<p>Someone I know went to U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and got mainly A's with occasional C's and perhaps a few B's.
They got into Georgetown Law School.</p>
<p>Someone else I know is a freshman at NYU and currently getting B's and A's, but more B's than A's.</p>
<p>Now looking at the GPA alone (and not the LSAT because he hasn't taken it yet), do you think he has a chance at Georgetown Law School?</p>
<p>Yes, your friend has a chance. What kind of chance (good, bad, or indifferent) depends on the gpa at the time of application, which he/she does not have yet, and the LSAT, which he/she does not have yet.</p>
<p>Well, say he maintains the same grades throughout the undergraduate years. And, as I said, dismiss the LSAT and look solely at the grades.</p>
<p>It makes no difference what school you go to. How many more threads on this do we need?</p>
<p>You can't look solely at the grades. The LSATs matter too much.</p>
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It makes no difference what school you go to. How many more threads on this do we need?
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<p>Well, to me, that doesn't make any sense. Let's say someone got B's in Harvard and applied to a law school that required a GPA of 3.6 or higher, but was nowhere near as prestigious as Harvard. He wouldn't get in just because his GPA read "3.0"? If that's true, then that's pretty stupid if you ask me.</p>
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You can't look solely at the grades. The LSATs matter too much.
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<p>For the last time, I KNOW in real life you can't just look at grades. But this topic is asking about grades, not LSATs ... analyze it THEORETICALLY, if LSATs didn't matter.</p>
<p>The fact is that if you get a 3.0 from Harvard, then yes, you will have a more difficult time getting accepted into the top law schools than some hardworking student who got a 3.8 from a solid state University, given the same LSAT's. And no, it's not "pretty stupid". Perhaps you could send the law schools a letter instructing them on how to improve. I'm sure they will all appreciate it.</p>
<p>You may want to study up a bit on the process. Read some of the discussion sites, and spend a couple of hours on the LSAC website. As someone posted above, go to the individual school sites on LSAC.org, and look at the grids. Check out the schools' own sites, which sometimes list ug's that their students come from. </p>
<p>As far as shouting at us to analyze the gpa without the LSAT's, you have not given us a gpa either. "getting B's and A's, but more B's than A's" does not constitute a gpa. Again, the LSAC site will instruct you on how to compute the LSAC gpa.</p>
<p>So basically, you will have the best chances of getting into a top law school if you go to the ****tiest school where you can obtain a 4.3 GPA with no problem. Wow, makes a lot of sense.</p>
<p>The conclusion you drew from my post was not implied by my post. You keep forgetting this little thing that everyone - repeat, everyone - keeps reminding you about - the LSAT. If you get a 175 and a 4.3 from a low ranked school, then yes indeed you have a very good chance of getting into a top law school. </p>
<p>I almost get the feeling that you just want to believe that going to a top tier ug will be an auto admit into a top law school. There is a strong correlation, but it's not a 1:1 correlation. The average LSAT of Harvard students who took the test was 166. Typically you have to do better than that to get into the T14.</p>
<p>Look at it from a different perspective: When you check out the list of ug schools attended by students at certain law schools that list by ug, look at the schools which are populated by Harvard students. Harvard students are all over the 2nd tier schools, as well as the 1st tier. Doesn't that mean that going to Harvard is not an automatic ticket to the T14?</p>
<p>Yes, the LSAT is the most important factor in admissions, so it is foolish to do thought experiments without taking it into account. </p>
<p>To digress, I find it intimidating that the LSAT average of Harvard students is * only * in the mid-sixties. It puts things into perspective. Getting admitted to a T14 Law school is no easy task even for many brilliant students.</p>
<p>^ ^^ what they are saying is, </p>
<p>come back to the forum when he has taken the LSAT.</p>
<p>What school you went to does not make much difference. Sometimes, a given law school may have had a lot of successful students from a given school and look a bit kindly upon it, but that's largely a private matter within the admissions department and can't be predicted. Much as they like to talk about holistic approachs (as subterfuge for racial/ethnic preferences) law school admissions are more mechanical than the schools want to admit. I sense they are intrigued by the diamond in the ruff. Between an applicant from an obscure or undistinguished school and one from an ivy with the same LSAT, I think they may go for the former, though I certainly wouldn't advise going to a lesser school to gain diamond in the ruff status.</p>
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To digress, I find it intimidating that the LSAT average of Harvard students is only in the mid-sixties. It puts things into perspective. Getting admitted to a T14 Law school is no easy task even for many brilliant students.
