If affordable, Williams College is worth $70,000+ per year.
LACs do not have a monopoly on small class size or on close contact with professors. Sometimes I wonder if the outdated misconceptions repeated by some are due to current experience with the over crowded UC system or with over crowding at some other large public universities such as the University of Florida.
Law school is an entirely different discussion. The highest paying law jobs & public interest jobs typically are filled by graduates from the highest ranked law schools. But most of the high paying jobs offer a miserable lifestyle with an average stay at oneâs first biglaw firm of about 3 years due to stress & job dissatisfaction.
As to whether a prestigious National University is a better investment than a top rated LAC depends upon a variety of factors including oneâs career goals. Other factors vary by individual experience, needs, & wants.
P.S. To answer your question: Ivy League schools, Georgetown, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Stanford, Rice, Vanderbilt, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, WashUStL, and other US News top ranked National Universities offer tremendous educational opportunities & great value.
Broadly speaking, US News top 25 ranked LACs also offer great educations worth the COA if affordable.
âBrand name impressive to whomâ? If you mean random people you meet on the street, Iâd expect few people would know much about Vassar or Williams, so most would not be impressed by the name. Many would probably not know much about some of the non-LACs that were listed as well. I think theyâd be most likely to be familiar with the state flagship.
If you mean impressive to law school admissions, as has been noted the undergrad school name has little influence. Far more influential are GPA and LSAT stats. So if undergrad grades are likely to be higher at a particular undergrad college that could be an advantage. This can be more difficult to predict than many assume since highly selective colleges in which a larger portion of students do A quality work tend to give a larger potion of A grades than less selective colleges. At the most highly selective private colleges, the most common grade is usually Aâs, by a wide margin.
If you mean impressive to employers, then it depends on field of work. Law firms often do care about school name, but school name of the law school attended, not school name attended for undergrad. Employers hiring new grads with a bachelorâs and no further degrees as whole tend to not focus on things like internships, relevant work experience, and major rather than college name (see https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf ) , although employers may recruit at particular schools for various reasons including location and being known for having quality grads in that field. If you have particular colleges in mind, you can often look up post grad employment reports and information about which employers attend career fairs.
That said, for most persons on this forum, college selection involves more than just choosing what college will help them with law school admissions. What other criteria is important to you in a college? Iâm sure some colleges on the list will meet that criteria far better than others.
The first one, how a top LAC like Vassar or Williams compares to more brand name research universities. I donât know if I would put Tulane with the Ivies, Gâtown or Duke, but the issue at that point is not brand recognition but what type of experience is better suited for your D, academically and socially. While I agree that motivated students can turn a large flagship experience (esp in an honors college) into a personalized one that they might experience in a LAC, LACs are just naturally set up for that. Your D wouldnât have to work at it or in some cases get lucky to get a more intimate undergrad focused experience.
The next question is whether any school is worth $320k over 4 years. Iâd frame this question differently, it is the differential between A and B multiplied by 4. Unless B were a school where merit/and or FA = 100% of CoA, it would not be whether $320k is worth it. Letâs say alt B was at a net $30k CoA, then the opportunity cost would be $200k, not $320k. For a pure monetary ROI analysis, you would also have to attach a speculative opportunity cost of not attending A over B. You might be able to get some median avg salaries for targeted majors/industries, and there may be real, little or no differences between A and B. For some families, there is a separate value they attach to the expected difference in experience which cannot be monetized, especially if being full pay causes no hardships or financial risks. This is honestly a family by family decision. Only you can weigh the costs and benefits based on your situation and values.
Third is the question of the importance of undergrad relative to success as a lawyer. First, if the goal is Big Law, graduating from a T15 is almost a must. If the end game is a good local practice, local prosecutor or defender or some form of public or government service, a good state law school or the next tier of private law school will do the trick. If T15 is the goal, I question this unwavering position that you see on CC that undergrad doesnât make a difference. Sure you see a variety of low recognition undergrad names for students admitted to top law schools, but we donât readily see how many from say HYPS undergrad applied and are admitted to each T15 relative to other schools. Also, I have yet to see anyone show that successful T15 law school applicants from non T50 or T25 schools have the same median GPA/Class Rank/LSAT as those from T25 undergrad. What information is out there, either historically or more recently, is some T15 law schools have proportionately more students from top undergrad programs, often their own. I agree we cannot draw conclusions that those schools confer an advantage because students from those schools already have demonstrated an aptitude for standardized tests, but I find it hard to believe that a 3.85/172 LSAT applicant from an HYPS is going to be viewed the same as a 3.85/172 student from avg State U.
Thanks for your input. As it is right now, she is putting together a list and we are making sure to include not only reach schools but safety as well. (Binghamton, Buffalo, GeneseoâŠ). We have saved some money for her education but we feel that the resources might be better used towards law school. But, you said it, we are dealing with a very smart and VERY STUBBORN teenager, and of course, she knows it all!!
