Full Ride to UCLA or UPenn?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Just because Penn sends more kids to HLS than UCLA does not mean it will be better for OP’s goals. </p>

<p>From my understanding, almost all of law school admissions (roughly 90%) are based on LSAT and GPA. Law school is also very expensive.</p>

<p>Since his LSAT score will be largely independent of where he decides to attend school, he should base his decision on the following two factors (if he is sure about law school):</p>

<ol>
<li> Maintaining a high GPA </li>
<li> Minimizing undergraduate debt</li>
</ol>

<p>I’m not particularly informed as to point number one, but I would guess Penn would have a slight advantage.</p>

<p>UCLA is obviously better for point two.</p>

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<p>Correct. And if you read p1 of this thread, you’d (hopefully) understand the connection. :)</p>

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<p>^ I did (read the first post). And I don’t (understand the connection). ;)</p>

<p>Unless you’re addressing his/her desire to go to Harvard Law School. Which still doesn’t explain why you’re comparing the geographic placement of Penn Law versus a California law school. Perhaps you’re using Penn Law as a surrogate for Harvard Law? In any event, it’s a tenuous connection at best. I think the OP should focus on where he/she would be happiest for undergrad (and best thrive both academically and socially), and worry about law school (and if and/or where he/she should go) when it’s time for that. </p>

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<p>One difference in the intermediate economics courses is that Penn’s courses specify a higher level math prerequisite (multivariable calculus) than UCLA’s do. Not sure if that matters too much for a pre-law student, as opposed to a student aiming for PhD study in economics.</p>

<p>But note that the LSAT does have a logic puzzle section, which may be why math and philosophy majors do well on it.</p>

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<p>I enjoyed this thread. Let me recap this thread and join in if I may:</p>

<p>OP wants poli-sci/econ and aspires to HLS afterward and is from CA. No cost for UCLA, and ~ 7-8K/year for Penn. </p>

<p>Dr Google argues in choosing from purely a ranking standpoint and minimizes the 7-8K. Says UCLA might be a good choice, I’m assuming, because UCLA is less competitive and won’t have as much grade deflation. To the contrary, UCLA is highly competitive, probably more competitive than Penn in things the bio-sciences, and has at least moderate grade deflation. Average senior at UCLA in 2009 had a 3.3 gpa. </p>

<p>UCBAlumnus as he/she always does gives pertinent links relating l-school admission to grades/scores.</p>

<p>Bomerr: Econ at UCLA is a gpa killer to which I disagree. Econ department graduating seniors in 2009 had 3.3-3.4.</p>

<p>SlackermomMD, though a Penn grad, recommends saving $$ for l-school and attending college for free. </p>

<p>Rjkofnovi: Elle Woods UCLA -> HLS, but was corrected a couple of posts down by Erin’sDad who stated that she went to CULA. The producers of the movie didn’t gain permission from UCLA to use its name so they just reversed the first two letters. CULA would probably appear to be more CSULA, but we know what they meant.</p>

<p>SiliconValleyMom cites a couple of links showing UCLA’s and Penn’s placement into various l-schools. Nice links, however, one has to understand the motivations behind each’s database. UCLA isn’t producing the info to try to sell itself, and indeed is not inclusive of all graduating students. Penn probably does some arm-twisting to gain this info and is more comprehensive to its referenced graduating class wrt the various l-centers, and in particular, related to the OP in HLS placement. </p>

<p>Bluebayou and I had this discussion wrt Penn’s placement into m-school before. Penn twisted the arms of those who aspired to m-school, hanging placement to Penn m over their heads, and likely got those who were borderline admits to m-school to defer so they wouldn’t be a part of the cited statistics, promising possible placement later into Penn m, resulting in Penn being able to produce a 90% placement into m-school statistic for whatever graduating year that db referenced. Let me state this explicitly: there is no u that produces a natural 90% placement into m-school … EVER. These statistics need to be massaged and worked-over to gain this rate of acceptance. This applies even to Harvard, though if any u had close to a natural 90% rate, it would indeed be that u.</p>

<p>Bluebayou, wrt SiliconValleyMom’s links states correctly that Penn would have more of an eastcoast l-school and therefore, l-firm placement because of “geographical bias,” particularly since UCLA grads would more likely want to study law and seek job placement in CA, and thereby have a westcoast bias. </p>

