<p>... then why not just take the easier route and attend your state school for four years, where you can avoid all the cut-throat competition of ivy undergrad schools and get a higher GPA more easily! </p>
<p>If you want to have fun in college but still get into a respected law school for your future career, that seems to be the best way to go!</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s good to assume you will get a higher GPA at a public school, considering the complications of grade inflation, motivation etc. It’s a lot easier to get median at Brown liberal arts (3.8), than a 3.8 almost anywhere else. However, I agree that if you are sure you are going to law school, it’s probably unwise to spend a lot more money for a more prestigious UG. The problem is that most 17 year-olds aren’t completely fixed on a career.</p>
<p>I wonder this as well. I’m kind of bent out of shape deciding on attending my local University (University of Central Florida) vs a more well known school such as University of Florida, where the course load may be more difficult and the majors in technology (my specialty) are limited.</p>
<p>Maybe the consideration is that if you are competing with a 3.8 173 toward, say, Harvard Law, and there is another Yale undergrad with the same 3.8 173, quite possibly other things will come into play. I’m talking about ECs, Undergrad reputation, major, etc. This is what I’ve come to understand anyway. The idea I’ve come to know is that a 3.95 and 177 from any school, with any non-basket weaving major, and any amount of ECs that show you have a life outside the library would be a lock at Harvard law, no matter what your other details are (considering you don’t bomb the interview or PS)</p>
<p>Cherokee I believe it is pretty safe to assume. In fact I am an exmaple of this. I recently have been becoming more and more stressed about law school because after 3 semesters at a state university and a 3.88 gpa I transferred to a top-10 university. Now after a year here and almost double the time studying I am going to pull out somwhere between a 3.6-3.7. And in fact if I don’t do well on finals it could be a bit lower. So the moral of my story is that I should have stayed at that state university to have a better chance at a top 6 law school. But I am hoping there is some intrinsic value to going here that will pay off on the LSAT or in the admissions process in general.</p>
<p>Is your major statistics by any chance?</p>
<p>Nope, poli sci and business with finance concentration double major</p>
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<p>i would say 3.9/174 is the “mouth breather” boundary for HLS. if you are above those two numbers, you need not fret from almost any undergraduate institution.</p>
<p>I believe that anyone who goes to a state school and gets the numbers is more than capable to succeed in a top law school. I also feel that if anyone has the choice of choosing between a state school and an ivy, choose the ivy for the following reasons.</p>
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<li><p>Most state school classes are huge, so there are NO extra credit opportunities and classes are usually based off of exams and only exams (no quizzes or homework to help bring your grades up). In addition, since the classes are so big, it is quite likely that the grade will be curved. In Ivy league schools you can expect small classes, you can expect to get to know the professors a bit better and you can expect to get plenty of small opportunities to raise your grade.</p></li>
<li><p>The grade inflation at ivy leagues (except maybe MIT, and the other tech institutes). E.G. Brown has a 3.6 GPA average, Harvard and Yale have above a 3.4 too to my understanding. And that’s including the science courses, imagine the median GPAs for just the liberal arts courses.</p></li>
<li><p>Most people do not know whether or not they want to be a lawyer while they are still in high school, and ivy league schools have better job prospects coming immediately out of undergrad. Even if you do want to become a lawyer, a lot of people change their minds throughout their undergrad years.</p></li>
<li><p>If you got accepted into an ivy league school, it is probably a better fit for you (providing you got the money). You can expect more people to study just as diligently as you will which will in turn motivate you to keep up(that’s one of the reasons the median GPAs are so high), whilst at a state school you will likely have so many different types of students, some who just don’t give a **** and just want a degree, and the environment might encourage you to work less for your grade. </p></li>
<li><p>In addition, you should supposedly make friends with people who are going to end up more successful than you later in life so the networking will pay off once you leave UG.</p></li>
<li><p>almost 40% of HYS law school 1Ls come from an ivy or one of the very top liberal arts colleges (not sure about T14). Not because the law schools prefer ivy leaguers but because it is the ivies and top liberal arts colleges that have the most people who want to go to law school (and grad schools in general), and as I already mentioned for above reasons, it is not necessarily harder to get the numbers to get into a top law school if you go to an ivy.</p></li>
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<p>I wouldn’t be so sure about that, considering the median Brown student had a high school GPA and SAT scores way above the median at just about any state school.</p>
