<p>agoodfella,</p>
<p>My "claim"? I didn't make any conclusive claim or hypothesis and therefore there's nothing I need to "prove". All I am saying is the enrollment list alone doesn't prove a person from school A has better chance to get in than someone with the same stats (LSAT/GPA) at school B if school A has higher number per capita than school B. What we really need is LSAT/admit rate/GPA data but unfortunately, they aren't available. Hope that's clear now. ;)</p>
<p>Sam Lee,</p>
<p>Or should we call you the "Artful Dodger"?
<a href="http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/warriorshtm/artfuldodger.htm%5B/url%5D">http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/artfuldodger.htm</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
I said GPAs vs LSAT vs admit rates for all the different schools would give much more valid comparison....but unfortunately, they aren't available.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>How unfortunate - for you.</p>
<p>Let me ask you a simple question since you haven't offered anything meaningful - What DO YOU suspect that the Top 10 pre-law schools are (for those wanting to attend Harvard Law / Yale Law)? </p>
<p>You must have SOME idea, esp. since you are so deadset against the "back of the envelope" calculations that I made.</p>
<p>
[quote]
All I am saying is the enrollment list alone doesn't prove a person from school A has better chance to get in than someone with the same stats (LSAT/GPA) at school B if school A has higher number per capita than school B.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Is that not true? You are in denial and now resort to ad hominem attack. </p>
<p>To answer your question, my guess (just a pure guess) would be HYPS. Besides that, I wouldn't want to claim anything about the relative rank among others such as Penn vs Duke vs Brown vs Cornell vs Rice.</p>
<p>
[quote]
since you haven't offered anything meaningful
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Just because someone doesn't have an answer doesn't mean he has to agree with someone's wrong answer. :)</p>
<p>actually I'm not attacking you - I am merely attacking your passive aggressive posts. It's like Michael Corleone said, "it's not personal, strictly business."</p>
<p>i firmly stick by those "back of the envelope" rankings - they absolutely validate my thoughts on the best undergrad programs in the US, as seen in my weighted rankings posted in an earlier thread:</p>
<p>Prestige,
I appreciated your post #7. I don't understand why Swarthmore is ahead of Williams. What are your raw numbers for this? Nevertheless, you've got Amherst and Williams in the top 10. Why don't you mention them in a "back of the envelope" ranking?</p>
<p>cardinalalum80, you're welcome.</p>
<p>as for the "back of the envelope" calculations, i gave a short summary in post #12:</p>
<p>Thank you for pointing out Swarthmore, I had the incoming freshman class number incorrect (I had it at 289 instead of 389), therefore the updated ranking (Williams and Swarthmore switch places ... I double checked the rest of the class numbers with USNWR and the rest are correct).</p>
<p>LAC Top 10 Per Capita for HLS:
Rank Name HLS Ratio
1 Amherst 22.68
3 Williams 31.47
2 Swarthmore 38.90
4 Pomona 42.56
5 Middlebury 92.17
6 Carleton 135.25
7 Wellesley 151.25
8 Bowdoin 159.33
9 Grinnell 193.50
10 Davidson 230.00</p>
<p>These arguments are useless, as there are too many variables.</p>
<p>The bottom line true general statment one can make about Harvard Law (except for affirmative action or Dean's penciled-in admittees) you will need an extraordinarily high LSAT score and ideally undergrad degrees from one of the Ivies or Stanford, MIT or a few others including small LAC's like Amherst, Williams, or Swarthmore</p>
<p>The rest are basically just (although probably individually well qualified) tokens to pump up the number of colleges</p>
<p>Harvard can't just end that list at 20 colleges, it would be embarassing</p>
<p>I see 2 from Wheaton (MA) - not a bad school, but I don't think it has much in the way of admissions standards the last few years - probably their heavily recruited full ride merit scholars of some type.</p>
<p>"to monydad, i know 3 ppl in Hum Ec this past yr that ended up at law school"</p>
<p>I didn't say their weren't any. THere were probably a few engineers who went too. But probably percentagewise far fewer than a liberal arts school, such as most of the other colleges Cornell is being compared to, would be expected to generate. Plus, it would not surprise me if the types of law schools are different, overall, than the law schools that the Arts & Sciences people are applying to. If you look at the stats of entering students to Human Ecology vs. Arts & Sciences you'll see a difference in the average capability of their entering classes. These are different colleges. Everyone there knows it; law school admissions people have to know it too. </p>
<p>Even if the same proportion of students from each of these separate colleges applied to law school, they still should not be lumped together. Because they are different, separate colleges. They have different admissions. </p>
<p>It does not help an applicant to the College of Arts & Sciences to have the results of the different College of Human Ecology mixed in with the stats he/she is trying to use to make a decision. And, likewise, applicants to the College of Human Ecology might be misled. There is no comglomerate/amalgam to apply to. </p>
<p>"Same for ILR ... I knew 3 seniors last year who are at Harvard Law as we speak.</p>
<p>For all I know ILR might do BETTER at law school admissions than Cornell Arts & Sciences, or a lot of schools on these lists. It's too bad the data isn't segregated so we can see. That would be more beneficial to prospective applicants. Who, once again, can only apply to one of these colleges all of which are different.</p>
<p>"Well, as noted, not that that large a proportion of Cornell students major in those fields that are unlikely to lead to law school."</p>
<p>OK, well then note this.
