A 170 is above the median at part of the T14 and below it at the rest. Which half you build your list around decides almost everything.
A 170 is where the T14 stops being one thing. Those fourteen schools report medians a point or two apart, and your score lands in the middle of that cluster — above the line at 1 of them, below it at 13. Which half you focus on is the whole strategy.
Good enough for part of the T14 and not the rest. A 170 is at or above the median at 1 of those fourteen schools and below it at 13.
The list that matters is the one built off medians. A 170 clears 12 of the schools we track outright and matches 14 more. Fordham, Arizona State, George Washington 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 170 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 170 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 | in range, below median |
| University of Virginia Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | in range, below median |
| NYU School of Law | 170 | 172 | 174 | in range, below median |
| Northwestern Pritzker Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | in range, below median |
| University of Michigan Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | in range, below median |
| Duke University Law | 169 | 171 | 173 | in range, below median |
| UC Berkeley Law | 168 | 170 | 172 | at median |
| Cornell Law School | 170 | 173 | 175 | in range, below median |
| Georgetown Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | in range, below median |
A 170 is not a good score with a comfortable margin; it is a rare one. Only about 2.6% of people who sit the LSAT land here or above, and the percentile scale barely has room left to describe the difference between them.
The shape of the curve matters more than the point on it. From a 170, one more scaled point moves you 0.4 percentile points, and five moves you 2. Those two figures are what any retake decision actually rests on.
The question is not whether you could score higher. It is whether the next point is worth what it costs, and at a 170 that point is worth 0.4 percentile points.
Think in fives rather than ones, because that is how retakes actually land. A 175 would put you 2 percentile points higher. That changes nothing anyone will notice.
The test reports a single figure and hides the uncertainty behind it. For a 170, that uncertainty spans 167 to 173.
The whole band is worth 4.6 percentile points — effectively identical scores. Whatever reason you might have for sitting again, it is not this one.
Precision matters more here than anywhere else on the scale. You are short of 13 T14 medians, and the closest one — University of Michigan Law at 171 — is the number to decide against.
Set that against a score band worth 4.6 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 calculatorPick the median you actually want to clear, then decide about a retake. Not the percentile, not the ranking — a specific school with a specific number. A 170 makes that a real decision rather than a hypothetical one.
Your band is 167-173, worth only 4.6 percentile points, so there is little upside from variance alone. Retake only to clear a specific school median.
One point buys 0.4 percentile points from 170; a full five-point improvement to 175 buys 2.
Yes at 1 T14 schools, where a 170 matches or beats the reported median. At the remaining 13 it is a below-median application.
Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern (Pritzker), Virginia report medians within two points of 170. Medians move year to year, so confirm against each school's current ABA 509 report.