100k+ debt for UG is crazy.
This may have been true in previous years, but this year, HLS only took 33% of 173’s. And less than 50% of 174’s. There were a lot more high LSAT scores this year.
OP, HLS, Stanford and Yale really love work experience. So do other schools. You’ll greatly increase your acceptances by working for a year or two after undergrad. GPA and LSAT trump everything else though.
As a reminder, op, who is a MO resident, is asking whether getting into 90k debt to go from Ball State to Indiana U is worth it wrt law school…
re #11, I know someone who scored above 173 but otherwise was unsure of their credentials. Not tippy-top grades, school is good but not tippy-top, work experience was interesting but not amazing. They wound up getting admitted to both top-five law schools applied to, and in fact all five of the T-13 schools applied to, with merit money. And is now kicking themself for not applying to Harvard.
But this was a few years ago.
I’ll put it in perspective. Experienced lawyers don’t make much more than computer engineers, but usually have twice the debt. If you go into law school with $90k in student loan debt, you can expect to come out with at least another $100k. That much debt could sink your career. If you want to do law, then you really need to go sparingly on the undergraduate debt and focus on your grades and LSAT scores. That’s what will get you into law school.
My kid went to a small oos state school on a full scholarship so no debt. She had a 3.85 and 163 LSAT- not great for top schools but she was accepted to two good schools (ranked 25-28) She will graduate with 70k (while some friends of hers will have much more) in debt and a job so it can be done.
To help with the numbers, D took this June’s LSAT and scored 172. This is below HLS median but at the 99th percentile. 60k apply to law schools annually. Not everyone taking the LSAT applies to law school but if they did there are 600 students applying with her score or higher. Incoming class size of Harvard, Yale and Stanford is such that these schools sort of need to accept most of the high scoring students. Otherwise, how could HLS report a median of 173? I know a few 180 scores drive up the average but there can’t be that many scoring above 175
Re: post 26:
Yes, there are only a small percentage of LSAT-takers who score in the 99th percentile or higher. HLS is only about 0.6% of all law schools (1 out of almost 200). And the number of LSAT-scorers in the 99th percentile or higher who also have a 3.8+ GPA and who have work experience and an unblemished record is even smaller.
There’s answer as to why HLS has to accept only a portion of even top scorers.
Its likely to be 2x that number per LSAC. Over the past three years, 1400 folks have scores 172+ on average. Now, not all apply to LS this year. Some score high and work for a year or two; others retake a 172 to go higher. On the other hand, some bright folks ace the LSAT but decide to continue making bank in whatever business they are currently in. So its unclear how many high scores apply every year.
But yes, to keep its 173 median, HLS has to accept quite a few of the 173’s+. There were ~972 172’s on average over teh past few years and HLS needs 300 of them. Of course, YLS and SLS are gunning for those scores as well, not to mention all the merit money from the next few schools down the food chain. So yeah, not that many to go around.
But I believe that female applicants get a slight bump so a 172 should do very well.
Good luck.
HLS would need to accept a good number of applicants with 173+ LSAT scores, but it can and does reject plenty. Same for Stanford and Yale.
These posts about “Harvard simply has to accept applicants” are one-sided. Just how many people who post them actually went to HLS, Stanford or Yale? It’s not as though admissions to those schools are handed out like candy, and HLS’s yield is extremely high, indicating that diplomas from those schools are among the most desired.
Who posts scores matters not, Happy. The only number that matters to HLS is the number of 173’s available, and that number is less than 1,000 on an average year. There aren’t just that many to go around. That is a statistical fact.
And HLS needs 300+ of those 173’s+, and that is after Yale and Stanford and Chicago, and Columbia and NYU and even Northwestern each take some. (Northwestern ED would be extremely attractive to a splitter, say 3.3 GPA+173.)
