<p>Don’t think twice, it’s alright! Great academics with matchless breadth, a beautiful campus, and a wonderful college town = 4 memorable years.</p>
<p>I should have applied ed to Cornell and not Columbia</p>
<p>First of all, it’s really hard to get 4.0 at Cornell, almost impossible. </p>
<p>I will tell you of two cases that I know of. The first one is my daughter’s best friend, who has 3.8 or 3.9 at Cornell (a humanities major, most science or engineering majors have much lower GPA) with very high LSAT. She has been accepted to every law school she has applied to so far. The last one I heard of was Columbia. She is waiting to hear back from Harvard and Stanford. I am sure she competed with HYPS students, and some of those students got turned down when she didn’t.</p>
<p>Another case was when my daughter was interviewing for internships last year, her GPA was around 3.5 (gasp) from Cornell. She and one other Cornell student were invited to interview at one of top IBs in NYC. On the interview day, there were students from MIT, Harvard, Princeton, even Stanford. The interview lasted all day. At the end, they thanked everyone and said they would notify them soon, then they asked my daughter to stay behind. She was the only one whom they made an offer to on the spot, a Cornellian, not someone from HYPS, and she didn’t even have 4.0.</p>
<p>You all should be very proud if you got accepted to Cornell ED. In the real world, people do not discount a Cornell degree. My daughter is graduating this year and she would say her 4 years at Cornell have been the happiest time for her. She has been very involved on campus - student government, EC and Greek life. She has also been very challenged academically at Cornell - met so many people who were way smarter than her.</p>
<p>The consensus about Cornell students is they work very hard, very practical, able to get things done and don’t act entitled. I am not sure if other higher ranked schools have as good of reputation.</p>
<p>It’s normal to wonder what if…no matter what school you got into because you could only go to one school. But I wouldn’t spend too much time on it.</p>
<p>I don’t think you’re giving credit to the variety of jobs people go onto, and the differences in offerings among the different universities. and how GPA is not the sole determining factor of employability.</p>
<p>also, I did not feel any regret after getting in ED because Cornell was my top choice school, as I would imagine it is for very many ED applicants.</p>
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<p>This is not true. Anywhere. Anyone going into HYPS or Cornell or any top college thinking they can ride the coattails of their university name without having to work for it will be very disappointed when it comes time to apply for jobs or grad school.</p>
<p>sometimes I regret not having done ED since I still have to sweat it out until April. But then, I realize how undecided I am about colleges, even though I have my top 3 picked out, they flip around every week.</p>
<p>^^^You did the right thing by not ED at Cornell because you are not sure which school is your first choice yet. You will make a good decision come April, no need to rush.</p>
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<p>Law school admissions is all numbers game. LSAT score = 60%, GPA = 35%, Rec/Essays = 5% of your application. I got into a top 6 law school with 3.6 and 171 LSAT. I know of several people with surprisingly low GPA’s (around 3.0-3.2) who managed to get into top 14 law schools with LSAT above 170. I remember reading that the median LSAT score for Harvard undergrads is 166. This means that an average Harvard undergrad doesn’t stand a chance of attending a top 10 law school.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is as much about numbers as you say. if you think that a Harvard undergrad does not have a chance at attending a top 10 school, why is it that they make up such a large percentage of the law school class at Yale, Harvard & Columbia?</p>
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<p>You can attend a crap undergraduate school, yet, if you get a 3.8 GPA and LSAT above 170, you will get into multiple top 10 law schools, period. Top law schools won’t care if you attend Arizona State University or Harvard, as long as you have a GPA and LSAT they are looking for. Which is why I think that a student who is sure of wanting to go to a law school and become a lawyer should go to an easy, cheap state school for undergrad and study his tail off for LSAT. Harvard undergrads are among the smartest college students in the nation. As a result, Harvard will have its fair share of students scoring in 170+ range on LSAT. These kids will get into top law schools. I was talking about an AVERAGE Harvard undergrad who scores 166 LSAT, who won’t get into top 10 law school.</p>
<p>oh, I see your point.
