Making Chicago Pre-Law More Transparent

Cue7 · December 30, 2008, 3:12pm

Based on the thread about High GPAs, I'm now curious - how do Chicago grads now do in terms of law school placement? People have made vague assertions, such as "law schools love Chicago grads," but I would like some more hard facts. When I was at Chicago (I graduated around 8 years ago), I went to the pre-law adviser and received a booklet with stats about Chicago applicants. I looked online, but I don't think this is posted on the web for more recent Chicago classes.

As a point of comparison, here are Penn's pre-law statistics:

Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania

Now, Penn is about TWICE the size of Chicago, and is much more pre-professional than Chicago. Nevertheless, I would expect that, to be comparable, Chicago's hard numbers would be about 40-45% of Penn's hard numbers.

So, for example, each year, Penn sends about 20 kids each to Harvard, NYU, Georgetown, and Columbia. (So there are around 20 Penn grads a class at each of these schools.) To be comparable, Chicago should send around 8 kids to each of these schools.

Also, Penn sends around 5-10 kids each to Virginia, Michigan, and Berkeley. To be comparable, Chicago should send at least 3-6 kids to each of these schools.

Has anyone seen the current book of numbers on Chicago's law placement? I'd imagine that the Chicago numbers would be a bit more skewed toward the midwest (more placement than Penn at Michigan, Chicago, and Northwestern), but the schools should be comparable.

I'm curious to see the hard numbers here. When I was thinking about law school, Chicago's numbers weren't great, but that's mainly because of a lack of grade inflation and students not being savvy about the admissions process (not taking the LSAT seriously enough, etc.). I would imagine that now, Chicago should perform admirably in comparison to its immediate peers (Duke, Penn, Brown, etc.).

uchicagoalum · December 30, 2008, 4:27pm

There was a very useful, multi-year data set when I was in the college covering admissions to the top 25 USNWR law schools plus some popular regional institutions (Illinois, Wisconsin), but it appears that when the pre-law advisor changed it was removed (after previously being available for a time by appointment only).

However, I remember three things very clearly. First, a good rule of thumb that appeared glaringly obvious in the numbers was that, barring mitigating factors (presumably URM status or significant post-BA work experience), the 25% GPA threshold as reported in USNWR for a given law school was a good median for people being admitted from the U of C. Second, the distribution of LSAT scores for admitted U of C students by LS mirrored those reported in USNWR. Third, getting admitted to UChicago for LS after attending as a UG was significantly harder than applying from other schools (the median for UChicago students was running near the 75% in USNWR), since so many UGs applied and they value diversity as a small LS (unlike, say, Harvard Law which stacks as many Harvard UGs into its relatively large class as possible).

All in all though, elite UGs save for Harvard and Yale are cruddy feeders into top 14 LS, i.e. the ones worth attending. It is fundamental pre-law knowledge that going to a Big State U or a middling private, bagging a 3.8+ in a liberal arts major, and racking up a 168+ on the LSAT is the superior way to play the game if your criterion is simply top tier JD or bust. Or more simply, GPA + LSAT +/- URM status = admission. An elite UG degree, choice of major, masters degrees, internships, extracurriculars, etc. are just not terribly valuable (completely unlike the business or medical school application process).

Unfortunately, so much BS to the contrary is feed to 18 year olds by colleges looking for matriculations, a narrative that completely shifts when they hit their senior year. The one good thing I would say about the U of C is that at least my advisor was well apprised of what it took to get into various graduate programs, law and otherwise, and would not push or approve of a cruddy graduate credential to placate a students short term desires while damaging their long term career.

Cue7 · December 30, 2008, 4:51pm

Interesting post, but do you really think going to a middling school rather than an elite school with extreme grade inflation is the better way to go? As far as I can see, Brown, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. do a GREAT job of law placement - mainly because kids have a relatively easy time attaining extremely high GPAs. From what I can see, elite undergrads with grade inflation do a tremendous job of sending kids to top law schools. (Even the numbers for Penn - until recently, not really a peer of Chicago or Columbia - are quite good.)

Also, maybe this is different now, but when I looked at the data set, I was struck by how many Chicago alums went to Chicago Law (maybe around a dozen a year).

