<p>I would say that even top law schools draw a somewhat regional student body. At the Stanford admitted students weekend last year, one of things that SLS tried to emphasize was that it wasn’t just a California school. There were a lot of people admitted to both Stanford and Harvard, and many of them made lots of comments like “I really like it here, but it’s so far away from my home (on the east coast).” It’s enough of a concern that Stanford pays for you to fly to their admitted student weekends.</p>
<p>Northwestern is a very unique law school. They specifically target students with 2 years of post-undergraduate work experience, and their percentage of Midwestern students has gone from over 50% in 2000 to around 25% in 2008. I’m somewhat surprised UChicago doesn’t sent a few more students to Michigan, but they still send a decent crop (in the 10-19 range for Autunm 2008, according to the Michigan Law School site). The UChicago Law School admits a pretty large chunk of undergraduates from the college. </p>
<p>As I said, regionalism isn’t the only issue with UChicago. But I also think that fewer students from UChicago apply seriously. I think a higher percentage of UChicago students are drawn to academic graduate school than at some peer institutions. And I think that the students are less focused on specifically what they will do after graduation, in general, than at some of the schools that send hoards of students to top law schools. As I said, pretty much everyone I knew who wanted to go to law school was admitted to a school that matched their goals.</p>
<p>Hey Maroon8 - thanks again for the info. Another quick question, you mentioned that students on campus now who wanted to go to a good law school “quietly took care of business” and succeeded. One of the trends I harp on, however, is the general opaque nature of pre-law info at Chicago. When I was at the U of C, very few Chicago students knew the world of law admissions well, or understood that, beyond going to top schools or great feeder schools for a specific region, law could be a dubious undertaking. Accordingly, I know too many people who then wound up at U of Houston Law, New York Law School, Chicago Kent law, etc. </p>
<p>Has this improved at all? So many Chicago students wind up going to law school because it seems to fit nicely with their liberal arts background. With a student body that’s decidedly not pre-professional, I thought the pre-law advisors would have an even bigger duty to the undergrad population at Chicago. In short, success breeds success, and if more Chicago students had a more informed look at law school, many grads would make different decisions. </p>
<p>As a counterpoint to this, I looked at Penn’s pre-law statistics, and what impressed me the most was that it seemed students made very good informed choices. Penn sends a heavy contingent of kids (maybe 20-30 a year) to Temple Law, but not, say to Widener or other local law schools. This implies that Penn students understand the basic axiom that, in the law game, it makes sense to go to the best ranked school you can get into, or go to the best feeder school in the region where you want to work. Are students at Chicago more aware of all of this, or how did you go about getting info on how this process works? </p>
<p>(At Penn, I found it’s largely word of mouth - there is a strong culture of success at the school, and an emphasis on status and going to the best school possible. Kids mainly just listened to other kids, and fell in line for this process.)</p>
<p>The pre-law advisor will tell you the basic information if you ask. They have a lot of events that are pretty helpful, especially the ones where admissions officers come from law schools and basically tell you what’s important (one particularly helpful one involved the adcoms from Virginia, Michigan, Chicago and Penn walking through four hypothetical applications and commenting on the things that helped and hurt each one). I would say that plenty of guidance is there if you seek it. Being on the pre-law listhost is also very helpful. You get information about all of the events, as well as a variety of other opportunities.</p>
<p>Also, to continue the anecdotal log of success, another individual I know waited to apply one year after graduation, spent the year working with a UChicago professor, and got admitted to Yale and Harvard Law Schools. I suppose it’s possible that I have a particularly unusual circle of acquaintances, so I now know 10 people admitted to top 5 law schools.</p>
<p>Cue7, Maroon8, et al, thanks for the great info. After another brief mini-meltdown, my son and I had some great talks. I cut/pasted and emailed this tread to him and I think he gets it now that UChicago is not the best place for a pre-law student but that he can still be excited about learning - he just needs to be more attentive to his GPA. As he grows at UChicago and ascends the learning curve, it think he will realize that life will continue if he is in a top 20 school just as well as if he is in a top 10 law school. Of course, he may change his mind three times before his junior year anyway. BTW - one of the courses he was worried about - math - he got an A-. Thanks again folks.</p>
<p>Good thread. though I am not pre law or pre med, this is an interesting discussion.</p>
<p>I did not know that GPA matters that much for the law school admission.</p>
<p>I am pre-wall street. Are grades really that important for me also? Should the difficulty or ease of getting a good GPA be a factor in my choosing Chicago over another school for undergrad education?</p>
<p>science fiction - for wall street, in short, grades will not matter as much. As long as you have good (not amazing) grades - maybe around a 3.5 or so - and you INTERVIEW WELL, you should be fine. Chicago placement for finance is as good as pretty much anywhere else save HYP and Wharton.</p>