To ED or Not to ED: 2015 Edition

Law school applicants are, on the whole, a neurotic bunch (I was ridiculous, if memory serves). When you start the application process, there's a lot to think about.  Where do I want to live?  Where do I want to work after I graduate?  What kind of debt am I looking at taking on?  What are the schools I can reasonably expect to get into?  What are some reach schools that are within the realm of possibility? The list really goes on and on.

One of the topics that I've heard most about from applicants is that of binding early decision (binding ED).  Many schools offer this option, and it holds out both the promise of getting a little bit of a boost in your application (many of the schools themselves say they'll give some weight to the fact that an applicant is so willing to commit to that school), but also the threat of having scholarship money reduced (since after admitting you, the school has no incentive to try to lure you with money).  The carrot-and-stick of binding ED creates a dilemma for many applicants, as they try to decide whether it's worth it to throw an ED app a school's way. For starters, you can only apply through binding ED to one school, so if you're dead set on doing it, you have to pick which school to which to apply ED. But applying ED may not be worth it at all; maybe you'd get in without ED, and have a better shot at scholarship money.

I'm here to try, in some small way, to add some food for thought for those pondering this dilemma.  Of the US News and World Report's top 50 law schools (as of 2015), twenty-six offer a binding ED option.  What I hope to show with this post is that only a small handful of those schools actually offer applicants any kind of "boost" by applying this way; the rest give no edge to ED applicants, and a few even seem to punish such applicants with a decreased chance of admission (more on that later).

First, though, it's important to acknowledge that not all binding ED programs are created equally. Some, such as Northwestern, George Washington University, the University of Texas, Emory, and Boston University, offer substantial scholarships - sometimes full scholarships - especially to ED applicants.  The calculation in applying ED to these schools is obviously much different and they are likely harder to get into as an ED applicant.  However, the binding ED options at the majority of schools come with no such benefits and, goes the theory, are likely to stiff you on scholarship money since...well, why not?  If accepted, you have to either attend that school or forego law school for a year.

So, without further ado, the analysis (which I've done on data from the 2009/10 cycle onward, except in the case of schools which did not offer binding ED that far back; in those cases, I've analyzed only the cycles in which binding ED was an option.  School names are hyperlinked to their webpages that cover their binding ED programs).  

The usual caveats apply here.  I am using user-reported data from Law School Numbers, with all the attendant accuracy concerns.  It's worth pointing out that, to the degree my analysis deals with scholarship money, I suspect there is a pretty serious problem with LSN users not reporting their scholarships.  Because of this, I end up counting everyone who didn't report as getting NO scholarship.  The data being what it is, there's no way around it.  That said, it's important to take all this with a grain of salt, but to take what I'll say regarding scholarship money with a HUGE grain of salt.  If you think you can do that, read on.  

Schools that do seem to give a boost to ED applicants (the number in parentheses is the % increase in the likelihood of being admitted as an ED applicant once LSAT, GPA, URM status, gender, non-traditional status, and timing of the application are controlled for):

List One: Schools that Have an ED Boost

1. Northwestern (601% - this is very surprising, given the full scholarship that accompanies admission)
2. The University of Chicago (525%)
3. Duke (487%)
4. George Mason University (277%)
5. The University of Virginia (220%)
6. The University of Pennsylvania (200%)

Do you pay a price for this boost, though, on the back end?  For some schools, you do.  Again, remember to take this with a grain of salt, given the lack of reliability of the data.  Parenthetical is the decrease in scholarship money associated with ED applicants at those schools, controlling for the same factors as before.  Schools that are not listed have no effect on scholarship associated with ED application:

1. The University of Chicago (-$11,102.00)
2. The University of Virginia (-$5,180.60)

Unsurprisingly, Northwestern ED applicants end up with more scholarship money than would be dictated by their other factors (LSAT, GPA, etc.) alone, due to the full scholarship that accompanies accepted ED applicants.

