<p>I know the schools are different but where would you go? Which comes with the most prestige, law school boost, academic rigor etc. Pros and Cons may help as well. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Bates has the stronger academic reputation but Maine location not as desirable as BC in the Boston metro area. Holy Cross is similar to Bates in academics and size but better location 40 miles west of Boston. SUNY Binghamton has good rep but not nearly as prestigious as the others.</p>
<p>IMO Boston College has the best law school boost among all three of them.</p>
<p>I am curious. How does Bates have a “stronger academic reputation” than BC? Please quantify/qualify that very broad, blanket statement.</p>
<p>is money an issue? and seriously consider this – law school is expensive. they don’t give financial aid like undergrad schools. so if you are going to have to take on debt for law school, think very seriously about how much debt you want to incur undergrad – or if no undergrad debt, whether that money is better spent on law school to avoid debt there. have you been to the law school forum here on CC? look back and you’ll find threads about the cost of law school vs. salary and how its increasingly becoming difficult for law school grads to handle their debt.</p>
<p>if money is an issue, binghamton gets a clear advantage.</p>
<p>(but i would also advise you to make sure you know what you’d be getting into before you firmly decide on law school - its a long way off. make sure you know why you want to be a lawyer and what being a lawyer is really like before you decide if you in fact want law school - and that’s not a decision you have to make now.)</p>
<p>Bates has very good academic reputation. Bowdoin and Bates have been top LAC’s for decades. Boston College has Div1 sports culture.</p>
<p>Boston College:
Pros - Best academics of the group, best reputation, close to Boston, beautiful campus, top law school
Cons - Student housing (I would live off campus junior/senior year anyway), religiously affiliated, liberal lean</p>
<p>Bates:
Pros - Good academics, good reputation, pretty campus, new england town feel
Cons - isolated, no law school, not much to do outside of school events in the immediate vincinity</p>
<p>Suny:
Pros - Cheap.
Cons - No other reason to attend other than cost.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why Boston College would have more of a law school boost. I think law schools would consider them both to be top schools and it doesn’t matter that BC has it’s own law school really. I would just compare the other factors----location, size, housing, type of student etc.</p>
<p>^You can take classes at the law school as an UG. If you can get decent grades taking law school classes at a top 20 law school, you probably will be able to demonstrate to the top law schools that you can compete once admitted.</p>
<p>Also, BC is big on Double Eagle status. While the OP should try and get into a top 10 school, having BC Law as a backup is a pretty nice cushion given its rediculously low acceptance rate. Double Eagles have a lot of connections in the NYC/Boston legal markets.</p>
<p>Academics-Bates>Boston College. For Bates has produced 5 Rhodes winners, boston college 2 and BC undergrad enrollment of 9,000, Bates only 1600. Might look at Georgetown and Holy Cross both great pre-law reputations. The US Supreme Court has 3 members with Holy Cross affiliations.</p>
<p>Academic Rating of Bates: 93
Academic Rating of BC: 89</p>
<p>Source: The Princeton Review</p>
<p>Boston College enjoys more prestige and commands more popular recognition than Bates, and at BC one will find a more traditional and, arguably, more healthy social experience–sports, frats, drunken orgies, etc.–to complement a satisfactory academic experience. The wealthy, safe suburb in which BC is nestled creates the comforting illusion of a rural LAC experience when in reality the city is a short and free bus ride away.</p>
<p>None of the three receives enough law school admission preference that merits one choosing one of them over the rest.</p>
<p>If money is no concern, BC. If it is, Binghamton, hands down.</p>
<p>Binghamton is one of the top schools in the SUNY system.</p>
<p>When I see a resume from someone who went to a flagship state university, I assume that they were from a family that didn’t have unlimited income. They could be reasonably smart, or absolutely brilliant. (One of my elementary school classmates graduated from a SUNY school en route to a tenured professorship at an Ivy League school.) I’ll need more information.</p>
