A 168 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.
A 168 is a good score having a frustrating conversation with itself. By any national measure it is excellent — top 4.5% of everyone who sat the test. Against the fourteen schools you are probably thinking about, it is under every single median.
Strong nationally, short of the T14. A 168 is in the top 4.5% of test takers and still under every one of those fourteen medians.
The list that matters is the one built off medians. A 168 clears 9 of the schools we track outright and matches 10 more. Boston College, Ohio State (Moritz), Wisconsin are among the first group.
Do not read those labels as odds. Every school on this list admits applicants below its median annually — that is what a median means. What changes across the columns is how much your GPA, letters and timing have to carry.
Read the last column as the position a 168 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 168 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 | in range, below median |
| Duke University Law | 169 | 171 | 173 | below 25th |
| UC Berkeley Law | 168 | 170 | 172 | in range, below median |
| Cornell Law School | 170 | 173 | 175 | below 25th |
| Georgetown Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | in range, below median |
Scores like this are scarce enough to change how they are read. When roughly 4.5% of a testing year clears your number, admissions offices stop treating it as a hurdle you got over and start treating it as something to acquire.
The curve is steepest through the 140s and 150s and nearly flat above 172, which is why the same five points mean completely different things to different people. For you they are worth 3.3 percentile points.
There is a specific line above you and it is worth naming: 169, where the T15-T20 band begins. You are 1 point short of it.
A point or two is a tuning problem, not a learning problem. It usually means not losing what you already know how to do.
Treat the number as a centre of gravity rather than a fact. The band around a 168 runs from 165 to 171, and the whole retake question turns on how wide that is in percentile terms.
That window is worth 6.3 percentile points. Not decisive on its own, but enough to tip the decision if there is a school median sitting just above you.
This one deserves real arithmetic, because the schools you care about are separated by single points. A 168 is under the median at 14 T14 schools, the nearest being UC Berkeley Law at 170.
Set that against a score band worth 6.3 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 168 is approximately the 96th percentile, so about 4.5% of test takers score at or above it.
On the median table a 168 reads as Likely at 9 schools and Target at 10, so yes for a real list of programmes.
Your band is 165-171, worth only 6.3 percentile points, so there is little upside from variance alone. Retake only to clear a specific school median.
The next point is worth 0.9 percentile points, and the exchange rate improves with distance: 3.3 points for the climb to 173.