<p>Im currently in the hunt for undergraduate schools but since I plan to go to law school after I major in History I was wondering if a 3.8 at a school like SUNY Bing. (respectable school) looked better then a 3.4 at a school famous for grade deflation like Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>I suppose the essense of my question is the whether or not I should go to a school I can excel at or one that I may struggle at times through, is the NYU or JHU degree worth that much more then a SUNY Bing. or American undergraduate.</p>
<p>Who said I was worried, the essence of my question was about whether or not GPA is qualified to a high extent with the caliber of school you apply to, and I did use the search function without satisfactory answers.</p>
<p>I concur with Sreis. The consensus is school doesnt matter-- </p>
<p>Having said that, it doesnt mean you can take courses that are no challenge-- types of courses do matter (ie. Ballroom dancing not taken as seriously as an EE course).</p>
<p>While I agree, I will be the voice of disent in pointing out how school does matter. A larger cut will be taken from better schools, generally. More 3.7s/168 lsat from Harvard are going to be taken to better law schools than your average state school's students 3.7s/168 lsat. However, if you do well, practically wherever you go, you're good. As to pre-law, look at the stats of people from those schools that applied to law school, and see how well they did with what numbers.</p>
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More 3.7s/168 lsat from Harvard are going to be taken to better law schools than your average state school's students 3.7s/168 lsat.
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<p>This I agree with, although I would argue that you are even better off than the Harvard 3.7/168 guy if you came from a state school and had a 4.0/168. </p>
<p>Of course, whether that 3.7 Harvard guy could actually pull off that 4.0 in that state school is another question entirely. In some cases, you might actually get WORSE grades by going to a state school, because of the grade deflation that many state schools have.</p>
<p>If I may digress, I personally think that the most pernicious kind of grade inflation is the intra-school kind, not the inter-school kind. For example, a guy with a 3.7/168 who completed a creampuff, do-nothing joke major is better off than a guy with a 3.4/168 who completed an extremely difficult and rigorous major. In other words, an easy A is better than a hard-fought B. Sad but true. It shouldn't be this way, but it is this way.</p>
<p>Sakky, you do mean with respect to medical school and law school admissions in general, I imagine, and perhaps for a few other areas, but not in total, as I'm sure you'd think the engineer or philosophy major is better off than the Leisure studies major, when things are said and done, in a more general sense.</p>
<p>In a more general sense, yes, the engineers are better off, especially those lower-performing engineers from no-name schools who honestly were probably never good enough to get into med-school or law-school anyway. </p>
<p>However, in the specific case of law and med admissions, I would agree that many engineers, especially the better engineers, have something of a raw deal. I am sure ariesathena would concur.</p>
<p>thanks for the input, the reason why I might choose a SUNY over a NYU, or JHU is mainly due to finances. Although I probably could get enough from family/loans to cover my 4 years, considering ill be going to a top law school after my undergraduate I don't want to incur that kind of heavy debt, so thats something I have to weigh in</p>
<p>"More 3.7s/168 lsat from Harvard are going to be taken to better law schools than your average state school's students 3.7s/168 lsat."</p>
<p>I agree with this also, but that doesn't prove that schools matter for gpa. You have to say that a 3.7 from Harvard is worth more than a 3.7 from a state school. More 3.7s from Harvard will be taken for a lot of reasons which are probably related to the student being very good at applying to schools (got in to Harvard?), but that's a diversion.</p>
<p>That's speculating. There is no way you can predict what you will get.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a 4.0 is a 4.0! Put that GPA next to a 170+ LSAT score and you are almost guaranteed admissions to most law schools --this, of course, leaving out HYS. </p>
<p>Remember, GPA is only one factor. Your LSAT and essays are key, too. For HYS, you will also need some sort of special distinction.</p>