<p>Significantly less so, according to this Daily Princetonian article.</p>
<p>U</a>. trails Yale in law school acceptance rates - The Daily Princetonian</p>
<p>Do you think it has more to do with lower LSAT scores or grade deflated GPAs?</p>
<p>Now Nat, as a Harvard student, you should be able critically to analyze this article and see its weaknesses and certainly shouldn’t engage in gross exaggerations such as your characterization of the article as suggesting that Princeton graduates are “significantly less” successful than Yale graduates in law school admissions. </p>
<p>There’s no reason for any great angst here. The differences are certainly not “significant” even for this single year. The primary problem with the writer’s analysis is that it IS for a single year only. Given the relatively small number of students and alumni applying to law schools in any given year, the mix of those candidates and their relative success in law school admissions is quite variable. The results for 2007 or 2009 might have been quite different and no analysis like this would be meaningful without a multi-year comparison. Just as one example, in 2008, as the article notes, Yale applicants’ average LSAT score was 166 while Princeton graduates’ average was 164. In 2009 both Princeton and Yale were 165. There is variability here from year to year.</p>
<p>The problem of the tiny sample size is even greater when comparing acceptances at a single school to which only a fraction of the applicants may have applied. If one is trying to draw general conclusions from the results of a single year then both Princeton and Yale will have to agonize over the explanation for the “fact” that they are both so unsuccessful relative to MIT in their graduates’ chances for admission at Duke and the University of Michigan! </p>
<p>I would wager a bet that these percentages would look “significantly” different in another given year. When I applied to and was accepted at Harvard Law School the percentage of applicants accepted was higher than the 28% reported in the article and it might have been lower the following year.</p>
<p>Then, of course, in terms of the quality of those law school graduates, there’s this to be considered:</p>
<p>“Sotomayor is the 11th Supreme Court Justice to have received an undergraduate degree from Princeton which has now graduated more U.S. Supreme Court Justices than any other undergraduate institution in U.S. history.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/759961-princeton-alumna-trustee-confirmed-supreme-courts-first-latina-justice.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/759961-princeton-alumna-trustee-confirmed-supreme-courts-first-latina-justice.html</a></p>
<p>Hmmm. Higher percentages in 11 out of 12 top law schools … you attribute this to yearly fluctuation?</p>
<p>Do you REALLY believe the next year Princeton might trump Yale 11 to 1?</p>
<p>I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I wonder if there’s some correlation between the law school placement numbers and Princeton’s similarly lackluster performance in producing Rhodes Scholars over the past decade:</p>
<p>[U</a>. trails peers in Rhodes race - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/11/24/24549/]U”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/11/24/24549/)</p>
<p>I mean, Harvard, with just 20% more undergrads produces 150% more Rhodes Scholars!</p>
<p>Lackluster? 14 Rhodes scholars over the past 10 years isn’t lackluster (that’s at least one per year, which most schools can’t advertise); it’s just not as much as Harvard’s count (which is very impressive, of course). </p>
<p>But really, is using the number of Rhodes Scholars from each school a good indicator for which school is “better”? No, not when you’re talking about the performance of 35 out of about 16,000 students for Harvard (assuming there are 1600 people in each class at Harvard) vs. 14 out of about 12,500 students for Princeton. That’s a very small percentage of each class.</p>
<p>Nat, you’re quite the Harvard booster here on the Princeton board. In answer to your question, a careful reading of the data may help. </p>
<p>There may be a couple of “apples-to-oranges” problems. If you go to the Yale career services website you’ll find that the most recent report available online is for students entering law school in the fall of 2007. (The button linking to that report says it is for 2008 but the linked report itself clearly notes that it is for 2007 applicants/enrollees.) Yale may have the updated statistics for the 2008 application year but they’re not posted on their website.<br>
<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/visvi/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/visvi/students/gradprof/lawschool/media/lawstats.pdf</a></p>
<p>The statistics from Princeton, available on their website and used by the writer of the article are, as the article states, for Princeton applicants “awarded admission in 2008.” In other words, it appears that two different years are being compared here. The years 2008 and 2009 saw a larger number of law school applications due to the downturn in the economy with tougher competition for all, especially at the leading law schools, so acceptance rates tended to be lower than in 2007. [Interested</a> in Grad School? So Are a Lot of Folks - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/interested-in-grad-school-so-are-a-lot-of-people/]Interested”>Interested in Grad School? So Are a Lot of Folks - The New York Times)</p>