So, there you have it.  Of the twenty-six programs that offer binding ED options, seven of them actually seem to give applicants a boost for applying ED, but at the U of Chicago and U of Virginia, it seems that there's a chance your scholarship money will be reduced as an ED applicant (compared to identical regular decision applicants).

That, obviously, is not the end of the story.  The following schools offer binding ED options, but ED applicants seem to receive no differential treatment (in terms of admission, at least):

List Two:  Schools that Have no ED Boost

• Columbia
• The University of Michigan
• Cornell
• Georgetown
• The University of Texas
• The University of California at Los Angeles
• Washington University at Saint Louis
• The University of Minnesota
• The University of Southern California
• Boston University
• The University of Washington
• The University of Georgia
• The University of Wisconsin
• Indiana University - Bloomington
• Ohio State University
• The University of Colorado
• The University of Maryland

Of these schools which seem to give no differential treatment to ED applicants, two schools do seem to penalize ED applicants with lower scholarships.  Columbia ED applicants seem to get roughly $11,678 less than identical RD applicants, and that number is $10,150 for the University of Michigan. On the other hand, Boston University rewards ED applicants with a full scholarship.

Finally, ED applicants seem to have a lower chance of being admitted to the following schools:

List Three: Schools that have an ED Penalty

1. Emory ( -81% chance)
2. George Washington University (-73% chance)
3. New York University ( -65% chance)

The inclusion of George Washington University on this list makes perfect sense.  Given the full scholarship ED applicants receive, one would expect the ED process to be competitive.  The same can't be said for NYU and Emory, and I'm not sure I completely understand why they would be more likely to reject ED applicants than RD applicants with identical characteristics.  Also, it should be pointed out that both NYU and Emory give less money to ED admits as compared to their RD counterparts; for NYU, it's -$11,279, and for Emory it's -$26,392.50 (although the data set for Emory is necessarily smaller, since it didn't institute its ED program until the 2012/13 application cycle).

So what's the bottom line?  Great question.  Based on this data (and, one last time, you have to remember that it's based on self-reported and incomplete data, especially as regards scholarship money), I would say:

Schools that may be worth an ED application: Applying ED to Chicago or UVA might not be a bad idea, if you're willing to risk the scholarship hit and are absolutely sure that you want to attend (and doubt you'd get in as an RD applicant). An ED to Northwestern seems like an especially good idea if you're either sure you want to attend, or think you're unlikely to get into more attractive options, since you appear to be more likely to get in as an ED applicant (for some reason), and it comes with that full scholarship.  If you're sure you want to go to Duke, George Mason, or the University of Pennsylvania, it does seem like an ED application might give you a better shot, without the downside risk of decreased scholarship money.  And, although they seem to provide no boost in terms of admission, it may also be worth it to apply ED to the University of Texas, which offers a stipend to Texas residents and in-state tuition to non-resident ED admits, and Boston University and George Washington University, which both offer full three-years scholarships to ED admits.

Schools that are probably NOT worth an ED application:  I would absolutely not apply ED to any of Columbia, the University of Michigan, Emory, or NYU, since you don't seem any more likely to be admitted than if you applied RD, but you do seem more likely to get shafted on scholarship money if they do admit you (and in the cases of Emory and NYU, you may be less likely to be admitted anyway).  There also appears to be no upside whatsoever to applying ED to Cornell, Georgetown, UCLA, USC, Washington University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Washington, the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio State, the University of Colorado, or the University of Maryland.

Which schools are splitter-friendly? (Non-URM edition)

The question of which schools are "splitter friendly" comes up pretty often, and it's not really an easy question to answer.  Are we looking for schools to which a high percentage of splitters are admitted relative to non-splitter applicants?  Schools that seem to value an applicants LSAT score much more than his/her GPA?  How about schools that are willing to go really low on the GPA scale to nab those high LSAT scores?