<p>Bluebayou also states that Penn students (I guess on average), would be better test takers because their U culls out poor test-takers, certainly wrt to UC in particular, and subsequently, they would do better on the LSAT in relation to UC grads. I agree, but I wouldn’t think, based on some of the linkages cited in the past that there would be a material difference. I think Penn might have been top 10, but UCLA was top 20 in LSAT score means in whatever year was cited. Of course, Harvard undergrads had the highest LSAT mean, which probably fairly validates this particular study. </p>

<p>I do think, though, that students who are low scorers from poorer educational backgrounds can be brought up to speed because of increased subject-aptitude gained at UCLA/UC, which their native high schools wouldn’t have helped them attain. I can cite a couple of extreme bootstraps examples of students who came from abject poverty, who gained admittance to m-school though their baseline scores weren’t all that good wrt the SAT. They got into the cycle of studying almost literally all the time, and this helped them to gain a foothold to do better in the classroom, and in if not attaining a 99-%-tile score, ones that certainly placed them into top-tier m-schools becasue of high potential.</p>

<p>Bluebayou in his first post and last paragraph states: “Save the cash,” because the OP is probably low-income, though just prior he says $7-8K/year for most is a great deal for Penn, for which I agree.</p>

<p>45Percenter refutes the eastcoast bias and states that there are more Penn undergrad apps (more Penn undergrads?) from CA than NY or PA, though I don’t know how this relates to eastcoast l-placement, to which Penn students undoubtedly aspire (regardless of undergrad geographic origin) because of eastcoast l-school prestige. </p>

<p>I think the point here is more that UCLA grads tend to want to practice in CA, a point Bluebayou makes in his/her second post, if Penn grads tend to practice more nationally, including as 45Percenter stated, many in CA. Because UCLA students probably want to practice in CA, this probably means that more UCLA grads accept CA l-school offers (as Bluebayou referenced), bypassing applying to HLS, which means that less who attend HLS in favor of Boalt, UCLA, USC, Stanford, etc. (I added SLS, and it would be hard to look at UCLA’s l-school placement db to obtain the true nos who do attend. True nos. need to be seen from the l-school side: Stanford doesn’t post nos from undergrad insts, but does list Cal and UCLA fairly prominently.) </p>

<p>According to CalBar, though, there are 1,811 Penn grads who are members, or about 0.73% of all members, or 25th in the state of CA, which doesn’t manifest his/her claim of “a good no.” who do practice in CA. Actually, I think this helps proves that Penn undergrads aspire to practice on the eastcoast, as the law hotbeds outside of CA would be Chicago, and mainly the eastcoast. I wouldn’t think there would be a plurality in Chicago, similar to there neither being a plurality in whole state of CA.</p>

<p>These same arguments above relate to the continued debates between bluebayou and 45percenter, associating Penn Law to Penn undergrad.</p>

<p>UCBAlumnus again pertinently points out that Penn Econ has more math reqs. There is a math/econ major, though, at UCLA which is gaining in popularity.</p>

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<p>“Elle Woods UCLA -> HLS, but was corrected a couple of posts down by Erin’sDad who stated that she went to CULA.”</p>

<p>Looks like wikipedia did me in again! :-)</p>

<p><a href=“Legally Blonde - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legally_Blonde&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>“In her senior year at UCLA, girlish sorority president Elle Woods majors in fashion merchandising and is hopelessly in love with her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, who will attend Harvard Law School the following year…”</p>

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<p>7-8K in debt for Penn seems worth it but can you find them? (ie, you can only borrow $5,500 yourself; do you have a job on campus to cover the rest? Does that amount represent what’s left of the cost of attendance, ie., everything including transportation, books, etc?)
If you live in California and have the money, Penn would get you some more connections and let you discover another part of the country. To me it sounds like a worthwhile investment.
However, UCLA is very good too and, if you have a full ride, it’s hard to pass up.
You really can’t choose wrong.</p>

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<p>Is the free ride at UCLA including scholarships that covered their usual loans? or are there loans in the FA pkg? Are those scholarships for all 4 years?</p>

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<p>Penn. It is fantastic and has a great balance of work/play.</p>