<p>The second issue here is that the applicant pools represented by both of these sets of numbers include alumni. In fact, the vast majority of the applicants are alumni. In Yale’s case 78% of the applicants in 2007 and I would guess the number for Princeton was something similar in 2008. There is absolutely no way of knowing the academic profile of this random group of alumni applying in any given year. While the profile of the group of current students applying is probably more predictable the profile of the alumni applying could change far more from one year to the next. So, to answer your question, yes, it’s certainly possible, even likely, that these numbers would change from year to year. When the numbers are so small and so close already, minor changes would produce noticeable swings.</p>
<p>So, we’re comparing statistics from one school for 2008 to statistics from another school for 2007. Even if the source data were from the same year, we have the problem that it is a single year comparison only and there is great variability due to the profile of the alumni who make up the majority of the applicant pools. I would have to say that the writer of the Daily Princetonian article could have been more careful in the analysis.</p>
<p>In the end, however, the differences here are very slight. Graduating from either school will give you a significant advantage in being admitted to the top law schools. (I personally had no problem at all.)</p>
<p>Finally, if you need the Harvard stroking, I’m happy to oblige. I was accepted as an undergraduate both there and at Yale but chose Princeton instead. It is undoubtedly true that in the Rhodes and Marshall competitions, Harvard has done far better than Princeton even on a per capita basis (though the difference becomes smaller when taking into account Princeton’s size relative to Harvard’s). In comparing Princeton and Yale, Princeton has had the advantage in both those competitions. In absolute numbers Princeton leads Yale in Marshall Scholars. On a per capita basis (again, taking into account Yale’s larger student body and number of applicants), Princeton leads Yale easily in the number of both Marshall and Rhodes Scholars. All three are fine schools and, as I have written numerous times before, they are not the only fine schools in this country. Motivated undergraduates can receive an equally spectacular education at literally dozens of U.S. universities.</p>
<p>I think Ptongrad rests his case.</p>
<p>But in response to your OP: there are simply a lot less students interested in law at Princeton. I don’t know why this is the case, but I have read an article talking about it. I think the difference can be broken down in this way:
15% differences in interests overall among undergrads
20% - difference in average LSAT score
40% - grade deflation and Yale’s grade inflation
10% - some students probably mentioned grade deflation in their interviews (why would you ever do this? Yet some people still do it)
5% - Yale’s inbreeding
10% - random fluctuations</p>
<p>What does it matter? If you’re stupid, it doesn’t matter if you graduated from Yale or princeton, you’re still not getting into Law school. Seriously, why do these things matter? They’re not you, and you’re not them. Just because a school has a fabulous acceptance rate into law school doesn’t automatically qualify you for acceptance.</p>
<p>^Nobody said anything about automatic qualification for acceptance. It matters because it shows law schools’ preferences for undergraduate education.</p>
<p>If you’re stupid it doesn’t matter if you graduate from Yale or Princeton. If you’re smart enough to be on the border between acceptance and rejection at Harvard Law, the OP claims it might matter.</p>
<p>Why is Princeton compared against Yale and MIT ?</p>
<p>We all know that Yale and MIT are more selective schools than Princeton.</p>
<p>Look at this web site. Only 17 Princeton students are enrolled at Yale Law.<br>
[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2009?2010 | Law School Students](<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/law-school-students.html]Yale”>http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/law-school-students.html)</p>
<p>82 from Yale College
63 froM Harvard College
36 from Stanford
26 from Columbia
20 from Brown
and
only 17 from Princeton</p>
<p>^Well, only ~40 Princeton students wanted to enroll at Yale law. Owned?</p>
<p>Why all the rancor? Law schools admissions are heavily determined by LSAT and GPA. If a college systematically lowers its GPA, why would one be surprised if law school admissions lag?</p>
<p>This is not a criticism of Princeton, but it seems a reasonable description of what has happened. I find it fascinating that Princeton would not release previous years law school admissions figures. Why not? It makes one suspect they would show what is expected- admissions rates dropped as GPAs went down.</p>
<p>Although it is true that the large number of alumni included in these figures means that some of the students accumulated many of their grades before the deflation, this has no effect on these data. They gave the mean GPA of all the Princeton applicants, so one can see that it was lower than for Yale. It does not matter when they got their grades. The Princeton applicants had lower grades and lower admission success rate.</p>
<p>Chill out, folks. The dangerous thing about places like CC, posters’ motivations aside, is that you can’t really vet people’s expertise. In this case, people with a somewhat limited understanding of what the data mean are jumping to a conclusion too far.</p>
<p>The way I see it, you have two things at play:
- Princeton is much more intellectually diverse than Yale.
