too much time on SL makes me think that they'll look down on it and it could count against me (only very slightly)

i could pay the $1k for all my application fees but i live with my single mother and i'm pretty sure i can get ~85% of them waived if i apply.

No it won't look bad. Also, tons of schools will just give you a fee waiver if you email them and ask for one.

fee waivers wont make u look bad

I see the point but it is unreasonable to argue with someone that they are too dumb for something. People are not going to agree they are too dumb to achieve what they want to achieve, it is only going to make them angry.

Besides if a serious discussion about the nature of intelligence revolving around a test or a handful of tests it is not a reliable measure. There are a number of reasons why someone doesn't do well in a particular exam that have nothing to do with intelligence. I won't insult your intelligence by explaining all the variations that go into explaining a test score.

That comment was intended to apply more broadly than just to the debate in this thread, or to standardized testing. There is rarely a good reason to discuss who you think is smarter than whom, and how you came to that conclusion. I have definite ideas on what constitutes intelligence (and it has little to nothing to do with performance on standardized tests), but I have learned not to share them, because even though I feel like I could do so in a detached, rational, philosophical discussion, people have never taken that way. Instead they seem to think that I am evaluating their own intelligence. So in the end I learn nothing about the subject (because my counterpart isn't interested in engaging in that discussion) and cause tension and hurt feelings.

The advice was really directed toward disko, who throws around the terms "smart" and "dumb" with regularity when talking about LSATs, the student population, and performance in law school. Predictions about success in law school do not require the use of these terms - as I posted earlier, intelligence is not the only factor that goes into academic success anyway. I would remove those terms from not only this debate but from many others.

I would like to hear what these definite ideas are. I think it is possible to debate this topic without getting personal. Engage me sir, please.

My only problem with this topic is it moves into the philosophy thread part of 2+2 and it may be not applicable to the law school thread. Perhaps with a bit of reference points to law in amongst the intelligence debate, we may be able to get by.

FYI, I am a philosophy graduate currently studying law...

let me make something clear:

when i say "smart" or "dumb" in this thread, i really mean "more likely to achieve good law school grades" and "most likely to do poorly in law school"

i don't believe intelligence can be measured by a the LSAT or any standardized test but for the purposes of this thread all we really care about is a person's ability to do well on law school exams and the LSAT is really all we have. the people getting offended by what i'm saying should have a little more common sense. i think it's silly for me to have to say "don't go to yale-- everyone there is more likely to do well on law school exams but potentially less likely to do well on math tests, art, etc"


as for the intelligence discussion:

it's no secret on this forum that i did very very well on the lsat and very well at a t14 law school. am i "smart"? i don't know. what i do know is that i have a very limited scope of exceptional ability and things like the SAT, LSAT, IQ tests, puzzles, etc fall within this scope. it's hard to understand but when i took the SAT and LSAT the right answer was basically flashing in neon green lights. i also suck at math, science, music, art and i can't build things, fix cars or cook. an IQ test will say that i'm smarter than the guy who is an expert violinist but i'm not sure the test encompasses all aspects of "intelligence"-- maybe he's truly the smarter guy.

but just like i can admit that i'd probably get crushed at a math competition by guys who outscored me by 50 points on a math test, ppl itt need to be honest with themselves and their chances at doing well on law exams vs ppl with monster lsat scores. i promise "hard work" isn't gonna close the gap.

I'm just surprised people ITT don't feel there is a stronger correlation between good grades and hard work. It might not pan out over the long term, but especially for that first semester 1L year, it seems like the people that did the best were the people that did the most work. Most work, as in spending literally every waking moment doing something law school class related. Of course there are outliers both ways (people that worked hard and got bad grades, and fewer people that didn't work hard and got grades), but it didn't surprise me that our #1 was a girl that moved 200 miles away from her husband and spent every waking second doing something for school. In the subsequent years, it kind of evened out as people got lazier and/or happy with their class rank and did less work to maintain it.

Perhaps it is my school, or just the law in general, but the thing that most surprised me was the genuine absence of brilliant intellects. Not saying there aren't smart people, but rather that next step above smart. I feel like I've only known one guy in law school that has a superior intellect (not to me, just in general, but nonetheless he's way smarter than me) and one just absolute freak (one of my good friends, he's a crass Brooklyn born dude with a questionable past that just happens to have a near eidetic memory). On the flip side, I knew 4 or 5 people with this same level of intellect in my undergrad physics/math program.

Re: Superior Intellects

I kinda felt the same way during law school, and one time it came up when I was talking with this guy who had been in a physics phd program and never finished it. He said something along the lines of it's a lot easier to "look and sound" smart when you're talking about something like plasma production or whatnot than policy considerations in torts.

i think this is mostly right but you need to remember that the vast majority of people at a law school are very similar in terms of GPA/LSAT so things like hours of study separate the top from the bottom. common sense would say that a guy with a 165 who studies 50h/wk will have better grades than a guy with a 165 who studies 5h/wk.

but a problem arises when a guy with a 155 goes to a school with 175s and risks $200k because he's gonna "try really hard." what i've been trying to say over the last few pages is that the 175s can beat the 155 with minimal effort no matter how hard he tries. we got sidetracked bc i was saying they are "smarter" which offended some people but i still believe that the 175s are so better equipped to do well on a law school exam than the 155 that risking $200k in hopes of beating them out is incredibly incredibly foolish.

i know there are some ppl out there who believe lsat doesn't mean anything but a bunch of stuff we've seen ITT seems to indicate otherwise: u have karak who demolished one school and did above average at a harder school, guys like me and ajrenni who went to schools where we don't "belong" and completely demolished, the fact that URMs almost never grade onto law review, etc.

I go to 7 hours/week worth of lectures and study 0 hours a week until 2 weeks b4 exams. During those 2 weeks I study max 5 hrs/day. On exam day I bring in other peoples' notes. These notes that people prepare are 200 pages (40,000 words) for one subject.

My grades aren't amazing but I've never failed either.
I'd like to think I would be an 85%+ student if I did the kind of work other kids are doing. I've heard it's up to 50 hours a week...

It scares me how much work people do. Disko - how many hours do u study?

In fact, it would be an interesting question to ask the law students on the forum, if you take my strategy of studying 2 weeks before an exam and are guaranteed 70% in a subject

or

study 50 hours a week and guaranteed get 85% +

Which option would you choose? Is 500 hours worth of life really worth 15 lousy marks?

1st year i went to ~75% of classes, did most readings and studied/outlined for an hour or two per night. kicked it up a notch the month before finals and did 4+ hours per night plus a few all-nighters after classes ended but before finals began. i had a supplement for each class. i had very good grades and was on LR.

2nd-3rd years i can literally count on one hand how many classes i attended (except my seminar) and didn't study (i didnt read 1 sentence of material) until 2 weeks before finals. i got a ton of Bs, a few As and a C (which was really an A- but i got 0/20 for class participation and had my grade lowered).