<p>So if applicants have equal academic credentials, do law schools look at where they did their undergraduate degree? Does it matter? or not?</p>
<p>all of those “matter”, some much more than most. HLS does have a large % of its students come from other elite UG colleges, but again there is no “guarantee” of acceptance if you went to HYPS, et al and were not a top student there.</p>
<p>Let me try this another way.</p>
<p>If it is possible for a student to get an excellent education at 3,000 colleges in this country…</p>
<p>Is it possible for a student with perfect stats to get into a top law school from any of those 3,000 schools? How possible? Does the undergraduate college ever limit a top student’s options for law school?</p>
<p>Does the NAME of the undergraduate college limit the admission or does the EDUCATION received limit the admission? If you have a 180 LSAT and a great college GPA, I suspect you have a good shot at admission to a top law school. It’s just like college admissions, though. Who knows the reason someone from Yale or Stanford might edge you out for admission?</p>
<p>harvard law school admissions statistics</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Colleges](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/undergrads.html]Undergraduate”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/undergrads.html)</p>
<p>[TLS</a> Stats - Law School Application Statistics](<a href=“http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/stats.php]TLS”>Top Law Schools - TLS Stats - Law School Application Statistics)</p>
<p>^ Now that’s some interesting data (TLS Stats)… I love the notes. Under a Yale applicant’s major it says Congress Senator (waitlisted then accepted).</p>
<p>I got into a rather heated discussion with a recent graduate about this issue. He claimed it really didn´t matter where one went to UG, what mattered was GPA and LSAT. </p>
<p>This is I was able to find, below is number of students admitted to Harvard LS from each UG school, and on the right side is number of UG students from each school.
Harvard Law School
2006-2007 # of Students Undergraduate Enrollment
Harvard 241 6,715
Yale 113 5,303
Stanford 79 6,391
Penn 57 9,730
Princeton 54 4,775
Brown 48 5,798
Cal-Berkeley 48 23,863
Columbia 46 5,593
Cornell 45 13,523
DUKE 41 6,259
Ucla 39 25,432
Dartmouth 35 4,005
Georgetown 32 6,587</p>
<p>To me, it shows H admits almost twice as many its own students as Yale. You would think both Harvard and Yale would have same calibre of students, there is no reason for Harvard LS to admit more students from its own UG, other than preference. I remember seeing Yale´s numbers too. They also admit more Yale students, but not twice as many. So I think it does matter where one went to UG when it comes to LS application. Parents with more recent experience (with their ow kid) may want to chime in.</p>
<p>S was admitted to HLS this cycle. Never applied to Yale or Stanford. Graduated from our state flagship, a top-50 school,with an almost perfect GPA, top 1% LSAT. Judging from TLS profiles of other admitted students, there is a mix of all kinds of UGs. I agree that GPA and LSAT reign supreme. Then go all sorts of softs, including WE, personal history and so on.</p>
<p>oldfort,your admitted students figure adds up to 878 which was probably All THE LS ACCEPTANCES for that year. I find that hard to believe as here are Harvard’s statistics for the latest incoming class</p>
<p>Class of 2014</p>
<p>Number of Applications: 6,364
Number of Admission Offers: 842
Percentage Offered Admission: 13%
Total Enrollment: 559</p>
<p>148 undergraduate institutions represented by 1L class (261 undergraduate institutions represented by the entire student body)</p>
<p>Either Harvard USED to accept applicants from ONLY those colleges, which is not true, or your statistics are badly off. </p>
<p>[Class</a> Profile and Fact Sheet](<a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/classprofile.html]Class”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/jd/apply/classprofile.html)</p>
<p>I agree the numbers are off, but are they supposed to be the numbers admitted or accepted?</p>
<p>Parabella, I don’t think anyone would argue that a kid with an academic record like your son’s could not be admitted to any law school in the country. But by your own admission-- he’s at a top 50 school. I think ALH knows a kid can get into Harvard Law School from a top 50. The question is- can a kid get in to Harvard Law school from a college ranked 600? 850? Posters like Annas dad like to claim that a smart kid can do anything he or she wants regardless of where he or she go to undergrad-- and point to statistics to prove his point.</p>
<p>But the facts remain that there are few data points proving that kids from Amridge University or Bismarck State enroll in top law schools at a rate that suggests that a kid can literally go ANYWHERE. From a top 50 University- without question.</p>
<p>re post 30
what difference does that make? oldforts list had 13 colleges whose total # of admits added up to a number close to the average # of HLS admits. Which means the accepted students could only come from those 13 colleges, right ?
