<p>Does anyone know how ND students fare at getting into Law Schools? How's Notre Dame's Political Science programs? Is the ND networking good/worth it?</p>
<p>any insight?</p>
<p>As a guess at your screen name, by any chance- are you another 2014 ROTC member?</p>
<p>i have appointments to West Point and Air Force. plus NROTC and AROTC scholarships to Notre Dame, but have since decided not to go military. a touh decision, but right for me</p>
<p>I feel like most of my political science and pre-law classmates are doing service work or entering the workforce before law school. Ask again in a few years and I’ll be able to tell you then.</p>
<p>ND certainly places among the top of schools in the country, however, some statistics [url=<a href=“Yale Law School undergraduate representation Forum - Top Law Schools”>Yale Law School undergraduate representation Forum - Top Law Schools]here[/url</a>] suggest that there’s still a big gap between ND and the truly elite UG schools.</p>
<p>To summarize, at Yale Law (ranked #1 nationally) over a 3-year span (not sure WHICH 3 years), ND sent 7 grads. That’s less than Amherst (9), Brown (13), Columbia (23), Dartmouth (16), Duke (9), Harvard (79), Northwestern (8), Princeton (31), Stanford (37), Cal (16), UCLA (8), UChicago (8), UPenn (9), Michigan (8), Texas (8), UVA (10), Williams (12), and Yale (78) and roughly on par with Cornell, Georgetown, and Wesleyan. Some of those names (HYPS) aren’t surprising; some (UCLA, UMich, Texas, UVA) might be.</p>
<p>The same thread also a current snapshot at Harvard, where ND is a respectable 19th with 20. However, that pales in comparison to the 241 from Harvard UG, 113 from Yale, and 79-57-54 from Stanford-Penn-Princeton respectively.</p>
<p>In short, yes, ND places a lot better than almost any school in the country. But for an elite UG institution, its numbers do seem quite a bit behind the very top of the heap.</p>
<p>There are a lot of other factors to consider, of course. I want to say that, as a senior Arts & Letters major, many, MANY of my friends are going to law school - the number is actually pretty staggering. I don’t know anyone who didn’t get into a law school, even if it wasn’t their top choice. Also, many of my friends are going to law school in a region that they want to work in, which for ND (which is in the Midwest and has a large percentage of Midwesterners) is often Chicago, but also California and the South in general. Most of the top schools cited above are all in the Northeast, which may skew ND’s apparent inability to send grads to the “best” law schools.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but Stanford (West Coast) doesn’t seem to have any problems with Yale and Harvard (Northeast). ND still places very well nationally, but it’s worth noting that at these top schools there’s just so much separation in terms of elite LS placement. This is probably a little bit of causation (these schools teach/prepare their students better) and a little bit of pre-existing inputs (to quote Justice Scalia, “you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse”). The exact distribution between these factors is uncertain, but the fact remains that the top handful of schools simply blow away the rest of the competition when it comes to placement at top law schools.</p>
<p>veritas24-I understand what you are saying, but I thought kevdude meant ND’s numbers were also fewer because ND students perhaps apply less to northeast schools and that they are applying in greater quantities in areas in which they want to live–midwest and south.</p>
<p>Perhaps. But ND does have a pretty strong draw from NJ/NY/PA, not to mention they’re a qualified, ambitious, geographically mobile enough group that I think they would have no qualms about shooting for the best schools, no matter where they are located. This is purely anecdotal, but the 2 people that come to my mind right away for ND –> Harvard Law are both from Chicago. So, while I suppose the fact that ND is 33-40% Midwest might play into it, I think it’s also fair to say that those top UGs place better at top LSs. After all, HYP hardly have overly NE-centric student bodies. I think the geography angle is a bit overstated, but again, we’re splitting hairs. My thesis remains that ND does very well at getting their grads into top law schools, but not to the level of HYPS, and maybe some others in between.</p>
<p>if you get good grades at Notre Dame and learn to write well, with precision and clarity, you will have no trouble getting into just about any law school in the country. Obviously how you do on the LSAT has a bearing. Political Science/Government is a very good prelaw major. Notre Dame places students in law schools all over the country.</p>
<p>where did the OP ask about placing into yale law ?? for heavens sake there are a zillion reasons why a person would not be interested in yale, and elect another law school.</p>