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<p>Damn, I didn’t know things were that bad with premeds.</p>
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<p>Harvard Law is largely numbers. Yale Law and Stanford Law are much more of a black box, due to their smaller class and fewer admits.</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
somehow this post got duplicated - edit</p>
<p>I got this from another thread:</p>
<p>Harvard Law School
2006-2007 # of Students Undergraduate Enrollment
Harvard 241 6,715
Yale 113 5,303
Stanford 79 6,391
Penn 57 9,730
Princeton 54 4,775
Brown 48 5,798
Cal-Berkeley 48 23,863
Columbia 46 5,593
Cornell 45 13,523
DUKE 41 6,259
Ucla 39 25,432
Dartmouth 35 4,005
Georgetown 32 6,587</p>
<p>This doesn’t take into consideration of how many students from each school applied to Harvard. Assuming students from HYS of the same caliber, which would mean students from HYP would have similar LSAT and similar percentage of students would get 3.7GPA and above. My question is then why there are twice as many Harvard students enrolled than Yale, and same for those schools listed. Based on what I see here, all else being equal, Harvard has preference for certain schools when it comes to admission. I do not think it is as number driven. </p>
<p>Number of UG schools represented at Harvard Law’s maybe over 200, and some of them are public schools, but none of those less well known LAC or well known state schools made it to top 15.</p>
<p>Many people who get into HYPS tend to already have quite a high level of academic ability to start with, regardless of how they got in. It’s pretty obvious harvard law will take most harvard grads. yale is really known for law as well and probably prepares their prospective law students to a great extent. The rest show similar numbers. It just means that there are a lot of top students that go to and come from those top schools, that’s all.</p>
<p>@lazykid,
if name has nothing to do with it, then maybe you can let us know why is it that the top /largest NYC law firms are mostly made up of ivy league schools, grad and undergrad
and if school does not matter, why do they - on their web site, let you search for lawyers based on the school they graduated? I don’t think there are many prospective clients looking for a graduate of a 3rd tier law school
you say that school has nothing to do with hiring and it is all about gpa, rank, and interviewing skills,
but the NYC law firms completely contradict that in that they are almost all ivy lawyers
also - if you wish, please respond to oldfort’s post about the disproportionate admits at Harvard. If school has nothing to do with it, how did that happen ?</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>How do you know what gpas, test scores, ecs, and what level of interviewing and presentation skills the applicants had?</p>
<p>seriously you gotta eliminate every possible variable and have a large data set to compare for there to be a good comparison</p>
<p>but yes i do think undergraduate quality counts, at least a little, for both premeds and prelaws. It really doesn’t mean that people who don’t go to ivies but go to a top school say like duke has any less of a chance if they have the same test scores and gpas, though.</p>
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<p>If top law firms give Ivy undergrads an advantage in the recruiting process, even the slight one, why would I not like that? I am about to graduate from an Ivy undergrad.</p>
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<p>You are right in that BigLaw firms care a lot about ‘the name’ - except they care about Law School name, not undergrad. The only people who benefit from having attended certain undergrad programs are those who majored in hard sciences or engineering from undergrad. People at top law schools who majored in engineering at college have a leg up in getting the firm job over others, because they can get into IP Litigation department and IP requires that lawyers come from a hard sciences background.</p>
<p>And, I am not surprised, at all, that top law firms have many associates who attended both top law school and top undergrad. Top colleges have higher percentage of kids who are smart, who get into top law schools at higher rate (due to higher intelligence, not school name), and those smart kids tend to do well at law schools (which is the most important factor in landing a BigLaw job) I suspect that you are confusing correlation with causation, as Norcal guy suggested.</p>
<p>lazy, you said that in terms of getting a job at a law firm, the law school name is not a big difference and it is about gpa, rank and interviewing - that is what you said here - twice
then why is it that all the top NYC firms are mostly made up of ivy league grads?
where are all those #1 kids from second tier and third tier schools - are you going to believe that they all can’t interview well?
in NYC everything from soup to nuts to law firms to doctors is about name - period.
