David Oppenheimer: "The LSAT Is a Wonderful Predictive Tool for Determining An Applicant's Family Wealth"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist – David Oppenheimer on the LSAT and Diversity in Law School

Episode Title: David Oppenheimer: "The LSAT Is a Wonderful Predictive Tool for Determining An Applicant's Family Wealth"
Date: May 23, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Professor David Oppenheimer
Produced by: Peach Fish Productions

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Mike Pesca revisits a recently recorded interview with Professor David Oppenheimer, focusing on the debate over standardized testing in law school admissions, specifically the LSAT, and its correlation to wealth, academic outcomes, and diversity. Pesca critically challenges the common assertion that the LSAT is mainly a measure of family wealth. The discussion also explores broader issues around diversity, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives on college campuses, and affirmative action. The tone is inquisitive, occasionally skeptical, and spiritedly critical—especially when debating nuanced points about the effectiveness and intent of standardized tests and DEI programs.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Role of Diversity and DEI at Universities

• Pesca references a New York Times article about DEI at the University of Michigan ([03:30]).
  • Notes there were “241 administrators on campus who were tasked with DEI and it wasn't improving the diversity or the equity or the inclusion feelings.”
  • Challenges whether DEI efforts truly facilitate greater inclusion or sometimes generate backlash.
• Quote:
  • “The way they instituted the DEI initiatives … engendered significant backlash. … They were cited in the article, which I'm sure you read, as getting in the way of true integration, of true, you know, the I in DEI.” – Mike Pesca [06:23]

2. Is the LSAT a Proxy for Wealth or Academic Potential?

• Pesca pivots to law school admissions and asks Oppenheimer for his view on the LSAT ([07:29]).
• Oppenheimer’s position:
  • “The LSAT is a wonderful, wonderful predictive tool for determining an applicant's family wealth and income.” – David Oppenheimer [07:55]
  • He argues it's only a "good predictor of first-year grades" but not graduation GPA; views the LSAT as partly measuring “how ready a student is for law school, culturally as well as intellectually or academically.” [08:04]
• Pesca counters, referencing existing research showing the LSAT's strong predictive validity for first-year law grades over socioeconomic status ([00:51], [09:50]):
  • “I can tell you that the strength, the correlation of both the SAT and the LSAT as predictors of what they are supposed to predict are really strong. … The SAT is a much stronger predictor of first year college grades than it is the socioeconomic status of the parents of those who took it.” – Mike Pesca [00:51]

3. Predictive Validity of the LSAT

• Oppenheimer concedes that the LSAT is a “good predictor of first-year grades” but reiterates that this effect fades over time ([08:05]).
  • “It is not a good predictor of a student's graduating GPA. That suggests to me that it's a measure in part of how ready a student is for law school, culturally as well as intellectually or academically.” – David Oppenheimer [08:05]
• On whether law schools should prioritize those prepared for law school:
  • “If prepared means intellectually and academically prepared, yeah, that's really important. If it means socially prepared, I think that's less important.” – David Oppenheimer [08:42]

4. First-Year Performance and Its Weight

• Discussion about whether the first year of law school is disproportionately important ([09:16]).
  • Oppenheimer offers a counter-traditional view:
    • “Those of us who believe in the importance of clinical education and skills based education are not as convinced that the first year is disproportionately important.” – David Oppenheimer [09:22]

5. Bar Passage Rates, Racial Disparities, and Test Bias

• Pesca raises data showing a significant gap in LSAT scores between Black and white applicants, as well as a correlation between LSAT scores and bar passage rates ([09:50]).
  • “LSAT scores correlate fairly directly with bar exam passage. What do we do with those facts?” – Mike Pesca [10:44]
• Oppenheimer responds:
  • “My understanding is there's some correlation with first time bar pass, but not with ultimate bar pass.” – David Oppenheimer [10:44]
  • Adds that all standardized tests favor “people who are good at taking tests,” so the correlation is expected ([11:01]):
    • “You should expect there’d be a correlation between LSAT scores and bar pass rate.” – David Oppenheimer [11:01]
• Pesca probes further on whether test success equates to subject mastery ([11:43]), and Oppenheimer acknowledges “some correlation” but tries to steer the discussion back toward broader policy issues.