What I'm mainly wondering is, since grade inflation has hit Chicago in the past 5-7 years, how do the Chicago students fare? I think (and hope) that more Chicago students take the LSAT more seriously, so I'd assume numbers-wise, Chicago is improving.

Do you remember the hard numbers to each school? As in, did Chicago (similar to Penn in the numbers above) send around 10 to Harvard each year, 10 to Columbia, 10 to NYU, etc? My memory of this is hazy, but I think the Chicago numbers back then were a bit lacking. I wonder whether they have picked up now?

One point of contention I had with the advisers is they should have emphasized the LSAT a LOT more. I had no idea it was SO important when I was a third year at Chicago.

uchicagoalum · December 30, 2008, 5:37pm

Responding to various LS posts on the board today (no just yours):

Students have undoubtedly ramped up in quality. Personally, I found the difference between the fourth years I spoke to as a first year and the first years I spoke to as a fourth year to be almost night and day as far as the average student went. Going hand in hand with this means a considerably more conscious student body about what it takes to succeed in life, whether that means the studying for the LSAT, going to firm presentations for the pre-banking / consulting crowd, or having serious summer internships for the politico types. The growth in well organized EC’s on campus was also particularly palpable.

As for gaming the LS system by going to a lower ranked college, it depends on the student. If you are up for the dot the ‘i’ and cross the ‘t’, pedantic paper shuffling makes an ‘A’ approach that a lot of state schools seem to offer (as someone who went to state school briefly before the U of C), then by all means do it. While it clearly is nicer to have a 3.8 at an elite, it is no cakewalk to attain, there are clearly many students at the selective colleges mentioned who could have both rocked the LSAT and a history BA at Rutgers or something (but instead faced stiff competition in a more theoretical environment). At the same time, there are students who really shut down when they are not challenged, and then find themselves stuck with a liberal arts degree from a non-target school when they could have Ivied. But it is not sound logic to say that Cornell has more people at elite LS, therefore, it significantly easier to get into such institutions from Cornell (i.e. the institutional quality factor weighs heavily with adcoms). The decked is clearly stacked in all elites favor by their quality of students alone, and this most certainly outweighs whatever merit is afforded to their instruction.

Finally, at most T4-T14 LS, the majority of students come from non-elite UG institutions like Boston College, George Washington, University of Illinois, and yes, UC-Irvine. I agree HYS are markedly selective, but places like Georgetown and Michigan are hardly bastions of the Ivy League. No CC’er should be forlorn thinking that by virtue of going to a regional school for college a top tier legal education is out of the picture.

broetchen · December 30, 2008, 6:25pm

Such great info, thank you.
But the general question still remains: grade-inflated Ivy or the hassle of dealing with a large state school with large weed-out courses?
IF you were pretty, but not 100% certain you were going into law, and had a good shot at a non-HYP Ivy, and were obviously in at a respectable, but not stellar, flagship in-state uni, AND your parents could afford the tuition at the Ivy -- what would you choose?

Cue7 · December 30, 2008, 6:51pm

uchicago alum:

I think you underestimate how easy it is to get a VERY good GPA at a grade-inflated top school. If you have a pulse and a willingness to do some legwork, you can get around a 3.7 GPA at Brown, Harvard, Dartmouth, etc. You just have to be willing to game the system and avoid the truly challenging courses that exist at these colleges.

I didn't mean to say that it is "easier" to get into a top law school coming out of Cornell by virtue of having attended Cornell. What I meant is that, while Cornell, Chicago, Dartmouth, etc. have roughly equivalent incoming student bodies, the students at Cornell, Dartmouth, and the like historically outpace Chicago students in law school placement BECAUSE of the nature of those schools and atmosphere of the student bodies. The Dartmouth kids and Cornell kids were, historically, more pre-professional and savvy about the grad school process, and so they performed better than the Chicago kids (when I was at U of C, I met many wanna-be poets who then stumbled into law school at Minnesota or George Mason pretty much as a default).

