Thirds

I forgot an important comment in my justifications post. It's from the same interview with Dean Tom at Boalt that I referenced in that post. The quote

Hierarchy of Application Segments

TLS: Does Boalt have an approximate hierarchy on what is most valuable for admissions: GPA, LSAT, etc?

Dean Tom: “I know that there is a perception out there in the cyberspace world that we value GPAs a lot more than LSATs, and I’m not sure where people get that. Because if you look at our index formula, we are purposeful in weighting it so that GPA and LSAT are roughly equivalent. So, if I had to characterize our review process, it’s about one-third LSAT score, about one-third academic record – I prefer to call it academic record because GPA is just so narrow, whereas with academic record we consider all of the factors that impacted the GPA: work responsibilities, extra-curricular activities, rigor of major, and so on. The last third is the subjective factors -- what one says in their personal statement, and what others say about them in their letters of recommendation. So, no, I don’t think either of the two quantitative factors is more important than the other.”(emphasis mine)

If your subjective factors are weak (a crappy personal statement, unremarkable recommendations) isn't that just as bad as a low LSAT score or GPA? Conversely, couldn't a strong statement and recommendations give a mediocre GPA or LSAT score a boost? While you probably need all 3 factors to be strong at a place like Boalt, the comment demonstrates that the admissions committee definitely looks at more than the numbers. Soft Factors Count!