A 167 sits in the gap between strong everywhere and competitive at the T14. Here is what closing that gap takes, and when it is not worth closing.
This is the most strategically loaded score on the scale. You are close enough to the T14 that a retake is genuinely tempting, and far enough that applying now means leaning hard on your GPA and everything else in the file.
Strong nationally, short of the T14. A 167 is in the top 5.8% of test takers and still under every one of those fourteen medians.
Ignore the rankings for a moment and sort by median instead. A 167 sits above 8 schools and level with 6. The level group — Notre Dame, USC (Gould), Fordham among them — is where you look like a typical admit.
Reach, Target and Likely are positions, not predictions. A median is the midpoint of an admitted class, which means half of everyone who got in scored below it. Schools in your Reach column admit people like you every year; the rest of the application just has to do more of the work.
Read the last column as the position a 167 occupies in each school’s reported range. Figures are the ABA 509 medians published on our law school tier page.
| Law school | 25th | Median | 75th | Where a 167 sits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yale Law School | 172 | 174 | 176 | below 25th |
| Stanford Law School | 171 | 173 | 176 | below 25th |
| University of Chicago Law | 171 | 174 | 176 | below 25th |
| Harvard Law School | 171 | 174 | 176 | below 25th |
| Columbia Law School | 171 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| University of Pennsylvania Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| University of Virginia Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| NYU School of Law | 170 | 172 | 174 | below 25th |
| Northwestern Pritzker Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| University of Michigan Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | below 25th |
| Duke University Law | 169 | 171 | 173 | below 25th |
| UC Berkeley Law | 168 | 170 | 172 | below 25th |
| Cornell Law School | 170 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| Georgetown Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | below 25th |
The middle-upper stretch of the scale is where percentiles start flattering you. A 167 is the 94th percentile, which sounds decisive right up until you compare it to a specific school's median.
The shape of the curve matters more than the point on it. From a 167, one more scaled point moves you 1.3 percentile points, and five moves you 4.1. Those two figures are what any retake decision actually rests on.
The word "splitter" just means your two numbers disagree. Whether a 167 makes you one — and in which direction — is decided by your transcript, not by the LSAT.
Here is the asymmetry that decides splitter outcomes: a school can absorb damage to its GPA median more easily than to its LSAT median. With a 167 it works only if the GPA holds up.
Splitters and reverse splitters covers how committees treat each case.
A 167 on Saturday could have been a 164 or a 170 on a different form. That is not a criticism of the test — it is what a 2.6-point standard error means in practice.
7.8 percentile points separate the ends of your band. That is real upside from variance, before any actual improvement.
Precision matters more here than anywhere else on the scale. You are short of 14 T14 medians, and the closest one — UC Berkeley Law at 170 — is the number to decide against.
Set that against a score band worth 7.8 percentile points and you have an actual decision rather than a feeling. Pick the median you want to clear, then answer.
A score becomes a school list only when it meets a GPA. The law school admissions calculator takes both and sorts every school we track into Reach, Target and Likely against their reported medians.
Open the admissions calculatorIf you retake, aim at 169 and give it a full cycle rather than a nervous six weeks. If you do not, build the list where your score is an asset and make the scholarship case hard.
A 167 matches the reported median at Notre Dame, USC (Gould), Fordham, Arizona State, among others. These figures shift each cycle.
A 167 is approximately the 94th percentile, so about 5.8% of test takers score at or above it.
On the median table a 167 reads as Likely at 8 schools and Target at 6, so yes for a real list of programmes.
Variance has almost nothing to offer here: 164-170 spans 7.8 percentile points. Only a named median above you justifies another sitting.