Limitations
When comparing schools for total whiteness, it was assumed that all schools pulled from the national pool of applications. That is, all schools application pool actually reflected 68% white. To the extent that a school is a truly regional, state or local school then % total whiteness when compared to the availability of applicants could be skewed
To the extent that "unknown" is a significant number of minorities, then the percentage of whites will be skewed upward and the calculations will not be valid for that particular school. However, the State LSAC application pool nor the Law School-age population represent the actual application pool for a specific school. A school's actual application pool could be very different. State LSAC Application pool reflects the number of persons in the national LSAC pool who listed the named state as their home. While all the applicants from a particular state may not have applied to law school in their state, the number provides a good idea of the available pool. So, for example, Texas Tech has 85.7% white students. In 2002 there were 6797 LSAC applications from the state of Texas. Of those applications, 4043 or 59.5% were from white applicants. Consequently, the disparity (excess whiteness) between whiteness in the student body and in the state application pool is 26.2 percentage points. That is, based on the LSAC applications from the state, only 59.5% of Texas Tech Student body should be white.
For those who object to the methodology here, based on the idea that it does not take into consideration the "pool" of qualified applicants, see my essay on LSAT and Discrimination and my essay on Legal Education!: Incompetent. As practiced in most law schools, the law school admission process is not an issue of who can do law school and be a competent lawyer. It is mostly a cherry-picking exercise, over applicants who all would be capable of being good lawyers if legal education would educate instead of sort.
