All I can provide are my daughter’s experience and mine as a practicing/hiring lawyer. My daughter with 4.0 at Clemson and 168 LSAT got full tuition scholarship and living stipend at UF. (So free law school) UF not a T14 but ranked 20-22. Did great in law school and has a job after graduation at a big law firm’s Miami office.
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The question discussed above was whether the college you attended was largely irrelevant to admissions to law school (“No undergrad college will impact your law school admissibility”), as purportedly demonstrated by the fact many colleges will get 1 or 2 representatives at the most selective law schools in a given period.
The proposition that GPA and LSAT are extremely important was never questioned. The specific proposition that kicked off the discussion above was that some law schools will go deeper into some college classes than others, which can give you more margin for error on grades–assuming you are interested in those particular law schools (“It is true your law school admissions are very much a function of your LSAT and grades. However, it is also true some law schools will go deeper into some college classes than others, which among other things gives you more margin for error.”).
I don’t take burghdad to have weighed in on that discussion. Indeed, the example in question–getting a 4.0 at Clemson–didn’t really seem to test the proposition regarding margins of error, since a 4.0 implies no need for such a margin. And Florida is also not one of the law schools we discussed, but does in fact serve as a good example of a law school where other parts of that discussion are relevant (“And then how much value-added is there in going to more selective law schools anyway? The same control issues exist there too, and it very likely depends on what sort of legal career you want to have, and where you want to have a career, and how you actually do in law school anyway, and so on.”). Because the rest of the story is: “Did great in law school and has a job after graduation at a big law firm’s Miami office.”
So examples like that very much underscore how complicated this all is. I don’t think anyone has argued that getting a 4.0 at a college like Clemson and then doing great at a law school like Florida is not a good path to getting a great private practice job in Miami.
But there are other paths some people might want instead, and meanwhile necessarily many other people will not do that well in college or law school. It is complicated.
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But if the LSAT were 160 instead of 168 - it would be different.
One of the schools - I think Vandy - at one point had a spreadsheet with all admissions decisions of their students who applied - and it very much tracked the LSAT part of it.
I was hopeful to find it but it’s either not published anymore of I have the wrong school.
I’ll look again.
Regardless of law school - OP will need to discuss the situation with their family.
I’d also note - back to your point of one or two admits - that’s over a wide range of schools - there’s only so many “elite” colleges or LACs - but they’re taking as many or a large chunk ( I don’t know the actual #s) from non elite as they are elite - but yes spread amongst more names.
How many applied from those schools I don’t know.
Heres some 3rd party data on gpa and lsat.
Right and if it was 174 it’s different as well. And that 160 could get you money at a lower ranked school thats average LSAT is 155.
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Just a cautionary note- I know a LOT of people who assume that their “backup plan” is becoming a prosecutor if their best option is a tier 3 law school.
This is a fallacy. Getting a job as a federal prosecutor is AS competitive- if not more so- than getting hired by one of the top law firms. You need the same GPA, Law Review/prestigious journal/etc. as the big firms-- AND you need (for many locations) a prestigious clerkship (federal). Becoming a prosecutor is nobody’s backup plan.
Job in the local DA’s office, “social warrior” (which I assume means working for a non-profit?)-- it depends (like so many other things in life). Your own state’s flagship U and its law school may be the best on-ramp. But again- not a backup plan.
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Yeah, federal prosecutors are a different animal all around.
(I used to date a county prosecutor; his office had a dim view of the feds, because, as they saw it, they could pick and choose the cases they decided to take on, and so they had a conviction rate to match it - whereas the county office was in a much more try-to-keep-your-head-above-water situation, stuck with the cases the cops brought them, and so they felt like they were much more in the trenches and battle-hardened than the elite feds. There is always rivalry!)
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Who is paying the $1.6k plus a month plus 1 bedroom rent ?
That’s the job these kids need !!!
To be blunt, a lot of people simply end up exiting the legal profession because they cannot make it work for them. Obviously this happens in every profession, but law in particular is pretty notorious for attracting people who are not sure what they want to do after college, they are sold on law school as a good next step, and then it turns out it really was not a good choice for them. And unfortunately, that can be an expensive mistake, both in direct terms and in terms of opportunity costs.
Of course for some of us it works out great. But yeah, for many people the “backup plan” really ends up some version of “not a lawyer at all”.
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Very true, and I would again emphasize that the part about then doing great in law school is also very important! I think at least a large majority of law schools are going to place their top students into good jobs in one or more significant legal markets. And after that, your actual abilities as a lawyer will determine the rest of your career path. So being a top student in law school is really helpful to actually making a legal career work.