- Very simply, Princetonians often have more lucrative/attractive options (than law school) that Yalies don’t.</p>
<p>Intellectual diversity:
- Princeton is traditionally a good deal more intellectually diverse than Yale. While both schools’ largest departments are the humanities and social sciences, 20% of Princeton is comprised of engineers. At Yale that figure is 2.9%. Princeton similar tends to have more students in mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc than Yale.
- In other words, if you randomly picked a Princetonian and a Yalie at the top of their respective classes, the Princeton whiz-kid is more likely to be the type who wants that gig at Google or D.E. Shaw, HLS be damned.</p>
<p>We simply have lucrative post-grad options at Princeton that our peers at Yale don’t:
- The most lucrative firms recruit much more aggressively at Princeton than at Yale. Top-notch PE firms like Blackstone and Bain Capital, for example, recruit only at Princeton, Harvard, and Wharton. The same is true for the quant trading firms (D.E. Shaw, Jane Street, etc) which simply don’t recruit at Yale. Goldman traditionally (excluding '09) takes approximately 30 from Princeton each year (across divisions, not just IB). They take ~10 from Yale.
- Even if you have, say, two history majors from Princeton and Yale, each near the top of of his class, the top student at Princeton is probably less interested in HLS than the Yalie. Frankly, if you’re a 21 year old near the top of your class at Princeton, and you can pick between (1) a prestigious private equity firm that’ll put ~150K in your wallet the year after you graduate and put you on the path to a top MBA school and (2) further schooling for three years (albeit a great education) that’ll put deeply in debt, there’s at least an okay shot you’ll consider option (1) seriously. And remember: the decision to head the finance route is traditionally done the summer after junior year, which means many of the very best Princetonians never even apply to law school.</p>
<p>Is it a surprise, then, that 210 Yalies applied to HLS, but only 123 Princetonians did? Hardly. Small differences in LSAT / acceptance percentages are also pretty easily explained away when you remember that, due to a diversity of interests and the ever-powerful Wall Street pull, the pool of Princetonians applying to law school is bound to be missing a fraction of Princeton’s most talented to an extent you likely don’t see at Yale.</p>
<p>In any case, this isn’t so much meant to be Princeton boosterism (though, yeah, it sounds like it) as much as frustration upon seeing posters take cheap shots at Princeton. In real life, the picture is much more complex and distorting the facts is unfair to some believing senior in high school.</p>
<p>To prospective applicants, I’d say this: Princeton and Yale? Great schools. Yale’s got some some legendary bankers (Schwarzman comes to mind), and, as PtonGrad2k can tell you, Princeton is a superb place for an aspiring lawyer to get an undergraduate education. Which you pick should depend more on what you want of your education. If you think you know what you want to do after college, you’re probably wrong, and you’ll regret making a decision on just that alone.</p>