I came from big law and hire big law and work with them every day. Transactional work.
As an associate I interacted with clients all the time and as a hiring client I now interact with associates all the time. It’s more often just a matter of who is working on what aspect of a given matter and whether I need to talk to them directly. I’m wrapping up something now that involved calls with the partner and associate up front, but I’ve been dealing directly with the associate 95% of the time since then because he’s the one helping me get this thing over the line.
I was told by a friend they didn’t get a McKinsey interview (and went to Wharton) because they did their undergrad at CU Boulder and not a more prestigious school…at least that’s what he was told.
So there are probably some (few) instances it does matter.
I think in the OPs case - it matters less.
But - the prestigious law schools probably are filled with kids mostly from high level undergrad…
That’s because if the students at top colleges are “superior” in grade and test from high school, they’ll likely be the same (especially test wise) during college.
I think for finance and consulting, there isn’t a huge amount of debate that where you went to school matters. With that said, I’d be surprised that McKinsey turned down a Wharton graduate for an interview because of their undergrad.
It is counter intuitive to me to tell a kid in any context that undergraduate school doesn’t matter. I know we’re talking about a means to an end but four years of a top undergraduate education IMO matters a ton.
“… they did not have to take general education requirements in the subject areas outside their strength where they would risk getting lower than A grades, unlike the ones from Harvey Mudd and CSU Los Angeles”?
(Open curriculum colleges are probably great for pre-law students in terms of allowing them to cherry-pick courses that they are most likely to earn A or A+ (if they exist at the college) grades and avoid general education subjects in their weaker academic areas that they would risk lower grades in.)
And in many cases outside of NY, ties to the area/region. If a law student is applying for a firm in say, Minneapolis, that SD State grad would likely have an edge over the Colgate undergrad who was NY born and bred. (Which kinda makes sense as the Firm would hope that someone that they hired would stick around for a few years.)
The other thing that works even better is attending a school with an overall less accomplished cohort, picking an easy major, and being strategic in fulfilling gen. ed. requirements, to the extent they apply.
Unless a kid is going to college to be challenged… in which case being surrounded by a less accomplished cohort, picking an easy major, and being strategic in fulfilling gen. ed. requirements (which I take it means taking “Rocks for Jocks” instead of an actual geology course, etc.)
I can’t imagine encouraging my kids to take the easy way out, regardless of their post-grad goals. And I can’t imagine paying for a college education knowing that my kid intentionally was choosing an easy major. Especially for law school. You need to hit the ground running in law school (those 1L grades matter more than anything else you do in three years) and being accustomed to working hard to keep up seems like better preparation than “being strategic”.
Need to be careful with that strategy if for no other reason that a school with a less accomplished cohort can have a lower grading scale such that A’s are hard to come by (and C’s are plentiful). In contrast, accomplished cohort schools such as Yale, Brown and Pomona College can have a mean GPA over 3.6, i.e., more A’s than B’s.
Neither can I, for the very reasons you offered among others.
Nor could I imagine a kid weighing a decision to attend Brown and making the choice based on the flexibility to never take a course outside their comfort zone so that they can game their GPA.
OP: Nobody knows except the law schools, and they aren’t tellin’. While top law schools do like to note how many different UG contribute, it’s also true that top UG schools seem to be over-represented.
That said, the most solid advice is become a resident of Montana and apply to Harvard.
My post was rhetorical. But fair enough. Compete for grades with smarter kids and have a higher floor, or compete for grades with less accomplished kids and have a lower floor. I guess you just have to know where you’ll fare better.
This discussion seems backward to me. If you cannot compete with the brightest set of students in undergrad in reasonably demanding courses, what makes you think you can compete in a T14 law school? Collecting “credentials” without challenging and sharpening your mind during undergrad does not seem to me to be the best long term planning (and a waste of time, money and opportunity). Whether law or any professional career, you have to have the mental chops and work ethic to succeed.
Well, therein lies the confusion. It’s not a discussion, and my response to a poster above was tongue-in-cheek/rhetoric/sarcasm … take your pick.
Just to clear this up for the confused, I don’t advocate going to an easy school, picking an easy major and avoiding a challenge so that you can get good grades for law school, nor would I pay for one of my kids to do so.
In some ways though ease is in the eye of the beholder.
My son is a mechanical engineering. Kicking his a$$.
His minor is geography. He loves it. Finds it simple easy.
But he says the business majors in the class complain there’s so much work, that they can’t keep up. My son says it’s like a 30 minute weekly assignment.
For my son it’s cake. For some of his classmates majoring in business, geography is not.
I assume someone would see physics or math as hard and geography or sociology as easier.
But for some it might be reversed.
So how can one really say - easier major?
And is a 3.8 in geography or sociology better or worse than a 3.2 in engineering?
I think the LSAT is the differentiator for law school - in some cases more important than the undergraduate work and why you see some 3rd tier colleges represented at top schools.
Well, looking at Stanford’s numbers will only further fuel the debate, as there’s quite a spread for both GPA and LSAT among its 1Ls…but again, they aren’t tellin’. The median private salary class of 2020 is a pretty amazing number, though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the extreme outliers don’t have some unique backgrounds. In my law school class at the school across the Bay, we had a former Black Panther, a previously convicted felon, a physician, to name a few non typical students. My roommate was older and was on a top sky diving show team and had been a fire jumper, had worked on an Alaskan fishing boat and had just come back from a summer lumber jack gig. I don’t know what their academic stats were, but I can pretty safely say if you are a 3.2 or a 157 LSAT student without some unique background, you have close to 0 chance at a school like Stanford.