On another note, look at the incoming student bodies for NYU, Columbia, Georgetown, Penn (virtually any of the top east coast law schools) - graduates of elite colleges make up a ridiculously disproportionate amount of students at these law schools. Elite colleges are what? 5% of all colleges that exist in the US? Yet maybe as much as 40% of a given top law school's class hail from the top colleges. Again, this isn't because it's "easier' to get into a top law school from a top undergrad, it's just that top undergrads enjoy a lionshare of the intellectual talent, and then groom the kids and educate them in a savvy way to get them ready to succeed in the law school app game. The top undergrads tend to grade inflate to a ridiculous degree, so the Big State U kids don't get any discernible advantage. You can paper push your way to As at Brown or Dartmouth - don't think more of a challenge exists at these schools.

For the vast majority of the students with the choice, it makes much more sense to go to Brown U. rather than Big State U. (finances being equal) if the student has an eye for law school.

So, Broetchen - if you have the chance to go to a non-HYP ivy, barring any reasons you haven't disclosed here (and finances don't matter), TAKE IT.

One caveat - for anyone interested in med school, what uchicagoalum says holds. It's easier to do better in hard science classes at Big State U. than it is at a top college. Most pre-meds aren't extremely talented in the sciences, yet top colleges also keep hard curves, so this makes the pre-med experience at the top schools somewhat uncomfortable.

Cue7 · December 30, 2008, 7:01pm

Btw - uchicagoalum, what did you think of your time at Chicago? I enjoyed it but I feel that, administratively, the school is moving in a good direction by focusing a lot more on sheer student quality. The admissions office had an interesting take on this - arguing that Chicago was only seen as "hard" because a large percentage of the student body just couldn't hack it.

Now, I think there is less disparity within the class, with more students being able to succeed and flourish at Chicago. Subsequently, the students might be a tad more pre-professional and less generally erudite, but I think student quality and the strength of the school overall has increased substantially.

(Chicago also lost a bit of its erudite air and decided - like UPenn or Duke - to play the USNews game. This is controversial, but if the U of C can stay in the top 8-10 schools in the nation for many more years to come, the school's reputation will only increase.)

unalove · December 30, 2008, 7:27pm

[quote]
If you have a pulse and a willingness to do some legwork, you can get around a 3.7 GPA at Brown, Harvard, Dartmouth, etc. You just have to be willing to game the system and avoid the truly challenging courses that exist at these colleges.

[/quote]

I hardly believe that. Do we have evidence to support that claim? Syllabi from multiple professors across academic programs, grade distribution charts, etc.? I have a feeling that many students at the aforementioned schools like to think they are "laid-back", meaning that they like to say they do hardly any work when in reality they do plenty. Clearly the kids who are there got in somehow, and had the grades, scores, and achievements to show their potential to thrive.

The change in tides at the U of C is an interesting issue, and I concur with uchicagoalum's observations. I would not say that the school is more pre-professional than it was before, but rather that more students tend to be on top of things, so even if their goal is getting grant money to do research on butterflies in North Dakota, they know where to look and whom to talk to. The "typical" Chicago kid has always appeared to me to be quite extracurricularly active and quite social, too, to the extent that the former "stereotype" of the smart yet functionally clueless student now makes up a distinct minority of the student population. And the students are very academically self-aware: I have no idea how it compares to the campus feeling eight years ago, but it's wonderful to be in an environment where the vast, vast majority of students feel there's something to be missed for not coming to class, not doing the readings, not putting in the effort, etc.

Cue7-- I don't know anything about this kind of hard data, but I agree that making it available somehow, somewhere would be helpful. It would be interesting to contact the pre-law advising office about it.

JHS · December 30, 2008, 7:38pm

I don't think Chicago "decided to play the USNews game". They made a one-time change in the way they reported core HUM and SOSC classes -- as seminars, not as sections of a large lecture class -- and that made a gigantic difference. It was (a) right, and (b) consistent with how other colleges reported similar classes.

