<p>As far as getting admitted into some of the top law schools, how important is the 'name brand' of the undergrad college?</p>
<p>marginal at best.</p>
<p>If you want to go to a top 20 law school, it matters. If you're more interested in attending a lower ranked or a regional law school, it matters less. For example, let's say that you want to go to Harvard Law School, and you want to go to an undergraduate university that sends lots of its graduates to Harvard Law. Well, the following comes from information on the Harvard Law School website regarding the "Undergraduate Schools of J.D. Students Enrolled at HLS in 2005-2006".</p>
<p>The following undergraduate schools have 30 or more of their graduates attending Harvard Law this academic year:</p>
<p>Brown, (51), Columbia (44), Cornell (40), Dartmouth (31), Duke (55), Georgetown (33), Harvard (232), Princeton (65), Stanford (91), UCal-Berkeley (43), UCLA (41), Penn (53), UTexas-Austin (31) and Yale (126).</p>
<p>Obviously, the HLS student body is filled with students from many other undergraduate schools, though most of those schools only managed to get between one and several of their students into HLS. Here are some examples:</p>
<p>American (2), ASU (2), BC (3), Brandeis (11), Case Western (5), Colgate (1), William & Mary (7), DePaul (1), FSU (2), GW (8), Johns Hopkins (4), Kansas State (1), LSU (1), Michigan State (3), NYU (17), Oklahoma State (1), Pomona (14), Rutgers (3), Syracuse (1), TCU (1), UConn (1), U of Maryland (6), UNC (13), USC (11), Vassar (2) and Wake Forest (1).</p>
<p>Many other schools that I can think of off of the top of my head are not represented at all. These include Bucknell, Bryn Mawr, Brooklyn College, Hamilton, UCal-Santa Cruz, Clarkson, Clemson, RPI, Fordham, Purdue, Ithaca College, Lehigh, Xavier and Valparaiso. </p>
<p>So what am I trying to say here? Well, if your goal is simply to go to law school wherever you get in, it shouldn't matter much where you go to undergrad. If you have stellar grades, superior LSAT scores, solid recommendations, a killer personal statement and a degree from any undergraduate school, you certainly have a chance at getting into HLS (or any other top 20 law school, for that matter). If you have stellar grades, superior LSAT scores, solid recommendations, a killer personal statement and an undergraduate degree from a top school, your chances of getting in increase. I can't say for sure how much, but they certainly increase. I would rather have a theoretical shot at 1 of 30 or 40 spots from my undergraduate school than 1 of 3 spots. </p>
<p>Yes, I know that I am making a lot of assumptions and I acknowledge them (students at top undergraduate schools may just be better test takers, thus have higher LSAT scores, blah, blah, blah), but the reality is that more students who graduated from Columbia go to HLS than students than graduated from Syracuse. If the statistics were available, I'm sure they would be similar at all of the top 20 law schools.</p>
<p>dude, self selection is a big issue there. People from better schools are more likely to have the scores necessary to get into big name schools.</p>
<p>i was recently at a function attended by a large quantity of current yale law students, and their undergraduate background was extremely broad, ranging from top 5 schools down to 3rd tier state schools, and it was pretty evenly dispersed.</p>
<p>Evenly dispersed? I'm not so sure. Yale Law is a very small law school by comparison to other top law schools (for example, I believe that Harvard Law has about three times the number of students enrolled at Yale Law), so it is doubtful that you would find 50 graduates there from any school. That said, while there are certainly students there from many different undergraduate schools, there are likely more students from Harvard and other top undergraduate programs than there are from UConn, Syracuse, etc. I didn't go to Yale Law School, but I've done a tremendous amount of recruiting from there, and I've always found this to be true.</p>
<p>well it wasnt done scientifically obviously, but of the 15 or so students that i spoke to, there were 5 from top schools, 5 from great but less presigious schools, and 5 from lower tier state schools.</p>
<p>my question is also do top law schools accept finance majors? </p>
<p>I've read that Business majors represent more of the applicant pool than anyone except polisci... and that finance majors are accepted 71% of the time, only 2% less than polisci majors</p>
<p>As far as I am aware, the top schools accept students from all different majors. My law school classmates included students who majored in fine arts (photography), biology, business (finance, accounting), government, french, communication, history, engineering and a host of other majors. We even had four doctors and a veterinarian! There were many people with work experience, many masters and other advanced degrees and many people embarking on their second careers (former teachers, journalists and consultants come to mind).</p>