6. The Debate on Affirmative Action’s Relevance Post-SCOTUS

• Oppenheimer expresses frustration that, despite affirmative action being struck down judicially, discussions keep returning to it instead of moving forward ([12:27]):
  • “There's a part of me that wants to say, you know, I was in favor of affirmative action. There's no question about it. I lost. … Can't we now talk about things that continue to be relevant?” – David Oppenheimer [12:44]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On DEI backfire:
  “… plenty of evidence that this idea of diversity, if achieved, would be great and is great. But the thing that we use to get there, DEI, gets in the way on the college campus.” – Mike Pesca [04:46]

• On the LSAT as a wealth proxy:
  “The LSAT is a wonderful, wonderful predictive tool for determining an applicant's family wealth and income.” – David Oppenheimer [07:55]

• On test bias and test taking skills:
  “The exams that students take in law school and … before law school … all favor people who are good at taking tests. And so it shouldn't surprise us that people who are good at taking tests do better on the bar exam …” – David Oppenheimer [11:01]

• On shifting away from affirmative action debates:
  “There's a part of me that wants to say … I was in favor of affirmative action … I lost. … Can't we now talk about things that continue to be relevant?” – David Oppenheimer [12:44]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• DEI and University Diversity Discussion: [03:30] – [07:29]
• LSAT as Predictor of Wealth/Academic Success: [07:29] – [09:16]
• Bar Exam and Racial Disparities in Scores: [09:50] – [11:43]
• Debate on Value of Test-Taking Skills: [11:01] – [11:54]
• Refocusing the Debate Post-Affirmative Action: [12:27] – [12:44]

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Tone and Style

Pesca’s style is “responsibly provocative”—he doesn’t shy away from challenging assertions, pressing for specifics, or highlighting uncomfortable data. Oppenheimer remains measured, preferring to look at systemic issues and occasionally deflecting heated debate in favor of broader policy considerations. The conversation is candid and, at times, a bit contentious, especially around the effectiveness and intent of standardized testing in legal education.

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Summary

This episode offers a nuanced, sometimes combative, discussion about the unintended consequences of standardized testing in law school admissions and the challenge of achieving meaningful diversity on college campuses. The debate illuminates the complexity of using the LSAT as an academic gatekeeper and its intersection with race and class, while also critiquing the effectiveness of institutional DEI efforts. It’s a thoughtful listen for anyone concerned about higher education policy, social mobility, and the future of merit-based admissions.

Transcript

[A]

Hi. It's Saturday. It's the Saturday show. When we bring you one from the week and one from the vault. We violate this so often today we're going to bring you one from the week. My spiel on the Long Island Railroad versus the I can't even say it lure. New York Times telling us some people call the Long Island Railroad the lure. They don't. I expose it. I also had on my sub stack the video version of this which, you know, you just see my facial expressions. Turns out I wasn't kidding. I was quite upset. Go to Mike pesca.substack.com for video versions of me getting upset and saying all the stops between Lynbrook and Babylon. On the Babylon branch, of course, everyone's favorite Mass people, Mass, Pico Park, Amityville, Copaig, Lyndon Hurst and Babylon. Then I'm going to give you a portion of the interview with David Oppenheimer that didn't air. Part one of the interview was him talking about the history of diversity. Him talking about his evidence that diversity really works. His he says the science is settled. Part two was me pushing back maybe a little. I'm not going to say tendentiously. Some of my pushback could have been shorter, I bet if you timed how much I talked and how much he talked was about even. And that's bad. That's bad from an interviewing perspective. But I did have to push back on his assertion that the power and evidence for diversity is just the same as it is for the climate being affected by carbon gases. It is not. And then I did ask him this one question that we extracted from the main interview, but I just wanted to play now because I was in retrospect and thinking about it. I was put off but also kind of concerned about his answer when I asked him. And since we're talking about diversity and colleges, law schools where he teaches, you know, what about the standardized tests that we use to try to judge the potential quality of the students? And his answer, you'll hear his first answer. It was the de facto answer that a lot of proponents of diversity give, but it was glib and it was inaccurate. And I can tell you that the sometimes I don't put my guests feet entirely into the fire, even though I hold them to the fire. I can tell you that the strength, the correlation of both the SAT and the LSAT as predictors of what they are supposed to predict are really strong. And in fact what he said, the socioeconomic, it's a predictor of socioeconomic status. They have studied this quite a lot. And the SAT is a much stronger predictor of first year college grades than it is the socioeconomic status of the parents of those who took it. It's much stronger. So his glib answer is glib. And I can also tell you, and this is perhaps not the greatest one to one comparison, but if I wanted to pack a rhetorical punch, I might have said this. That correlation between the sat, it's also true of the lsat. The SAT and what it's supposed to correlate to success as a college freshman is much, much, much greater than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. All right, nine more minutes of that interview. Sharing with you some of the back and forth I had. And I do appreciate Professor Oppenheimer coming on the show. And I do think professors, when they put ideas and books out into the world of ide with them to themselves to get challenged. And if I am the person who has the challenge, I accept that. And if you are the person who doesn't mind that or even likes it, I thank you here. Now, that spiel and that interview, You know, you write, and this may be true, as the number of blacks and Latino students attending selective colleges drops, the role of DEI offices become even more important. You know, maybe. On the other hand, I'm sure you read Nick Confessor, his article in the New York Times about the University of Michigan, which has the most DEI offices. And there was something like 241 administrators on campus who were tasked with DEI and it wasn't improving the diversity or the equity or the inclusion feelings on the University of Michigan. So it's another example of maybe this idea of diversity. I'll say more than maybe plenty of evidence that this idea of diversity, if achieved, would be great and is great. But the thing that we use to get there, DEI gets in the way on the college campus. I specifically am citing here.

