<p>Hey guys, I've narrowed my list to Swarthmore, Duke, or Dartmouth. The problem is, that I think the deciding factor will be which one can get me into a top law school-- specifically, Harvard Law School. Do any of you have any ideas? stats? Thanks!</p>
<p>All three, I'm sure, have excellent law school placement. I really wouldn't base the decision on getting into Harvard Law (which mostly depends on your LSAT score and GPA). Go wherever you feel you can get the best grades, I suppose.</p>
<p>Why not just go to the one you like the best. In four years you might change your goal.</p>
<p>Duke and Dartmouth have a tendency to get more grads into HLS than Swarthmore, my guess is this has a lot to do with the grade deflation at Swarthmore (which does exist!). Between Duke and Dartmouth I would personally choose Dartmouth because of the LACy feel(and I did make this choice lol), but I don't see any difference in law school placement between these two.</p>
<p>IT DOES NOT MATTER where you go to UG, unless you go to a community college that offers a B.A. program. Honestly, it does not matter. Good grades and stellar LSAT is 90% of what they look at. Maybe...MAYBE if it comes down to the Harvard grad and the Southern New Mexico State-Truth or Consequences grad it will factor in.</p>
<p>Not true. Institutional quality is weighted so you want the best school where you'll get the best GPA, i.e. the one with the most inflation. If Chicago is rated lower than Stanford by the admissions committee yet Stanford is easier, its beneficial to go there. That's why I would avoid any grade deflatory school (like Swat). Dartmouth does better than Duke on this list (when size of school is factored in), but these numbers do fluctuate so I view both schools as the same.</p>
<p>Here is the undergraduate list from Harvard Law:</p>
<p>thanks a lot for that list!</p>
<p>GPA's are not the criteria used by law schools. In order to take into account differences in grade inflation/deflation at different schools, you are a assigned a percentile rank based on the GPA's of people who applied from your school in the last 10 years. In addition, school strength in weighted by the average LSAT score of all applicants from your school in the last 10 years. </p>
<p>This was indicated to me at a law school forum when I was an undergrad attended by reps from Yale, UVA, Columbia and Duke law schools (either dean or associate dean of admissions). It just so turned out that they mentioned that year Swarthmore had the highest average LSAT score of any school in the country.</p>
<p>That data does exist, but it doesn't compensate enough for deflation. People from deflatory schools with average GPAs but high LSATs not do nearly as well as those from inflation oriented schools who had both high GPAs and LSATs.</p>
<p>My friend, this list has just decided my university choice for me, thank u soo much!!</p>
<p>I don't know about anyone else but I've always been disgusted (but hardly surprised) by the overrepresentation of H kids on that HLS list. What's the excuse? H kids are really so much smarter than everyone else? Sure.</p>
<p>Take Princeton. P has no Law School of its own to offer competition for P undergrads. (Unlike, say, Yale or Stanford -- or Columbia for that matter.) P is not on the other side of the country. P kids are, uh, not so dumb.</p>
<p>But there are 241 H kids at HLS and "only" 54 P kids. Sure, P is a smaller undergraduate school than H, but if P kids were enrolled in the same proportion as H kids, there would be about 171 of them at HLS -- more than 3X as many as the actual 54. (Do you really think it's that not enough P kids apply to HLS? P is not MIT.) </p>
<p>I certainly have no special brief for P kids. But P just perfectly reveals the crassness of the HLS preference for H undergrads. And, no, my point is not that there should be more P kids at HLS. It's that there should be fewer H kids (and more from all kinds of other schools). Meritocracy indeed.</p>
<p>Dartmouth..great experience and probably the best bet t get into Harvard Law.</p>
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I don't know about anyone else but I've always been disgusted (but hardly surprised) by the overrepresentation of H kids on that HLS list. What's the excuse? H kids are really so much smarter than everyone else? Sure.</p>
<p>Take Princeton. P has no Law School of its own to offer competition for P undergrads. (Unlike, say, Yale or Stanford -- or Columbia for that matter.) P is not on the other side of the country. P kids are, uh, not so dumb.</p>
<p>But there are 241 H kids at HLS and "only" 54 P kids. Sure, P is a smaller undergraduate school than H, but if P kids were enrolled in the same proportion as H kids, there would be about 171 of them at HLS -- more than 3X as many as the actual 54. (Do you really think it's that not enough P kids apply to HLS? P is not MIT.) </p>
<p>I certainly have no special brief for P kids. But P just perfectly reveals the crassness of the HLS preference for H undergrads. And, no, my point is not that there should be more P kids at HLS. It's that there should be fewer H kids (and more from all kinds of other schools). Meritocracy indeed.