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To me, that indicates that the differences in averages between the top shools and the bottoms schools are much smaller than the variabilities within schools.</p>
<p>You make a good point Mr Payne. Without question the top 20 students at UFlorida or UMich to name a few examples are equally competent and intelligent if not better students than the lower ranked Harvard kid. However, I don't see at all where you guys are coming from by debasing a score in the mid-sixties. I don't know about some of you and your respective LS, but when I went to Stanford, some of the strongest students I knew had scores comparable to that.</p>
<p>The top 20 LSAT scores at a major school like UMICH/UF/Cal/UCLA/UVA will undoubtedly beat average at Harvard (not merely the Harvard low end). Major publics have even larger variability than privates because their top students are generally those who could have gone to Ivies but didn't for financial reasons.</p>
<p>I once went to a UCLA summer camp and the dean of law admissions spoke with me. He said that Professors say LSAT is only way to predict law school success and as a result, he chose stated LSAT is weighed HEAVILY in his decisions of applicants.
result: LSAT is VERY very very very important. The school you come from will make no difference in admissions. Maintain a great gpa and a killer LSAT score</p>
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The school you come from will make no difference in admissions.
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<p>I wouldn't go quite that far . . . though, yes, it is not one of the most important factors in any given law school application.</p>
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I wouldn't go quite that far . . . though, yes, it is not one of the most important factors in any given law school application
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<p>I would have to agree with sallyawp on this.... It's obvious that law admissions take into account the school you went to.</p>
<p>"He went to Harvard and got a few As in important classes, but got mainly Bs in unimportant classes. His overall GPA, a 3.2, does not quite hit the range for our law school (Santa Clara U. Law) so we probably should not accept him."</p>
<p>Come on, he went to HARVARD. There is an obvious grade differential between Harvard and most other colleges. Common sense tells me that what school you went to IS factored into the admissions process, but is second to GPA.</p>
<p>the dean of law admissions from several law schools (i believe ucla is one of them) that held info sessions at my college said that they do take your undergrad school into account in that they adjust GPAs (by re-weighting them) for quality and for grade inflation of your undergrad school. for example, someone's 3.6 LSAC gpa might actually have the weight of a 3.65 (although not necessarily a reported gpa of 3.65) after the law school takes into account the undergrad school. </p>
<p>2 disclaimers into that policy though. 1) by quality, i think they meant prestige, because when asked where my college would be placed or how much it'd be weighted, they would group colleges in tiers similar to how US News orders them. 2) this also must mean that grade inflation isn't actually taken into account, since quality/prestige and grade inflation aren't necessarily correlated, unless the re-weighting formula already took this into account. </p>
<p>in the big picture of things, it doesn't make THAT much of a difference. also, i doubt that many law schools actually re-weight gpas but rather probably holistically take into account your undergrad college. nevertheless, this re-weighting of the gpa was news to me.</p>
<p>
the dean of law admissions from several law schools (i believe ucla is one of them) that held info sessions at my college said that they do take your undergrad school into account in that they adjust GPAs (by re-weighting them) for quality and for grade inflation of your undergrad school. for example, someone's 3.6 LSAC gpa might actually have the weight of a 3.65 (although not necessarily a reported gpa of 3.65) after the law school takes into account the undergrad school.</p>
<p>2 disclaimers into that policy though. 1) by quality, i think they meant prestige, because when asked where my college would be placed or how much it'd be weighted, they would group colleges in tiers similar to how US News orders them. 2) this also must mean that grade inflation isn't actually taken into account, since quality/prestige and grade inflation aren't necessarily correlated, unless the re-weighting formula already took this into account.</p>
<p>in the big picture of things, it doesn't make THAT much of a difference. also, i doubt that many law schools actually re-weight gpas but rather probably holistically take into account your undergrad college. nevertheless, this re-weighting of the gpa was news to me.
</p>
<p>I'm betting that most law schools group undergraduate schools into tiers, which would determine the amount of grade inflation.</p>