<p>Many people say only the GPA and LSAT score matter in the admission. Is it really the case? Does the name of the college not matter at all - what if it's an ivy? If it doesn't does that mean one could go to a cheap college with low grading system in order to save money and get a high GPA?</p>
<p>It might matter a little bit; it’s hard to make definitive statements. But a 4.0 from a cheap college will definitely get you into better schools than a 3.5 from Harvard. </p>
<p>(If this seems unfair to you, think about it the other way around. Considering prestige heavily would be the same as telling the students at non-prestigious universities “sorry, but because you couldn’t get into or afford Harvard you can never be a competitive candidate”.)</p>
<p>How could you not be impressed with a 3.5 GPA from Harvard ? Given how selective they are ,wouldn’t that be more meaningful than a lesser school ?</p>
<p>It probably is more meaningful. Law school admissions committees don’t really care, though.</p>
<p>^This is misleading. HLS disproportionately admits Harvard undergrads everything else being equal just as most laws schools affiliated with Ivy league schools favor their own undergrads. This happens all the way down the chain. Some law schools even allow their affiliated college undergrads to apply without the LSAT by keeping a certain GPA, something not offered to outside applicants.</p>
<p>^ so, hypothetically speaking, a Harvard undergrad with 3.3 GPA and 170 LSAT would stand the same chances in HLS as a Yale undergrad with 3.9 GPA and 170 LSAT?</p>
<p>In this case it would not be a matter of one over the other. Depending on the recommendations, personal statements, softs, URM status, first gen, etc. the Harvard undergrad would still have a good chance of being admitted to Harvard along with the Yale applicant since the largest number of law school students at both schools come from within their undergrad ranks.</p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot of blanket assertions on this topic, but little hard data to back up these assertions.</p>
<p>My law school alma mater (Berkeley) states that it takes into consideration the difficulty of the undergraduate program. There was a time when their numerical formula that guided admissions decisions assigned different multipliers to different undergraduate programs, until the Justice Department filed suit, arguing that this method had a racially disparate impact on admissions. They entered into a consent decree agreeing to stop using the formal multipliers.</p>
<p>The scarcity of publicly available hard data on this subject may relate to concerns about future litigation.</p>
<p>My guess is that most schools take into consideration, to varying degrees, the difficulty of the applicant’s undergraduate program, and that both the fields of study and the reputations of undergraduate institutions play a role.</p>
<p>A 3.3 Harvard grad with a 170 LSAT would have no shot at HLS since his scores are below both medians. The Yale student is a plausible candidate for admissions though. </p>
<p>Harvard does favor its undergrads ATHE but not with a GPA that low. HLS has a pretty strict 3.7 GPA floor unless you are a minority (better if you are a URM male).</p>
<p>If you look at LSN it is pretty clear that the numbers rule the game. Unless only people from top undergrads use that site, I would say LSAT and GPA matter more than where the GPA came from. </p>
<p>That being said, there might be a slight edge given to the marginal applicants with the exact LSAT and GPA who come from more respected undergrad institutions than the applicants who come from lesser known places and majored in basket weaving. </p>
<p>Also, the comment that Harvard takes more of their undergrads than ones from other schools doesn’t necessarily mean they favored their own. There is a good chance that those students did very well on their LSAT. Since they obviously did well on their SAT’s and in school in general to get into Harvard in the first place, they could just be smart and do well, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. So of course they would have a high percentage of qualified applicants.</p>
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<p>The fact is that HLS admits Harvard undergrads at a rate 3 to 4 times greater than Yale or Columbia applicants for instance. It would be very hard to argue that the Harvard applicants are that much more qualified than applicants from other top schools.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is true cellardewller, and they favor their own. But if they are are not favoring Yale or Columbia or other schools on that level over a lesser known school or a state school, then my argument still stands. It does seem that numbers for the most part rule, and the school could be used as a tie breaker all other things being equal.</p>
<p>My S is a hs senior and says he wants to be a lawyer. He is a recruited athlete. Let’s assume everything is equal (COA, he likes all the schools the same, etc.) Right now, he is looking at, and I think he can get into:</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
Amherst
Tufts
Wesleyan
Wash & Lee
U of Richmond
Haverford</p>
<p>He can also probably get into any D3 school ([List</a> of NCAA Division III institutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_III_Institutions]List”>List of NCAA Division III institutions - Wikipedia)). From purely the standpoint of getting into law school, which is he better off at? (assume he puts the same effort into his studies; the only difference is the GPA awarded at different schools, and the prestige of the institution).</p>
<p>From an admissions standpoint it won’t matter where he goes. He should go wherever is cheapest. It’s foolish to take out tons in loans for a bachelor’s degree if he knows that he wants to go to law school.</p>
<p>Having said that, if he changes his mind and decides that he doesn’t want to go to law school, he may regret not going to a prestigious school.</p>
<p>Here is a list of all of the undergraduate colleges represented at Harvard Law School: [Undergraduate</a> Colleges](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/undergrads.html]Undergraduate”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/undergrads.html)</p>
<p>LOL re 4.0 from unknown school being better for law school than a 3.5 from Harvard. Assuming relatively equal SAT scores, the Harvard student will win the nod almost every time. Law is the most status conscious profession in America and that seeps down into law school admissions.</p>
<p>No, law schools are concerned about maintaining their GPA and LSAT medians, so assuming equal LSAT scores, a 4.0 from anywhere will beat the Harvard 3.5 nearly every time. Long story short, if you have the numbers, you’ll get in.</p>
<p>So the next question is, if you go to a school with a lesser reputation, will you get a better GPA than going to a school with a better rep? Or will it be the same? Let’s take a hypothetical: someone gets into umass and Harvard. They get 4.0 at umass; what would the GPA be at Harvard? is a 4.0 student going to be 4.0 no matter where they go? Of course there is no definative answer, butnAi am interested in what people think?</p>
<p>There is no way of knowing for sure. A lot of people assume that higher ranked schools are more difficult than lower ranked ones, but this isn’t necessarily true. Check out this link for information about grade inflation at different schools:</p>
<p>[National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5DNational”>http://www.gradeinflation.com)</p>
<p>The top law schools all consider the quality or rigor of the undergraduate institution. And students at top colleges whose pre-law advisors have shown them data on their graduates report that those top-school grads had GPAs and LSAT scores significantly below the medians at law schools where they were accepted.
I would recommend students go to the best college they can get into, and try to get the best grades possible.</p>
<p>Take it for what it’s worth. From my experience of meeting many students at my school (top 6 law), I’ve met dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals who went to colleges I’ve never heard of. Yet, they all made it to a top school.</p>
<p>In reality - it is all about your LSAT score, followed by your GPA. You can be a chemical engineering major from MIT with 3.8 GPA, but if your LSAT is 162, your application to HLS is most likely going straight to a garbage can, while that kid with 174 LSAT with a B.A. in history from Rutgers would merit a serious consideration in front of admissions committee at HLS. Fair? Perhaps not. But it is what it is.</p>
<p>One piece of advice - it is a terrible idea to treat your college as a mere stepping stone to get into a law school. Law industry isn’t very healthy now, and won’t be for a long time in future. Plenty of my classmates are jobless at the moment, despite having T6 law school credentials. What I am saying is don’t hedge 100% of your bets on law. Go to college and learn what would be useful to employers. Trust me, you will be thankful that you did.</p>