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<p>Do you really think an English Lit major has job prospects at all? Do you really think that Harvard Lit majors are graduating into great jobs and the Lit majors at Public Uni are not? (Hint: they’ll both end up working at Starbucks.)</p>
<p>Do you really believe that Comp Sci majors from Cal, UCLA or Georgia Tech are wanting for jobs, and are behind the Ivy CS majors?</p>
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<p>Many prestigious employers, including top ibanks, will take a Harvard grad, regardless of major. So yes, Ivy grads do have better job prospects.</p>
<p>Having done a liberal arts degree, I had several ibank offers waiting for me after graduation. I chose law school instead, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had those offers if I had attended a state school–most ibanks simply dont recruit at many lower ranked institutions (though, of course, elite public schools enjoy heavy recruitment as well).</p>
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<p>Yes definitely, I don’t know about stats but I am 100% sure that English Lit majors (and for that matter any other liberal arts degree) will have a lot better job prospects coming out of an ivy rather than a state school. Writing, critical thinking and analysis and oral communication skills are very much needed in a wide variety of jobs. I don’t see how having these skills would make you any less marketable, and there are several thousands of grads each year in the liberal arts who do get the job they wanted.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that a liberal arts degree from a state school is useless though, just better chances from an ivy for obvious reasons.</p>
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<p>Not really, this is a pretty different point from what I made, besides CAL, UCLA and GT are very well known for their Comp Sci majors (right???), and even if they’re not, we’re kind of comparing top 25 UG institutions to top 10 UG institutions here, which really isn’t that huge of a difference especially when comparing job prospects in a local area.</p>
<p>Anyways, it’s my belief that in general ivy league schools will have their grads getting better starting jobs than local state schools.</p>
<p>Some of us think that coasting to easy A’s in boring classes doesn’t sound like very much fun.</p>
<p>many of us think of CAL, UCLA and GT as “local state schools”. :)</p>
<p>SIGH. It’s one of my pet peeves that so many people think that if you get into an Ivy you’re sure to get a 3.75 if you have a pulse and a 3.9+ if you make any effort. </p>
<p>Most–not all, but most–students who enroll in top colleges are bright and worked hard in high school, while engaging in substantial ECs. Especially when you’re talking about Harvard, most undergrads are pretty driven people. They don’t just sit back and coast, thinking “Okay, I’m at Harvard. I’m going to stop trying.” They keep trying and most do well. </p>
<p>At Brown, grades are optional. Some people take all their classes S/NC. A large portion of this group are the actor crowd–the folks who care more what roles they get in productions than their grades. Another large group of folks want to go to grad school in a specific subject and will take all their grades in their concentration for a grade and none of the courses outside it for a grade. Other students take some courses S/NC. So, while most students at other colleges take no more than 2 or 3 classes pass-fail during 4 years of college, a very large percentage of students at Brown take a lot more courses that way. </p>
<p>So, the fact that the median gpa at Brown is higher than at most colleges doesn’t mean,IMO, that it’s easier to get an A at Brown than it is at other colleges. It’s just that the median gpa for all students is based on a smaller number of grades per student than at most colleges. Add into that the fact that Brown has no distribution requirements–many students at other colleges tend to get their worst grades in gen ed courses in fields of no interest to them–and you’ll end up with a high median GPA. </p>
<p>If you want to go to law school, you’re going to have to take more courses for grades than some of your classmates. And I wouldn’t count on getting an A just because the median GPA for students based solely on courses they took for grades is higher than the median gpa at a college where grades in all courses are mandatory or limited to a couple of P/F courses over 4 years. The folks who take the S at Brown might help bring down the median gpa at another college.</p>
<p>And in some instances, Brown might be more punishing. Since the system just has As, Bs, and Cs, and no A-s, B+s or B-s, etc., not getting an A can really do damage to your GPA.</p>
<p>flowerhead, how does a school with no A- hurt you? I can see how being in a school with only A and A- can suck since there’s no A+ to break through, but no A- can only be a good thing, as working toward A- work will get you an A! No?</p>
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<p>So you’re saying since if you’d have gotten an A- in one system, working for an A- in another that doesn’t have an A- will get you an A? Why not assume the reverse? That if you don’t make what’s clearly an A, you’ll be shafted with the next lowest grade: a B.</p>
<p>I hae to agree with whitespider. I think most of us, me included, have had A LOT more A- than b+. Certainly my GPA, as well as many of my friends, would have higher GPA’s in a system that had no plusses or minuses.</p>
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<p>Again, you’re both assuming that an A- would be upgraded to an A in a system that didn’t have an A-. I’m not so sure this assumption is correct.</p>