<p>How hard is it to be accepted to a top 10 law school? Do we need to go back to the high school days and get those crazy extra-curricular activities?</p>
<p>It's harder getting into a top ten law school than into a top ten college. In 2003, Every top ten law school rejects most of its applicants from Princeton and Stanford; ditto for Yale, with the exception of UVA law school which accepted 51% of the applicants from Yale.</p>
<p>Extra-curricular activities are mostly irrelevant; law school admissions decisions are largely numbers driven.</p>
<p>To reinforce Greybeard's point, let's also keep in mind that not everybody from the top schools even applies to top law schools. Generally, the pool of students who are applying from a particular school will tend to be better than the average student at that school. Let's face it. First of all, some students at the top schools simply flunk out, particularly at tough places like MIT or Caltech. Every year, MIT and Caltech flunk out some very sharp, but perhaps immature, people. If you flunk out, you're not going to be applying to a law school. Secondly, even if you do graduate, you need to graduate with good grades, and not everybody will get that. If you graduate in last place in your class at Harvard, you're probably not going to be applying to a top law school. And let's remember that somebody in a given Harvard class has to graduate in last place. {Although, granted, graduating in last place at Harvard is a lot better than flunking out of Caltech}. </p>
<p>So if you REALLY look at the true failure rates, including those people who wanted to go but either couldn't apply (i.e. because they flunked out) or because they chose not to apply (because they knew their grades are so low that they wouldn't get in), you can appreciate just how much more difficult it is to get into a top law school vs. just getting into a top college.</p>