<p>I was just accepted to Pepperdine as an undergraduate where I will be attending this fall. I know it's a little early but I am absolutely sure I want to go to law school afterwards and have been looking at such places as Stanford, Pepperdine (obviously), Columbia and Harvard. I will also most likely be applying to some UCs. </p>
<p>So far I'm really liking Pepperdine's program (but I still need to look more into a couple of the others). I also would really prefer to stay in California though that may change in a few years. However, a couple people have mentioned to me that many employers like to see some diversity as far as the undergrad/grad schools you attend. Basically if I go to Pepperdine for undergrad it might be more advantages to enroll in a grad program at a different university when it comes to job hunting later. </p>
<p>Does anyone know if this is true? Or do employers not care as long as you get your degrees from a good program?</p>
<p>Law firms will only care about where your J.D. comes from.</p>
<p>Also the list of schools you’re considering is all over the place. Typically, unless you’re practically getting a full-ride to law school, it’s really financially irresponsible right now to go to any school outside of the T14 (some would argue top 20/25ish, though this is a point of strong contesting). In California, the only ones being considered should be Stanford, Berkeley, and arguably UCLA and USC. Pepperdine is a Tier 2 program and the amount of debt accrued to the average actual salary being made post-grad is not worth it. Take statistics touted by the schools themselves with a grain of salt as most numbers are just well-manipulated statistics (incomplete reporting, median vs. mean, reporting 75%ile, etc.).</p>
<p>Anyway, back to the original question, it doesn’t matter where you go for undergrad. Pepperdine -> Pepperdine or Yale -> Yale, it’s all the same.</p>
<p>Actually all of the schools I listed are considered tier 1 for this year (US news considers the top 100 schools) Pepperdine is ranked at #54 in the nation, UC Davis #23, UCLA #15 and the rest are in the top 5. If “all over the place” means I’m not ONLY applying to the top 14 schools in the nation, then yes I’d rather be “all over the place” than assume I will get into/be able to afford one of those schools. </p>
<p>What Oyama meant is that there is an overabundance of lawyers out there and well paying jobs are difficult to come by. You typically need to graduate from top 14/20/25 schools in order to get a chance at a job at a high power law firm. Otherwise, you might end up as a public defender or small time lawyer taking care of traffic tickets or small claims. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with doing either of these but you won’t be making the hundreds of thousands of dollars that people typically think lawyers make.</p>
<p>An exception to this is if you graduated from the top school in a given state or region and there’s a top law firm localized in that area. For example, graduates from the University of Florida might have a good chance getting into the top law firm in Florida where many of the partners are UF alums, but that UF degree won’t have much weight anywhere else in the nation.</p>
<p>I wasn’t even referring to Biglaw. Many graduates are having trouble finding public defense jobs, too, since the oversaturation of lawyers has hit almost all domains by now.</p>
<p>If you want to inquire further, head to the Law School forum in CC, Top Law School forum, and Law School Numbers forums.</p>
<p>Also, the law admissions game is very straightforward. You can gauge your chances based on the GPA+LSAC GPA split of years past at the schools you’re applying to. It’s not like typical graduate admissions for MA/Ph.D. where there’s a lot of variance and adcomms look for multi-factored applicants; if you’re under the median for both GPA and LSAT, you know you have a very low chance to begin with, but if you’re above the median on both statistics, you’re fine. If you look at Law School Numbers, you’ll know that this has been the case year after year after year with almost all the law schools in the US. If you’re competitive at the T14 tier, there’s no point in applying to schools outside the Top 25 unless you’re seeking scholarships; if you’re competitive at the #30-50 tier, then you should infer that you have little to no shot at T14 unless you have something ridiculously incredible on your application (i.e., on the order of being famous for it; law admissions is notorious for placing almost 0 emphasis on extracurriculars, no matter how impressive).</p>
<p>Oh ok! Thank you both for the clarification.</p>
<p>So, Oyama, like you said, the thought is that it would be better to pay more to go to a higher ranked school then to possibly pay less at a lower ranked school (Unless it was a full-ride), right? Because even though I would be paying more in the beginning to go to let’s say Stanford I would have a better chance of obtaining a higher paying job upon graduation then if I went to Pepperdine or one of the UCs? </p>
<p>I see. So when it comes to law school, it’s not really nesessary to have “safety” schools if you have high enough stats?</p>
<p>(Thank you! I’ll check out the other forum as well.)</p>
<p>If you’re, let’s say, $150k in debt, it’ll take you forever to pay off that with a $45k/year salary and you’re never going to get out of the hole. There are tons of horror stories of people basically going bankrupt because of this, and with education loans, you can’t default them even if you declare bankruptcy.</p>
<p>If you get a job that isn’t in biglaw, but had 0 debt, you’d still be doing what you wanted to do (practice law), and can actually make a decent livelihood at 45k-60k/year since you won’t be under all that debt and the compounded interest on top of that.</p>
That’s sometimes a concern for students applying to PhD programs who want to have a career in academia. It’s been aptly titled “academic inbreeding.” I’ve never heard of it being a concern for students in professional programs though. Heck, the biggest feeder into Harvard Law is Harvard College.</p>