High school student trying to get a head start

So I’m a week away from finishing my junior year of high school and am obviously thinking about what undergraduate school I would like to go to. I’m realistically looking at probably attending one of the lower tier UC Schools (Riverside, Santa Cruz, Merced) with a somewhat decent shot at getting into one of the middle tier UC Schools. (Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis)

Now with that being said I do want to attend a top 10 law school. What I am wondering is that will not going to a top undergraduate university hinder my chances at getting into a top law school if I can get a 3.8+ GPA and a 170+ LSAT? And as far as the LSAT what prep advice would you give. (I’m probably not going to start prepping for that until I actually go to college but I still want to get some now to save in my memory for later.)

So basically to sum this up. Will not going to a top school for undergrad hinder my chances for a top law school even if my GPA and LSAT are competitive?

Two major criteria for law school, GPA and LSAT score, with work experience a distant third. Now, if you had the same scores as someone at Yale, and you want to SW froggy-lake state university, you indeed might get a push on your application. That said, go where you might excel and grow the most.

Work experience in the field of law shouldn’t be too hard for me to get while I do my undergrad. My dad as well as about 5 of my aunts and uncles are attorneys. I’m already going to be working at my dad’s law firm this Summer so I can probably have a lot of that. I don’t know if legacy helps but I have family that went to Upenn Law, Uchicago law and my cousin even works for the Office of Legal Affairs at UC Berkeley as an attorney. I’m not saying that will get me in alone but could it be the difference if I am on the cusp If my cousin puts in a good name for me?

But what do you suggest to get a high LSAT score? I’m guessing for a top 10 school I probably want 170+. If I want to go to HYS I probably should get 175+? Correct?

See, top-law-schools.com, they have a plethora of information on almost every aspect of law school. But, if you are seeking the holy grail of law schools, Y–H-S, 170+ is the norm.

Going to a top-tier undergrad school can help you get into a top law school because (1) you may get a GPA “boost” in the eyes of a top law school based on a strong college name on your resume, and (2) at a top school, you’ll be surrounded by peers who will be focused on getting into a top law school, and faculty and staff who will know the ropes in helping you get into one.

However, not going to a top college certainly does not preclude you at all from ending up at somewhere like Stanford.

Just study as hard as humanly possible and remain focused on grades to the expense of other things such as Thursday nights at the bar, or extracurriculars that won’t result in amazing letters of recommendation or the like.

Also take a Kaplan test prep class, and study (hard! for months!) for the LSAT.

Work experience in college is not really relevant for law school; what helps is taking a year or two off after college in order to work before applying to law school.

High school is really too early to start worrying about these kinds of things, however. I didn’t think abut law school until maybe sophomore or junior years of college. At all times during college, I was just in a complete panic about grades, and all I did was study. That resulted in a GPA that got me into Harvard for law school, at least.

@HappyAlumnus Where did you go for undergrad?

RH:

I checked your stats on another post and believe that you have an excellent shot at the mid-tier UCs. But troubling to me is your SAT-CR score vis a vis LSAT. A sub-600 does not forecast well into a 17x LSAT, which itself is a lot of (boring) reading.

You might take an ACT practice test at home and see how that goes. The ACT is offered in September…

Good luck.

Yeah. I think the passage based reading part will be my weakness but I think I will be really good at the logic stuff on the LSAT. And I’ll probably get better at reading passages by the time I take the LSAT. I’m trying to get my CR to about 600-620 on the SAT. Then I’m trying to get my Writing and Math in the 700’s. (Giving me an SAT above 2000)

Here is an overview of colleges most represented at YLS–see:http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48746

@RHSclassof16, I went to a LAC that’s in the US News top 10- although it did zilch to prepare me for law school admissions.

There are students from slews of colleges at top 10 law schools, although students from the Ivies, Duke, Stanford, etc. are disproportionately represented. (E.g., Princeton and U. of Kansas may each be listed on a college list for one of those law schools, but Princeton will have 50 students and U. of Kansas will have 1 every few years).

@HappyAlumnus When you say prepare you for law school admissions do you mean people know how to help you get in? Because I have an entire family that went to top law schools that can kind of help me out in that sense. Most of them went to top undergrad schools as well with the exception of one but still.

