Very Few Blacks Score at the Highest Levels of the Law School Admission Test

Students seeking admission to the nation’s highest-ranked law schools such as Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have a mean LSAT score of about 170. Data obtained by JBHE from the Law School Admission Council shows that almost no blacks nationwide score at this level.

In 2004, 10,370 blacks took the LSAT examination. Only 29 blacks, or 0.3 percent of all LSAT test takers, scored 170 or above. In contrast, more than 1,900 white test takers scored 170 or above on the LSAT. They made up 3.1 percent of all white test takers. Thus whites were more than 10 times as likely as blacks to score 170 or above on the LSAT. There were 66 times as many whites as blacks who scored 170 or above on the test.

Even if we drop the scoring level to 165, a level equal to the mean score of students enrolling at law schools ranked in the top 10 nationwide but not at the very top, we still find very few blacks. There were 108 blacks scoring 165 or better on the LSAT in 2004. They made up 1 percent of all black test takers. For whites, there were 6,689 test takers who scored 165 or above. They made up 10.6 percent of all white students who took the LSAT examination.

The nation’s top law schools could fill their classes with students who scored 165 or above on the LSAT. But if they were to do so, these law schools would have almost no black students. Blacks made up only 1.1 percent of all LSAT test takers who scored 165 or above on the test in 2004.

The data shows the importance of maintaining race-sensitive admissions at our nation’s top law schools. Make no mistake, black students admitted under affirmative action guidelines can handle the curriculum once they are admitted. JBHE surveys of the graduation rates at our leading law schools show that many, if not most, black students who were admitted under affirmative action guidelines graduate at very high rates. In many cases, their graduation rates approach 100 percent, and in almost all cases the black student graduation rate at these law schools is very close to the graduation rate for white students.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.