Law School admission and socioeconomic class (was Michigan and popular constitutionalism)

[Howard Schweber]

>   Perhaps someone could educate me on the question of whether the 
> predictive value of undergraduate grades and LSAT scores varies with 
> socioeconomic class.

In "The Big Test" Nicholas Lehman cites data indicating that the SAT is 
less predictive of college performance for racial minorities and  students 
from lower socioeconomic classes than it is for middle- and upper-class 
white students.  Generally speaking, minority and students from lower 
socioeconomic classes do better in college than their test scores would 
predict if we use the correlation between test scores of middle- and 
upper-class whites as a baseline (this is one thing that weakens the logic 
of the "just-grades-and-scores" school of anti-affirmative action 
argument).  It is certainly plausible that the same is true of the LSAT.

Howard Schweber
UW-Madison Dept. of Poli. Sci.