I guess in your opinion the undergrad school does not count for much in law school admissions or future prospects. maybe…</p>
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<p>I guess I disagree with that. It maybe true for medical school, but when it comes to law school application it is important where you went to UG. I know that first hand because number of lawyers in our family. But students at Cornell don’t have that much to worry about.</p>
<p>I think all you have to do is to check how many kids Harvard Law admitted from Yale vs Arizona. For the size of U. Arizona, I am sure there were quite a few kids with LSAT over 170.</p>
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<p>This is not my opinion, but it is a fact… If a kid from Arizona State University has a 3.6 GPA and 170 LSAT, he will probably get into a top 10 law school. If a kid from Harvard University with 3.6 GPA and 165 LSAT, it is highly unlikely he will get into a single top law school. (maybe top 20)</p>
<p>Even if you get 4.0 GPA from Harvard, if you get mediocre LSAT, you ain’t getting into a top 10 law school. This is a fact.</p>
<p>ok, thanks for your post
I do disagree though, and can tall you that at least when it comes to the NYC large firms, they are so in to where you went undergrad (and law school) they make a big deal of getting as many ivy undergrads (and law) students as they can
outside of the NYC law firm market, I honestly can’t say
but in NY, ivy league is a big deal and they look for it, even in term of undergrad education
I think Oldfort is right
I don’t think it is as much about numbers as you make it
my opinion</p>
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<p>Most people seem to think this way, and I used to as well until last year. I’ve seen, with my own eyes, 4 people from Arizona State University (they went to my high school), who have 3.5-3.7 GPA range, and 169-171 LSAT range, who all managed to get into multiple top ten law schools. I’ve seen many Cornell students (my classmates, friends, etc) who failed to get into a single top 14 law school, despite having a respectable GPA yet not the best LSAT scores. Frankly, getting into a top law school is all about LSAT, and nothing more or less. (A strong GPA helps, too)</p>
<p>Law school admissions is very straightforward and heavily based on the LSAT. 170+ LSAT with serviceable GPA (3.6 or above) will get you into multiple top ten law schools regardless of where you’re coming from. This is about as much as you can hope for as a law school applicant.</p>
<p>Medical school admissions is much more complex, incorporating GPA, MCAT, essays, interview, extracurriculars, research, clinical experience, undergraduate prestige, recommendation letters, etc., not to mention the acceptance rates are simply much lower (practically every medical school in the country has less than 10% acceptance rate). Hence, I can have a 3.9+ GPA from Cornell, a MCAT score in the 98th percentile and still get rejected from 20 out of 25 medical schools I applied to.</p>
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<p>Honestly, I presume you are a high school student if you are making these statements. Where you attend undergrad matters very little in landing BigLaw firm jobs in NYC. Firms look at 1) Where you attend law school 2) Your GPA/ class rank at your law school 3) Your interviewing/ social skills. Law students at top law schools would straight up tell you that your class rank at the law school after first year of your law school is, by far, the single most important factor in landing a firm job. Last year, around bottom 35% of students at Harvard Law School failed to land ONE law firm job offer.</p>
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<p>Don’t confuse correlation with causation.</p>
<p>Top law firms care about where you went for law school, not where you went for undergrad. It so happens that most of the students at top law schools went to undergrad at top colleges (since the intelligence, work ethic that got them into top undergrads also help them get into top law schools). </p>
<p>Outside of the top 3 law schools in the country (which are the only law schools that are truly competitive), the rest of law school admissions is strictly a numbers game.</p>
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<p>There aren’t too many who score 170 and up, from any undergrad school. At Cornell, I know of very few people who scored above a 172. (I only know of one person who scored 174) Getting 170 is like top .5 percentile of all LSAT takers. I highly doubt many kids would hit that score from Arizona State or its comparable institutions. My friend from Arizona State, who has 170 LSAT straight up told me that kids at his school think of him as a godly status for hitting a LSAT score in that range.</p>
<p>lazy, I think you are wrong, actually very wrong (my opinion)
check out Baker, Skadden and other top / largest law firms and I don’t think you will like (or believe) what you see
they are basically made up of ivy school grads
how would you explain that??
not gonna be easy for you to answer that one, I think (in light of your 3 part analysis which says that gpa,rank and interviewing skills is what counts.
why is it that there are basically no members of those law firms that went to second tier schools
can’t be that they all have lousy interviewing skills.
in the world of NYC law firms, it is all about name,
NYC is big on name, from everything to Park Avenue ivy league grad doctors to top lawyers who went to the ivys
maybe outside of NYC it is different
in NYC the firms brag about how many ivy grads they get, so much so, that they often let you search for lawyers by the school they graduated!! that alone shows you how important the school name is</p>