<p>Well, does the reputation of your undergrad institution affect being admitted into a top law school? I've heard that admission is based mostly on your GPA and LSAT scores, but I was interested in knowing if reputation had any weight with admission. Thanks!</p>
<p>(If this question has been answered previously then I apologize for being repetitive.)</p>
<p>The question has certainly been asked, but I'm not sure if a definitive answer has ever been provided. </p>
<p>It probably has at least some effect, but how much is unclear. I would wager that all things being equal, the graduate of a prominent, highly-respected university will usually get the offer ahead of someone with identical numbers from a smaller school. On the other hand, it's difficult to say exactly how many GPA or LSAT points attending a big-name program is worth. </p>
<p>Some would say the best benefit of attending an "Ivy" is the grade inflation you might encounter. There's no question that LSAT and GPA are generally the two most important factors, with LSAT the more important of the two.</p>
<p>I would also add that there are also certain extremely prestigious schools that also happen to be extremely difficult and who give out lots and lots of bad grades, such that it's a rather dubious notion that the prestige of those schools will outweigh the lower grades you will most likely get there (or at least, lower grades than you would have gotten at some no-name school). These schools include any whose name ends in the words "Institute of Technology". Many highly prestigious public schools are also well known for giving out lots of bad grades. For the purposes of getting into law school, it is often times simply better to attend a school where, as long as you do the work, you are basically assured of getting a decent gpa. There are plenty of places out there where you do all the work and still flunk out.</p>
<p>thanks cardozo and sakky for your responses! sakky, do you know how one could find out the grading system of a college like whether or not "you are basically assured of getting a decent gpa"?? Thanks.</p>
<p>i think that sakky is referring to some of those places where the tough part really is getting in. after you get in and decide to enroll, they do their best to make sure you stay with it and <em>not fluck out</em>. these include, to my knowledge, out of the very most prestigious schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton (though they're capping it now), Stanford, UPenn. these are schools that want to see the highest possible grad rates, which indirectly affects their level of grading inflation. Schools like UTexas, for instance, rely on the fact that a signifcant % of their incoming freshman class wont graduate. The aforementioned schools dont, really. some of the well-known grade deflated schools are: Cornell, UCB, Caltech, Chicago, MIT</p>
<p>Princeton can talk about capping their grade inflation all they want, and yet I think it's safe to say that Princeton will still be easier than, say, MIT.</p>
<p>The only cross-current is that certain majors are also significantly easier than others. One of the most effective ways to get a high GPA is to simply take lots and lots of very easy classes that give out lots of high grades and require very little work. Basically, if a major sounds like it's bullshi<em>, it probably is. But for the purposes of law school admission, it doesn't really matter if your major is bullshi</em>. The only thing that really seems to matter is what kinds of grades you get. Hence, choosing easy classes is (unfortunately) another way to game the system.</p>
<p>seriously? wow, that's very interesting sakky, but yes, rather unfortunate i guess. do top law schools really don't give a ***** if you major in something as far fetched as say "basket weaving?" so they don't even care about the difficulty of the classes you take like whether or not its an honors class or if you are in an advance program?</p>
<p>Yes, reputation of undergraduate institution plays a role in law school admissions. I glanced at the classes of several top 10 Law schools, and they seem to favor top LACs (10 or so LACs but Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore and Williams above all), elite private research universities (the top 20 or so) and elite public research universities (the top 8 or so). </p>
<p>At Yale, a whopping 80% of their law students graduate from the 35 programs I mention above. The remaining 20% of Yale Law students came from over 150 universities. Clearly, Yale favors students from top universities. Harvard, Chicago, Georgetown and Northwestern, UVA were not as extreme, but they too have a preference for top universities. </p>
<p>Take UVA. A top 10 Law school. 360 students enrolled from 127 undergraduate institutions. Of those, 200 (55%) came from the 35 programs I mentioned above. The remaing 45% came from 92 different schools. </p>
<p>Georgetown is yet another example. Of the 450 or so students that joined, 260 (58%) came from those 35 or so schools. The remaining 190 spots were filled by students from 150 different universities.</p>
<p>If you look at the 20 schools that send the most students to those two top programs, not counting UVA and Georgetown because they naturally send a lot to their own program, you will quickly see that they are a=mostly reputable schools. </p>