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<p>The one x factor that all the adults here are missing is the importance of being surrounded by the brightest cohort of students possible to provide motivation for a college individual and put him/her in the right academic environment to fulfill his/her potential. There’s a reason that undergrads at large state schools like UCLA are not as well represented at Harvard or Yale Law compared to Penn undergraduates even in absolute numbers despite having 3-4x as many students: the “bottom feeder” students at UCLA are much worse than the bottom feeders at Penn and thus hold a lot of high-achieving students from achieving their goals by distracting them and influencing them to get a lower GPA and LSAT score than they would at a higher ranked school.</p>

<p>Penn undergrads>>UCLA undergards, choose Penn!</p>

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What a lot of hog wash. Attending UCLA will cause me to consort with students less interested in grades, making me follow their bad lead… </p>

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<p>@ennisthemenace‌ </p>

<p>If someone is Harvard Law material, he’s not going to get “distracted” by all those pathetic “bottom feeders.” 8-| </p>

<p>Seriously, OP, can you afford to take on $30,000+ in debt BEFORE you apply to law school? It’s as simple as that. Two GREAT schools, but “prestige” doesn’t pay the bills.</p>

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<p>@‌LucieTheLake</p>

<p>Please explain to me why there are fewer UCLA undergrads at all the elite professional programs compared to Penn then? Since UCLA is larger and probably has just as many undergrads who score 33+ on the ACT or 2200+ on the SAT, shouldn’t there be at least an equal amount of UCLA alums at the top law schools as Penn alums?</p>

<p>From top to bottom, Penn undergrads are more gifted academically than UCLA undergrads and that academic excellence and drive to succed will rub off on all incoming Penn students.</p>

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<p>“Seriously, OP, can you afford to take on $30,000+ in debt BEFORE you apply to law school? It’s as simple as that. Two GREAT schools, but “prestige” doesn’t pay the bills.”</p>

<p>Student loans can be deferred to schooling is complete. Starting lawyers at top corporate firms make $100k plus and after ten years can make $1 million plus. If going in debt in the amount of 30k increases the odds of that kind of payout, some might think it is well worth it. Sometimes prestige leads to jobs which do pay the bills . . . and a lot more.</p>

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<p>Need to work on those critical thinking skills, ennis. Your point might be true if all of those undergrads had the same goals and same financial situation. But the undergrad populations are significantly different, not only financially, but also goal orientation, and geographic preferences.</p>

<p>Case in point: this thread. Penn undoubtedly has more wealthy students (top 5%'ers and 1%'ers) than does UCLA. Thus, many more of Penn undergrads can afford sticker at Penn Law (or T6)… </p>

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<p>You make Penn out to be some sort of tiny ultra-selective u. There are, ~ 20K students at this u, about evenly divided between grads and undergrads. This means that UCLA would have 2.7-2.8 x’s more undergrads (because, logically and with a bit of rounding in mind, UCLA has 27-28K undergrads).</p>

<p>The “bottom feeders” at UCLA are athletes, with DI competitiveness coming at an academic cost because of these ~1,000 student/athletes on campus, especially for the football and basketball teams, we’ll call these, Group B; … and students who attended bad high schools, but manifested high potential though they may not have manifested high SATI scores, Group C. There are (probably mostly) top-tier students among, Group B, the athletes in more of the olympic non-revenue-type sports. </p>

<p>Group C students do manifest high grades most evident in high unweighted gpa if not weighted, because the latter gpa is dependent on a high amount of AP-related courses, which poor hss do not have in abundance. So you’d probably see this among the top students at UCLA, Group A, in comparison to the “bottom-feeders” Group C crowd:</p>

<p>UWGPA: A> C
WGPA: A>>C
Scores: A>>>C </p>

<p>The class average UWGPA for incoming frosh at UCLA for 2013 was ~ 3.84 (soph-jr grades, A-G courses, which is fairly inclusive of just about all – as the “G” was included to be moreso). </p>

