Hacker News Reader

Comment by anothermachine | Hacker News Reader

Anyone at an Ivy League law school might have more lucrative opportunities than teaching LSAT classes.

You'd be surprised ;)

On an hourly basis, you can earn more teaching the LSAT than as an Ivy League law grad. Mind you, I don't work 80 hour weeks, so I don't make as much on an absolute basis, but the work is more interesting, and I've branched out into LSAT books and an online LSAT course.

But mainly, I wanted to point out that the instructor is unreasonably arrogant. By comparison with his reference group, he's far from exceptional.

By implication, the Mensa cut-off is also far from 'genius'. Top 2% is 1 in 50.

To be fair, that's 1 in 50 from a group that was relatively accomplished in an academic setting before the test. But I agree that it doesn't qualify as "genius."

I may not have been clear, my posts mix LSAT percentiles and IQ percentiles.

The Mensa cut-off is top 2% of the general public. 98th percentile on an IQ test.

For the LSAT, they accept 163 as meeting that cut-off. Relative to other LSAT takers however, a 163 is 92nd percentile. So the top 8% of LSAT takers are qualified to enter mensa, or roughly 1 in 12.

I took the LSAT in 2009. I scored 166, which was in the 93rd percentile. Mensa lists their cut-off as the 95th percentile, so your 163/92 figure is inaccurate, at least for recent years.

Being an LSAT instructor is surprisingly remunerative. One of the big test prep companies pays $50/hour, which is about the same as what a first year associate makes at a big law firm (when you account for the fact the the associate probably puts in 3000 hours a year).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com