You can go anywhere and still end up at Harvard.
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Iâve never bought into that whole theory (med school/law school)âŠsure Iâm a 3.5 GPA kid that is told not to apply to top schools. I donât know any kid who would take that advice, they would apply anyway. They may apply to safeties but they will apply to top schools also. It makes no sense for them NOT to apply to a top school they want to attend. They didnât put the work in at UChicago to attend some also ran law school.
Sure you can, but did you notice how many of the T20 undergrad schools are represented. I can tell you, ALL of them, not true about the rest. Also you can bet that most of the rest are single admits, while the T20 will have multiple admits. Harvard, itself, will admit a ton of its own undergrads. The axiom applies to all the top schools if you want to go to Harvard Law, go to Harvard as an undergrad. Youâll also notice that the T20 undergrad schools own most of the T14 Law schools.
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Thatâs not surprising at all as they each have high concentrations of strong students who are strong test takers who go to law school and aim for the top law schools. Why does that surprise anyone? Itâs not a causal relationship at all.
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Yes I mentioned that in my first post, however there is a causal relationship with T14 Law Schools showing preference for their own undergrads.
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Disagree. At least for my T14, the stats just donât bear that out.
Itâs the same at Yale. I understand the majority will come from the same school, other Ivies and elite universities. However if you go to a âlesserâ pedigreed school, all hope is not lost.
At the same time, youâll have undergrads from U of Chicago end up at less pedigree law schools.
In the end, GPA and LSAT matter most. Yes, youâd find better LSATs at higher pedigree schools. And yes, some law firms may hold a lesser pedigree undergrad school against the student.
Nonetheless, if the topic is elite colleges and law school, yes thereâs a correlation. However it is far from absolute.
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Well if your just going to choose who is T14 yourself, then why does it matter?
Quick observation: This debate sounds strikingly similar to the perennial one about whether elite high schools are feeders to HYPSM: Is it the density of the talent at top schools, or the reputation that accounts for the higher admit rates?
Carry on.
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For reference, the LSAC used to publish LSAT + GPA stats by undergrad college. An example is at https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/May2018CouncilOpenSession/18_may_2015_2017_top_240_feeder_schools_for_aba_applicants.authcheckdam.pdf . Skimming through the college list, I believe the colleges with the highest stats among undergraduate applicants in 2017 are as follows.
It looks like all of the top 10 colleges with highest law school applicant stats are Ivy+ schools â 7 Ivies (all except Cornell), Stanford, Duke, and Chicago. I presume MIT and Caltech are missing due to not reaching the minimum number of applicants. Relatively few kids from tech schools apply to law schools
1 . Yale: 184 Applied, Mean LSAT = 167.5, Mean GPA = 3.73
2. Harvard: 208 Applied, Mean LSAT = 167.4, Mean GPA = 3.69
3. Stanford: 109 Applied, Mean LSAT = 165.7, Mean GPA = 3.71
4. Dartmouth: 106 Applied, Mean LSAT = 165.7, Mean GPA = 3.67
5. Chicago: 156 Applied, Mean LSAT = 166.0, Mean GPA = 3.60
6. Columbia: 172 Applied, Mean LSAT = 165.0, Mean GPA = 3.70
7. Duke: 141 Applied, Mean LSAT = 165.0, Mean GPA = 3.69
8. Brown: 119 Applied, Mean LSAT = 164.3, Mean GPA = 3.75
9. Penn: 198 Applied, Mean LSAT = 164.6, Mean GPA = 3.68
10. Princeton: 150 Applied, Mean LSAT = 166.1, Mean GPA = 3.55*
*Near time of Princeton grade deflation, Mean GPA is higher today
The highest stat publics I see were:
1 . Michigan: 384 Applied, Mean LSAT = 160.5, Mean GPA = 3.56
2. William & Mary: 138 Applied, Mean LSAT = 161.2, Mean GPA = 3.44
3. Virginia: 249 Applied, Mean LSAT = 160.8, Mean GPA = 3.43
4. Berkeley: 524 Applied, Mean LSAT = 159.4, Mean GPA = 3.55
Seeing that kids in the group of Ivy+ colleges above that have the highest average stats of all undergraduate law school applicants do well in law school admissions is not good evidence that law schools are emphasizing having an âeliteâ undergrad college name. A more useful comparison would be looking at colleges where applicants have similar stats, and seeing how law school outcomes differ. For example:
USC: 294 Applied, Mean LSAT = 158.9, Mean GPA = 3.56
Berkeley: 524 Applied, Mean LSAT = 159.4, Mean GPA = 3.55
0r
Emory: 161 Applied, Mean LSAT = 160.6, Mean GPA = 3.51
Michigan: 384 Applied, Mean LSAT = 160.5, Mean GPA = 3.56
If admissions decisions were based purely on stats and the applicants from both Emory and Michigan applied to the same law schools, then one would expect T15 law school admission to be in an approximate 384/161 = 2.4 to 1 ratio. In the College Transitions data that was posted above, the actual ratio was 96/44 = 2.2 to 1, which seems fairly close.
However for USC vs Berkeley, the expected ratio was 1.8 to 1 and actual ratio was 2.5 to 1. Berkley matriculations ratio was more on par with Emory and Michigan, in spite of Berkeley grads averaging 1 point lower LSAT (159.4 at Berkeley vs 160.5 at Emory/Michigan) . This might point to a small preference among law schools towards Berkeley grads or it might be relate to countless other factors including applying to different sets of colleges, different sample years, small sample size, matriculant vs acceptance, some students choosing scholarships to save money, differing URM percentages, differing non-normal distributions of stats between the 2 colleges, etc.