<p>Duke, 32
Yale, 32
Cornell, 24
Penn, 23
Princeton, 23
Harvard, 21
Brown, 20
Cal, 20
Florida (not elite but regionally respected), 18
UCLA, 20
Columbia, 16
William and Mary, 16
Emory, 14
Stanford, 14
BYU (not elite, but excellent student body), 13
Michigan, 12
Northwestern, 12
UNC, 12
UT-Austin, 12
Dartmouth, 11</p>
<p>Top LACs send fewer than 10 students, but they are usually 4-10 times smaller than the school listed above. In terms of student/capita, they are pretty impresive though.</p>
<p>Obviously, students from universities that are not as reputable still have a chance of getting into top Law schools. But top law schools seem to favor students from "reputable" universities.</p>
<p>I would just point out that we cannot necessarily conclude that law schools "favor" reputable universities simply because graduates of these schools appear in higher numbers. </p>
<p>Graduates of these programs tend to be students who do very well on standardized tests, specifically the SAT. Therefore, they are likely to also do well on the LSAT, which is the primary factor in law school admissions. </p>
<p>Therefore, it is certainly possible that the current breakdown is simply a reflection of testing ability more than anything else. (It is also certainly possible that there is at least some bias in favor of reputable universities, as there probably should be.)</p>
<p>I was thinking about the grade-inflation issue the other day, and I was thinking that it is also possible that there is in fact no real grade "inflation" at HYP. </p>
<p>I realize that there are a disproportionately high number of "A"'s given at these schools. But let's think about the most fair way to evaluate students at such a program. </p>
<p>One way would be to impose a strict B or C curve, which means that no matter how stellar your academic performance may be, if you're slightly less stellar than some other junior intellectual luminaries, you may end up with a C -- even if your performance is better than most "A" students at most other universities. </p>
<p>Another, more fair way, arguably, is to not have any curve at all, and simply work from an objective scale of what you consider "A" work, "B" work, etc. </p>
<p>If you follow this latter system, is it really so unreasonable to conclude that most of the kids who get into HYP, given their strong academic performance in high school, would also perform at a very high level in college, thus earning the objective "A"? And wouldn't this system make as much sense as one where you are penalized for attending an elite school by getting artificially low marks (because you are competing against the cream of the crop?). </p>
<p>I'm not saying that it's not theoretically possible that actual grade inflation (better grades than were actually earned) exists at these schools. I'm simply saying the real problem may be the enforced curve at other elite schools.</p>
<p>Finally, I think law schools do probably take difficulty of major into account somewhat. Underwater basket-weaving might make the first cut in the admissions review, but you'll probably get tossed under closer inspection, unless maybe you have a stellar LSAT, which pretty much trumps everythiing else.</p>
<p>Cardozo, I agree with all you say. I would also like two add two points:</p>
<p>1) Regional preferences play a big part in how many students from a particular undergraduate institution will apply to a particular Law School and how which undergraduate institutions are favored in return. For example, you can be sure that among top undergraduate students from the Mid Atlantic states (PA, DA, NJ, MD,DC, VA and NC), the most popular law schools (after Yale and Harvard) are going to be UVA, Georgetown, Penn and Duke. For top undergraduate students from the Midwest, the most popular Law Schools (again, after Yale and Harvard), are going to be Chicago, Michigan and Northwestern) etc...</p>
<p>2) Don't be ridiculous. There is no such thing as "underwater basket weaving". I looked it up when I got to Michigan back n 1992 and much to my chagrin, they did not offer such a major...and trust me, if a university out there would have a top ranked program in "underwater basket-weaving", it would be Michigan (or perhaps Cornell...afterall, Cornell is #1 in Ornamental Horticulture!). So, to reiterate my point...there is NO such thing as "underwater basket-weaving". Now if you were asking about "underwater fire-extinguishing"...well, that's another story alltegether! hehe</p>
<p>I had a roommate at Cornell who was studying ornamental horticulture. It wasn't as easy as it sounds - he was expected to know the scientific names of hundreds (thousands?) of plants.</p>
<p>I've never met an underwater basketweaving major, but suspect we'd hear the usual college student's lament from them as well: "If I could just get my head above water long enough to catch my breath!"</p>