THe number of entering students into the two colleges that produce lots of lawyers is: 1,235.</p>
<p>THe number of entering students into the 5 colleges that don't produce many lawyers at all is: 1,993.</p>
<p>Tell me afan, do you really want to continue to maintain that 1,993 is not a large proportion compared to 1,225?????? What proportion WOULD you consider to be "large"????</p>
<p>"I don't understand why Swarthmore is ahead of Williams. What are your raw numbers for this? Nevertheless, you've got Amherst and Williams in the top 10. "</p>
<p>Willimas is behind Amherst because far more Williams students go to Yale law than Amherst students.</p>
<p>Moreover, afan, I have to say that if your professional school is ignorant of the differences among these different colleges, that to me is a fairly stinging indictment of the depth of your admissions practices. The differences among the colleges there is material. I suggest you have them look into this further, for their own sakes. Links to the stats for the separate colleges have been posted on CC.</p>
<p>Well, I think we should all take this to the next logical step, then. Why do people go to law school? To become lawyers (usually). Where do lawyers go to work after graduation? Often, to the very most prestigious job that will have you. Since Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is widely considered to be one of the most (if not the most) prestigious firm in the country, let's take a look at where the attorneys who work there went to undergrad and law school:</p>
<p>Undergrad</p>
<p>Harvard 20
Yale 19
Penn 12
Cornell 9
Columbia 9
Princeton 9
Dartmouth 5
CUNY 5
Brown 4
Johns Hopkins 3
Duke 3
(Tuoro, Middlebury, Oxford, Swarthmore, Lafayette, Brandeis, Georgetown, NYU, Amherst, Rutgers) -- 2 each
(Syracuse, Stanford, Tufts, Illinois, Wesleyan, Haverford, RPI, Maryland, Wisconsin, Hobart, Kansas City Art Institute, U of New South Wales, UNC, Chicago, Bowdoin, Tulane, Williams, Queen's Univ (Canada), Moscow State Univ, Yeshiva, Union College, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Albany, Univ. of Hamburg, Bryn Mawr, Alabama, BC, BU, Pomona, Tel Aviv U, New College of Florida, Minnesota, Marquette, Case Western, St. John's (NY), St. John's (Annapolis), Virginia Commonwealth) -- 1 each</p>
<p>Law School</p>
<p>Columbia 34
Harvard 30
NYU 21
Yale 18
Penn 12
Chicago 10
Stamford 6
Fordham 4
GW 4
Duke 3
Cornell 2
UVa 2
NY Law School 2
BU 1
Tel Aviv Univ. 1
Brooklyn 1
Alabama 1
Texas 1
SUNY Buffalo 1</p>
<p>So, what does this tell us? Well, nothing really, though the numbers are very interesting to look at. Are there regional biases inherent in these numbers? Absolutely. Is there a bias in these numbers towards people who want to make a lot of money, work really long hours and focus mainly on corporate transactional and commercial litigation matters? Yep. But these data points are really no different than what we are examining with the numbers of students who matriculated to Harvard Law. Arguably, no one is going to say no to an offer at Wachtell -- I'm sure that their yield rates are right up there with the yield rates at HLS. In fact, without a doubt, it is much harder to get a job at Wachtell than it is to get into HLS. Based on these numbers, are you much more likely to get a job at Wachtell if you go to HLS than if you go to Yale Law? Sure, unless you're looking at yield rates. Furthermore, Yale also tends to be a different kind of law school, which is much less corporate-focused than Harvard, Columbia, NYU and Penn.</p>
<p>So, while you really can't extrapolate any truly useful information out of this information (as you really can't out of the HLS matriculated student data), the numbers are interesting to note if you are considering a career in law.</p>
<p>"Arguably, no one is going to say no to an offer at Wachtell"</p>
<p>I don't know, how many hours do those guys have to bill??? Or work, anyway (they might be doing the billable hours thing)</p>
<p>Mony,</p>
<p>Sorry if you are disappointed by the fact that we don't care which school within a university is issuing the degree.</p>
<p>I don't suggest anyone try putting on their application that "my school at X University is really much better than the other schools here, so you should be more impressed with me since I am the 'School of Y', which is really, really good, and not at all like those slackers in the 'School of Z' that somehow share a campus"</p>
