<p>To me, it's not highly interesting to see that the colleges that get the smartest kids in to start with also get proportionately the most into top professional schools. Although it's useful to confirm it, as a check. </p>
<p>What could potentially be interesting is seeing whether kids from some great but less-wow colleges consistently get disproportionately admitted into top programs. Like whenever I see these Harvard lists it always seems Wellesley is disproportionately represented, when you consider the average entering SATs and admit % of wellesley. Which interests me a little because my daughter turned them down. But I don't know if you'd get exactly the same results, beyond the top fifteen or so super-selective colleges if you looked at a wider spread of top schools, geographically dispersed. Similar obviously, but with a somewhat different order perhaps, and some different schools in and some out in the lower parts of the list.</p>
<p>IMO what an applicant to an undergraduate college really wants to know is whether THEY, as a person, will be advantaged eventually in grad admissions if they attend school A vs. School B. And this is harder to say. Schools accept individual people. Maybe the guy ranked #242 at Harvard College would have ranked #1 at Ball State, so he would have gotten into HLS instead of being rejected. Which makes Harvard worse than Ball Sate for getting into HLS, for many students??</p>
<p>From everything I know Cal is a great school. It's student body is quite capable, but on the whole less highly selected than Harvard's is. It would not suprise me to see a smaller percentage of Cal students being admitted to Harvard Law school. (Even ignoring the different interests of the student bodies, which diluted the utility of this metric anyway. And different regional application patterns, which is probably big).Does this mean that if you attend Cal and you're good enough to get into HLS you will be at a disadvantage? I don't know.</p>
<p>I guess if your school hardly ever gets a kid into a particular place that's also interesting information to know. But then you'd also want to think about why. Like, maybe, because of the type of school it is maybe few people there choose to go this route.</p>
<p>The percentage thing has been beaten to death. But it still gets trotted out, so cautions are warranted once again lest it mislead. Just because something is easy to calculate, with data readily available, does not mean it should be relied on without thought applied to the applicability across the different types of institutions. The more appropriate comparisons may be more complicated to calculate, but that does not mean that they should not be accounted for; if only conceptually. Lest ye mislead.</p>
<p>In some way or the other, if you take the 20 top law schools, I'm sure you'll find HYPSM, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Columbia, Penn, Chicago, NU, Cornell, Georgetown and maybe a few key others being easily the best schools for placement....</p>
<p>My favorite out of the schools that are top 10 for both Harv and Yale is Duke since its real far away, but Duke also sends lots of kids to its own law school (Brown and Dartmouth lack that). </p>
<p>However, this is skewed because Brown, Dartmouth, and Duke students are ranked in the top 10 in average LSAT scores as well.</p>
<p>This to me maybe confirms that, on average, there are smarter, more accomplished students at Dartmouth and Brown than Cornell, but doesn't at all confirm that the same student choosing between Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell will have less of a chance of being accepted at Yale Law School if he chooses to attend Cornell for undergrad.</p>
<p>I think we would all agree that the best measure of how well a particular undergraduate school does at placing their graduates at top law schools would be yield -- how many students applied versus how many were admitted. Of course, finding out how many students applied is difficult, and since law schools such as HLS reveal only statistics relating to matriculated students, it is pretty tough to determine the yield (and impossible if, as mini suggested, you try to eliminate the admitted law students with "hooks"). </p>
<p>Since Cornell was getting pretty beat up as a law school feeder on this thread, and my recollection from my days there was that everyone I knew who wanted to go to law school not only got into law school, but often to a top law school, I did some sniffing around. Cornell Career Services publishes an annual report (as I'm sure many schools do) that gets a high response rate that discusses how many students did what for how much money after graduation. </p>
<p>For the Class of 2005 (2006 doesn't seem to be available just yet), a reported 224 students (258 in 2004, 243 in 2003) applied to law school. Perhaps add some students to make up for the non-responders to the survey (response rates of 70-75% per college, though as has been mentioned previously, not every college at Cornell sends lots of students to law school, e.g. engineering, hotel). Of these, the top ten law schools attended by Cornell grads were Brooklyn Law School, Columbia, Cornell, Fordham, GW, Harvard, NYU, St. John's, Michigan and Wash U. Of course, I'm certain that some students work for a couple of years before applying to and attending law school (as I did), and those numbers are not reflected. </p>
<p>The takeaway, I think, is that a relatively small number of students are applying to law school from Cornell when you look at the number of law school applicants versus the size of the student body. Accordingly, it would seem that Cornell students are very successful in getting into top law schools, using the Harvard matriculated student numbers as some kind of proxy for "top law school" admissions.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Eliminate legacies, father's law firm's connections, and family income status, and you'll get a radically different picture.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You can say the same thing about the elite prep schools, you can say the same thing about college admissions, you can say the same thing about graduate admissions, you can say the same thing about job placement, you can say the same thing about career advancement...</p>
<p>Why live in the real world when you can relish life in a fantasy one? </p>
<p>That's just life getting in the way of your utopia. The bottom line is if one is truly motivated, qualified, determined, talented, etc. - you will more than likely make it in this world. The cream generally rises to the crop.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This to me maybe confirms that, on average, there are smarter, more accomplished students at Dartmouth and Brown than Cornell, but doesn't at all confirm that the same student choosing between Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell will have less of a chance of being accepted at Yale Law School if he chooses to attend Cornell for undergrad.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly. the_prestige seems still to be the one that doesn't get this.</p>