You have to be careful with this sort of thing because almost inevitably you will not be alone if you think this way. But if you take merit money from a law school that is usually a pretty good sign that THEY think you are a good bet to be a top student there. And that is definitely something to keep in mind.
But of course it is correct different GPA/LSAT combinations will lead to merit offers at different law schools. The basic logic, though, of going to a still-good law school where you are well-qualified enough to get a merit offer does not really change, even if that means different law schools for different people.
Fascinating expose a few years back by the Wall Street Journal that in fact- this is NOT the case for some law schools. Merit awards for L1, which have a GPA requirement for L2 and L3 years which is mathematically impossible for all the first year merit awardees to obtain. Meaning- merit money is front loaded, law schools budget for a significant fall off in the number of students winning a merit award for the last two years.
For some students- not a problem. They can afford their school and the merit money was just a nice enticement. For others- huge problem. Do you drop out- with 1/3 of a law degree? Do you sign on for even more loans?
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We welcome many of them to the dark side…Investment banking😀
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Diversity in the law school context means students whose lives allow for a different perspective on the law than most of the applicants. So growing up with an incarcerated parent. Growing up in the foster care system. Time spent unhoused, or bouncing from shelter to shelter after an illegal eviction.
Law school adcoms aren’t jumping up and down saying “Hey look Margie, here’s a kid who grew up in Winnetka and went to Alabama for college! Gotta have us another one of those!”
All due respect to TSBNA- whose knowledge of supply chain careers is second to none on CC- law school admissions is NOTHING like undergrad admissions. It is a numbers game, pure and simple, with a smattering of equity and access concerns sprinkled in. And deference to the faculty, who would rather teach a seminar on “Incarceration and the Constitution” where at least one student actually knows something about the prison system.
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Actually - if you look at the stats, there’s a lot of equity. A ton of equity - very high person of color ratio and LGBTQ ratios at top schools.
My point on school diversity was -
If you have 30 from one school already and you have another from - say Bradley University who you feel is qualified - do you want another Dartmouth or Bradley? I don’t know - but if you are publishing lists of how many schools are represented as top schools do - I’m hypothesizing you might want that Bradley kid over the Dartmouth kid.
Anyway - the data (not me) shows you can get to any school from any school.
And no - I’m a sales guy, not in supply chain although had supply chain offers because i went to a top supply chain mba and took an elective.
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ahh; its been a hot minute; but this story is so integral to our family - for many personal reasons. so i’ll share here – but not all the details!
My sibling was offered full tuition at UT with 178 lsat; sibling was in TX with their partner at the time. Sibling’s undergrad was from a small D2 religious LAC. Sibling turned down UT for some very pressing personal issues (hadnt applied anywhere else); applied last minute in august to their home state’s flagship (UW) and was let in immediately. They were giddy to have my sibling.
Sibling has done incredibly well since then; now at sibling’s high-tech company, sibling will only hire from ivy league. Sibling has mentioned they are so so glad it wasnt like that 20 years ago; or sibling wouldnt have been looked at. Sibling was NM, but i’d bet you $100 youve not heard of the undergraduate school. They’d be the first to tell you - Grades > LSAT > Law School name.
rambling, i know, but i do feel like work ethic, natural ability, and good luck all play a role in this.
I think we are beating a dead horse, but I think you are asking the wrong questions again if you really want to understand why this is a complicated situation.
More illuminating questions would be whether a 3.7/170 from Dartmouth can get the same law school admissions as a 3.9/170 from Alabama. Or whether a 3.7/170 from Alabama can get the same law school admissions as a 3.7/170 from Dartmouth. Or change that to 3.5 versus 3.7, and so on.
And I think many people sort of make a casual assumption that even if a 3.7 from Dartmouth works as well as a 3.9 from Alabama, maybe it is as easy to get a 3.9 from Alabama as a 3.7 from Dartmouth. But that is not a good assumption to make, because again we actually know very high numbers kids do attend Alabama, for cost reasons or others. And while that may not show up in something like a 25th SAT report, when you are looking at being not in the top 25th of your class at Alabama, but top 1%, or even higher–that is getting into the range where the competition is actually going to be extremely stiff.
And I really think kids with top HS grades making college choices are ill-served by casually assuming they will be at the top of their college classes as well. Again, we know that is not going to happen for many of these kids, because it can’t, but it can be tough for these kids to really internalize that probability.
So I think it is not a good idea to encourage kids to just assume that if they take merit money from Alabama that means they are destined to end up one of the top handful of kids with top grades at Alabama. Maybe, but maybe not, and they should be considering seriously both of those possible scenarios when making college choice.