I find it easy to believe, actually, because the USNews law ranking is so stats-driven and the various tiers of schools really want to keep their place in that ranking.
Now granted, at an LSAT of 172 (which is outside the top 1% of LSAT scores, BTW), T14 may not be a guarantee (though some schools seem to value GPA more and some LSAT). But at LSAT of 175 (top half percentage), almost everyone is accepted at some T14âs. And 173 (roughly the top 1 percent) looks like enough for NYU and Boalt Hall (assuming a high GPA).
175 likely nets you big scholarships at T14.
And I know that no LSAT prep comes close to 6 figures. If I was a kid who could imagine being 40, I know Iâd rather be able to fund early retirement (which that 6 figures, invested, would be able to contribute a large amount towards).
Very smart kids are often intrigued (happy?) by getting larger merit awards at various schools just below those that donât offer them. It means even more for them if they locate these schools themselves, because mom and dad donât know it all, of course.
Can you suggest to her - or her guidance counselor if she likes them, or any other trusted capable adult willing to help guide since their word can sometimes be accepted better - to look for a few of these she might like with the idea that the money saved can either go to law school or something else post graduation. (50% to you and 50% to her if thatâs more attractive to you.)
We can view self-reported results by GPA and LSAT on several websites, such as Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers . I used Chicago Law (USNWR #4) as an example since Chicago was mentioned a few posts up. Looking up applicants with a 3.85 GPA + 172 LSAT, the results were as follows:
Chicago Law Applicants with 3.85 + 172 LSAT
Only 1 applicant directly rejected â He/she appears to be an international student
Several were waitlisted â Some were waitlisted from highly selective privates. Some were waitlisted from not especially selective publics. However, there is a more clear pattern based on ethnicity. All waitlisted applicants were ORMs. All URMs with stats above were accepted.
The vast majority of applicants with stats above were accepted, regardless of which undergrad school the student attended. I see some non-flagship publics, as well as some Ivys.
Looking up the lowest stat acceptances, almost all were URMs. Among the few non-URMs with relatively lower stats, I see both publics and Ivies
I donât doubt that Chicago Law and similar have a lot of kids from their incoming class who attended highly selective privates for undergrad. However, that does not mean that Chicago Law and similar emphasize undergrad school name. Instead the kids with high LSAT scores tend to be concentrated at highly selective colleges that have high average SAT scores, and kids who apply to highly selective privates for undergrad are more likely to apply to also apply to highly selective privates for grad, after controlling for stats.
Now, it does appear that T14âs tend to have more of their own undergrads than a random distribution would suggest for whatever reason. All of those undergraduate schools would range from really difficult to insanely difficult to get in to, however (maybe being in-state for Cal/UVa/UMich would help, but plenty of high-stats in-state kids get rejected from those schools too).
I looked at those who were 173 & 3.7 or better for NYU and among those NYU Law denied/WLâed, only 2 didnât get in to any T14; a woman who only applied to law schools in NYC + HLS and an International man. Everyone else got in to some T14, often with some or even a lot of scholarships.
It would be interesting to know the backgrounds of those in the bottom quartile of the LSAT (say 165 at Chicago), than it would be for those with exceptional test scores. The issue is âwhat makes the difference for the last kid admittedâ?
While looking at the qualifications of the successful applicants by law school is helpful, we are viewing the subset of those with already high stats in GPA and LSAT scores. Here we run into the issue cited by @Data10 that I alluded to earlier that undergrads from the T25 are generally good test takers, SAT and LSAT. We really need to view it from the other direction which @Eeyore123 gets at in #46. For the 83-93% of UChic successful applicants to T15 law schools, what were their median GPA and LSAT scores? Is it materially higher or lower than those from College X who also got into T15 law schools? Or if we take these median scores from UChic and apply it to College X, what is its admissions rate for its students applying to T15 law schools? Is it materially higher or lower than 83-93%? These are the outcome stats I would want to get from career services of colleges my kids would be considering if law school, med school or other professional/grad schools were a likely post undergrad path.
From State U or a LACâŠgiven the focus of this discussion. There is a decision point where URMs with 165 and a 3.5 (or whatever) bumps up against the rigor/reputation of their undergrad.
There were 16 acceptances with <= 165. 14/16 and all with less than 3.98 GPA were URMs. Being a URM appears to be a powerful hook at Chicago and most other law schools. Among the remaining 2 non-URMs with <= 165 + >= 3.98 GPA, only one listed information about undergrad school. She was a white woman who attended a " Top Public" and majored in History. If increase to a 166 LSAT threshold, the single low scoring non-URM acceptances attended a âlarge public universityâ,. At 167, there were several non-URM acceptances, and again all accepted non-URMs attended publics for undergrad. We need to increase LSAT up to 168 before we see any accepted kids who attended a selective private for undergrad and even higher for Ivies. This may relate to the applicant pool from undergrad Ivy-type colleges tending to score >= 168, so sample size of Ivy-type applicants with < 168 is small.