<p>Here's the link to the actual numbers. (Scroll to the end of the page.) That may be your idea of "evenly dispersed." It sure isn't mine!</p>
<p>Jonri, do you have this data for Stanford Law School?</p>
<p>I guess the question is not whether or not there is a correlation between a top-tier undergraduate school and admission to a highly selective law program, but whether or not that correlation is causal. If there is indeed a direct causal link between attending a top undergraduate institution and a top 20 law school, why is that? I doubt prestige is the reason, though many assume it is.</p>
<p>well, according to those yale numbers, 49% of students did not go to college at harvard, princeton, yale, brown, dartmouth, upenn, cornell, columbia, stanford, mit, duke, amherst, williams, and swarthmore. if my math is right, thats about half that went to top 10 schools and about half that didnt.</p>
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<p>Given that there about 2,200 bachelor-granting institutions in the U.S. that aren't in your top 10, versus 10 that are, that's not what I would call "evenly dispersed." I would call it "overwhelmingly lopsided" in favor of those ten schools.</p>
<p>There's one way to try and disentangle causation from self-selection. That's to look at the GPA's and LSAT's of students admitted to YLS et al. from HYP vs. the general applicant pool. I only have hard data from Harvard College in 1999, but from speaking to others who have more recent admissions grids, things haven't changed much. The mean LSAT of a Harvard College graduate admitted to YLS in 1999 was very close to the overall YLS mean: ~171. The mean GPA of admitted Harvard graduates, however, was WAY below YLS' overall mean at the time: ~3.75, which was very close to the YLS 25th %ile of admitted students. In other words, Harvard College kids had to have roughly the same LSAT as other admitted students in order to get into YLS, but they got a major break on the GPA.</p>
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<p>I doubt prestige is the reason, though many assume it is.</p>
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<p>Prestige probably plays a role, IMHO. </p>
<p>Having been an advisor to law school applicants at a top-ten school, however, I think that the superlative guidance some colleges give their kids plays a bigger role. Using Harvard as an example solely because it's the school I know best, every group of ~400 Harvard upperclassmen lives in a dorm and eats in a dining hall together with at least two resident HLS students whose job it is to run programs all year encouraging those 400 students to apply to the best law schools and helping them get in. When a student officially decides to apply at the beginning of senior year, she is additionally assigned a <em>personal</em> HLS student (who usually has only 1 or 2 advisees per year) who is expected to meet with her throughout the year, edit her essays, select a list of target schools, help her choose recommenders, and eventually compose a glowing dean's letter in consultation with the actual dean. If the undergrad wants an additional resource, he or she can also sign up for a "Radcliffe Mentor," a local alum who is a lawyer, who does basically the same things. All of these resources are equally available to the students years after graduation if they choose to work before applying to grad school.</p>
<p>In other words, at some of those top 10 schools, every single applicant is provided with multiple expert guides who offer months or years of the kind of admissions assistance you'd be very lucky to get if you paid $200 an hour to K*plan or whoever. And heck yeah, it makes a difference in where the kids apply and get in.</p>
<p>Hanna, I feel as though your post described the resources available to students of top universities as a factor in admissions, rather than the actual brand-name of the university. To that end, I would agree that it's the resources of a given school that gives applicants an edge in the admissions process. </p>
<p>First-tier schools have tremendous resources, including but not limited to: internships, fellowships, undergraduate research programs, work-study opportunities related to one's field of interest, study abroad partnerships, career and graduate school counseling, etc. </p>
<p>Third- and fourth-tier schools tend to skew towards the financially disadvantaged and have fewer resources. Often students at these schools have to WORK; not just 10 hours a week at a work-study job, but 20, 30, sometimes even 40 hours a week while going to school full-time. They must meet family and employment commitments as well as educational ones, and bear a greater burden for the financing of their education than students at other universities. This leaves little time or money for internships, leadership experience, fellowships, student-faculty collaboration, etc.--if such opportunities exist in the first place.</p>