In short there isnât enough information for definite conclusions, but the information that has been posted including stats above and decision scattergrams seems to suggest that kids in a particular stat range tend to have similar results in law school decisions, regardless of whether attending an âeliteâ private or not as selective public.
Itâs certainly possible that some law schools favor applicants from their home school over others, but again simply seeing that applicants from their home school are overrepresented is among matriculants is not good evidence of this, particularly if looking at a college like Harvard that is near the top of the stat list above. In addition to having among some of the highest stat applicants, students attending Harvard for undergrad are far more likely to apply to Harvard for grad than the average applicant and are probably more likely to choose Harvard over alternatives than average, if accepted to multiple law schools.
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All my mind can think of when reading this thread is a real interaction with my son when he was 8:
Him: Mom, I want to be either a doctor or lawyer some day.
Me: Thatâs fine dear. (He could have said firefighter, super hero, or dragon slayer at that age for all I cared.)
Him: Whatâs a lawyer do anyway?
Me: (Suppressing a laugh) Oh, all sorts of things (explaining the basics of as much as I could think of from estate to business to court law).
Him: Oh. Definitely a doctor then, not a lawyer!
Me: Are you sure you want to be a doctor?
Him: Why?
Me: Well they have a long time in training and have to deal with a lot of gory scenes (detailing out some examples).
Him: I help daddy clean the deer every year. It canât be much different!
Touché son⊠who is very, very happily a doctor now!
I also asked him what brought the subject up because nothing weâd been doing was in any way career related.
Him: My teacher came up to my desk today and told me, âYou should be a doctor or lawyer someday.â
Never underestimate the power of a third grade teacherâs comment.
Carry on! At this point in the thread Iâm happy to have dealt with the med school âstuffâ and not the law school âstuff!â
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Unfortunately, itâs apparent the law schools could clear all of this up by listing who/how many applied from what school with what LSAT/GPA. But they wonât do that, so itâs pretty tough to supply concrete evidence as to whether or not a top LAC will be a plus for admissions purposes.
Same applies for Yale Law.
There is one thing that is undeniable, the amount of T14 law schools accepting their own undergads is vastly greater than from any other school. This clearly skews T14 law schools toward their own, and by extension, T14 law schools simply admit more undergrads from T14 undergrad schools. That data is undeniable and verifiable.
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Does this undeniable and verifiable data include number of admits by undergrad college or admit rate by undergrad college? Or are you assuming information about admits based on limited information about enrolled students? The latter can lead to misleading conclusions about cause vs correlation.
Iâll use UCLA (a T14 school) as an example since they publish the number of enrolled students by undergrad school at https://law.ucla.edu/admissions/jd-admissions/class-profile . The undergrad colleges with the largest number of enrolled students were as follows.
Most Represented Undergrad Colleges at UCLA Law School
1 . UCLA â 35
2. UCB â 20
3. USC â 18
4. UCSB â 14
5. UCSD â 11
6. UCD / NYU* â 7 (*total among all NYU schools)
8 Columbia / Michigan / Stanford â 6
UCLA is indeed the most represented college for undergrad, followed by Berkeley. Law applicants who attended Berkeley have similar or higher average stats than UCLA as I noted in my earlier post, yet UCLA Law enrolls more kids who did their undergrad at UCLA than Berkeley. Does that mean that UCLA Law gives a big boost to applicants who attended UCLA over applicants who attended Berkeley? Or might kids who attended UCLA be more likely to apply to UCLA Law than kids at Berkeley? And be more likely to choose UCLA over Berkeley if admitted to both (some of whom chose UCLA over Berkeley for undergrad)?
UCs + USC dominate this list, Stanford is at the bottom, and there was only 1 kid from Yale in the entire entering class. Does that mean that UCLA favors kids from UCs + kids from USC over kids from Yale? Or might there be a variety of other confounding factors such as kids being more likely to apply to law schools in their region than on opposite coasts (reduced tuition for in state), kids attending the UC system / UCLA for undergrad are more likely to think highly of the UC system / UCLA and as such more likely to apply to UCLA for grad, Yale applicants who had higher average LSAT/GPA stats than any other undergrad college often having some other law admissions theyâd choose over UCLA so they often do not matriculate to UCLA when accepted, âŠ
I could continue, but I expect you get the point. Differences between applications, acceptances, and matriculations can make drawing conclusions by just looking at matriculation totals awkward.
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Youâre obfuscating something that is pretty simple, every T14 law school favors its own undergrads. You might even say the emphasis is extreme at UCLA if you include the entire UC system.
Even if this is true, that suggests that what may actually be of value to a pre-law undergraduate is an undergraduate college that also has a T14 law school, not generic college prestige.
If you look at the matriculation totals above, you might also say the UCLA favors University of Southern California grads as much or more so than they do University of California grads. USC had 18 UCLA Law matriculants among 294 total ABA applicants (all law schools) in 2017 or 18/294 = 6%. UCLA had 35 matriculants among 625 ABA applicants (all law schools) in 2017 or 35/625 = 6%. Both UCLA and USC undergrad had the same ~6% of law school applicants matriculating to UCLA Law School.
You also need to consider that students can favor particular colleges (not just law schools favoring particular undergrad colleges), including students being far more likely to apply to colleges that are in their backyard than colleges on the other coast. For example, USC and UCLA are both located in LA, so they get a lot of cross applications. Without this control for which colleges applicants favor or some information about applicants and admissions, you cannot draw simple conclusions about which undergrad colleges law schools favor by looking at matriculations totals in isolation.
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Unfortunately they are mostly the sameâŠ
Try a regression analysis on the data (in ref: to admits of T14 law schools to T14 undergrad schools). Feel free to use as many independant variables as you can find data on. There is no way to say its anomalous. T14 schools favor their own as compared to like candidates from other schools.