Law by the Numbers

An article by Scott Jaschik, More Testing, Less Logic? (Inside Higher Ed) comments on an article by Anne VanderMey,  GMAT:  The MBA Job Seeker’s Best Friend (Business Week).  VanderMey reports on a disturbing trend in the MBA job market:

For a select group of companies, mostly top consulting, finance, and banking firms, employers routinely look to MBA graduates’ GMAT scores as a reliable standard measurement of academic prowess…. Particularly when jobs are tight, and every element of each résumé takes on added weight, test scores can be the difference between an interview and the dustbin.

According to both VanderMey and Jaschik, some schools are advising students to retake the GMAT. 

VanderMey observes that while employers looking for people to do “heavy quantitative lifting” find the quantitative portion of the GMAT useful, the real problem is that GPAs are not always useful:

Many MBA programs have grading systems that vary widely or are solely pass-fail, making it difficult for recruiters to compare applicants from different schools, and others don’t provide grades at all. Even at schools where grades are released, grade inflation may render As and Bs poor markers for actual skill. The tests can be a boon by virtue of their standardization….

The problem with GPAs is that they are not objective measures of performance.  Rather, they just sort each cohort of admitted students.  The strength B-school cohorts vary from school to school, and even from year to year. 

Jaschik suggests that the problem is more acute at lower-ranked B-schools:

At the very top ranked business schools, … “companies assume that everyone there is strong, and don’t care about their scores as much. McKinsey or Goldman Sachs is going to hire 20-30 grads from there every year.” But … at other business schools, “where Goldman may only hand out a few job offers, they’ll look more carefully at everything in a student’s profile (including the GMAT) to determine who the lucky few will be. That’s not a knock on those lower-ranked schools; I think it’s just the reality of the situation.” (quoting Scott Shrum, director of admission consulting research at Veritas Prep, a “high end GMAT test-prep company”).

Jaschik’s main focus is on the use of GMAT scores for purposes other than as a guide to first-year MBA grades.  He argues that testing companies, such as the GMAC (presumably, the Graduate Management Admissions Council), should more actively resist the use of test scores for purposes other than admission.

U.S. News uses LSAT scores of entering classes as one of the factors in its rankings of law schools.  The LSAC and the ABA also report the LSAT profiles of entering classes in their annual Office Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools.  Of course, they also provide a wealth of additional data about each law school.

Has anyone heard of law firms and other employers of lawyers using LSAT scores in evaluating job applicants?

posted by Gary Rosin