|"You've gotta know the rules if you wanna play the game." Part II.|

This is actually what the last post was intended to be about, but I got side tracked by the diversity discussion.

The USNWR takes into account factors other than LSAT score of admitted students in its methodology. One other factor is yield or matriculation rate. In other words, how many people who get into the University of Michigan actually become Wolverines? The problem with being any law school other than Yale (this includes Harvard and, to a lesser degree, Stanford) is that you are very likely to lose a number of students any given year to schools above you. At the same time, this should mean that, for any given school, you should be getting students from schools below you. And that is true, but conceivably you only want so many of them because the ones who are going to schools above you are the ones with the better scores and, logically, the ones being pulled from schools below have lower scores. Starting to grasp why "game" analogies are so pertinent?

On Brian Leiter's blog (a University of Texas law professor who publishes his own rankings, which curiously enough put UT at a much higher spot than the all too respected USNWR [8 vs. 15, I think]), a number of students wrote him last year complaining of the fact that they did not get into schools where they should have been a lock and that, in their opinions, the schools violated their "contracts." These kids complained, "I got into Harvard and NYU and Columbia, but was 'priority waitlisted' at UPenn and UChicago. What gives?" That's nothing close to a direct quote, but you get the gist. What gives is that those schools might have been engaging in what is called "yield protection."

Some members of the admissions committee out there in Hyde Park thought, "This kid is not coming to Chicago. No, she's going to go to Columbia and possibly try to leverage any money from us to get more money from them. Well we're not falling for it! Oh, but what if she does want to come to Chicago. Oh, we know, we'll 'priority waitlist' her. And we will give her the 'option' of writing another essay. If she writes it, clearly she does want to be here and we'll accept her post haste. Brilliant!" And the admissions committee was right. This girl isn't upset about having to go to Harvard. She's upset about not getting the acceptance letter she fully believes her $70 deserved. She doesn't care that she and they all knew she would not be matriculating. As far as she is concerned, she paid to have her qualifications for the school evaluated and because she got into Harvard she clearly must be qualified and that's all there is to that.

Now, it doesn't take a pre-law applicant to point out the problems in this logic, but before we go there, let's look at "yield protecting." I'm a law school, and I want an academically fortified and richly interesting entering class. And I'm small. My entering class is only about 250 students. There are far more students with the qualifications to be in my class than I can accomodate. Ahh, but how many of them want to be here? How many of them will stay if I let them in. They've paid me to evaluate them and I evaluate them as not being interested and that is something that I consider to be a very important qualification of getting into my institution. Worse still, what if I don't think they want to come but I let them in anyway because I suspect they won't come, but they do. EVERYONE DOES. Now I've got too many students and I have to build new dorms and make additional sections and reduce the number of 2L and 3L courses because I need to pull those teachers into teaching Contracts and Torts. Ahh, but if I don't let these kids in, then I don't have to worry about overenrolling. Better yet, if I waitlist them and they express interest, then if I am facing underenrollment, I can go to the waitlist, and I have right there a reservoir of high scoring kids who now want to come to me. And if they turn down my offer, I can just go to the next names on the list. Perfecto. Rah.

I dunno, yield protecting just seems like good business to me. The only real problem I see with yield protecting is that a school might turn down someone thinking he'll go higher when, in fact, the higher schools don't want him. But presumably they only out right reject people they don't want, that should not pose a problem. The student the school wants but does not think will matriculate will be waitlisted, and when he expresses interest, chances are he'll be accepted.

Now, to the students who feel gipped out of their $70 or $140 or $210 because you got into schools 1-5, but not all of schools 6-11: why do you think you deserve to get into those schools? You've assumed that you know the schools selection criteria. You heartily cling to the idea that schools decide things not based on numbers alone -- that is why you volunteered at the soup kitchen two nights a week every week of the semester just prior to your applying to law school, isn't it? -- yet as soon as it becomes evident that this process is about more than numbers, you get angry and bratty. Moreover, you've decided that because USNWR puts Yale at #1 that if you get into Yale, that should mean all 180+ ABA approved law schools below Yale should accept you with open arms. But besides all of the methodological flaws that are constantly pointed out in USNWR (even by you), there are several other (also flawed) methodologies that don't even place Yale in the top 5. But you've assumed that because USNWR says that Yale is THE school, that all other schools obviously must fall in line.

Moreover, why shouldn't your interest in attending the school be evaluated as well? Granted, the school is just second guessing (with the exception of Fordham, who actually asks you for a list of the other schools to which you're applying), but this whole process is guessing. Law schools are guessing you're an interesting or intelligent or decent person. Good grades or a good LSAT score or recommendations do not prove any of that, just suggest it. And if you couldn't think of a reason to write the why University of Michigan essay (or, worse still, coughed up a few quotes from the viewbook), then why should you get in? Just because you have a 3.9/176? No, I really don't think so.

You paid to be evaluated for admissions, but at no point did the law school say how they would evaluate you in anything but uncertain terms. If you want to be upset about not getting into your fifth or sixth choice school, be upset with yourself for having applied to a school you knew you weren't going to attend.*

*In defense of students, no one is an auto-admit anywhere and one can never know for sure where you will end up (unless you're the son or daughter of a very well connected alumnus).