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<p>WesDad, I think you're being a bit extreme. I think much (probably most) of the "overrepresentation" on the list has a simple explanation - people tend to get used to a certain area and don't want to move. If you're a Harvard undergrad and you get into HLS, you stand a high chance of enrolling there simply because you're highly familiar with the area, a lot of your friends will still be there, you know how a lot of local things work, maybe you have a local boy/girl-friend who doesn't want to move, etc.</p>
<p>I seem to recall on the law school part of CC that jonri once asserted (and you can ask him for his data) that the majority of cross-admits to YLS and HLS will choose YLS...except for those cross-admits coming from Harvard undergrad, where the breakdown is about 50/50. Again, if you're already a local, you will have developed specific information about the area that may make HLS more desirable. For example, one reason that jonri posited (which I find to be quite reasonable) is that somebody who's a Harvard undergrad and who gets into HLS can arrange to become a graduate resident tutor within one of the Harvard houses, which means that you get housing for free, because you already know the people who run the tutor process, you know where to apply, and hence you have strong 'inside information' compared to somebody coming from a completely different undergrad program. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that I strongly suspect that most of the overrepresentation on the list is simply explained not because it's easier for somebody from Harvard College to get into HLS (relative to somebody from Princeton), but rather that somebody from Harvard College who does get into HLS is highly likely to actually matriculate. Nobody likes to move. Everybody likes to stay local where they can take advantage of inside information, as opposed to having to learn a whole new way of doing things. </p>
<p>By the same token, every law school is overrepresented with its own undergrads. YLS has lots of Yale undergrads, SLS has lots of Stanford undergrads, etc. Same reason - people naturally don't like to move. They tend to prefer to stay in the same place. </p>
<p>The data that * should * be interesting to you is whether Harvard undergrads are over-represented compared to Princeton undergrads in * just getting admitted *, not whether they actually enroll.</p>
<p>"The data that should be interesting to you is whether Harvard undergrads are over-represented compared to Princeton undergrads in just getting admitted , not whether they actually enroll."</p>
<p>To be sure. But we don't have that data. That was the point of my making this comment: "(Do you really think it's that not enough P kids apply to HLS? P is not MIT.)" That is, I just don't buy -- until I see data -- that what we have here is H and P undergrands being admitted at about the same rates, but H undergrads choosing to enroll in much greater numbers because of local preference. I think H overadmits its own undergraduate students. </p>
<p>And the choice of P, in this regard, was deliberate. P has no law school. So a P undergrad has no choice to remain local (as opposed to a H undergrad choosing HLS over YLS; or vice versa; or a Stanford undergrad choosing Stanford over either HLS or YLS). Okay, so a P undergrad also has no "local" tie dragging him to Cambridge. Fine. Does s/he need one? If a P undergrad is accepted to HLS, where is s/he going to go instead? The only likely place would be YLS. Sure, sure, maybe some would choose Stanford, or some Columbia or NYU because they fancy NYC -- but hardly in droves. So I find the local tie theory not too convinving. </p>
<p>Now, maybe the explanation is that P undergrads are admitted to HLS at about the same rate as H undergrads, but just apply in proportionally much smaller numbers -- like at a 3X lower rate. Maybe. But I wasn't under the impression that P undergrads were disinclined to go to law school. And you don't get into P as an undergraduate being shy about applying to the top rated schools.</p>
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To be sure. But we don't have that data.