<p>The statistics the UCLA admission site cites understates scores as shown in my exercise [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-los-angeles/1472470-my-study-on-superscoring-of-sat-and-other-stats-related-things.html]here[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-los-angeles/1472470-my-study-on-superscoring-of-sat-and-other-stats-related-things.html]here[/url</a>], as UCLA isn’t trying to sell itself to the public as Penn is, in a typical public v. private-u data presentation. This exercise, with the various methods of these two types of u’s present these scores probably shows that the median, adjusted SATI score for UCLA students is mid to upper-middle 2,000’s. Add to my exercise, that the U excludes Int’ls from its mean SATI calculation though they manifest higher scores than US residents because admission for foreigners is more dependent on SAT’s than grades because of the latter’s problem in conversion to a 4-point scale. </p>

<p>I would probably guess, since Penn plays at best fifth fiddle to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, etc (not for Wharton of course), that UCLA’s UWGPA is probably higher. But we’ll never know because I doubt if Penn in its national forms reporting would ever report this statistic, but would rather conveniently leave it blank.</p>

<p>We all know that as a public institution, UCLA, feels compelled to educate the poor as well as the rich, and is probably even mandated by the state to do so. However, I don’t think these students with mainly lesser scores can’t be brought up to speed with the academic services the U does offer because a higher level of teaching does indeed improve students’ “aptitude.” </p>

<p>Besides which, with the same tutoring afforded the rich, poorer students with low baseline SAT’s could easily bring up their scores 200-300 points, showing that the SATI isn’t anything more than a test that can be bought --manifested in students scoring well, at times exceedingly well – at a monetary cost. And the test doesn’t unfortunately differentiate between those who are naturally high scorers and those who “purchased” their score.</p>

<p>So my expository essence here is that there probably isn’t as much of a difference between Penn and UCLA students in intelligence, studiousness, and certainly not competitiveness, (if at all) that you’d like to portray. Now, if you were to state that there were between Harvard and UCLA, I’d have to agree. And there are undoubtedly “low-level,” “bottom-feeders” for a moderately large u as Penn.</p>

<p>UCLA is also exceedingly good at offering many of the ancillary (pronounced in more of the British, accent on the second slab) things beyond scholastics: social/night life, high D-I sports, outdoors things, etc, at least as good as Penn, maybe better. I guess that was someone else’s thoughts beyond yours, ennis. </p>

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<p>I’ll add, that students who attend UCLA would probably more likely defer l-school for a couple of years of employment and attend such later, because of as you stated, sticker price. Again, too, I don’t think the presentation of UCLA’s law-school admits per link, is necessarily reflective of all who apply within the graduating class, and certainly not for all those who apply within that year among recent and previous years’ graduates. The l-school nos. for UCLA might be include a good portion of those who were borderline admissible to l-school and sought out UCLA’s counseling staff, and subsequently acceded to the U publishing their data. And I’m not saying that UCLA would outpace Penn in HLS matriculants, either. People are so easily led to buy into utter BS or at least partial, as private u’s like Penn are always obviously always trying to promote themselves.</p>

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<p>@bluebayou‌ </p>

<p>It’s you who needs to think more critically here. I’m not talking about Penn Law, I’m talking about HLS. No one with a sane mind would pick a full ride to UCLA or even Boalt over sticker at HLS. The job /federal clerkship/academia prospects are simply far better at Harvard Law School not to mention that the school gives excellent financial aid. </p>

<p>Penn undergrads are much more prominently found at the top 6 law schools, M7 business schools, and top 10 medical schools than UCLA undergrads. Penn grads may be wealthier but they are also more academically inclined and have loftier ambitions than UCLA undergrads shaped largely by the community they spent 4 years in.</p>

<p>UCLA probably still has more students whose family belong to the 1% in absolute numbers than a private school like Penn due to the sheer difference in the magnitude of their undergraduate student bodies and yet UCLA’s absolute placement into professional programs still far trails that of Penn’s.</p>

<p>@drax12‌ </p>

<p>Penn undergrads are much closer to Harvard undergrads in studiousness and competitiveness than UCLA ugrads are to Penn ugrads. Are you seriously debating this fact? Just look at the difference in the number of National Merit Scholars, SAT scores, etc.</p>

<p>Playing second fiddle to HYPSM still means you can enroll valedictorians, perfect ACT scorers, and national award winners. UCLA is the backup school for Berkeley which is the backup school for Californians who can’t get into the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Chicago, etc.</p>

