Also,
It is commonly held that NYU (almost?) never takes BTL’s.
If you have high 170s, you will definitely get into Fordham with money, but you will be selling yourself short by doing so.
Really, don’t let these guys scare you about the writing. I know plenty of yeshiva guys with no college who went to law school. I never heard one complaining about lacking writing skills.
If Fordham did a study that most BTL’s are in the bottom half of the class, I would want to know what the numbers were. The bottom half of the class is 50% of the class. If 60% of BTL’s were in the bottom half, that is not so shocking as to make it a very big deal.