The Volokh Conspiracy
[Orin Kerr, February 22, 2008 at 12:48pm] Trackbacks
Inside the Yale Law School Admissions Process:
The Yale Daily News has the scoop. Link via Howard.
great unknown (mail):
So basically, this is a process to screen out right-leaning students, because of course, the enlightened faculty at Yale would never dream of inviting that kind to be their colleagues.
2.22.2008 12:04pm
3L:
Very interesting from a management perspective that the system forces the faculty to "buy into" the group of admitted students. I can only imagine it would be a very different culture if the faculty at my school were so closely involved with the incoming students from before even matriculation.
2.22.2008 12:29pm
Terrivus:
The most interesting aspect, which I think plausibly explains a major difference -- and many derivative differences -- between Yale and Harvard law schools:

"Harvard’s admissions officers, who were all formerly practicing lawyers, look for the qualities that will make the applicant a successful attorney, he said, whereas professors might look for applicants who lean toward academia."

And the oddest aspect:

"Each reader rates the application on a scale of two to four based on his own criteria."

Because a scale of one to three would just be silly.
2.22.2008 12:49pm
Ben P (mail):

"Each reader rates the application on a scale of two to four based on his own criteria."

Because a scale of one to three would just be silly.


I suppose that it mightreally be 1-4, however, all of the one star applications are cut from the pool before it goes to the faculty.
2.22.2008 12:59pm
OrinKerr:
Terrivis,

I think this explains it..
2.22.2008 1:08pm
Wallace:

First, Rangappa reviews all the files in the order they are submitted — not sorted by grades or test scores. She identifies about 50 to 80 applicants who are so outstanding that they are “presumptive admits,” reviewed by Rangappa and one other faculty member serving as the admissions committee chairperson, a position that changes every year and is designated by the dean.


Rangappa gets to pick over 1/4 of the class and the Admissions chair gets a veto. That's a lot of discretion. They must really trust Rangappa.
2.22.2008 1:22pm
Westie:
Terrivus,
A "1" in that scale is useless. The faculty are basically grading by quartile, with 1 being the worst, and 4 the best. Any student getting a 2 or below from any single faculty member is likely doomed. Getting a 2 or 1 from a pair of faculty members is absolutely toast. Why waste time giving (or having the possibility of) a "1" when a "2" is determinative?
2.22.2008 2:19pm
Jamessadfasdfasfd:
That's just it: if the "2" is determinative, the scale is really 1-3, but they've changed the numbers' labels.
2.22.2008 2:29pm
dawg (mail):
Why nothing about diversity? Race matters, and such erasure of people of color by straight white christianists like Rangappa and the rest of the mostly straight white christianist male faculty of privilege smacks of racism.
2.22.2008 3:04pm
DavidBernstein (mail):
At least when I was a law student, I was told by a professor that children of alumni get an extra "1" point, so that a 10 becomes an 11 or an 11 becomes a 12.
2.22.2008 3:51pm
Michael Guttentag (mail):
When I was at the law school, faculty had to divide their stack into four quartiles (rated 1 to 4). This made it possible to estimate a correlation coefficient between the ratings different faculty members give the same student. For example, if ratings were perfectly correlated and they were selecting 150 students from 1,000 applications, there would be too many students even among those who receive 12 to accept all students. I ran the calculation based on the numbers when I was there, and the correlation between various faculty members ratings had to be pretty close to zero for the system to work. Seems like the same may be true today, though we don’t have quite enough data in this article.
2.22.2008 4:34pm
James Grimmelmann (mail) (www):
Perhaps the scale actually runs from 1 to 4. That would make it a four-point grading scale like the school uses (fail, low pass, pass, high pass)--except that just as no one ever gets a fail, no one ever gets a 1.
2.22.2008 4:37pm
DavidBernstein (mail):
I should also add that some students did seem to get in rather randomly, because they happened to have their files read by professors who "took to them" for unknown reasons. One of my classmates was quite surprised to have gotten into Yale, because his LSATs were not that strong, and he was rejected by every other law school in between Yale and Penn in the rankings.
2.22.2008 5:21pm
Brian G (mail) (www):
Who cares about Yale? I rolled a Stanford and Yale guy on summary judgment and a 10th Circuit appeal in the last year, and I went to a so-called second-tier law school.