I am in the dark arguing with uchicagoalum. I don't know where he gets his figures. My impression conforms to Cue's: elite college alums are very disproportionately represented at top law schools, but not exclusively. Look at the Penn data above -- about 130 students/year to top 14 law schools. They have, what?, about 4,000 students/class combined. If we assume that the rest of the Ivy League, Stanford, and Duke do about as well relative to their population -- and I think that's conservative -- it would mean those ten colleges represent at least 25% of the students at those law schools. Add in the top 10 LACs (whatever they are) and that's probably another 10% of the top law school classes. Then add Chicago, Northwestern, Michigan, Berkeley, Virginia, UCLA -- places that feed their own law schools to some extent, and that are comparable to the colleges already mentioned -- and we have probably accounted for half of the students at top law schools.

Meanwhile, the 130 Penn students at top law schools represent 1/3 of the Penn students who attend law school, and about 5% of a Penn graduating class. No public university will remotely match those numbers, not even Virginia (which is small and has its own top law school), much less any public university below that tippy-top tier.

uchicagoalum · December 30, 2008, 7:43pm

Cue7:

I was pointing less to you than other posters regarding the feeder matter. Call me elitist, but whatever the very lucrative professional merits of a lot of top law schools, only HYS strike me as having truly distinguished student bodies. I concur that the USNWR top 20 universities and the top 4 LACs land a sizable number of students into the rest of the top 14 LS, but it does not wholly compensate in my eyes for having half a LS class who did only moderately well in high school, were forced to choose a regional school as their best option for college, and then juiced it up for the first three years of university in relatively weak courses with little peer competition. Frankly, if schools did not have to release admissions numbers to USNWR or sites like LSN did not exist, I would wager that many more places like UChicago Law would go back to stacking their classes with their own or comparable undergraduates.

As for my own experience, I liked UChicago for the most part, but in hindsight I would have chosen Berkeley for engineering amongst other selective college options given I was a California resident. I think would have enjoyed the student body more there (many more Asians, more pre-professionally focused), in addition to saving a considerably amount of money to roll over to graduate school loans. That said, I think UChicago is definitely on the right course with its admissions policies, as there were far too many people when I arrived who seemed to believe college was an glorious intellectual reprieve after which you just got something random (degree, job) to pay your Starbucks bill.

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 7:33am

Unalove:

Re: Grade Inflation. At Brown, an estimated 50.6% of grades across ALL academic disciplines were As. In the humanities, it is suspected that as many as 75% of the grades were As. For the social sciences at Brown, 62% of all grades distributed were As. (Brown does not give out + or - grades, so these are all solid As.)

See here:

More</a> than half of grades are now A's, data show - Campus News

And here for the take on the humanities:

Three-quarters</a> of letter grades in humanities are A's - Campus News

At Harvard, the Boston Globe reported in the early 2000s that 91% of the student body graduated with honors of some kind (cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude). I'm assuming to be competitive for even cum laude, you need around a 3.6 GPA or so.

See here:

ASNE</a> High School Journalism -

At Dartmouth in the early 2000s, around 50% of classes have a median grade distribution of A- or better.

See here: The</a> Dartmouth Review: Grade Inflation at the Other Ivies

Again, this does not specifically account for the fact that, in the humanities, Dartmouth probably gives out even more As.

So this indicates that, if you're a pre-law at say, Brown, and you wisely choose to major iin the humanities to maximize your GPA, you have a 75% chance of pulling an A in a course. Given the fact that URMs, legacies with lower academic credentials, and athletes with lower academic credentials make up maybe 30-40% of Brown's student body, I stand by my original assertion. If you have a pulse and are willing to do the legwork, you can get superb grades at Brown.

Given that, recently, 91% of students at Harvard graduated with say, a 3.5 or 3.6 or so or better, I'd imagine the same holds for Harvard.

The grade inflation at many of the top schools is absurd, and recently worked to the detriment of Chicago applicants (I doubt 75% of Chicago students have superb grades). Now, with grade inflation more present at Chicago, I think the playing field has leveled a bit.

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 7:48am

JHS,

Regarding gaming US News rankings, many argue that President Robert Zimmer's initiatives for the colleges focus on maximizing numbers that in turn, augment the school's US News ranking.

