Breaking Down titles

I took a closer look at the numbers titles posted in the TLS thread mentioned in a previous post. I used the law school predictor to verify that titles's assertion that he (the tone of the post sounds like a dude to me so I'm going to use male pronouns) was accepted where he should be accepted. These are the schools applied to, the prediction, and the reported result:

School	Prediction - 167	Result
Wake	Consider	Accepted
W&L	Consider	Accepted
Emory	Consider	Accepted
GW	Consider	Accepted
Vandy	Deny	WL
Gtown	Deny	Rejected
Cornell	Weak Consider	WL
Duke	Deny	WL
Boalt	Deny	Rejected

The point of titles's post was that a PhD will not get you in at places where your undergraduate GPA and LSAT score predict that you will not be accepted. He got in at places where he should have gotten in (a little LSAT practice; what assumption would you have to make for that argument to be valid, answer - consider=accepted) and denied at those places that should have denied him (even though there are 3 waitlists, I know that's cutting hairs, but being on the waitlist is not being rejected). But how would an applicant with the same numbers but no PhD have fared at the same schools? I tried to look for an answer to that question at LSN, but there weren't enough people with similar numbers who applied to the same schools for me to feel comfortable making a strong conclusion. I did however find one profile that supports the general conclusions drawn by titles. The graduate degree was in engineering so it was most likely a master's degree, but that's still a valid comparison for our purposes.

I will use this information to help me decide which schools it will be worthwhile for me to take a shot at and those that I should just save my time and money and not bother applying. I have made a preliminary list and it looks like I have a couple more "weak consider" predictions in the schools I am interested in applying to than titles did. (I told you that I was an ideal candidate for this investigation.) I think this category is the most interesting because it could go either way. This is where the PhD (and other soft factors) could make a real difference. I have also found some profiles at LSN that look like nice controls. These applicants and I have similar numbers but they do not have a PhD. I will discuss the schools where I plan to put in an application in the next post.