Academic

Michigan's "Holistic" Review of Law Applicants

By Calvin Massey

Bill Henderson (Indiana) and Paul Caron (Cincinnati) have each exposed Michigan Law's shameless attempt to game the USNews rankings.  Brian Leiter (Chicago) calls it a "new low."  What has Michigan done?  It has created the "Wolverine Scholars" program, under which UM undergrads with six semesters of 3.8 GPA work and who have not taken the LSAT can apply for admission.  As Henderson points out, this enables Michigan to admit a cohort of high GPA people without dragging down the LSAT.  Henderson also notes the disproportionate effect on the bogus USNews rankings that is produced by jacking up the GPA of matriculants.  When you recall the sanctimonious blather about holistic review that Michigan successfully peddled to the Supreme Court in Grutter, you vacillate between tears and whoops of ironic laughter.  A frat boy with a 3.81 in some soft discipline (can you say "interdisciplinary studies"?) gets a free pass (check that: gets a "holistic review"), while a kid from hardscrabble Flint with a 3.79 in electrical engineering has to take the LSAT to get that "holistic review."  Sure, Michigan will say that the holistic review will tend to weed out the frat-boy slacker with the 3.81 GPA produced by good cram guides in the old Alpha Beta Gamma Omega frat house, but if the object is just to jack up the GPA median and mean of the entering class without giving anything away on LSAT, you have to be fairly gullible to accept that holistic review will have any bite.  Paul Caron notes that Georgetown has a similar program.   

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).