Don’t tell the partner in a major law firm that I met last night that his college in Missouri was not good! He was just saying how nice it was last night! Of the lawyers that I spoke with they were from all over, small and large colleges, state schools, not highly ranked schools, etc. All are really great lawyers and due to what they did at those colleges and their LSAT had no trouble getting in to law school. The law firm I’m thinking of in in TX by the way.
@bluebayou, usually I agree with you, but we’re talking past each other.
There are incessant posts saying, “Harvard simply has to accept X number of applicants who scored X on the LSAT”.
No, it doesn’t. It’s Harvard. It has a large endowment. If there weren’t enough qualified students to fill its class, it would just reduce the class size. There are numerous people in and outside of the school who want it to; the result would be that its median LSAT score could increase dramatically.
People who make the statement that HLS simply has to accept X number of applicants are treating the school as though it were the University of Mississippi or the local community college and needed X students paying $X per year in tuition and didn’t want the US News ranking to fall. Harvard doesn’t think like that.
@HappyAlumnus: Do you have any evidence of HLS ever just reducing its class size?
Perhaps you have on crimson goggles? 
Yup, and they have over the past few years. But the math is still the math.
Harvard law has decreased its class size about 40 students (from 600 to 560). So, that means instead of 300 173’s to hold their 173 median, they only need 280. But the fact is that there are less than 1,000 173’s+ each year. But, for HLS to hold its median, it now HAS to take at least 280 of them.
And sure, HLS is wealthy enough to easily reduce it class size even more, perhaps even “a lot” if it wanted to say increase its LSAT median over YLS. (Not sure what “a lot” of the faculty would do in such a situation, but that is another discussion.)
My statement about “has to take” was never about tuition fees; rather, to hold a statistical median, HLS needs at least 50% of those matriculants to be at or above that number. Besides reducing class size further, HLS could also decide to drop their median to <173 but I’d guess, that Harvard “doesn’t think like that” either.
The OP said he wants to be a criminal defense attorney. While some big law firms have criminal departments, not all do. Most criminal lawyers start in either a public defenders’ office or DA’s office. Some state at a federal court, but many of those don’t pay anything or pay at the lower rates of federal pay scales.
I think expecting $190k per year is not realistic.
My niece’s friend was a top students and got accepted at T-14 law schools, but attended one just outside that group because they offered her a scholarship. She is absolutely top of her class , has a job at a big law firm in DC, but is doing a federal clerkship this year. I don’t know if the firm is paying her the difference in salary, but sometimes they do but if not she’s not making anywhere close to $190k; I think federal first year lawyers are paid about $80k plus locality adjustments. She could make those choices since she had no student loans from undergrad or law school. Many more options when you don’t have debt.
Here’s a link to the 2018 Federal Judiciary Salary plan for the DC area, showing a 28% location adjustment. First year federal clerks are paid at grade 11. http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/jsp_washington_dc_2018_0.pdf
I hadn’t heard of Biglaw firms paying the difference between the Biglaw salary and the clerkship salary. The firms I’m familiar with do pay a nice bonus when their hire completes the clerkship, and an even nicer bonus if their hire does two clerkships. (And an insane bonus if one is a Supreme Court clerkship.) Many firms will also pay the hire as a 2nd or 3rd year associate once they begin working for the firm, depending on the number of years they served as a clerk.
Correct, they do not.
Correct. But the bonus ($50k seems to be the going rate for a 1-year federal clerkship, but some firms pay more) does not come close to the salary differential.
btw: Firms will also still reimburse for bar review courses, etc, after the fact for those who clerk before joining the Firm.
Once I had a job in hand, I studied for the Bar while at law school and passed it very easily with sufficiently high enough score to get waived in in Washington, DC. I feel they should make passing the Bar harder to weed out bad attorneys. Couldn’t stand working for a large law firm and mastering the art of billing (writing down 0.1 hour when I worked 2 minutes), so I set up my own law office after one year of working, and did well enough to retire after 20 years. With a law school, the problem isn’t getting in; it’s what you do after you graduate.