And that is primarily a function of the fact that “the Ivies, Duke, Stanford. etc.” only accept top test takers; they deny the average test takers. That means that their students will do much, much better than students from say, Kansas, on the LSAT. (The the top quartile of Kansas’ class would be in the bottom decile of most Ivies.)

Since the LSAT is ~50% of top law school admissions, the fact is that most students attending KU have not shot at HLS, since they do not have the test taking ability to ace the LSAT, which is required for Harvard Law.

Well I think the school I am going to is a step above KU. It will probably be something like Santa Cruz, Riverside Irvine, Davis or Santa Barbara. That’s not HYS quality but those are definitely a step above KU.

the point is test-taking ability, RH, not undergraduate institution…for a rule of thumb, someone who scores 17x is in the generally scoring ~2100/32 on the high school exams.

@bluebayou I get that. I actually think I will be able to score over 2000 on the SAT on my 3rd time in October. I’m stating to actually see legit progress in my prep for the SAT. (Even on the Critical Reading) but the point is that I’ve always been kind of a late bloomer when it comes to school. I’m somebody who barely passed Algebra I & Geometry in middle school who ended up acing AP Calculus this year. I’ve already become a exponentially better test taker and student in general in the last two years and I feel like I’m still improving at a rapid rate.I got a 150 on my PSAT just this year and ended up getting 1870 on my SAT about 5 months later. Last week I took a Blue Book SAT test and scored 1960. I’m somebody who was getting a 3.5 and a 3.8 freshman year and I just pulled back to back 4.67 GPA’s my junior year. So I feel like if I keep improving at the rate I am with my academics I feel confident that I can actually do really well on the LSAT. I’m as tenacious as they come.

Related to the undergrad breakdown for YLS, here is similar info for Harvard–More or less the same profile appears when you look at Harvard’s undergrad representation as well, so this is not just a feature of small elite schools. Harvard no longer publishes this sort of breakdown, apparently. Just 12 schools account for 50% of those enrolled at HLS. And 37 schools that sent three or more students per year to HLS account for 75% of the student body. Only 82 schools have an average of at least one student per year enrolled. The other 172 schools with any students at all sent less than one per year. There were a total of 254 schools represented in the HLS student body for the 2006-07 academic year.

Excellent post, boolaHI.

Sidenote: @Demosthenes, I am “officially” ignoring you.

As as aside the KU example presents an interesting posit, say versus the applicants from a UC. I would need to drill down on the numbers, but I wonder from a statistical vantage where KU might actually have an advantage. Now, before we fast forward to dismissing me-- we know the UCs will have much more applicants, and granted probably a greater number of scores in the 170+ range. That said, say KU had a one or two in the same range, they potentially could be just as or even more attractive-given the need for regional representation or other more soft criteria? Well, just a thought…

Ahh, doing a bit more homework, here is a comprehensive list from 4-5 years ago, listing a comprehensive school list represented at YLS. As can be seen. KU, if one were to eliminate UCB and UCLA, has more representation than the others UCs: see–westbayguy wrote:
Yale as of 2009-10 (620 Students) Top feeders are pretty constant from year to year