See here:

Prospective</a> students judge evolving admissions process - The Chicago Maroon

Zimmer apparently made it a goal to receive 15,000 applications within the next 5 years, and he wants the college to be more selective. Under a mantra that doesn't indirectly speak to US News, I think many Chicago administrators would prefer to see a smaller pool of applicants, but a pool of applicants that was more talented and would offer more of a "fit" for Chicago. Zimmer seems to encourage just attracting a wider range of applicants to make the U of C more selective in its admissions.

Keep in mind, I applaud this move. Judith Rodin at UPenn, for example, identified targeting rankings as a key way for Penn to improve and attract better applicants. After nearly a decade straight of top-ten finishes (in comparison to barely top 20 finishes for much of the prior two decades), Penn has visibly improved. For better or worse, rankings matter and - over the course of years - can shift perception about a school. A temporary fluctuation in ranking does not matter, but if Chicago can stay in the top 8 or so schools for the decade ahead, this only helps the school and makes the alums' degrees appreciate handsomely.

At the same time, looking to drop Chicago's acceptance rate from around 40% to around 20% in 4-5 years seems like an attempt to game rankings. After a certain threshold, I doubt the incoming Chicago classes will be a LOT stronger, but the college gives off the impression of being very selective based on the initiatives Zimmer began.

Now, keep in mind, there are other good reasons for a school to desire to increase selectivity. Zimmer, however, does seem to keep the rankings in mind, and some of his initiatives seem to take place with one eye toward these lists.

(One other note, please remember that many of these decisions started with President Sonnenschein back in the 90s. He endorsed "watering" down the core to make Chicago more palatable to a broader range of applicants, focused on more careful management of the endowment and more fundraising, etc. Again, Chicago is simply not strong enough to stand as the lone outlier when all other universities focus on selectivity, finances, and the like. Bringing Chicago more in line with its peers is a good - and somewhat inevitable - move.)

(One final note - up until recently, I thought Chicago was one of the ONLY schools to NOT attempt to game the rankings. Now it's simply gotten on board. & by gaming the rankings, I mean that administrators maintain an awareness of the rankings, find justification for some initiatives with an eye toward the rankings, and the like.)

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 8:13am

JHS:

Final note on elite college law placement, I think it works out that overall, the top 25% of UPenn's law applicants gain entry into the "Top 14" schools. (130 matriculated at top schools out of a total of 517 applicants)This seems to make sense - the top 25% of the class at Penn is quite bright, and probably should be able to hack a good GPA and good LSAT score. I think saying 1/3 might be a bit high.

In any case, this brings me back to my curiosity about Chicago's pre-law placement. I wish I had paid more attention to the Chicago data set, but from what I remembered, the numbers were - to put it lightly - extremely sobering. Chicago kids LOVE to apply to law school because it's pseudo-intellectual, seems to represent a productive way to spend three years, and still involves schooling.

From what I remember, I think around 300-350 Chicago students apply each year for law school (a high amount considering that say, Penn is more than DOUBLE Chicago's size, and has around 500 apps a year). Outside of placement at Chicago Law, Chicago undergrad did alarmingly poorly. Maybe 2-3 to Harvard, 2-3 to Yale, 3-4 to Columbia, 2-3 to NYU, 1-2 to Penn, etc. I'd estimate maybe 10-15% of the applicants gained entry to a top law school.

From what I remember of people in the College, maybe about 20 of whom went on to law school, this is what I remember: 2 to Temple, 3 to Loyola Chicago, 1 to UPenn, 2 to Chicago Law, 1 to Wayne State, 2 to Minnesota, 3 to Notre Dame, 1 to Columbia, 1 to BU, 1 to Toronto, 1 to U of Houston Law, 1 to Yeshiva, 1 to New York Law School (not NYU), 2 to Yale, 2 to NYU.

What is interesting about my recollections are, almost always, the students going on to the good law schools were significantly Younger than me. I got the sense that those a few years below me in college were achieving more success on this front, but I only have anecdotal evidence to support this.

Again, I was hoping to see if pre-law placement is indeed changing at Chicago. To be fair, I don't really consider UPenn to be one of Chicago's peers, and I think it's a little strange that it used to outpace Chicago so handily.