HLS says 559 students representing 148 undergraduate institutions make up the 1L class of 2016. In addition, All current HLS students came from 261 UG institutions.
13 is a very different number than 148. and REALLY different than 261.</p>
<p>blossom,</p>
<p>I don’t see why a graduate of Bismarck State can’t be admitted to HLS, provided he/she has the numbers. As I said, there are graduates of all sorts of schools among S’s fellow admitted students(including University of Wyoming, if memory serves). If anything, this person would be a great diversity admit.:)</p>
<p>It doesn’t make a difference since the numbers don’t add up. I just wondered how oldfort’s source labeled those numbers.</p>
<p>I don´t remember the source. Let me look. This is what happens when you don´t document the source and label the numbers well enough. Trying to keep my day job, popping in and out of here.</p>
<p>The title of the OP looks like it should be in The Onion.</p>
<p>Take a look at HLS’ list of schools from which they drew the 2011 class. There are certainly schools there that are not in the top 50. There are schools there that I have never heard of.</p>
<p>I don’t know how subjective law school admission is, but I know it is much less subjective than undergrad admissions…</p>
<p>Law school admissions is not very subjective at all. I’ve spent some time investigating this because law school is one avenue my D1 is considering. According to my informants, it’s now basically all US News-driven, which means it’s numbers-driven, which means LSAT scores and GPAs are pretty much the whole ball game. If both your LSAT score and your GPA are above the medians for the school (or more accurately, above its target medians for the current admissions cycle, which for some schools may be higher than last year’s medians), you have an excellent chance of admission anywhere except probably Yale, Harvard, Stanford, which can afford to be choosier. Yale and Stanford are idiosyncratic and subjective; they like to go for an “interesting” mix and “interesting” applicants, people with an unusual angle or story, and they can afford to be as picky as they like because they have the pick of the top applicants. Harvard, needing to fill a class three times the size of either Stanford or Yale, is somewhat more numbers-driven, but still no sure bet even for applicants with great stats. After that it’s pretty much straight numbers-driven. </p>
<p>A couple of important qualifications to that. First, most law schools do seem to care about their diversity goals, so that complicates things a bit. Second, top LSATs are rarer than top GPAs, and also LSAT medians count more heavily in the law school’s US News ranking, so if you’re a little lopsided it’s probably better to have a great LSAT and be a little light on GPA rather than vice versa. And beyond the top half dozen or so schools, law school admissions committees will “split,” i.e., take some applicants with high LSATs and lower GPAs and trade them off against other admits with slightly lower LSATs and higher GPAs, as a strategy for maximizing both their LSAT and GPA medians. Your chances are much better, though, if you’re above the median (or this year’s target) in both.</p>
<p>The reason there are so many Harvard and Yale grads in top law schools is they’re the top LSAT-takers, just as they were the top SAT-takers. That’s what got them into Harvard and Yale in the first place. That said, the median undergrad at Harvard or Yale doesn’t have the grades or the LSAT score to be admitted to Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, or any top law school.</p>
<p>Yes, it is possible for someone with a 4.0 GPA and a 178 on the LSAT to get admitted to Yale Law School. But that student will pass through Bismarck State maybe once or twice a century. Most top students at Bismarck State are not going to have the LSAT scores to make them competitive for admission to top law schools.</p>
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<p>I think it has more to do with the preferences of the applicants than the preferences of the law school admissions committees. First off, Harvard’s graduating class is 27% larger than Yale’s, so that would explain some of the difference. But after that, there are all sorts of factors that could go into it. It could be that a higher fraction of Harvard grads than Yale grads go to law school. Harvard grads, if they were satisfied with their undergrad experience at Harvard and life in Cambridge, are probably more inclined to apply to Harvard than to Yale, and vice versa. Some might have stronger reasons to stay put–a relationship, perhaps. Some might decide to apply to HLS and Harvard Business school, and if they get into one, fine, and if not move on to something else. Maybe more Harvard grads have YLS as their second choice (or even their first choice), while a larger fraction of Yale grads have YLS as their first choice and Stanford as their second choice, given that both are small, quirky, intimate law schools while HLS has a reputation for being big, cold, and impersonal.</p>
<p>And even if there is some institutional favoritism at the margins, I don’t think HLS is going to cut Harvard grads one bit of slack in GPA and LSAT scores. They have too big a class to fill, and too much is at stake in their US News ranking. They’d dearly love to overtake YLS for the number one spot; they’re not going to do anything that would have them fall farther behind.</p>