I will hopefully be majoring in political science as an undergrad on my way to Law School. If I want to get into a more prestigious law school, does it matter what school I attend for my undergrad?
(assume I graduate from any school with a 4.0 gpa, regardless of rigor)
No. It will be more of a function of your LSAT score and your GPA. You might also consider not going directly to law school, and working for a year or two or three before going to law school.
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This was posted on a Reddit sub recently:
A. T14 Law School undergraduate representation, July 2021:
- Yale
- Princeton
- Amherst
- Harvard
- UChicago
- Duke
- Columbia
- Georgetown
- Pomona
- Yeshiva
- Stanford
- Claremont McKenna
- Swarthmore
- Barnard
- Dartmouth
- Penn
- Cornell
- Northwestern
- Williams
- Wesleyan
- Rice
- WashU
- Brown
- Vanderbilt
- Bowdoin
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So, what you learn from that College Transitions piece is that a little more than half of the people who got into the top tier of Law schools came from colleges categorized as “Most Selective” or “Extremely Selective.”. This should hardly be a surprise: it takes top grades and top test scores to get into those schools. More interesting is that a quarter of the people who got into those top Law schools came from schools that are “minimally selective or non-selective”.
IOW, no.
Save your money for law school.
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Object to the use of “feeder” as misleading.
@hyprstorm , basically the answer is no. College GPA and LSAT are what matter.
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I am good friends with a guy who is the VP over the legal search group at a prominent Executive Search firm. He is a Duke Law grad and former attorney. I asked him this exact question and he said your undergrad school does not matter. Just make excellent grades, and do well on the LSAT.
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I think the top feeder schools make sense because you needed a top SAT to get into them…so it’s similar.
But when you go to Harvard or Yale you do see kids from South Dakota State or Boise State, etc. so your LSAT is key. The other thing you’ll notice - work experience. The top schools are becoming like business schools…not totally yet but on their way.
Work experience greatly adds to an application.
If poli sci is your thing, then no issue - most law school majors are. But your major isn’t relevant and you bring some educational diversity to the application of you major in something different.
Good luck
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I think the right answer is that GPA/LSAT are the primary drivers (along with highly desired demographic factors), but to say it doesn’t matter is inaccurate. It is one of many factors that are or can be considered and in some instances can make a difference.
You do see kids from all over the place at national law schools, and that is a function of both high stats and a desire for geographical/background diversity. No, HLS is not going to fill their class with Harvard and Princeton kids. That would be insane and boring. But they sure as heck are not going to fill their class with South Dakota State people either, even if there happened to be 600 SDS applicants with superior numbers. Not gonna happen.
Although it’s true that LS admissions committees are under pressure from the rankings, they are still trying to put together classes of people who are going to be difference makers, which means holistic reviews. And once you get there, where you earned your GPA can be a factor. AOs are not blind to the differences between these institutions and are very good at understanding the context in which one has generated a given GPA. I’m not theorizing here; I’m telling you I’ve heard words come out of committee member mouths such as “Well, this one’s coming from Amherst so …”
To say flatly that it doesn’t matter is inaccurate. It just doesn’t matter nearly as much as GPA and LSAT. Few factors do.
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I don’t have any experience applying to Law School, but maybe soon with my Son. He is in highly selective LAC and gets a 3.7, and the kid at South Dakota State gets a 3.9, same LSAT. Does the South Dakota kid have the edge?
They both get in.
Without more information, the South Dakota State student may have a slight advantage, but it mostly is determined by the median GPA of any particular targeted law school. For example: If a targeted law school has a median GPA of 3.8, then the applicant with the 3.9 GPA has an advantage.
Additionally, an applicant from South Dakota may also enjoy an advantage based on geographical diversity when applying to law schools outside of the region which includes the state of South Dakota.
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Step further. Law firm hiring out of same law school kids with same stats. Any advantage if you went to undergrad to Colgate or SD State?
Unlikely that there would be any difference unless hiring partner or interviewer attended one of those specific schools as well.
Hiring out of law school depends mostly on the law school, law school class rank/grades , and sometimes grades in specific law school courses.
And on interviews – if they still do them. When I was in law school, lots of my classmates looked good on paper; in person it was a different story with many of them. The interviewers might be thinking to themselves, “Is this person someone we could introduce to our clients, or would we have to lock them in the law library where they do research but never have any interactions with clients?”
To what size law firm are you referring ?
The larger the law firm, the less likely a new associate is to meet clients.
The largest law firms understand that recent law school grads are likely to last less than five or six years.
Large law firms want billable hours from those who did well at a top ranked law school.
I started out in a law firm of about 30 lawyers, and had client contacts right away – at least, with certain clients (it depended on the client and the type of work we did for them).
You are correct that larger law firms – at least those involved in corporate/transactional work, for example – are more likely to want research drones for the meat grinder, with minimal opportunities to meet and interact with clients or even get into court. If the law firm is one in which young associates would have the opportunity to meet clients in the flesh, or get to appear in front of a judge or jury, then interpersonal skills that might come through in an interview could be valuable.
By large law firms (biglaw), I am referring to firms with over 500 lawyers.
Firms with fewer than 300 lawyers are likely to evaluate potential new hires differently than do large law firms. Typically, the opportunity to become an equity partner is much greater at small to medium sized law firms than at large law firms.
I definitely agree.
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Been out of it for quite a while, but coming from a Big Law firm and very much involved in hiring, the interpersonal skills we saw in interviews were important as a function of “would this person work well with others at the firm: is he/she a team player, can he/she communicate effectively, does this person exhibit good people skills?” vs client considerations, although these traits are also important in terms of interactions with clients when the time comes.
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Hard to say. Will vary by committee and the like. As one poster pointed out, the South Dakota State kid may enjoy an advantage by being the first attractive SDS applicant to that school in recent memory. It can act as a diversity factor, which is still very powerful. Tell me the kid is Native American and had a reasonable LSAT (but not necessarily stellar or even competitive) and he’s probably going to bump your son (in our contrived example where they are viewed as vying for one seat).
OTOH, in that same contrived scenario, if all else is truly equal and the scores and GPA match up closely, you son’s undergraduate school will be viewed as a positive. These are academics. It’s what they know and respect. Nobody on those committees assumes the 3.85 South Dakota State English major is marginally more capable and incrementally more likely to go on and do great things than the 3.7 Amherst English major. In fact, a majority of them would assume the opposite. LS Ad Coms are trying to put together a good class, and that means numbers and it means other things.
There is no doubt that the increased position of US News rankings in our culture has put pressure on law schools to generate numbers. But they are looking at other things … many other things, and among those is an informed view of your undergraduate work.
Put it this way. If it were as straight forward and formula driven as some suggest, they wouldn’t bother the faculty and alumni with reading applications and an admin would just pick the class on his / her own. It’s not how it works. Your son’s application is going to be reviewed in context, which you should be happy to hear.