<p>Therefore, the lack of resources available to students at third- and fourth-tier universities places them at a competitive disadvantage with the students of better-funded institutions. I would hate to think (and highly doubt) that law school admissions officials (many of whom are academics, from what I gather) value prestige over achievement. However, one's opportunities for achievement are directly linked to available resources.</p>
<p>I agree with what you're saying, although the difference is dramatic not just between top-10 and third-tier schools, but even between top-10 schools and others within tier 1. Just in my personal experience, there was a colossal difference in law-school advising between Bryn Mawr/Haverford and Harvard. The colossal difference began with the fact that the ONE pre-law advisor for the 2300 students at the two colleges had no law degree.*** Of course, the financial disadvantages of students at 3d and 4th tier schools plays a big role for those students, but don't suppose that all those well-funded "CC Top Universities" provide identical resources, either.</p>
<p>***And people wonder why I'm so skeptical about the suggestion that elite LACs provide the pinnacle of individual student advising while the Ivies abandon their students to sink or swim...</p>
<p>There was a similar thread a few weeks ago:</p>
<p>I disagree that students from top undergraduate programs are disproportionately represented at top law schools simply because of the greater resources available to them. While a better funded university may have some additional resources available to its students, that is hardly the entire picture. In fact, few of the top undergraduate schools go as far as Harvard does (based upon the description above) in helping its undergraduates get into law school. I think that it is beyond question that while it may not be the prestige factor associated with top undergraduate schools that sways the admissions officials at law school, there is a presumption that if you do well at a top undergraduate school, you will do well at a top law school. Let's not forget, too, that law schools are very concerned with their own perceptions in the legal community at large, particularly with employers that recruit on campus. Generally, the employers who are coming on campus to recruit at top law schools definitely do care to some extent about where the students went to school as an undergraduate -- if for no other reason than because their clients like to know that they have a Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. grad doing their most sensitive and complex matters.</p>
<p>However, the resources of better-funded institutions are hardly confined to advising. Bear in mind that any worthwhile graduate program will be closely examining a given applicant's relevant work experience; extracurricular activities and campus leadership; fellowships; publications; whether or not s/he has participated in any meaningful internships, faculty-student collaboration, or undergraduate research opportunities. Rarely is an applicant admitted to a top law school without significant achievment in at least one of these areas.</p>
<p>Few third- and fourth-tier universities offer these opportunities to begin with. Fewer still offer the financing necessary for its students (who are frequently among the neediest) to pursue them. If a student has a significant amount of financial obligations to meet on a day-to-day basis, if a student needs to work 20-40 hours a week as a waitress while enrolled full-time, how can that student be expected to create and pursue such opportunities on their own time? </p>
<p>While law schools grant some consideration for financially disadvantaged students, this leniency only extends so far. In fact, the students of third- and fourth-tier universities are struggling to remain competitive with students from better-funded universities that have been granted more opportunities during the course of their undergraduatee education.</p>
<p>Pip-pip,
While I don't agree with your assumption that most students in third and fourth tier schools work 20-40 hours a week in addition to taking classes, while most students at top schools don't work at all, it seems that we can agree that the answer to the original poster's question, "How important is the 'name brand' of the undergrad college?" is that it matters. You think it matters because students will have better resources at a name brand college, and I think that there is a lot more to it than that, including the fact that the "name brand" opens doors that someone might otherwise have to break down.
sallyawp</p>