My freshman son currently has a 4.0 average at a “decent” public university and he’s confident he can maintain that GPA (or close) if he stays. He has already build good relationships with professors and has been offered a couple TA positions. He strongly believes he would like to go to law school after college.
He has the opportunity to transfer to a top 20 liberal arts school. But he doubts he’d be able to maintain the same level GPA there.
How much does the reputation of the undergraduate institution matter in law school admissions?
Also, what kind of grades might a student who achieves a 4.0 (as an econ major) at a public university (with minimal grade inflation) expect / hope to achieve with similar effort at a top 20 LAC?
He’s got a couple days to decide what he’s going to do, and the law school admissions impact is very important to him.
Thanks.
There are numerous threads on this topic–I would recommend referring to them rather than starting this topic, and the resulting battles, again.
For your second question, I’d think that a 4.0 would be harder to obtain at a LAC than a “decent” public university, but if you love what you study and are good at it, you’ll get the same grades anywhere. For example, I went to a top-10 LAC for college and then a top-3 Ivy for law school, and I got my head cut off and served to me on a platter in terms of law school grades, but when I took college classes at the Ivy in the same field as my undergrad major, I also got As.
Thanks, @HappyAlumnus , I appreciate the response. I have no desire to repeat a topic with numerous threads, especially if the topic is contentious. However, I haven’t been able to find those threads. Would you be able to direct me to them?
If you are competent enough to get into law school you can find the threads.
lol @lostaccount Thanks – not! – for your snarky comment. Value-added response!!
I came back here to say to @HappyAlumnus that I did indeed find a locked thread on this topic. So thanks again.
The CC search function is crap, so it’s not always so easy. A recent search for a misspelled word didn’t turn up a thread created the day before with that misspelling in the title until I messed with the settings.
@bodangles – Thank you, that’s very true. I’ve had mixed luck with word searches. I had tried word searches on this topic to no avail. I finally found one of the threads by scrolling and scrolling until I hit it. It’s one thing to keep scrolliing when you know something is there. It’s another when you don’t.
A handy indirect way to search CC is to use Google but limit the search to this site by including the term “site:talk.collegeconfidential.com” along with your other search terms. For example, search on Google for “law school does undergraduate institution matter site:talk.collegeconfidential.com”
My basic thought is that law school admissions are very numbers driven, so a 4.0 from any decent school will be a huge asset. Couple that with a strong LSAT score, and he will have options at almost any law school, with a substantial number of strong law schools offering very good merit aid.
Unlike undergraduate admissions, law schools do not have more 4.0, 175+ LSAT candidates than they can ever hope to enroll. In order to maintain their medians, they need to enroll a lot of students based purely on the numbers. The exceptions to this, Yale and Stanford, are just that: exceptions.
The reasons to transfer from a decent state university to a top 20 LAC are for the college environment (likely very different), more interactions with professors (which can help in terms of getting good recommendations), a strong alumni network, and, if your son is Yale Law material, a shot at getting in there. There’s an off chance that you might live in an area of the country wherein having a fancy undergraduate degree is part of the pedigree that law firms expect to see (in addition to a top law school), but that’s something to really look into before transferring.