<p>UCLA’s student body doesn’t even compare to Penn’s and graduate school adcoms, professional school adcoms, and employers are well aware.</p>

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<p>I tend to like to address entire messages of those who respond to my posts. So if you don’t mind, I’ll divide my response to the three p’s that you composed. </p>

<p>You wouldn’t have any idea wrt a statement such as Harvard > Penn, Penn >> UCLA students.</p>

<p>And let me get this straight, you’re associating NMS’s and SAT’s from high school to studiousness and competitiveness in college. This doesn’t make any sense. In fact, UCLA students are extremely studious and competitive, some of whom have to be to makeup for a possible lack of profound natural intelligence compared to those who might be more inclined to attend a u like Harvard. </p>

<p>If you said that Penn students had more natural intelligence, I could have bought in to this idea more, but this idea still wouldn’t be much more legitimate as Penn students have more access to buying a good SAT score. If you read my entire post you wouldn’t have evaded some of these simple concepts as to why Penn students do score higher, and at least made a facile attempt to address them. </p>

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<p>Likewise, too, UCLA as a safety to Stanford and CIT can enroll valedictorians, award winners, and high scorers, etc. That UCLA doesn’t, though it could throughout its entire student body, shows that UCLA is concerned about educating all CA’s constituents, and thereby makes large concessions in higher standards for the sake of economic and racial diversity. And I don’t think Penn would have that many perfect ACT scorers; I’d be surprised if there’d be 1% of the student body who achieved such. Now, at Harvard, I’d be surprised if this % weren’t extremely high.</p>

<p>This p shows how ignorant you are. To assume that UCLA is a backup to UCB shows how little you know about current times. My point was the local proximity of Penn to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, makes Penn a geographical safety, because all u’s stated here are in the east. Duke and Chicago especially, and even MIT, as highly prestigious as they all are don’t register a relative blip in CA wrt applications relative to the size of CA’s graduating class or even top-tier graduating class.</p>

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<p>Lazy paragraph. Of course, for eastern US employers and professional-school adcoms, UCLA would trail Penn, because of Penn students aspirations in being employed in the east and attending grad school there. I recommend that you go over bluebayou’s posts about Penn having an eastcoast bias in employment and in grad appts. </p>

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<p>This statement is most certainly false. Berkeley’s yield is only 2.2% higher than UCLA’s. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/01/30/national-universities-where-accepted-students-usually-enroll”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/01/30/national-universities-where-accepted-students-usually-enroll&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>There are plenty Berkeley admits (especially those from NorCal) who come to SoCal to attend UCLA. And I personally know many Berkeley alums who hold UCLA in a very high regard. So no, UCLA is not a ‘Berkeley reject’ school.</p>

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<p>Well they both have two different goals for their student bodies, so that isn’t surprising. UCLA’s goal is to offer a world-class education to California’s best and brightest, and it does an exceptional job in doing so. I won’t comment on the applicants to Penn. But I think it’s pretty obvious that the students who apply to both universities are largely different. I imagine that there are very few students who apply to both universities.</p>

<p>FWIW, I hold Penn in a very high regard. It’s really similar in a lot of ways to UCLA for those in the know (they’re both beastly at health sciences and have fantastic hospitals.)</p>

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<p>I looked at your link – sorry my eyes tend to go to things that stand out – and UCB’s (I prefer “Cal” or “Berk,” short for berkenstocks ) acceptances and yields appear to be solely for fall admits.</p>

<p>Other things … BYU having > 80% yield. I agree that yield is extremely important and certainly high yield certainly is, but the quality of student accepted does vary. I don’t think anyone would confuse BYU’s admissions, ie, quality of applicant pool, quality of students accepted, and ultimately its yield of the quality of students who do matriculate, to be comparable to Harvard’s. </p>

<p>I think it goes without saying that UCLA does well in NorCal and certainly well oos and internationally similar to Cal in SoCal and for non-residents. And I know bluebayou has made it a point to say that Cal and UCLA students have similar stats, similar ambitions, and similar campus lifestyles, but I think that there are definite differences between the two student bodies. Maybe in the future this very topic will show forth and I’ll detail some of the differences I see in comparing the two groups. One of the things is Cal is definitely more STEM oriented and generally gives more science degrees, though both produce a ton of MDs, attorneys and business people.</p>