<p>My gut reaction when I see a resume from someplace like Bates or BU is that the candidate is likely to be pretty smart, but unlikely to be absolutely brilliant. (I acknowledge that I’m describing a prejudice. My gut reaction may be unwarranted, but that’s my gut reaction.)</p>
<p>I would pick Bates. Other schools are good, I just think Bates has a better undergraduate focus. You will have more to show to law school given that attention as it generates better opportunities.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>State flagships are evenly divided between the absurdly rich and the miserably poor, no? What makes you lean one way and not the other? The only assumption one can make about someone who attends a state flagship is that he had a solid work ethic in high school, since public universities admit with H.S. GPA as the primary metric, no? Perhaps the raw number of kids with outstanding potential at a state flagship is higher than that of places like BC, but only on account of the sheer size of public universities.</p>
<p>Bates is stronger than BC academically. Also it is a smaller school. The two have different cultures. Whereas one might be welcome at one, they may not feel as comfortable at the other.</p>
<p>Do you want a football-crazed, tailgating, partying school (BC) or a drinking, chill, school (Bates)?</p>
<p>Money isn’t an issue because financial aid will take care of it, so Bing might even be the most expensive of the three. What I’m getting so far is that Bates is the most academically focused. Can you guys throw NYU in there as well? Thanks so much for the help.</p>
<p>re financial aid – just be careful how it is packaged – often financial aid includes loans. and whatever you get the first year, be sure to ask if the mix is more likely to include more loans in future years.</p>
<p>“…public universities admit with H.S. GPA as the primary metric, no?”
I’ve seen no information that indicates Binghamton does so. Applicants are asked to submit test scores and write essays. I assume there is a reason they’re asked to do that.</p>
<p>"State flagships are evenly divided between the absurdly rich and the miserably poor, no? "</p>
<p>I doubt that’s the case at Binghamton, there are so many private options in and around New York for the better-healed.</p>
<p>“Perhaps the raw number of kids with outstanding potential at a state flagship is higher than that of places like BC, but only on account of the sheer size of public universities.”</p>
<p>Binghamton isn’t all that big.</p>
<p>We were really impressed with the place when we visited this summer, they’ve really put money onto it and re-built most of it that existed when my generation was college age. My son has applied there, would not apply to Bates and does not fit at BC. If he did fit I would probably suggest BC. But Binghamton is pretty attractive, to us anyway, as funds are no longer unlimited. If he’d be giving up much to go there, this hasn’t been evident to us so far.</p>
<p>Bates - Very well-respected liberal arts college known for strong academics/intellectual focus among high school classmates, parents, academics, and employers in the NYC/NE area at least. </p>
<p>Boston College - Academically respectable(Not on Bates’ level) Jesuit University which has a strong sports/drinking/party school reputation among high school classmates, parents, and especially guidance counselors. A reason why most guidance counselors and some parents did not have much respect for the school…and it extended to the point that one GC strongly discouraged an older classmate with Ivy stats from applying there. </p>
<p>Binghamton - Regarded as the most prestigious/the flagship SUNY and during my high school years in the early 90’s…was actually harder to get into than NYU CAS. Nearly everyone I knew hated the campus environment, social atmosphere, weather, etc so much that anyone who could transfer up to Ivies or other elite schools did so after one or two years.</p>
<p>NYU/CAS - Has some excellent departments in a sea of average/mediocre ones…especially before the aughts. No real campus, very little sense of campus community, unresponsive bureaucracy, hit or miss advising, little guidance/handholding, and extremely miserly levels of financial aid. </p>
<p>To succeed here, you must be focused on what you want, be proactive in seeking it out/finding information to that end without expecting much help from anyone else, and have huge financial reserves from family/trust fund or be willing to take out enormous loans. If one takes out huge loans, be prepared to experience post-college life enchained to such debt as dozens of NYU graduates I’ve known from the last decade till as recently as 2009 can attest.</p>