people want to go to that Harvard doctor, no matter where in his class he graduated,
not that doctor who graduated first in his class at Mississippi state …
it may not be a great way to look at things, but in NYC, it is how it works
you disagree?</p>
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<p>This phenomenon is present at virtually every school in the country. There is going to be an overrepresentation of students from the associated undergrad because it’s going to receive a lot of applicants from the associated undergrad. If you look at Yale, the numbers will probably be reversed. If there are more applicants to Harvard Law School from Harvard than any other college in the country and there are more matriculants to HLS from Harvard than any other college in the country, you can’t make the assertion that HLS favors any specific college without more data. </p>
<p>This same phenomenon is present at Cornell’s medical school. The single most prevalent undergrad at Cornell’s medical school is … Cornell (not surprisingly). This doesn’t mean that Cornell necessarily favors its own undergrad. Heck, I received interviews from at least from at least 5 medical schools that were ranked higher than Cornell’s medical school and interviews from all 3 other Manhattan medical schools (Columbia, NYU, Mt. Sinai, all of which are highly ranked as well) and still was not offered an interview to Cornell’s medical school despite being a Cornell undergraduate with a good application. In fact, you can make the argument that Cornell got so saturated with applications from its own undergrad, it simply wanted more diversity.</p>
<p>Like I said, law school is much more straightforward than medical school admissions. It’s largely numbers driven and there simply aren’t too many factors that go into the admissions criteria. You receive your decision quickly instead of waiting 8 months like you do with medical school. Don’t try to make this more complicated than it is. A state schooler with a 3.8 GPA and a 172 LSAT is going to get into multiple top ten law schools.</p>
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<p>This is not true. I didn’t show Yale Law, but they have the same number of Yale vs Harvard (Yale doesn’t show preference to its own students). You also can’t tell me if a Harvard student were to apply to Harvard, that same applicant wouldn’t think of applying to Yale. If you look at Dartmouth vs Yale, there are 3 times as many Yale students vs Dartmouth, and those 2 schools have almost same number of UG students.</p>
<p>The point here is law school admission is not that number oriented. For whatever reason, one school may prefer UG from one school over another. Again, I don’t see any second tier schools (even schools with large UG) made it to Harvard’s top 15.</p>
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<p>No. I never said that. Re-read my posts, carefully. I said attending a top law school and attaining the high class rank at that law school, are two most important factors at law firm recruiting. I said, however, that undergrad name doesn’t matter all that much, when it comes time for interviewing with law firms or getting into a top law school.</p>
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<p>Please re-read my previous post. And, if you are so curious, please ask any top law school student or a BigLaw associate regarding this topic. I recently got into a top 6 law school, did a whole bunch of research and studies on how the law firm recruiting works, etc, so that I will give myself the clear idea of what I am getting into. I feel qualified to make informed opinions on how legal hiring and law school admissions work, and quite frankly, I feel that you are just throwing blanket statements without much substance…</p>
<p>This is really really off topic</p>
<p>Just found this:</p>
<p>Yale Law School
2005-2006 # of Students Undergraduate Enrollment
Harvard 89 6,715
Yale 86 5,303
Stanford 42 6,391
Princeton 34 4,775
Columbia 18 5,593
Brown 17 5,798
Cal-Berkeley 16 23,863
DUKE 13 6,259
Dartmouth 13 4,005
Williams College 12 1,965
U of Virginia 10 13,440
Amherst 9 1,648</p>
<p>old fort is indeed right on the money
@lazy - go to the skadden web site and check out where there lawyers come from
it is not as much about numbers in terms of getting into law school or getting jobs as you wrote
it is about school, school and school more and more
for the big firms, you can be first in your class at a second tier or third tier school, but not even get an interview
the guy in the bottom 1/2 of his class at Yale has a better chance at the job - that is the fact of NYC law firm hiring
and I don’t think any of the big firms would ever deny it
some of the big firms hire as many as 20 yale grads every year - they all can’t be first in their class. it is the school they graduated from
people want a Yale lawyer - not a lawyer who has a 4.0 and first in his class at Miss. state, almost all the time, with few exceptions</p>
