Does it hurt your chances to apply to a school you were rejected from undergrad?

<p>Does it hurt your chances to apply to a school you were rejected from undergrad?</p>

<p>I'm a senior in high school and ultimate goal is to go to Columbia Law. I have a slim chance of making it into Columbia (which I would love to go to) for undergrad (2020 SAT, 4.0 Soph and Junior years, and good leadership positions and involvement in EC's). All of that being said, I know my chances are still very slim. I know most college apps ask "Have you previously applied to...?" What do they mean when they ask that? Is that an automatic -1 off your app? Do they want to give other people a chance?</p>

<p>Would it be best to not apply for undergrad at all? Or would it not make that much of a difference, because I still want to see if I could make it, regardless of my slim chance</p>

<p>Columbia law won’t care whether you applied for admission to Columbia College. (Some universities will ask you if you have previously been affiliated with or applied to the institution. Not to judge you, but to avoid creating duplicate records for you. They wouldn’t want to assign you a second university ID if you already have one, for example.)</p>

<p>Graduate schools care not a whit for anything related to your undergraduate admissions process.</p>

<p>It doesn’t matter at all whether you got rejected as a high school senior. Grad school applications don’t ask for undergraduate schools you applied to (at least for chemical engineering they don’t). I got rejected from a school when I was a HS senior and when I applied for graduate school they accepted me about a week after I submitted my app and they were recruiting me hard. So don’t worry.</p>

<p>thanks guys!</p>

<p>Some professional schools prefer that you went elsewhere for undergraduate studies. So if you want to go to Columbia for law school it would be preferable to go elsewhere for undergrad. They do this so that everyone in their professional program is on an even footing.</p>