<p>Like I said, we look at the individual record, the name of the college does not matter much (unless we have really never heard of it, then we have to do some research. We get lots of applications, "never heard of it" does not come up that often). The major does not matter. Since different majors are in different schools in some universities, but not others, it would be strange, in evaluating individual students, to attribute any significance to how a particular university, for historical reasons, structures itself.</p>
<p>If you want to be sorry about something, why not stick to this:
"Well, as noted, not that that large a proportion of Cornell students major in those fields that are unlikely to lead to law school."</p>
<p>Why someone would pass on an affirmative statement like that without benefit of the facts I do not know.</p>
<p>With respect to the other matter I am not disappointed so much as appalled. This is tantamount to admissions malpractice, quite frankly. The various individual colleges vary in admissions stats from 20% to over 35% admitted. Different in median SATS by up to 85 points. That's A LOT. Although the Arts school gives various survey courses and some free electives available to students in the other colleges, the majority of coursework for most students is typically in their own college, taught by their own faculty. So these grades that you're treating equally in actuality may be earned on a very uneven playing field, competing mostly with a different group of students. You should be ashamed, IMO,if this is what is really going on.</p>
<p>There are some exceptions., notably with bio.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Every time you say something like this I have to scratch my head. My own personal experience with engineers I've studied and worked with over the years could not possibly be more contrary to these assertions you make of this type. I've hardly known any engineers who had the slightest interest in law. .
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My response to this is simple. Many engineering students, frankly, have no interest IN ENGINEERING. Seriously. The truth is, a lot of engineering students are studying engineering because they want to secure a decent paying job. Nothing more, nothing less. They see people who major in Art History or Film Studies end up working in the mall and they resolve not to end up that way. Let's be perfectly 100% honest here. If engineering didn't pay so well (relative for a bachelor's degree), fewer people would study engineering. A lot of people are in engineering just for the money. Whether that's right or wrong for them to do that is irrelevant, what matters is that they are doing that. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Many of them have, in fact a sort of contempt for these sorts of "artsy" ie not quantitative or mathematically complex,endeavors
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So then let me ask you the same question that I have asked you before on other threads. Why is it that so many of the top engineers from MIT, Stanford, and schools of that caliber attracted to management consulting companies like McKinsey? You say that engineers are not attracted to non-quant work. Well, do you really consider consulting to be true quant work? I think we can both agree that it's pretty darn 'artsy' and 'talkie'. </p>
<p>So it begs the question of if engineers really aren't interested in this sort of work, then why are so many of the top engineering students at the top engineering schools attracted to consulting? </p>
<p>I believe it gets back to a very basic point - that a lot of engineering students don't really want to be engineers, and would rather do something else if they could. Certainly not all of them are like that. But a lot of them are. And the engineering student who would gladly turn down an engineering job to work for McKinsey is precisely the kind of person who would also gladly turn down an engineering job to go to Harvard Law. If he can get in, of course. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I sincerely doubt that most of these people would turn to law as a preference matter if they turned out not to be any good at engineering. There are probably 50 occupations they'd prefer first. These are very diametrically different occupations. If you took a Strong vocational Interest test, these two groups would probably be on opposite sides of the page. IMO.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But that's not the question at hand. Sure, there may be other professions that these engineers might prefer more. Like management consulting. But the question is, can you get into those professions? You don't always get what you want, you know.</p>