<p>@oldfort - just read your post, I guess williams and schools with 1/2 of the population of cornell still do better in terms of getting kids into Yale. amazing. does Yale law somehow not like cornell students?</p>
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<p>Few things. There will be very few people who score LSAT range required for admission into Harvard Law, out of crap undergrad schools simply because, over 95% of people at these schools don’t have that level of intelligence. My Arizona State friend from high school was a decently smart kid, but incredibly lazy, so although he got 1400 SAT (old SAT), his high school GPA was like 2.0 (Which is why he ended up there) Actually, it worked out fine for him - at Arizona State, he didn’t really have to work all that hard to get a respectable GPA. And, since he has intelligence, he pulled high LSAT and got into a top 6 law school. He told me straight up that he would have been far worse off, had he attended an Ivy over Arizona State, since he would have to do more work to get the same level of GPA.</p>
<p>Another thing - my speculation is that Harvard Law enrolls many Harvard undergrads because 1) There are many smart Harvard undergrads, who score in that 170-175 LSAT range 2) More Harvard undergrads who get accepted into Harvard Law choose to attend there. Keep in mind, if you are of Harvard Law caliber, you can get a hefty scholarship money from other top 14 law schools. My suspicion is that these Harvard undergrads who get into Harvard Law choose to go to HLS, giving up scholarship money from other top law schools, at higher rate because of their familiarity and fondness with the area and the school. (If you have the LSAT to get into Harvard Law, you can get like 50% scholarship money from schools like Michigan Law and maybe a full ride at Cornell Law)</p>
<p>So, that Yale grad who got into Harvard Law may more likely choose to attend Cornell Law School with full ride, over that Harvard grad who chooses to attend Harvard Law paying 200 k over three years of law school and giving up substantial scholarship money from lower ranked top schools - because he is familiar with Harvard and likes its area.</p>
<p>LazyKid - would you say students from Yale are of the same caliber as Harvard students? Would you also say students (whether they are from Yale or Harvard) would apply to both? Adcoms are very good at predicting yield. If they wanted to have just as many Yale vs Harvard students, and assuming everything you’ve said about why Harvard UG would choose Harvard over any other law school, wouldn’t adcom admit less Harvard students relative to Yale?</p>
<p>Cornell is not really that known for its law.</p>
<p>How about you guys take this to the harvard/yale sections of the forum and ask them what they think?</p>
<p>@ lazy, you are very strong in your opinions and I respect that
please explain how, for example, a top NYC law firm can hire in a recent year 75 people and almost all of them are from ivy law schools
all things being equal, interviewing skills, etc, a graduate from an ivy law school anywhere in the top 1/2 will always and always get the job over a Michigan, or Virgina grad at any top NYC law firm. NYC is a place where school name sells clients and NYC loves ivys
if you don’t think so, ask a recruiter or hiring partner at any of the top firms
I know you may not like hearing that, but it would be completely dishonest to ignore it.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
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<p>No. A top law school - including Harvard Law School, doesn’t give an advantage or disadvantage to an applicant based on which undergraduate institution the individual attended.</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law schools are the only 3 law schools in the nation that don’t offer merit scholarships. And, if you have the LSAT to get into any of those three, chances are you will get near full rides from every law school ranked below top 10. And, you can save around 200 k of tuition money, by giving up Harvard Law School and attending say, Cornell or Georgetown Law School. One BigLaw Associate I met over summer (he works at NYC BigLaw) told me that he regrets his decision to have gone to Harvard Law. He has 200 k student loan to repay. He told me that if he could do it over again, he would have taken that substantial scholarship money from Michigan or U Virginia Law over Harvard Law, because he would probably end up with the same job.</p>
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<p>Where is your evidence to back up this statement. I just showed you both Harvard and Yale’s enrollment numbers to prove my point. My point is H shows preference to its own students, hence not numbers driver. What’s the connection about Michigan or UVA? Even if you threw away all other data, but H&Y data, you would see there are more H UG enrolled at Harvard Law.</p>