<p>I believe there are about thirty or forty people with a gpa above a 3.75 GPA at our school. Out of like, 2k students. And I have to agree also that certain engineering disciplines are easier than others. I also agree with the double bell-curve idea. </p>
<p>Engineering is not the best gpa idea for pre-med, pre-law, pre-whatever really. But it's the best major ever in my opinion</p>
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however there is such a disparity quality and reputation between top tier law schools and mediocre law schools, that i dont think i would even bother going to a mediocre one.
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<p>If I may make a digression, what I find even more distressing is that some prelaws from even the top undergrad programs can't even get into the no-name law schools. This happens not only with engineering students, but with prelaws across the board. </p>
<p>For example, take a gander at the data regarding prelaws at Berkeley. Notice how even for tier4 law schools like Chapman, California Western, or Golden Gate, plenty of Berkeley prelaws get rejected. For example, in 2004, more than half of Berkeley prelaws who reported their data and who applied to Golden Gate Law got rejected. </p>
<p>These aren't just prelaws from any old school, these are prelaws from Berkeley. And yet plenty of them can't even get into Golden Gate. That's pretty sad. The point is, just because you go to a good undergrad school doesn't mean that you're going to be able to get into a good law school. In fact, you may not even be able to get into a not-so-good law school. </p>
<p>Not that I want to unfairly single out Berkeley. The same thing happens with prelaws at Stanford - some of them get rejected from low-tier law schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I would point out that, according to USNews Premium Edition, the median salary of private sector lawyers coming out of Golden Gate is 58k. And of course plenty of Golden Gate graduates cannot/do not get a job in the private sector, and many cannot get a job at all. According to USNews, over 1/3 of those grads are still without a law job 9 months after graduation. I think it's fairly easy to conclude that having an engineering degree from Berkeley or Stanford, or even SJSU, is probably better off than that, once you factor in the fact that the engineer doesn't have to spend 3 years in law school. </p>
<p>Hence, that reinforces what I've been saying. Being an engineer is probably better than being a low-tier lawyer (and is clearly better than being a prelaw who can't even get into a no-name law school). However being a high-tier lawyer is better than being a high-tier engineer. If you have an engineering degree, especially from Berkeley or Stanford, you probably aren't champing at the bit to go to Golden Gate Law School, but you probably wouldn't think twice about going to a place like Yale Law.</p>
<p>Some stats:</p>
<p>Roughly 40% of students who apply to law school don't get in anywhere. Certainly, some of this is because they aim too high. A lot of this, however, is because two to three times as many students take the LSAT every year (100,000 to 150,000) than can be admitted to law schools (matriculation is usually around 56,000). Unless you go to a top-tier law school, your chances of being employed upon graduation are less than 90%. That number drops off quickly (with second tier schools being around 60% at graduation and about 80-90% nine months later); the nine months later stat is bad, because it often includes those who are not working in legal jobs. </p>
<p>For medicine, about half of the applicants won't get in anywhere. </p>
<p>Now, for the law school quality issue: look at US News, graduate edition. You can find percent employed at graduation and nine months later; percent who are in a legal job; percent in the private sector, gov't, etc; and median private sector salary. It is scary how much that drops off as the rank decreases. For example, the median private sector salary of, say, a Northwestern grad is over $100,000. For a third-tier school, the median is about half that. The percent of grads who even get those jobs is lower, too. For many people, who go in with their eyes open, it's hard to rationalize paying so much money for a third-tier school. I didn't even apply, even though my grades were bad - just wasn't making sense to spend $150,000 on an education, after which, statistically, I would be making the same thing as I would be if I were in engineering. </p>
<p>I'll let y'all know in a few years if my legal education has paid off.</p>
<p>Hey Sakky,</p>
<p>Upon looking at those links you put out, I found something interesting that's not related to the OP:</p>
<p>Stanford 2003 applicants' average stats : GPA 3.49, LSAT 164.2
Berkeley 2003 applicants' average stats: GPA 3.59, LSAT 164</p>
<p>Do these data strike you as odd considering how Stanford is known for grade inflation?? If Stanford's grade is very inflated, 3.49 GPA is supposed to be pretty mediocre (mediocre students?). Yet their LSAT is about the same as aveage LSAT for Berkeley students who averaged 3.59 GPA which is considered very good at Berkeley. I thought the saying, at least according to Berkeley people, is something like 3.2 there is equivalent to 3.5 at Stanford. But if one assumes LSAT score and GPA are strongly correlated, the above data seems to say a person with 3.5 at Stanford would get 3.6 if he were put in Berkeley! Surprised?? </p>
<p>I also notice in almost all cases, the admit rate is higher (substantially in many cases) for Stanford applicants and they got admitted with lower GPA than their Berkeley counterparts. That's completely counter-intuitive. Shouldn't it be other way rather if you consider the grade inflation/deflation??</p>
<p>Sam Lee, I think suspect what is happening here is that the 'name' of the school does count. LSAT and GPA matter most of all, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that the name of the undergrad school doesn't matter at all. It's not a giant factor, but I think it is a factor. </p>