<p>Well, Cardozo, in answer to your contention that there may not be any grade inflation at all at HYPS, and the high grades are simply a function of the high caliber of students at those schools, let me proffer the following. Ask yourself why is it then, in the highly technical and science-based majors at HYPS, the grade scales are significantly lower than the non-technical majors at HYPS? For example, why do Harvard physics students have to work harder and get lower grades than Harvard Social Studies students? Or maybe even more to the point, why do Stanford or Electrical Engineering students tend to get significantly lower grades while having to work far far harder than Stanford American Studies students? Are you saying it's because those Harvard physics students or those Stanford electrical engineering students are stupider and lazier than those social-studies or American studies students and so they deserve to get worse grades? I think it's the general consensus that the electrical engineering students at Stanford are probably the hardest-working and most intelligent students of the entire Stanford student body. But your logic seems to turn all of that upside down. You're basically saying that those guys are getting worse grades because they deserve them because they're stupid.</p>
<p>Now, about your other contention that you say that the real problem is not that HYPS grade high, but has to do with the enforced grade curves at other schools (or, by extension, the enforced grade curves even at the same school, but in different majors, like the different grade curves in American studies vs. electrical engineering), well, you say tomato, I say tomato. At the end of the day, the issue is that you have entirely different grading schemes. After all, what's the point of grading in the first place? It's supposed to serve as an objective measure of your performance in the class. However, if grading scales are radically different in different schools, or even in different majors in the same school, then grading no longer serves as an objective measure. </p>
<p>As I've been saying before, one of the easiest ways to get a very high gpa is to simply take very easy classes, and/or take classes in things that you already know. For example, a guy who is already fluent in Spanish can just go take all the introductory Spanish classes and simply clean up. He won't learn anything there, but I guess for the purposes of grading, if the point is to rack up easy A after easy A, then I suppose the purpose is served. </p>
<p>Finally, none of this would really matter if law schools were smarter about how to treat different grades. It wouldn't really matter if Stanford American Studies gave out higher grades than Stanford EE, as long as everybody knew about it and adjusted accordingly. But that's not happening. Like I've said, law school adcoms seem to be using grades as if they truly were objective measures of performance, but I have already stated that they are not so. It is easier to get higher grades in Stanford American Studies than in Stanford EE, but law school adcoms don't seem to care very much about that.</p>
<p>I disagree with the general thought that the As at Harvard are "right." Basically, IMO, an A at Harvard should mean more than an A at UMass Dartmouth. Under that theory, H students would all get As, all MIT studnets would get As, and all UMass Dartmouth students would get Bs and Cs, because they would get those at other schools. </p>
<p>Harvard has almost set up a system by which grades are not a measure of student performance at the University, or a measure of student performance relative to their abilities (which would be a rational measure); it is a measure of how those students perform in relation to hypothetical "other" students at other schools. I think that H missed the boat with that policy.</p>
<p>My wife, the prof., just gave me a lecture on the difference between criteria based exams vs. normed testing. How, in your opinion, does this play into the either real or presumed grade inflation at college?</p>
<p>Most of you have seen my thread...Now, what do you think is the situation when a school giver no grades? I know Reed College in Oregon, only records them for institutional purposes --students never see them--, and Evergreen State College in WA, gives narrative evaluations instead. Yet, these schools send a few students to top Law Schools. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>the lsat is so important, that grades mean much less regardless of where you go to college.</p>
<p>To ariesathena, I am not entirely clear about what you mean when you say that Harvard has 'missed the boat' on its grading policy, but if you mean it as a criticism of Harvard's grading policy, I would have to disagree. In fact, I now see the Harvard grading policy as nothing short of devilishly ingenious, and certainly very very cunning and sly. By inflating grades, Harvard effectively gives its students a tremendous leg up in getting admitted to law school. Furthermore, a lot of people think that Harvard is extremely difficult, and it is... to get admitted. Once you're admitted, then it's all gravy (relatively speaking, of course). </p>
<p>The bottom line is that as long as law schools (and med-schools) continue to reward grade inflation, then schools like Harvard have little to gain by fighting grade inflation, and much to lose. The way the present system is set up, Harvard students have a great thing going. You can't really argue with the results. Like it or not, grade inflation works.</p>
<p>harvard should give mostly A's, because students that smart would be getting staright As at places like state schools.</p>