(Also, in terms of grad school and business school placement, I was struck by how a near-majority of Chicago students do SO well. As in, placement at the grad school of their choice, or acceptance to a top 5 or so business school. I don't know why a disparity existed with law.)

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 8:33am

One other note for comparison,

Here are Yale's statistics on pre-law placement.

<a href="http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf</a>

Unsurprisingly, the school does ridiculously well. Out of 416 applicants, around 180 went on to Top 14 schools (about 45% of the applicant pool). Yale sent more students to Harvard Law alone than Chicago sent alums to the top 14 schools back in the late 1990s.

The increase in student quality from UPenn to Yale is significant. At Penn, the seniors averaged around a 3.5 GPA and a 164 LSAT. At Yale, the seniors notched a 3.6 GPA and a 167 LSAT (a significant difference). This is due in no small part to Yale boasting such an extremely talented college student body. Again, I wonder what the average at Chicago is now? When I was there years ago, I'd estimate the GPA was around a 3.4, and the LSAT maybe around 161 or 162. By now, I would think both numbers would be up (maybe 3.5/163 or 164 or so?).

I would hope that now, though, Chicago could at least get to about 40% of Yale's performance (i.e. instead of sending, say, 15 students to NYU Law, maybe 6 or 7 students).

Generally, I just hope Chicago students are more savvy about the law school app process. My only critique of my undergrad experience was that the administrative approach to law applicants was too lovey-dovey (do what you enjoy, law school is a great way to teach you to think, law schools LOVE Chicago students, etc.). The advisers should have been more pragmatic and focused in their support of an undergrad population that already would lean to any sort of training that would "teach them to think" post-college (sure, Law schools may love Chicago students, but ONLY if they have the right numbers). I had no idea about the strict stratification, numbers-whorish-ness, and hierarchy present in law until I did a lot of my own research. Moreover, I had no idea that graduates from the "lesser" law schools (U of Houston, U. of Louisville, whatever), tend to struggle SO much. I think a good number of Chicago graduates at these schools regret their choice, but they went into the whole process not fully aware of how the law game works.

It seems a bit unfair that our counterparts at UPenn and Yale seemed to do so much better on this front. I hope this has changed. I am very pleased to see that students such as Machiavelli are already so aware of how this process works. When I was at Chicago, students didn't even begin to think about law school until, say, fall quarter of fourth year. By that point, with a 3.4 GPA and a hurriedly achieved 162 LSAT, it was already too late for them.

JHS · December 31, 2008, 9:42am

Cue: My 1/3 percentage was based on the number of Penn applicants who actually attended law school, not the number of applicants. If you use applicants as the denominator, yes, it's 20% who go to top-14 law schools. But I thought applicants was the wrong denominator to use, because the majority of applicants were alumni, not seniors, and lots of them did not actually attend law school, suggesting that they were only interested in law if they got into a top school. Either way, it's a pretty good record (and, as you said, Yale does a lot better). Chicago really ought to match it.

Re grade inflation at Brown or Harvard: A top law school may see dozens, even hundreds of applications every year from Brown and Harvard. They can't be saying, "Wow! All 134 of these kids with 3.8 GPAs are the best students in their class!" The admissions people at Harvard Law School have to know what the numbers on a Brown or Harvard transcript mean -- and they probably know that better than anyone. So it's hard for me to believe that, if there really is grade inflation like you describe at those colleges, anyone in the law school admissions world gets fooled by it.

Pre-law support: I went to Yale, I did well, I applied to three law schools (yes, those three) and was accepted at all of them. Do you know how much support I got? Nothing. Nada. Zip. I signed up for the LSAT (as kind of an afterthought to signing up for the GMAT). I wrote for applications.

Actually, I did get one important bit of help. A professor from Stanford Law School was visiting Yale in the fall of my senior year. He got interested in stuff that was happening around literary theory, and was annoying some of my professors by asking them dumb questions. So they assigned me to talk to him -- give him an overview of the field, identify key books and essays, let him know who was on what team, etc. He turned out to be an influential guy -- he became dean a few years later -- and my relationship with him probably helped my application there. (It also helped me decide to go there.) But that was the extent of the support the university gave me: a contempt for lawyers so deep that a well-known law professor at a top school wasn't deemed worthy of a grad student's time.