<p>We have to be careful about the argument that one college or another has fewer students who might be interested in law school, and thus discount the differences in percent who end up at YLS or HLS. This could be a valid concern when considering Caltech (96% of students major in science techology engineering or math). However, except for technical institutes, the range is a lot tighter than suggested, and does not necessarily explain much of the variance. For example, Yale has a small portion of STEM majors (19%), Stanford, at 35% is higher than Berkeley, at 30%. Princeton is in between at 27%, and Cornell is essentially identical to Stanford. </p>
<p>In other words, the low representation of Caltech is explained on these grounds, the the differences among Y, S, Cornell, P and UCB are not.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In other words, the low representation of Caltech is explained on these grounds, the the differences among Y, S, Cornell, P and UCB are not.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>an excellent point. Sam and others seem to be the ones who don't get this.</p>
<p>Look noone is saying that Cornell isn't a great school - it absolutely is - it's just not as good as its other Ivy peers (plus Stanford) when it comes to matriculation into the absolute top tier law schools. period.</p>
<p>here's a simple suggestion: if you have data (any data) that supports your arguments, by all means, share it... BRING IT... instead of your snide little comments backed up by nothing but thin air.</p>
<p>"You can say the same thing about the elite prep schools, you can say the same thing about college admissions, you can say the same thing about graduate admissions, you can say the same thing about job placement, you can say the same thing about career advancement..."</p>
<p>Well, if you want to measure "placement into Harvard Law", you've got a point. But there is no indication or even a hint of evidence, given the data, that the quality of undergrad education had anything to do with it. Such evidence might in fact exist, but it is unsupplied here. </p>
<p>I am willing to concede that people with $300,000/yearly incomes purchase more Mercedes than those with the average family income ($53k). But it approaches a tautology to say so.</p>
<p>“Look noone is saying that Cornell isn't a great school - it absolutely is - it's just not as good as its other Ivy peers (plus Stanford) when it comes to matriculation into the absolute top tier law schools. period.”</p>
<p>-Again, there is no proof of this. All the information we have tells us is that a smaller percentage of Cornell graduates attends HLS and YLS than some other schools. There is nothing at all about the data we have that could allow us rationally to assume that Cornell is “not as good” as the other schools in this aspect. </p>
<p>Again, the only way to tell if the name of a school has anything to do with aiding students with getting admitted to those law schools would be to have actual LSAT and GPA numbers. That is, looking at two people with equal stats (LSAT and GPA), a person from Yale should have an advantage at gaining admissions to HLS than someone from Cornell. Then, and only then, can such an argument be made.</p>
<p>"it's just not as good as its other Ivy peers (plus Stanford) when it comes to matriculation into the absolute top tier law schools. period"</p>
<p>i disagree. picking cornell over dartmouth, brown, etc. will in no way hurt your chances at getting into a great law school (unless, of course, you can't handle the courseload). </p>
<p>"differences among Y, S, Cornell, P and UCB are not"</p>
<p>so should we ignore the fact that Cornell has VERY specialized programs in hotel, arch art and planning, agricultural sciences, and a bunch others where students will very rarely choose to go to law school after completing these degrees? Does it matter that none of its peer schools have the same programs, yet these programs consitute thousands of students at Cornell? It doesn't make sense to NOT include this into the equation...</p>
<p>gomestar, i don't think anyone is saying that if you go to Cornell, there is no way you are getting into Harvard Law School.</p>
<p>look at it the other way, if one were inclined to go into the Hotel industry after college, isn't it safe to say that Cornell's Hotel program is a good way in? does that mean that people from Harvard or Yale are never going to be able to get into Hotel Management?</p>
<p>if one were inclined to pursue a PhD in the hard sciences, isn't it a safe bet that you will get the resources and support at a place like Caltech or MIT? Does that mean that people from Amherst or Williams can never pursue a PhD in the hard sciences?</p>
<p>there are no absolutes here (or in life) - just shades of grey.</p>
<p>so as it is, for those interested in pre-law (or attending a top law school) certain schools are better suited, better positioned, attract better candidates for, attract more students interested in attending a top law school.</p>
<p>I said GPAs vs LSAT vs admit rates for all the different schools would give much more valid comparison. That's a VERY SIMPLE point. I do not need to provide any data. LOL! The burden of proof, in the case, lies on the_prestige's side. Hope this isn't too complicated for you.</p>
<p>theprestige,
[quote]
However, except for technical institutes, the range is a lot tighter than suggested, and does not NECESSARILY explain much of the variance.
[/quote]
You seem to be the one confused again. He/she's just pointing out yet another uncertainty. What he/she meant was Stanford/Cornell have similar portion of techies and therefore one can't say Cornell doesn't send as many to Harvard because it's a more technical-oriented. I have no problem with that. He didn't necessarily mean Cornell and Stanford have the same number of students applying to Harvard either. You seem to have the habit of extrapolating way too much.</p>
<p>i had the cornell/YLS data from some year like 2003, and CU sent a bunch of students to yale. This past year, not so many, just like Duke with HLS. sometimes, things just change, nobody has yet to explain why.</p>
<p>@Sam Lee: the burden of proof is 100% on your side!</p>
<p>YOU are the one making claims about GPAs and LSATs and admit rates - I don't remember Prestige claiming anything about GPAs and LSATs and admit rates!!!</p>
<p>YOU make the CLAIM so YOU provide the DATA backing up YOUR CLAIMS.</p>
<p>Unbelievable!</p>
<p>...................................</p>
<p>So, according to YOU Sam, if I make any claim, for example: people who are left handed have a better chance of getting into Harvard Law School... why does prestige have to find the data to back up my claim? Huh?</p>