Apparently the ABA, in its "critical review" of über-toilet North Carolina Central, smiled upon a "corrective action plan" allegedly aimed to address such failures as low rates of passing the bar exam, high attrition (38% of last year's first-year students either dropped out or failed out), and a Cooleyite student body. According to the article cited above:
The corrective action plan includes tighter admissions standards. All incoming students must post an LSAT of at least 142 and a grade point average of at least 2.96. Recent graduates were provided with bar preparation classes, and incoming students will be given online resources, tutorials, academic coaches and will be required to meet with academic advisers to make sure they stay on track.
A minimum LSAT score of 142, which is below the 18th percentile, hardly represents a standard at all; rather, it shows a basic inability to read and think at the level that should be expected of a lawyer. While "academic advisers" and such may help to push North Carolina Central's dolts through to graduation, they won't be able to correct major deficiencies in essential skills. Perhaps two or three years of intensive study would prepare them for law school, but that's not on the cards at North Carolina Central or anywhere else.
North Carolina Central must have strict standards of skill (not to mention size, gender, and age) for its undergraduate football team, and Old Guy wouldn't come close to qualifying. Yet for its law school it cheerfully throws meaningful standards out the window. Cherchez l'erreur.
As a historically Black institution, North Carolina Central has done much to right the wrongs of racism and afford opportunities to people who could not have had them in white-dominated universities. (Nearby Duke didn't have a Black law student until 1961, nor a Black female law student until 1974.) Today, however, the opportunities that they afford in the legal profession are merely illusory. People of whatever color who can't attain the high 150s on the LSAT don't belong in law school: even if they graduate and pass the bar exams, they're unlikely to find work that pays enough to cover their student loans.
It looks like its enrollment is tanking nevertheless.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lstreports.com/schools/nccu/
"A minimum LSAT score of 142, which is below the 18th percentile, hardly represents a standard at all; rather, it shows a basic inability to read and think at the level that should be expected of a lawyer."
ReplyDeleteContrast that with medical school, where an MCAT score below the 75% will preclude admittance to even the least prestigious programs in the country. And keep in mind, having completed pre-med studies as opposed to some Mickey Mouse BA curriculum, the typical MCAT taker is much smarter than the typical LSAT taker. That is why medicine is a profession and the law is not.
The MCAT requires quite a lot of chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, and, yes, even medicine. By contrast, the LSAT doesn't require any specialized knowledge of anything.
DeleteI suspect that most people who score well enough on the MCAT to get into medical school would do well on the LSAT. And I have to agree, with regret, that law can no longer be called a profession.
According to the AAMC, a score of 489 on the MCAT corresponds to the 18th percentile of test takers. From 2016-2017 through 2017-2018, 20 out of 1,576 (1.3%) applicants with scores of 486-489 were admitted to a U.S. allopathic school. 93 out of 2,556 (3.6%) applicants with scores of 490-493 were admitted to a U.S. allopathic school. The admitted students who scored between 486-493 consisted of 0.6% of all admitted students.
DeleteLooking at the numbers overall:
99% of admitted students scored higher than 494 (32nd percentile)
90% of admitted students scored higher than 502 (60th percentile)
77% of admitted students scored higher than 506 (73rd percentile)
56% of admitted students scored higher than 510 (84th percentile)
33% of admitted students scored higher than 514 (92nd percentile)
Over half of admitted allopathic medical students scored among the top 15 percent of MCAT test takers and over 3/4 of scored among the top 25% of MCAT test takers.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
Let's be more direct: there isn't a single applicant to this ls who would be admitted to any US medical school. People applying to a dump like this are classic liberal artists, and they are the type of liberal artist who avoid math/science diligently. So they haven't done the required course work, and would score at the bottom of the MCAT.
DeleteSo let's stop this innacurate comparison: as it stands today, there is virtually no similarity between rigor in terms of medical school application and the joke that is applying to law school, especially a law school like NCCU. Medicine is still a profession; law is a bad joke.
Liberal artists? That's far too generous. In the entire student body of North Carolina Central University's über-toilet law school, you wouldn't find enough knowledge of or skill in the liberal arts to fill a fucking mustard seed.
DeleteI guess the ABA really is in a quandary here. If they actually did anything to shut down all law schools who admit students unlikely to graduate and pass the bar, we are talking about closing down 1/4 to 1/3 of all law schools. That needs to happen, of course, but it would indeed be extremely disruptive.
ReplyDeleteThere comes a time when it's a valid question to ask: Is this law school needed, in light of its horrendously low admissions standards? In this case, the answer is a clear "No!".
ReplyDeleteNCCU is a North Carolina school, drawing 70% of its students from that state. Of its 173 recent graduates, a grand total of 63 got jobs where bar passage was required. Its overall pass rate for the Feb 2018 NC bar exam: 28.38%(https://abovethelaw.com/2018/04/first-results-are-out-from-february-2018-bar-exam-and-they-are-not-good/).
In sum, it's a terrible law school, and its only purpose is to separate students from their federally-guaranteed loan $$$ and keep admin/profs in low work, high pay jobs. There may have been a time when the school served a noble purpose, but that's no longer the case. It simply serves now to hammer its students(and many drop and flunk outs) with massive debt.
In the end, any toilet can simply give unmerited grades to get unqualified students through to graduation. The ABA is not going to review exams one by one. After that, the 142 threshold should maintain a low but consistent bar passage rate.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, why don't the über-toilets prove their "success" by awarding inflated grades to the 20–40% of the class that would otherwise fail out? The "gentleman's C" actually originated at Harvard and Yale (in the undergraduate schools).
DeleteIn 2010, Loyola in Los Angeles raised all grades—retrospectively and prospectively—by a third of a grade point, allegedly because its students were hot shit. An A+ became an "A+*".
This is, unfortunately, the hypocritical sword-and-shield (used simultaneously) that the Cartel is so adept at. No one should be allowed to attend law school with mid-140 scores. It's untenable. But to say so is to brand you a bigot.
ReplyDeleteThe scamblogs actually care about outcomes for individuals, regardless of initial conditions. The Cartel sells moonshine for profit. But, somehow, the scamblogs are the "bad (old) guys"...
Law school is a luxury good now, anyways. It doesn't get you a job, it doesn't pay off, or pay for itself, it's therefore not an investment. Borrowing money to buy luxury goods is a bad idea. The only idea worse is to lend money to others to buy luxury goods.
ReplyDelete