A 173 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 173 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 11 of them, below it at 3. Which half you focus on is the whole strategy.
A 173 makes the T14 a real conversation rather than a hopeful one — it clears 11 of the fourteen medians outright.
Sorted against real medians rather than rankings, a 173 looks like this: comfortably clear at 22 schools, level at 12, and slightly short at 0. Chicago, Columbia, Harvard sit in that middle group, where your score neither carries the file nor drags it.
These categories describe distance from a midpoint, nothing more. Half of every admitted class came in under the median, so a Reach school is one you apply to with a good story, not one you cross off.
Read the last column as the position a 173 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 173 sits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yale Law School | 172 | 174 | 176 | in range, below median |
| Stanford Law School | 171 | 173 | 176 | at median |
| University of Chicago Law | 171 | 174 | 176 | in range, below median |
| Harvard Law School | 171 | 174 | 176 | in range, below median |
| Columbia Law School | 171 | 173 | 175 | at median |
| University of Pennsylvania Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | at median |
| University of Virginia Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | at median |
| NYU School of Law | 170 | 172 | 174 | above median |
| Northwestern Pritzker Law | 170 | 173 | 175 | at median |
| University of Michigan Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | at 75th |
| Duke University Law | 169 | 171 | 173 | at 75th |
| UC Berkeley Law | 168 | 170 | 172 | above 75th |
| Cornell Law School | 170 | 173 | 175 | at median |
| Georgetown Law | 168 | 171 | 173 | at 75th |
A 173 is not a good score with a comfortable margin; it is a rare one. Only about 1.2% 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 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 1 percentile points.
The useful map here is tiers, not percentiles. From a 173 the next tier that changes your options is T6, and it starts around 174.
Gaps that small are almost never knowledge gaps. They are two questions you rushed, or one game you never went back to check — the cheapest points on the test to recover.
Sit the same test twice with the same ability and you will not get the same score. The measurement error runs to roughly 2.6 points, so a 173 is shorthand for the range 170 to 176.
Up here the window stops mattering. Its ends are 2.1 percentile points apart, which is nothing, so variance has no gift left to give you. A retake would need a named school median to justify it.
Precision matters more here than anywhere else on the scale. You are short of 3 T14 medians, and the closest one — Yale Law School at 174 — is the number to decide against.
Set that against a score band worth 2.1 percentile points and you have an actual decision rather than a feeling. Pick the median you want to clear, then answer.
The next useful step is to stop looking at the score alone. Put a 173 and your GPA into the law school admissions calculator and see which of these schools your actual profile lands in.
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 173 makes that a real decision rather than a hypothetical one.
Schools reporting a median within two points of 173 include Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, WashU St. Louis. Check current 509 data before building a list.
A 173 is approximately the 99th percentile, so about 1.2% of test takers score at or above it.
A 173 clears the reported median at 22 schools outright and matches it at 12 more. That is a workable application list.
With just 2.1 percentile points across the 170-176 band, a retake needs a concrete target rather than a hope of noise.