In litigation, it isn't the Yale/Harvard/Stanford/Michigan guys that scare me, it's the scrappers who went to U of Texas, U of Arizona, and U of Kansas, for example that make me nervous. Those "top school" guys are theoretical soldiers, and little more when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of winning a multi-million dollar insurance case before a jury and preserving it on appeal. I always ays, "those guys can talk you to death about a 1983 case. I have actually won several of them."
2.22.2008 7:27pm
Duffy Pratt (mail):
David:

I'm pretty sure you have it wrong about alumni children. As I understood it, alumni children get an extra reading and the lowest score is dropped. That may, or may not, amount to an extra point. It means that some who got 10s might get an 11 or 12, and some with 11s might get a 12. The professors don't know who the alumni children are when they are reviewing the applications.
2.22.2008 8:47pm
TerrencePhilip:
Brian G, I assume that was a parody of the obligatory "I beat an Ivy Leaguer in court once so I'm just as smart as they and by the way I'm not bitter AT ALL" posts we get in every thread discussing the prowess of students and graduates of top schools?
2.22.2008 9:33pm
pcharles (mail):
I thought they had Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul &Simon Cowell go through the Yale Law School applicants and get rid of the pitchy ones as well as the "truly awful" ones.
2.23.2008 10:25am
Ben P (mail):

Brian G, I assume that was a parody of the obligatory "I beat an Ivy Leaguer in court once so I'm just as smart as they and by the way I'm not bitter AT ALL" posts we get in every thread discussing the prowess of students and graduates of top schools?


Why should it be a parody?

I'm not going to knock HYS, if they weren't good they wouldn't be at the top of the rankings, but I believe many people from these schools do place an inordinate amount of faith in the name.

I didn't apply to HYS so I'll never know if I would have gotten in, but I did get accepted to two other law schools in the the top 20 of the USNews rankings, and three in the top 25. However, for a number of reasons, money among them, I chose to attend the State law school in my home state.

I don't regret that decision, but I'm considering applying for judicial clerkships next year. I know that it's a fact that the following will take place.

If my application (Top 5% at a state law school) is compared against a Top 5% student from HYS, I don't really expect to get the position.

But, what about when my application is considered against someone from the top 20% in those schools? or the top 25%. How much of that calculation is simply going to depend on the name of the school?

Leaving aside my school for the moment, I'll choose one of the schools the poster mentioned. The University of Texas, Ranked 18th in USNews rankings. I don't think you can make any conclusive statement about the ability of a top 10% University of Texas student as compared to the ability of a top 10% student from Yale.
2.23.2008 11:14am
Houston Lawyer:
Do they explain how they end up with basically the same proportions of students by race every year based on this subjective process?
2.23.2008 11:18am
RBG (mail):
I've heard that it's Yale Law School's policy not to admit any students from a sectarian (read evangelical) undergraduate institution. (Except, according to the anecdote I heard, the one student from Messiah College, which the Yale folks thought was a Jewish - and thus non-sectarian, I guess - college.) Is this true?
2.23.2008 2:31pm
Duffy Pratt (mail):
Houston Lawyer:

Assume the racial numbers in the application pool are pretty constant, or at least that they don't vary wildly from year to year. Now, given that assumption, the procedure that Yale gives is subjective, but its also basically consistent from year to year. The reviewing faculty approaches the applicant pool each year applying their own preferences, prejudices, etc... Some will probably routinely take diversity into account (assuming they can tell from the application). Others will probably try to remain completely neutral when it comes to race considerations. And there may be a few who will reject applicants based on race or ethnicity. But since the application pool is probably pretty consistent from year to year, and the distribution among the professors is random, it's not a surprise that the same leanings would tend to get similar results year after year.
2.23.2008 3:00pm

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