There is actually a lot of overlap between those questions, but they're not all the same thing.  There is a ton of anecdotal evidence out there, but the point of this blog is to try to get to the bottom of what the numbers themselves can tell us.  With the "splitter friendly" question, it's not all that easy.

What I have done here is try to create an index number that incorporates information to answer questions posed at the beginning of the post.  Both that index, and the data used to compute it, are found in the table below.  I have to stress that because there is so little data available - and especially little data available on URM applicants - the following applies to non-URM applicants only, and is based entirely on non-URM applicant data.  I excluded URM data because it can really skew the overall picture, and I thought it best to do them separately (although I'll have to approach analyzing URM splitter data differently, due to a serious dearth of data).  Just to break down the categories for you:

Non-Splitter GPA: This is the mean GPA of admitted non-splitter applicants.
Splitter GPA: This is the mean GPA of admitted splitter applicants.
GPA Differential: This is simply the difference between the previous two categories, and gives an indication of how much lower on the GPA a school will go compared with its average in order to chase high LSAT scores.
LSAT Bump: This is a number from my own regression analysis, and indicates the % increase in the likelihood of admission for each additional LSAT point an applicant has.
GPA Bump: This is the GPA equivalent of the LSAT bump (the % increase for each .10 GPA).
LSAT/GPA Differential: This is the LSAT Bump divided by the GPA Bump, to give us a measure of the relative importance of the two.  The higher the number, the more relative weight the LSAT has.
Splitter Success: This is the % of splitter applicans in the data who were accepted.
Non-Splitter Success: This is the % of the non-splitter applicants in the data who were accepted.
Splitter vs. Non Success:  This is Splitter Success divided by Non-Splitter Success, and gives us a measure of how splitters fare vs. their non-splitter counterparts.  If a school admits splitters at a higher percentage than non-splitter, the number will be greater than 1 (and if the opposite is true, it will be less than one).  The higher the number, the greater indication that the school favors splitter applicants.
Index: This is the number I concocted to take into account the salient data from the other categories.  It is simply (GPA Differential + LSAT/GPADifferential) * Splitter vs Non Success.  The higher the number, the more splitter-friendly a school is.

The mean index number for the schools included is 2.68, so I set that as a benchmark, and then broke the schools down into five categories:

Very Splitter Friendly: These schools have an index number that is more than two standard deviations above the mean (Dark Green)
Splitter Friendly: These schools have an index number that is between one and two standard deviations above mean. (Light Green)
Neutral-Friendly: These schools have an index number that is between the mean and one standard deviation above. (Yellow)
Neutral-Unfriendly: These schools have an index number that is between the mean and one standard deviation below. (Orange)
Splitter Unfriendly: These schools have an index number that is more than one standard deviation below the mean. (Red)

No schools were more than two standard deviations below the mean, although Stanford was right on the cusp.  The neutral-friendly and neutral-unfriendly categories make me a little squeamish.  Since they are all within one standard deviation of the mean, they're all pretty average.  In the end, I decided it was better to distinguish between the above-average and below-average middle, though.

So, there you have it.  And next up, the numbers themselves, with the schools ranked in order of USNWR ranking:

So, there you have it. Remember, this is categorizing schools by their relationships to each other.  As you can see, there's not a whole lot of splitter love, in the grand scheme of things, going on in the Top 14.  Still, just as we can compare all the schools among themselves, we can isolate the Top 14 and do the same thing.  And since someone is surely interested in how that shakes out, why don't we just do it right now?

For the Top 14, I kept the categories and color coding the same, but based everything off the mean index score of just the T14, which was 1.55 (much lower than the overall average).  Here are the results:



Northwestern and Georgetown are the only schools we could call splitter friendly, and Columbia, NYU, Penn, UVA, and Duke all fall on the friendly side of average.  This more or less confirms the conventional wisdom you hear thrown around, but I guess I should stress once again that there's really not a whole lot of splitter friendliness in the T14 (outside Northwestern, I guess).