<p>Case in point. 2 MIT engineering students immediately come to mind. One of them really really wanted to get a high-end consulting job as his first choice, but didn't get a single offer right after undergrad. So instead, he ended up going to graduate school (at MIT), and after that, he tried again for consulting, and this time he got one (at McKinsey) The other guy really wanted to go to a top-flight engineering grad school. But he didn't get in anywhere. So instead, what did he end up with? A consulting job (at Booz Allen, I believe). After a few years of that, he got into a top-flight engineering grad school (as part of a MBA+MS dual program). </p>
<p>Hence, each person did not get what they really wanted out of undergrad, so they had to settle for a backup option. It's rather interesting that one person's first choice was another person's backup, but putting that aside, the point is, you don't always get what you want. In fact, you may not even get ANY of your top choices. </p>
<p>Monydad, I think you are viewing the world far too idealistically. I belive Thoreau was spot-on when he said that most people lead lives of quiet desperation, in that most people don't get to do what they really want to do. If I was doing what I really wanted to do, I'd be playing professional baseball for the Boston Red Sox right now. I imagine that many other people feel the same way. But none of us are doing that. Heck, if I had what I really wanted, I would be 6-foot-4 inches tall, have a body like Schwarzenegger, have a face like Brad Pitt, be worth a billion dollars, and be married to Jessica Alba. So far, I'm 0-for-5, and I will probably be 0-for-5 for the rest of my life. </p>
<p>We can't always get what we really want. In fact, we almost never get what we really want. Instead, we have to pick from the choices that we actually have. Given the choice between taking a low-end crappy engineering job (which is probably the best you can do if you end up with a bad GPA in engineering), or going to Harvard Law, I think there is little dispute that the vast majority of people would take the latter. Just like given the choice between sitting around in my house on Friday night doing nothing, and going out on a date with Scarlett Johansson, I would take the latter. Maybe I would prefer dating Jessica Alba even more, but hey, if I don't have that choice available to me, I gotta work with what's available. </p>
<p>Furthermore, you are also making the strong assumption that just because you go to Harvard Law, you automatically have to work as a lawyer. Why? As we all know, plenty of engineering students, especially from the top schools like MIT, Stanford, etc. will never work a day in their lives as engineers. You can graduate from Harvard Law and become a consultant. McKinsey is the biggest single private employer at HLS. You can become an investment banker. You can enter a wide range of other professions. Clearly, a Harvard Law degree is far more versatile and useful than having just an engineering degree with a low GPA.</p>
<p>Hey, I'm pursuing engineering at Princeton and I wouldn't mind going to HLS or YLS someday.</p>
<p>And it's not just about the career opportunities (though those are nice, too), but the logic/rigor of law school's always appealed to me, and I have a degree of interest in public policy.</p>
<p>Mony,</p>
<p>Before you make any more unsupported claims, I suggest you read an article on the subject in the October 2005 issue of Academic Medicine. There are facts, and there is opinion. My position is based on fact. Undergraduate college does not matter. Performance in college and on admissions examination does.</p>
<p>Cornell is like many other universities in that it has lots of students who are not interested in law school. Like many other universities, it has many majors that will seem odd choices for those interested in law. It is far from unique in this.</p>
<p>afan, what grad program did you work for?</p>
<p>can u pm me the place if you dont feel comfortable saying it here</p>
<p>well mony, i kinda agree w. you, but from my own experiences, i think that it doesnt exactly happen.</p>
<p>I know of several ppl from ILR and Hum Ec that are at columbia, duke, uva, northwestern law right now. I actually know more law ppl from those colleges than I do from Arts and Sci. i guess it doesn't matter?</p>