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<p>And that's my point also - that we should refrain from being 'disgusted' until we see the data. </p>
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That is, I just don't buy -- until I see data -- that what we have here is H and P undergrands being admitted at about the same rates, but H undergrads choosing to enroll in much greater numbers because of local preference. I think H overadmits its own undergraduate students.
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<p>I think one should be conservative about what is going on - that you shouldn't rush to judgment without data.</p>
<p>Besides, even if H overadmits its own undergrads, relative to P, I think one simple explanation is that, frankly, H students are probably better than P students. Let's face it. Like it or not, Harvard wins the undergrad cross-admit battle with Princeton (as it does with every other school). The upshot is that Harvard probably has a better quality of student body relative to P.</p>
<p>Besides, consider the following data from Yale Law School. Which undergrad school sent the most to YLS? Harvard. Yale is a close 2nd, a difference which can almost certainly be explained by the fact that Harvard College is simply bigger than Yale College. In fact, Harvard sends almost 3 times more students YLS than Princeton does.</p>
<p>So does that mean that you're now disgusted that YLS is giving preference to * Harvard * students? {And why exactly would YLS give preference to Harvard students anyway?} Or is it perhaps another explanation more likely, i.e. that Harvard students are simply better than Princeton students on average, and/or that perhaps just lots of Harvard students just want to go to law school? </p>
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If a P undergrad is accepted to HLS, where is s/he going to go instead? The only likely place would be YLS. Sure, sure, maybe some would choose Stanford, or some Columbia or NYU because they fancy NYC -- but hardly in droves. So I find the local tie theory not too convinving.
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<p>Uh, no, you're seeing the problem wrong. The question is, who has the stronger * relative * local tie to HLS? The obviously answer is Harvard itself. Like I said, even many Harvard undergrads (~50% according to jonri) who get admitted to YLS will * still * choose HLS. That's the point. Harvard has a stronger * relative * local tie than Princeton does, and that's all that you need to explain a relative difference in enrollment.</p>
<p>Also, again, see above regarding the YLS data. Harvard College seems to sends more students than Princeton to HLS. However, it also sends more students than Princeton to YLS. I also strongly suspect that it will probably also send more students to SLS. Do you find that "disgusting" also? </p>
<p>And besides, even if you're correct and Harvard really does favor its own undergrads, even that to me isn't particularly surprising or 'disgusting', simply because plenty of other schools do precisely the same thing. For example, it is well understood within the MIT community that by far the best way to get into MIT for graduate school is to go there for undergrad and just stay there. In fact, that's why you have the characteristic of "MIT-cubed", meaning somebody who got his bachelor's, master's, and PhD at MIT. Similarly, Caltech undergrads seem to enjoy a quite strong home-field advantage towards getting into their own graduate school. Same seems to be true of Stanford. The upshot is that, ex-ante, it's better to go to these schools that offers these 'home-field advantages'. </p>
<p>Hence, even if what you are saying is true, I don't know why you would be singling out Harvard.</p>
<p>More info...</p>
<p>Yale Law School
2005-2006 # of Students Undergraduate Enrollment
Harvard 89 6,715
Yale 86 5,303
Stanford 42 6,391
Princeton 34 4,775
Columbia 18 5,593
Brown 17 5,798
Cal-Berkeley 16 23,863
DUKE 13 6,259
Dartmouth 13 4,005
Williams College 12 1,965
U of Virginia 10 13,440
Amherst 9 1,648</p>
<p>i think the link slipper posted proves that it is very possible to get into top grad programs from lesser-known schools.however if you have a 4.0 at neverheardofit u and some other guy has a 3.5 at princeton, with everything else equal, they will still take the princeton guy.</p>
<p>Does anyone have a similar link for Stanford?</p>