And as another poster pointed out, self-reporting of anecdotes on forums like this are very much not going to give you a realistic sense of all this. Of COURSE the parents of kids who did great are far more likely to tell their stories here. The parent of a kid who took merit money and then did not do as well in college as they expected and then had to change their further plans as a result is just far less likely to tell that story.
None of which is to imply the parents of the kids where it worked out are wrong to tell their stories, indeed it can be illustrative of important possibilities to consider.
But then it is also important to consider the possibilities that are not likely to be shared as proud anecdotes, and to ask serious questions about what happens if you do not in fact get a 3.9 or 4.0 or so on at your college of choice.
Again, we are circling back, but we know what Yale Law did. Yale Law had no one from Bradley on that list. So, Yale preferred to take their 34th person from Columbia over someone from Bradley. And their 59th from Harvard. And their 90th from Yale.
And again, many colleges had one–but not two. So, Yale also preferred to take a 34th person from Columbia over a second person from Baylor, or Ohio State, and so on.
Of course for that one person from Ohio State, it all worked out. And again, if you focus on just that one story, you are necessarily not focusing on the stories of all the other people who went to Ohio State with great numbers in HS and then did not get admitted to a law school like Yale.
But, that very much happens. Including because Yale, and other law schools like it, are perfectly happy to take the 34th person from Columbia rather than a second person from Ohio State, or anyone at all from a variety of universities at any given time.
And to come full circle–did someone with a 3.9/175 from Ohio State not get admitted, whereas someone with a 4.0/175 did? And yet did someone with a 3.9/175 from Columbia get admitted, even though no 3.9/175 from Ohio State did?
I don’t actually know the answers to questions like that, because we don’t have that data. But absent such data, no one knows, and therefore it is not warranted to tell kids we know it makes no difference whether you go to Columbia or Ohio State.
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Further to this point I would likely rather be number 35 to be rejected from Columbia, 60 from Harvard or 91 from Yale vs number 1 from Bradley as the depth and breadth of opportunities, alumni network, name recognition etc., becomes more important as an alternative to plan A (Yale Law) becomes necessary.
You have much further to fall if plan A doesn’t work out with an elite school on your resume. Hardly a universal truth but should be considered as there are no guarantees that you are number 1 at Bradley and then things quickly become more challenging.
In my industry there are plenty of 2nd/3rd academic quartile Harvard/Yale/Columbia graduates and very few lesser name school kids, and typically tippy top or story kids when they do make it.
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Given your sibling’s experience, though, it sounds like they would be the first to advise the OP to NOT go to a big merit school for undergrad and attend the best school he can afford instead…or your sibling won’t hire him.
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. I have a college senior with law school aspirations, so the law school piece is interesting to me, but it sounds like the immediate undergrad question the OP has would have a different answer from your sibling than the hypothetical law school question would.
Agree and that is why I prefaced my post with “all I can provide is my daughters experience”Clearly it is nothing more than a single example of someone who went to a fine albeit not prestigious college and similarly a fine but not T14 law school and it has seems to have worked out well. And she leaves law school debt free. Of course the fact that she worked very hard in both college and law school has been the real difference maker for her.
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no - not saying that! Sibling is big believer in top grad schools, but thinks undergrad is fine wherever. just get the GPA and the LSAT score from whatever undergrad that you’ll do well at if you want to go on to a big name law school. Sibling did well at an unranked unknown religious LAC.
But you don’t know if anyone from Bradley applied to Yale.
The point isn’t wrong - sorry - and it’s not is the 3.9 from Bama better or different than the 3.7 at Dartmouth.
In theory, yes.
But do schools look at the subject - because if so, a 3.5 engineer might be deemed more rigorous than a 3.9 sociology major, etc.
No one said the tops in a HS means they’ll be the tops at whatever school they attend and we don’t even know if the students that are chosen for these prestigious law schools are tops at their school - we just know they delivered a GPA and LSAT - and I think many are diminishing how important the LSAT is in this equation. This is not a test optional scenario.
Yes - no one knows is the point but many people, including myself, are making hypothesis.
OP asked a question and I feel we got off track and wanted to get back to his question which was - is the more expensive school worth it?
While it’s a familial call, I’m sort of asking - take the family out - then on the basis of reality - is it worth it - and I agree, no one can answer with assuredness.
I do think money plays a part because now one has to budget for 7 years vs. four - and that needs to be considered too.
Maybe it’s not BC or Dartmouth but UF (which is half the price of Dartmouth, etc.).
Or maybe the tradeoff for going to Dartmouth is to go to that law school that isn’t elite - because that’s all you can afford.
There are a lot of moving parts here - for any student - and for many only looking at four years, that short term bias might end up costing them.
Every family is different.
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