People who I knew socially in college -- not necessarily close friends, but people I knew from classes, hanging out, etc. -- included five future Supreme Court clerks, professors at several top law schools, the lead attorney for LAMBDA, and one of the founders of the Federalist Society. Fewer than half of them knew they wanted to go to law school before we were seniors in college. I certainly didn't. There was no pre-law culture at all.

People from state schools: Some of uchicagoalum's comments have been rankling me since yesterday -- his suggestion that people in law schools from non-elite colleges were just filling up space. In my rough cohort in law school, I was in a good position to know who the superstar students at HYS were, and it was completely a mixed bag. HYPS undergraduates were way overrepresented, of course, but only at Yale Law School did they completely dominate. The three most impressive and influential students in my year's class at Harvard Law School had come from Albion College, SMU, and Northwestern. The top ranked students in my class included students from Missouri, Reed, Cal, and Vassar, the leaders of the class after me included students whose undergraduate degrees were from the universities of Texas, Arizona, and New Hampshire, and people I looked up to in the classes ahead of me included alumni of CCNY, Carleton, Macalaster.

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 10:39am

Thanks for the informative post JHS. I was just going to say - I think it's important to note that at Penn, if a student did not get into a top law school, he/she would just end up doing something else. This is a sign that Penn students were sophisticated in their applications strategies, and they realized the futility in going to a lesser school. When I was at Chicago, no one bothered to tell applicants that going to Wayne State or Louisville or whatever - 90% of the time - is an awful decision to make. Penn students seem to realize this critical fact ex ante, and make their decisions with respect to this fact.

When I was at Chicago, I didn't see students taking the same "top school or nothing" approach. They figured law school was a great way to put off the real world and "learn how to think" some more, so they willingly paid high tuition at Wayne State or U of Houston or whatever. I was shocked, after learning more about the process, that Chicago students didn't seem to know how this whole process worked. In retrospect, though, while there was always a lot of awareness about the finance industry, applying to grad school, etc., Chicago students didn't seem to be aware of how the law world operated.

Regarding grade inflation at Harvard and Brown, I think law school admissions comms look at it like this - as long as your LSAT fits the bill, they'll value your GPA just as highly as anywhere else. So, a 3.8/172 from Brown is going to a great school, a 3.8/164 may not. If there are 130 Brown grads with 3.8/172 LSATs, you can bet that the vast majority of them are ending up at top schools. And guess what? Most of them do.

LSAT equalizes all here, but Brown and Harvard students have an easier time fulfilling the GPA prereq at a law school than Chicago students used to have. I really don't think law schools care whether an undergrad grade inflates or not, they just care about having the appropriate numbers represented to US News. So in some ways, Harvard and Brown do a service (so to speak) to their students by making sure the "grades" portion of the admissions requirement is met. Then, it's up to the students to do superbly on the LSAT. For law school admissions, Chicago students will only do better the more the school grade inflates.

By the way, JHS, when did you attend law school? I imagine the scenario now is much different than it was back in the day a bit. Even when I was thinking about law school, there wasn't as much info available as there is now (as in, most kids didn't know just how harmful it could be to rack up debt at a lesser school).

In any case, again, I'm interested in hearing what current Chicago students may know. While I may be speaking a bit out of place here, I always considered Chicago to be a bit closer to Yale than UPenn in terms of academics. As far as grad school placement goes, I think this holds true - Chicago places its students at the best doctoral programs all over the place. For law, I'm not sure why Chicago - with an academic reputation that for so long eclipsed places like Penn, Duke, Brown, etc. - faltered so much. If for nothing else, the Chicago student body is just as accomplished as the students at UPenn or Cornell, so I am curious to see what the situation is now.

JHS · December 31, 2008, 11:12am

I went to law school a long time ago, but I don't know that things have changed so much.

