@juillet “Graduates of top undergraduate schools are wealthier and more able to afford top law schools; they are also more likely to want to go to law school in the first place. I’m not denying that the premise is true; I’m just saying I have not seen any evidence to support the claim.”
I guarantee that the 300 to 400 thousand students at SEC schools (which includes extremely wealthy Vanderbilt) have tens of thousands more “rich kids” that want to go to law school than tiny Amherst has in its 1800 student body. Nevertheless, Amherst has more students at the best law school in America than all of those SEC schools combined.
You are correct that this only applies to the most selective law schools, the ones that have to make fine tiebreakng decisions between many very good candidates - but for those schools, it absolutely does matter where you went for undergrad, and the law schools absolutely do know what an A means at each school and judge applicants accordingly.
S @juillet all serlaw schools make it very clear that GPA and rigor of undergrad courses are key factors along with LSAT, admission staff also discusses this a l goth at informational meetings. I picked MIT and UChicaho because both are known among the elites as schools with no grade inflation.
18 seems accurate based on a friend's kid's recent experience with this. There are websites where you can see recent stats vs.actual admissions results. LSATs seem more influential these days. Probably moreso than in the past.
In the case I am personally familiar with, humongously high LSAT scorer, not top grades, decent but not absolutely top school, got in to all five or the T-14 schools applied to . Did not apply to Harvard, Yale or Stanford; Based on the other results wishes they did apply to one of them.
The way I recall reading it is, to maintain their rankings the schools have to report astronomical reported LSAT ranges for US News. To do that they have to disproportionately admit candidates with those LSAT stats. Because there aren’t that many of them.
Since all these tests are correlated to some extent, astronomical LSAT scorers probably had astronomical SAT scores. And a lot the highest SAT scorers are clustered in the “top” colleges.
So it would not be surprising to see a lot of students from "good"colleges in the T-14 law schools. Especially factoring in having the wealth to attend, as mentioned previously. But there is not enough information public to discern correlation vs. causation effects, IMO.
So my question is, after all of this, if I get a 3.0-3.2 GPA at Berkeley (grade deflation and general competitiveness), will that be seen as worse than a 3.8 at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School (#9 in the nation)? I’m sure law schools and MBAs would favor the 3.8 at a slightly worse school.
And another question: say I don’t get into Haas (quite likely considering the Class of 2017 was a 15% acceptance rate, with 11% coming from within Berkeley) - if I graduate from Berkeley’s College of Letters & Science with political science, for example, with a mediocre GPA (but higher than a STEM major’s GPA, lol), will that be seen as less qualified than an actual business degree from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler with a high GPA?
I was talking to a graduate employer at a top 10 school, and she said that she and the rest of the admissions staff did not take undergraduate class into account whatsoever, and that GPA was the biggest factor. In addition, a family friend of mine graduated from Penn State undergraduate and went straight to Harvard Business School - that shows that GPA is more important than undergraduate school, right?
of course not - a 3.0 is far, far different from a 3.8. But it also is silly to assume you would get a 3.0 at one good school but a 3.8 at another good school.
Again, why are you assuming that you would be utterly mediocre at Berkeley but a star at UNC? UNC is a very good school.
One family friend is an anecdote, not data. There will be people at Harvard Business School who went to all sorts of places for undergrad. However, percentage-wise there will be a lot MORE that went to places like HYPSM, UChicago, Columbia, Amherst and Williams, especially given the size of their graduating classes compared to places like Penn State.
And to be honest, I don’t know that much about business school admissions. I do know law school admissions pretty well.
@ziggy1234 no. Bussiness schools care a great deal about work experince after college and references. GMAT is also important. Interviews are key. Lots of factors.
