How Advisors Sort a School List into Safety, Target and Reach (With a Worked Example)

The Method in Four Steps

1. Get the advisee's two numbers. The test score (LSAT, MCAT) and the cumulative undergraduate GPA, on the scale the schools use.
2. Pull the school's three percentiles for each number. The 25th, 50th (median) and 75th percentile of the enrolled class, plus the acceptance rate. For law these come from the school's ABA 509 report.
3. Locate each number. Below the 25th percentile, between the 25th and the median, between the median and the 75th, or above the 75th.
4. Combine the two locations, then sense-check with the acceptance rate. One number high and one low is the case that needs judgement; see below.

Worked Example: A 164 LSAT and a 3.70 GPA

The figures below are each school's 2025 ABA 509 disclosure. The tier and the modelled chance come from AdmitBase's match engine, which scores an applicant against the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles and the acceptance rate. The percentile positions are interpolated from the three published points, so treat them as approximate.

Read down the "where" column and the tiers follow. Notre Dame is out of range on both numbers. Fordham's median LSAT is four points above the advisee's. Colorado and Iowa are the interesting pair: the LSAT is exactly the median, but the GPA is about a tenth below the median, and that is enough to keep both in Reach. Denver is the only school where the advisee is above the 75th percentile on the test and at or above the median on GPA.

Why Two Numbers, Not One

An applicant at the median LSAT of a school with a 3.81 median GPA is not a coin-flip Target if their GPA is 3.70. The GPA is below the school's median, so the school has to like something else about the file to take them over a typical enrolled student. Scoring needs both numbers, and it needs a weighting. AdmitBase weights the LSAT 60% and the GPA 40% for law, and the MCAT and GPA equally for medicine. That is a modelling decision, not an admissions rule, and different schools lean differently. What does not change is the pattern: a split profile, strong on one number and weak on the other, lands in the middle tiers.

Four Mistakes That Put a School in the Wrong Tier

• Reading enrolled-class percentiles as admitted-class percentiles. The published 25th, 50th and 75th describe who enrolled. Admitted applicants who went elsewhere are not in them, so the range of admitted applicants can be wider than the published one.
• Comparing GPAs on different scales. Most US schools report on a 4.0 scale; some international and Canadian schools do not. Convert before comparing; a 3.70 is not a 3.70 on a 4.5 scale.
• Letting the acceptance rate decide. Iowa Law admits 44.3% of applicants and is still a Reach for this advisee. The rate averages over everyone who applied, including many whose numbers are nowhere near the school's range.
• Writing off a school because one number is low. Schools publish a range, and a quarter of the enrolled class is below the 25th percentile on any given number. A low number is a reason to keep the school as a Reach with a real chance, not to drop it, if the rest of the file is strong.

From Tiers to a List

Once every school has a tier, the list-building question is how many of each. The guides on building a law school list, how many law schools to apply to and building a medical school list give the counts. The mix matters more than the total, and the next piece in this series, the chance of at least one acceptance, shows why: in this worked list the single Safety supplies about 28 points of an 86% chance.

Checking Your Sort Against a Calculator

You can reproduce the sort for any advisee in a few minutes. The law school chances calculator scores an LSAT and GPA against every US law school with published data and ranks them best fit first; there are matching calculators for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, optometry and MBA programs. Advising offices that want one view of every advisee's list can read about the advisor plan.