<p>In fact, awhile back, a study was published by the LA Times detailing an 'index score table' used by the Berkeley Boalt Law school, which served to weigh the various GPA's of various prelaws from various schools, in an attempt to assess how 'valuable' a GPA from a particular school is in order to compensate for grade inflation, difficulty of getting into the school in the first place, how good the undergrad education prepared you for law school, and all those factors. Unfortunately, that paper is no longer available on the Internet, and Boalt changed its policies anyway. However, I do remember the highlights. Some of the highest numbers (hence, the most grade compensation) was given to the elite LAC's like Swarthmore and Williams. They scored something like an 89 on a 100 point scale, which were the highest scores of any school. Harvard and Princeton were something like an 86, MIT was an 85.5. I also distinctly remember Stanford being an 82, whereas Berkeley was a 79. Hence, Berkeley's own law school considered Stanford's grades more valuable than Berkeley's grades. </p>
<p>Here's an old CC link where a bunch of us talk about it in detail. If you can find a copy of that old LA Times article, that would be peachy. </p>
<p>I think what it also means is that grade inflation is a complex phenomena. There are two factors at play. #1 - the grading philosophy of the school itself. And #2, the quality of the students. Let's face it. The average student at Berkeley is not as good as the average student at Stanford, chiefly because Berkeley has a long tail end of quite mediocre students, and I think we can all agree that most of the bottom 25% of Berkeley's students would have had little chance of ever getting into a school like Stanford. Hence, it may be entirely possible that it is harder to get top grades at Stanford than at Berkeley, and hence, as you said, 3.6 at Berkeley really is equal to a 3.5 at Stanford. There are more good grades given out at Stanford, but on the other hand, the quality of the student body is better, and these are countervailing factors. </p>
<p>As a corollary, notice how on that Boalt scale, MIT earned a higher 'score' than did Stanford. I would say that the student quality at MIT and Stanford are about equal. Yet, MIT gets a higher score on that Boalt index. That indicates to me that this is an attempt to compensate for the MIT grade deflation relative to Stanford, or an attempt to acknowledge that MIT students work harder and are therefore more prepared for the workload in law school than are Stanford students. </p>
<p>The way that I think of grade inflation is not at the top end but rather at the bottom end. For example, I know it is far far easier to flunk out of Berkeley than at Stanford. Even if you're a terrible student at Stanford, you're still probably going to pass. You'll probably get mediocre grades, but you'll still pass. Berkeley, on the other hand, will not hesitate to throw you out. </p>
<p>However, if nothing else, this indicates that you should prefer to go to Stanford rather than Berkeley. As a more general rule, I think it indicates that Berkeley, and by extension, most large public schools (because they have an even lower prelaw success rate than does Berkeley) do not do a good job of preparing people for law school. Also note, while Boalt no longer uses this particular index (they scrapped it after it got published), I suspect they use a revised one that is similar.</p>
<p>In fact, I have talked about a related point in both the premed and the prelaw categories. For example, you can search back through my old posts and listen to me comparing the premed placement rates of Berkeley and Princeton and notice how Princeton premeds are getting into the UC medical schools with almost-always LOWER grades and MCAT scores than Berkeley premeds are. And these are these UC medical schools I'm talking about, who, by law, provide admissions preference to California state residents, and there are far more California state residents at Berkeley than at Princeton.<br>
Princeton has a reputation as being a grade inflated school, relative to Berkeley, and yet look at the success of Princeton premeds relative to Berkeley premeds.</p>
<p>Or, perhaps even more striking, take a look at who gets admitted to Berkeley's own law school. In 2004, Boalt admitted about 14% of Berkeley prelaws that applied, and about 26% of the Stanford prelaws that applied. Of those that got in, the Berkeley prelaws who have an average 3.89 GPA and 168 LSAT score, and admits Stanford prelaws with an average 3.77 GPA and 168.5 LSAT score. Hence, if nothing else, that means that no evidence exists that Boalt is penalizing Stanford prelaws for supposed grade inflation. If anything, like you said Sam Lee, it is Berkeley prelaws that are getting punished. Again, that reinforces my point that if you want to go to law school, you're probably better off going to Stanford than to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. I totally agree with you that grade inflation is a complex phenonmena.</p>
<p>I remember I first read about grade inflation through Northwestern's student newspaper in like 96 or so. The article talked about grade inflation at Stanford. What's funny was how little many of NU's students were unaware of the fact that grades were almost as inflated at Northwestern! Many of the students didn't feel like it was "that" easy to get A. That's because of the quality of the students which, like you said, should be taken into consideration. The picture was muddier because the grade inflation varied unbelieveably widely across different schools there. The schools of music/comm/ed students had insane gpa of 3.5-3.7+ on average while schools of artsci/engineering students had average gpa of 3.2 or so. The former were usually pretty quiet about their grades while many students at artsci/engg would talk and whine about them. When the Daily published an article about Northwestern's own grade inflation in like 2001, many people (probably not the music/theater people) were surprised. The adminstration/dean was "embarrassed".</p>