[B]

Oh, but for all of the problems at Michigan, they are still. Well, they of course had the voter initiative in Michigan as well. But nonetheless, for all of the problems in Michigan, they are a more diverse campus and they are benefiting from that diversity in myriad ways. And I don't think anyone who cares about the success of the University of Michigan wants to go back to the days when Michigan was an almost entirely white student body and white faculty in which there was very little diversity. For all of the challenges about how to best manage how to best increase the diversity of the university and how to best manage that diversity in terms of helping students feel included, feel welcome.

[A]

But the trends are, I Think more in that direction, actually, with the flagship university, some of their divisions becoming more white than they were. But also as society becomes more diverse and you take the qualified, the best qualified people throughout your state, you're going to get a bit more diverse. And from everything in that article and others around it, the way they instituted the DEI initiatives weren't just well intentioned, that didn't always get there. They engendered significant backlash. And they were cited in the article, which I'm sure you read as getting in the way of true integration of true, you know, the I and dei.

[B]

Was there a question?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, do you agree with that or disagree?

[B]

I, I don't know enough. I did read the article. It was, it was certainly distressing.

[A]

Yeah, I had a what are we doing? Type reaction. Now let's talk about something you definitely know, which is law school admissions. And law schools have long, although we got away from this for a couple of years, they have long relied on the LSAT as one of the major factors in admitting students. And while you characterize your opinion of the use of the lsat, the LSAT

[B]

is a wonderful, wonderful predictive tool for determining an applicant's family wealth and income.

[A]

And that's it.

[B]

Well, it's a good predictor of first year grades. It is not a good predictor of a student's graduating gpa. That suggests to me that it's a measure in part of how ready a student is for law school, culturally as well as intellectually or academically.

[A]

So law schools don't want to. I mean, they don't at least favor people who are prepared for law school and shouldn't?

[B]

Well, it depends what prepared means. If prepared means intellectually and academically prepared, yeah, that's really important. If it means socially prepared, I think that's less important.

[A]

So, and so your opinion is that over the years in law school they will acclimate. Even those who aren't prepared originally can acclimate to the law school.

[B]

I think that's right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I think that's why it's a less successful tool, a less predictive tool the more years that a student is in school.

[A]

But isn't the first year of law school disproportionately important?

[B]

The first year of law school is important. Is it disproportionately important? That is the traditional view. Those of us who believe in the importance of clinical education and skills based education are not as convinced that the first year is disproportionately important. So that's the beginning of another Interesting discussion.

[A]

Well, what about bar exam passage rates, which are highly correlative to LSAT scores? I mean, that would indicate that by the end, when you're ready to take the bar, people with lower LSAT scores. And by the way, we should note that there is a pretty wide chasm in the LSAT scores of white test takers versus black test takers. For instance, when they did this big study in 2004, only 29 black test takers scored 170 or above. But there were thousand couple thousand white test takers. 10.6% of all white students who took the lsat got above 165 1% of black test takers. So the black test takers were doing more poorly on the lsat. And LSAT scores correlate fairly directly with bar exam passage. What do we do with those facts?

[B]

Well, first of all, they correlate. My understanding is there's some correlation with first time bar pass, but not with ultimate bar pass.

[A]

Well, there is a correlation, but less of a correlation.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

There's a strong, pretty strong correlation. In fact,

[B]

the. Bar exam and the exams that students take in law school and the exams that students take before law school in college all favor people who are good at taking tests. And so it shouldn't surprise us that people who are good at taking tests do better on the bar exam than people who are not as good at taking tests. You should expect there'd be a correlation between LSAT scores and bar pass rate.

[A]

And isn't there a core, isn't there a correlation between doing well on tests and I don't want to say being smart, but mastery of the subject matter? In fact, of course there is a correlation.

[B]

Is there some correlation? Yes. But if you look at, and let me also say we're falling into a discussion here really about the value of or legitimacy of affirmative action in law school admissions or generally in university admissions, a subject that has been precluded by the Supreme Court.

[A]

So why are we even talking about it?

[B]

You're saying, well, there is a question in my mind. Why do we. You know, Mike, it's been frustrating in that I've written a book about the history of this idea that I think is an important idea.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Conversation after conversation, people say, well, let's talk about affirmative action. And there's a part of me that wants to say, you know, I was in favor of affirmative action. There's no question about it. I lost. I submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in the Students for Fair Admissions case. I lost, but I so clearly lost. Those of us who supported affirmative action so clearly lost. Can't we now talk about things that continue to be relevant?