Institutions Represented
One student from each institution unless otherwise indicated
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Germany
Albion College
American University (5)
American University of Beirut [Lebanon]
Amherst University (4)
Aristoteleio Panepistimio Thessalonikis [Greece]
Arizona State University (5)
Arkansas State University
Athinisin Ethnikon Kai Kapodistriakon Panepistimion [Greece]
Baylor University
Biola University
Birmingham-Southern College
Bob Jones University
Boston College (2)
Bowdoin College
Brandeis University (2)
Brigham Young University (5)
Brown University (21)
Bryn Mawr College (2)
California State University
Calvin College
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Chulalongkorn University [Thailand]
City University of New York [Bernard Baruch College]
City University of New York [City College]
City University of New York [Herbert Lehman College]
Claremont McKenna College
Colgate University (2)
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Columbia University (22)
Columbia University [Barnard College]
Concordia University [Canada]
Cornell University (10)
Creighton University
Dartmouth College (15)
Dickinson College
Duke University (14)
East China University of Political Science and Law [People’s Republic of China]
Emory University (3)
Fordham University (4)
Fudan University [People’s Republic of China]
George Washington University (2)
Georgetown University (7)
Gettysburg College
Gonzaga University
Gordon College
Grinell College
Hampton University
Harvard University (76)
Harvey Mudd College
Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Israel]
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf [Germany]
Hillsdale College
Howard University (2)
Indiana University (2)
Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris [France]
Johns Hopkins University (6)
Kalamazoo College
Kyoto University [Japan]
Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck [Austria]
London School of Economics and Political Science [United Kingdom]
Louisiana State University (2)
Loyola College [Maryland]
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola University [Illinois]
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
McGill University Canada
Middlebury College (3)
Millsaps College
Minnesota State University
Montclair State College
Morehouse College
Morgan State University
Mount Holyoke College (2)
Nanjing University [People’s Republic of China]
National Law School of India University India
National Taiwan University Taiwan
National University of Ireland [Ireland]
New York University (7)
Northwestern University (8)
Oberlin College (2)
Ohio State University
Peking University [People’s Republic of China]
Pennsylvania State University
Pepperdine University
Pomona College (3)
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [Chile]
Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro [Brazil]
Princeton University (27)
Rice University (2)
Rutgers, State University of New Jersey (2)
Saint John’s University [New York]
Sarah Lawrence College (2)
Scripps College
Seattle University
Smith College
Sookmyung Women’s University [Republic of Korea]
Spelman College
Stanford University (35)
State University of New York at Buffalo
Swarthmore College (7)
Taylor University
Tel Aviv University Israel
Touro College
Trinity Christian College
Trinity University [Texas]
United States Naval Academy
Universidad Católica de Córdoba [Argentina]
Universidad Complutense de Madrid [Spain]
Universidad de los Andes [Colombia]
Universidad Nacional de La Plata [Argentina]
Universidad Panamericana [Mexico]
Universidade de Lisboa [Portugal]
Universidade de São Paulo [Brazil]
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Brazil]
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore [Italy]
University of Alabama
University of Alberta [Canada]
University of Arkansas
University of Asmara [Eritrea]
University of Calgary [Canada]
University of California at Berkeley (12)
University of California at Irvine
University of California at Los Angeles (9)
University of California at Santa Barbara
University of Cambridge United Kingdom
University of Cape Town [South Africa]
University of Chicago (12)
University of Colorado
University of Connecticut
University of Denver
University of Florida (4)
University of Georgia (3)
University of Iowa (2)
University of Kansas (2)
University of Mary Washington (2)
University of Maryland (2)
University of Massachusetts
University of Miami (2)
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (9)
University of Missouri (2)
University of North Carolina at Asheville
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (5)
University of North Texas
University of Notre Dame Indiana
University of Oklahoma
University of Oregon (3)
University of Ottawa [Canada]
University of Oxford [United Kingdom]
University of Pennsylvania (14)
University of Pittsburgh (2)
University of Redlands
University of Rochester
University of Saint Andrews [United Kingdom]
University of Southern California (5)
University of Tennessee
University of Texas at Austin (6)
University of Texas at Dallas
University of the Philippines [Philippines]
University of Tokyo [Japan]
University of Toronto Canada
University of Tulsa
University of Virginia (3)
University of Washington (3)
University of Western Australia [Australia]
University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire
University of Wisconsin at Madison (3)
University of Witwatersrand [South Africa]
Vanderbilt University (3)
Vassar College
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Wake Forest University
Washington and Lee University (4)
Washington University Missouri
Wellesley College (6)
Wesleyan University (7)
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster [Germany]
Whitman College (2)
Williams College (4)
Wuhan University [People’s Republic of China]
Yale University (87)
Yeshiva University
Yonshei University [Republic of Korea]
Total institutions, 185

Kind of misleading to use raw numbers. Virginia, Vanderbilt, Middlebury, and Pomona all have 3 students at YLS, so they might all appear equal…but UVA and Vandy have about ten times as many students as Middlebury and Pomona, so the latter two are getting a much higher percentage (of overall students, not necessarily applicants) admitted.