Ranking the schools by LSAT boost, waitlisted candidates included

Hey all.

I finally made it through the initial push in crunching and organizing numbers.  There is still a ton that can be done, and surely a lot I haven't thought of yet, but over the next couple weeks I am going to be posting preliminary results.  The first is from my Model 1, which includes accepted, rejected, and waitlisted applicants (I will shortly release the same ranking for my Model 2 results, based on data that only includes acceptances and rejections).

In the table below you will find schools ranked by the "boost" at each school associated with a one-point increase in LSAT scores of candidates.  The % number associated with each school is the % increase in the likelihood of an applicant being accepted vs. waitlisted or rejected (and also the % increase of an applicant being either accepted or waitlisted vs. rejected) for each additional LSAT point (think 169 vs. 168 here).  There are floors for the LSAT, for sure...a 148 is not X% more likely to get into Harvard than a 147, after all.

One of the problems with this is that there are almost certainly diminishing returns past a certain point with your LSAT score, so it's not a straight linear proposition.  Still, the goal here isn't so much precision (God, if I can just get one more LSAT point I'll increase my chances by X%!) but to both give a rough idea of how schools weigh the LSAT, and comparing the schools among each other.

Again, please remember that this is all done based on user-reported applicant data at Law School Numbers, with all the caveats that go along with it.

I'm not sure how many more ways I can disclaim this whole thing without sounding like I'm actually saying, "Pay not attention to what you're about to read", but again...there's no crystal ball here and I'm not a stats PhD.  Take this for what it's worth, and ask any questions you have.

Without further ado, 100 law schools ranked by LSAT boost:




Some notes:

• Every single solitary school I have data on had a statistically significant boost associated with LSAT scores.  While this is not surprising, the same can't be said (although barely) for the GPA, which I will post soon.

• See Stanford in last place?  That does NOT mean that Stanford doesn't care about your LSAT score!  The groups of applicants applying to each school is going to be reasonably homogeneous, so Stanford being last in the list just means that, relative to other schools, Stanford places less weight on the LSAT in drawing distinctions between largely similar applicants.  

• Eventually, I would love to figure out WHY schools give different boosts for the LSAT, using the numbers from the table as the dependent variable.  Off the top of my head, with six of the bottom ten spots being occupied by T14 schools, I'm thinking USNWR rank might be a good independent variable to include in the model.  If anyone can think of anything else (measurable) that I might include, let me know!

As always, feedback and input is not only welcome, but encouraged.

Very basic T14 vs. Non-T14 breakdown

I have been plugging away processing the data, putting together school profiles as I get requests, and generally trying to think of the best way to approach this.  I definitely appreciate the feedback I've gotten so far, so keep it coming.

I did want to do something quick to post while I continue working, so I thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at factors as they play a role in the top 14 law schools as compared to the rest of the law schools outside the top 14.  I'm using the same Model 1 as always, in which I regress these independent variables (LSAT score, GPA, earlier month sent, URM status, non-traditional student applications, and female) on the dependent variable, which in this case is the decision result (acceptance, waitlist, or rejection). Results are below:

                                

For those who are reading this blog for the first time, those percentages given correspond to the increase in the likelihood an applicant has of either

• Being admitted as opposed to being waitlisted/rejected
• Being admitted/waitlisted as opposed to being rejected

So, for instance, at a T14 school, you're 26% more likely to be admitted with a 173 LSAT as opposed to a 172 LSAT, all other factors being held equal.

Seems pretty clear that the T14 schools give much bigger boosts for numbers, earlier submission (want to get squared away earlier?), and both URM and female applicants (the URM boost is much bigger than that for the non-T14).  The only group of applicants that seems to fare better outside the T14 are non-traditional applicants, who get a little boost in the non-T14 but nothing at all in the T14.

Of course, there is plenty of variation within these two categories of schools, and that's what I'm working on.  But, I figured this would be worth looking at in the meantime.

Comments, feedback, questions, and requests welcome!