[A]

And now the spiel the Long Island Railroad ended its one day strike today. As with any work action, there was tension and disagreement. But this is a story about what no one disagrees over. Except perhaps some people I have never heard of, thought of and want to hear no more of, except to know that they are wrong. So to establish the baseline, here's a montage of the headlines about the LIRR Job action People who Take the LIRR

[B]

three of the LIRR Strike the LIRR LIRR Workers the LIRR Unions LIRR Union

[A]

Workers went out on strike. That's the LI rr. The LI double R on occasion. If you're getting a bit fancy for a guy from Hicksville, here now the headline of a New York times story today. LI RR vs lure the debate splitting New York Commuters Initialism or acronym? It doesn't matter. No one can agree on how to pronounce it. Here's the thing. Everyone can agree on how to pronounce it. This is an insane article about insane people who don't really exist or if they do, shouldn't. This is in fact a service by the New York Times to put together this article so that it can help us identify people who say lure. So you should never believe them about anything ever, nor hold the door for them, nor give them accurate information about transferring in Jamaica for West Hempstead, Oyster Bay, Port Jefferson or run Konkoma. Just tell them oh, West Hempstead. Yeah, that'd be the second to last stop on the Hempstead line when in fact they're totally different lines as every non idiot knows. How do you not know that? Everyone from Spion to Quag knows that. To say nothing of the aforementioned Ron Konkama. Here now is how the New York Times audio version of that article supposedly raising accurate points about accurate people in a credible fact checked way says Ron

[B]

Konkoma no matter how many times they've ridden the Long Island Railroad out to Jones beach or back and forth between Midtown and Ron Konkoma. New Yorkers can't agree on how to pronounce it.

[A]

Yeah, I guess. I guess there's some maniac out there who says lure. The lure of lure escapes me. But what do I know? What's my standing having grown up on a train to Limbrook stopping at Rockville Center, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick, Belmore Want to Seaford, Mass. Piqua, Massapequa Park, Amityville Copaig, Lyndenhurst and Babylon. If you are waiting for a Long Island Railroad lirr, maybe LIR train, and you hear saying, when's the lure coming? You need to deplatform them. Not literally, but also maybe literally. You should treat the lure crowd like we treat Q, Anon, or I guess Quanon. Yeah, maybe they exist, but it's too bad they do. They are at least helping us identify themselves as useless, worthless, and backwards. Now, the article engages in some faux contemplation about the vagaries of initialism. They quote a professor who says why something becomes initialism when it could be pronounced as an acronym is weird. This professor says, noting that City University of New York, or cuny, is pronounced cuny, but its state counterpart, suny, was suny. I don't know why it happens. I do. And you, by the way, should be fired. At least from your job. Possibly into outer space, that is. Ron Konkoma. Let me explain how it worked. You can't call SUNY sunny because it has one N, not two S, U, N, Y. And also because Albany, Binghamton, Oneonta are just not sunny. Thirteen years after they come up with suny, that's when they came up with cuny. And you got to rhyme it with Sunni. So you have what you have. Also, cunning has its problems. As far as lirr, it's always initialism if the vowels don't help you out, right, it's the MTA, not the Meta, but it is the MoMA, not the M, O, M, A. There we have the vowels helping you out. NASA, yes, but the FBI, not the fibi. Although under Cash Patel. I mean, can you trust that snorkeling drunkard? The LI RR isn't the lure because the U and the I are complicated. But also it has two R's. You got to respect both railroad R's. There's ample precedent for when a government entity has double letters. The Civilian Complaint Review Board is the ccrb, not the curb, and it's the ncaa, and also sometimes the nc double A, like the li, double R. It's never the Nika. You know, by the way, I'd welcome an announcement that says, transfer Jamaica for the lure. And then there'd be a giant hook that would drop all those people who listen to it in the Bay. The article, the Times article ends with one guy from Queens saying, I don't know, maybe it's only people from Long island who say LIRR about the Long Island Railroad. Well, then, what else do we need to know? Deferred to the land that gave us Bill O'Reilly and Joey Buttafuoco and Michael Cohen and Anthony Scaramucci and so many Baldwins, including the town I came from, but not the town they came from. That'd be Massapequa, as opposed to Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copagan, Lindenhurst. It all brings me back to the fondest part of my youth on Long island, which was planning, often on a map, the way to get out of Long Island. And that plan, like the means of transit itself, did not get derailed, which is one thing I got to thank the LIRR for. That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist, and Kathleen Sykes does the gist list for me. Jeff Craig edits how to which you should listen to. And Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Michelle Pesca is a daughter of the path improve. And thanks for listening, Sam.