I have been admitted to the University of Virginia as a transfer student and I am very likely to attend (although my transferring process isn’t quite complete, let’s assume I head to UVA for the purposes of this discussion). I understand that Virginia Law is an extremely prestigious law school, and I was wondering if my chances there would be improved by completing my undergraduate degree within the same university? Obviously, I won’t be basing my college decision off of this - there’s a lot of other things I love about UVA - but I was curious if this might be another perk.
short answer is no.
@bluebayou that’s not too surprising, care to share the long answer as well though?
LS admissions is 95% GPA+LSAT. If you are above both of UVa’s medians, being an undergrad there might be a really minor plus factor, but being an undergrad there will not make up for lower scores.
There was a thread on this same topic a year or so ago. Someone from a law school admissions committee said that undergrads from the same university were preferred, and someone had found that Harvard undergrads received a deemed GPA boost when applying to HLS. So it may help, but probably not a significant amount.
Thanks for the insight both of you!
That is a unusual. U-Carolina, for example, publicly admits that it favors its under grads in grad/professional school applications. The UC’s are just the opposite. They want you to go elsewhere. Boalt could fill a lot of its class from Cal undergrads, but purposely does not.
Of course, it comes down to how big the state and how many other great colleges are contained within its borders. If UVa was to favor its own in a big way, it would by definition, be disfavoring those from William & Mary and VaTech – which would be political suicide in that state.
Of course, all other things being equal – and they rarely are – HLS would favor its own grads. But HLS is not going to accept a Harvard undergrad with a 3.4 over a UVa/other grad with a 3.7 (assuming same LSAT).
“… if UVa was to favor its own in a big way, it would by definition, be disfavoring those from William & Mary and VaTech – which would be political suicide in that state.”
So many fact free opinions available on CC. It’s clear that UVA does favor its own, as UVA undergrad is the most represented school, and is almost double the next highest school(W&M)-and note that VA Tech isn’t even on the list for top schools providing students. Per BB, the admissions committee must be intent on committing “political suicide”.
So attending UVA undergrad apparently does help, as does in-state status.
correlation is not causation (which I realize is a difficult concept for many in the legal profession, who can be math-challenged.)
UVa = 16,000 undergrads
W&M = 6300 undergrads (or less than half the size)
Do a per capita, and W&M is looking pretty good as a feeder school, no?
Ah, BB always changing the standards. Your initial post said nothing about relative statistics, causation, correlation or anything of the sort. You enjoy making fact free pronouncements, then scrambling to explain what you meant. There was no mention of “per capita” and again-what about VA Tech, which you conveniently ignore? By the way, VA Tech has 24,000 undergraduates-could you point out the “feeder” aspect of that?
Your statement was direct, if completely muddled:
“If UVa was to favor its own in a big way, it would by definition, be disfavoring those from William & Mary and VaTech – which would be political suicide in that state.”
For its most recent class, UVA accepted almost twice as many students from its undergraduate as it did from W&M-and, again, VA Tech didn’t even make the list. So please, as you are such a statistical wizard, is “big way” a term in statistics with which I am not familiar?
And please, illuminate us all as to the “political suicide” aspect of UVA law admissions, particularly as it applies to admits from VA tech.
Your reliance on statistics is risible in light of your original post. It’s clear that your opinions regarding the law and law school are rarely, if ever, supported by any facts.