Duke named in lawsuit

[Skydog]

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When I was applying to law schools many years ago, it was almost exclusively based on GPA and LSAT scores. Extracurricular activities or other considerations played almost no part in deciding who got admitted. In fact, many law schools back then published a grid of GPA's and LSAT's and if you didn't fall in the "right" box, you pretty much knew you would not be admitted to that school. Whether or not that is a better to do it is subject to debate, I guess.

As an aside, the “right GPA*LSAT box” approach to admissions criteria has been responsible for a lot of the ridiculous grade inflation that plagues many elite universities. For example my undergrad alma mater resisted grade inflation for decades. Back in the stone ages (70’s) Harvard and Yale had begun doling out “gentleman A’s” but Princeton was still grading like most high schools -maybe 20-25% A’s, 40% B’s, rest C and below. So when it came time to apply to professional schools a lot of Tiger grads were at a big disadvantage if they applied to graduate programs that were formulaic in their cutoff criteria. As I remember it (based on cursory reading) in the ‘80s & ‘90s the university started giving in somewhat to the pressure. They still weren’t following the Harvard model of giving out A’s like M&M’s but they did bump up the average GPA a bit. I don’t know if this continued or where they, or Duke, are now on this issue. I just know the GPA*TestScore grid approach to all types of professional schools had unintended and deleterious (IMO) consequences for undergrad grading practices.