By the way, I'm not certain it's such a terrible mistake to "rack up debt at a lesser school". The main difference between top law schools and the next several tiers is how portable the credential is, and how well you have to do to get good opportunities. If you know where you want to live and work, a local school, especially one with lower tuition, can be a really good option. In Philadelphia, good students from Temple or Villanova have as many opportunities as students from Penn or Harvard (except that the students from Penn or Harvard don't have to be in the top quarter of their class), but of course that isn't true if they go to New York or Washington. One of the absolute best younger lawyers I've mentored over the years was a GE engineer who went to night school at Rutgers-Camden until his last year, and I have a very classy, successful former partner who is a Chicago alumna and went to Temple.

unalove · December 31, 2008, 11:52am

[quote]
If for nothing else, the Chicago student body is just as accomplished as the students at UPenn or Cornell, so I am curious to see what the situation is now

[/quote]

But if you would like to use a universal metric to measure student populations, say, the ACT or the SAT, then yes, I think Chicago is comparable to Penn or Cornell. However, I think the personalities of the schools and probably the motivations and the pressures of the students tend to be different from those at Chicago.

Somebody I know graduated with an economics major from one of those schools and said that he always felt some kind of pressure to join the aspiring investment bankers, even though i-banking was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. His one quip with the school was that it didn't help him find the ideal job for him because the career office and its students tended to be so focused on certain post-graduation ventures.

I know a handful of economics majors at Chicago, and peer pressure to do investment banking, top law school, or a similarly competitive post-graduate opportunities really isn't there. (For me or for them). Instead, I think the pressure comes in in the classroom, where it's easy to feel intimidated and to feel like you're not doing enough. I visited classes at Penn and Cornell, when I was a prospective student and I feeling that the classroom setting was a little more relaxed in the way that more students weren't really engaged with the class material and that was okay.

Cue7 · December 31, 2008, 3:08pm

JHS - I agree, if you are in the top 10-20% of your class at Temple or Villanova, you'll have great options. The problem is, while this may be a truism, the majority of students are NOT in the top of their class, and just in terms of probability, taking on debt and going to a lesser law school is a gamble. Also, there's a difference between Villanova and say, a tier 3 law school like Wayne State.

One other note - I think the one element of the law school admissions game that has changed of late is that students at the top schools begin thinking about law school earlier, and begin to "game the system" earlier as well. During my grad years at Penn, I was struck by how many of the undergrads - very early on - expressed an interest in law school, and seemed to understand how completely numbers-based the process is. They made many of their academic decisions to maximize their law school admissions chances. Years ago, I don't think this happened as much anywhere, bc 1.) numbers were not as important (as recently as 7-8 years ago, I believe Penn Law's median was around a 3.5/165) and 2.) college students were not as excessively pre-professional as their compatriots today.

Unalove - interesting post. When I was at Chicago, we would always snicker at the kids who concentrated in econ because it was seen as the most pre-professional discipline on campus. While the kids who concentrated in anthropology or history or mathematics generally had academic interests, the econ students always seemed to be the ones lining up in suits and heading to Ida Noyes to interview with banks (is that where you guys still have the career office?).

If anything, I thought Chicago was too focused on the finance industry or going to a doctoral program. I felt everyone was either going to Wall Street or pursuing their passions at the graduate school (MA or PhD) level. There wasn't as much emphasis on great fields like teaching, law, etc.

I definitely agree that Chicago students were very engaged in the classroom, in a way that differentiated the U of C students from their peers at Penn and Cornell. That's what disappointed me about the law school placement - based on attitude and comportment, Chicago had a lot of serious, diligent types that would do well at a top law school, but they never had that option. The pre-professional types at Penn and Cornell, meanwhile, took the plumb positions at the top law schools, coasted their way through the top law schools, and had their pick of law jobs. It didn't seem fair, and I hope that's changed.

Also, law is the one field where I feel there SHOULD be pressure to go to a top school. Chicago is generally laissez-faire about this, but given the strict hierarchy of the legal market, Chicago students should know that by not attending a top school, they are putting themselves at a significant disadvantage.

unalove · December 31, 2008, 3:57pm

I have no resources besides anecdotals ones to answer the questions about student quality and placement, but I can say that for me, I see no appeal in going to law school or becoming a lawyer whatsoever, even if I am academically or intellectually qualified for a top school.

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