Ranking For Undergrad With Highest Acceptance Rates To Law School?

Alexandre · March 7, 2009, 1:07pm

kwu, per capita representation isn't telling. At schools like Cal, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, Michigan and Northwestern, only 15%-20% of undergraduate students are interested in Law school. At schools like Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Yale and many LACs, I would say the number of undergraduate students interested in Law school is closer to 30%-40%. For this reason, per capita figures aren't telling.

Looking at placement rates is much more telling. Placement rates are indicative of applicant success. But unfortunately, not all universities publish their placement rates.

monydad · March 7, 2009, 3:44pm

As an applicant to college, the relevant question here is will attending a particular school materially enhance your personal chances of gaining admission to a top law school. You, the individual, are not an aggregate, you are a particular person with your own particular set of capabilties. So to what extent does the college attended affect your odds, personally.

Isn't that really the relevant issue at hand for most applicants to college, thinking about maybe a top law school down the road?

Not which college does better on some macro level, but which will do better by you, personally. Given your personal capabilities, which may differ from a particular college's aggregate profile.

And that's what's not so obvious to me from these statistics. If school x has a higher % than school y, but
-school x is a classic liberal arts college where a large proportion of students desire law school, but school y is a multi-college university with many scientific-oriented specialty programs, hence much higher % students don't want law school;
-students at school x are on average more capable than students at school y;

Then the fact that school x is more highly represented does not really indicate that your personal chances would be enhanced by attending school x vs. school y. Per the previous example I gave, one's chances might actually be worse, coming out of a pool comprised completely of the country's most capable students. Unless they all get in. Maybe if such schools don't show a 75% placement success rate they have actually shafted many of their highly capable students, who would have done better as bigger fish from school y.

What is relevant is, if you are capable, will attendance at school x enhance your chance of getting in. Or actually hurt your chances of getting in. If 80% of school x students are both interested and capable, and 40% of them get in, but only 1% of school y students are interested and as capable as the school x students, and half of that 1% gets in, then school y may in fact be the better choice.

I guess if there was data comparing success rates of applicants with comparable LSATs and (normalized/ adjusted) GPAs from the various colleges, that might get closer to what is really at issue.

Greybeard · March 7, 2009, 6:18pm

Some of the sites I linked to above include appliants' LSAT information, both for the whole pool of applicants to a school, and for those who were offered admission.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 6:38pm

[quote]
I agree with you the_prestige. Cal's numbers look very fishy to me. Not just to HLS, but to the rest of the Law schools.

[/quote]

Very fishy. Whether its an honest case of having "incomplete" data or its outright manipulation -- either way, those numbers look very fishy.

cherokeejew · March 7, 2009, 6:51pm

I don't see how it's fishy for Berkeley to post the info they have, although I can see that it's not particularly useful. They openly disclose: "The Top 20 Law Schools & California Law Schools report is based upon a subset of data and consists only of students who agreed to report their admissions data." We know there were 48 Berkeley students at Harvard in 2006-2007, but the site reports 12, 5 and 4 matriculating in the previous 3 years (a total of 21), so it is clear that the agreement rate is quite low (especially since those of the HLS caliber are probably more likely to report).

As always, though, with these inevitably recurring threads, only statistics which control for LSAT would be remotely useful in judging which undergraduate (if any) helps to get into law school.

Greybeard · March 7, 2009, 6:52pm

The site with the numbers for Cal says they come from the Law School Admissions Counsel. The site with the Yale numbers said the same thing.

I haven't been able to find the school-by-school data at LSAC; it may be available only to registered subscribers. (Subscriptions are free, but seem to be geared toward people applying now to law school. They do require a social security number to subscribe.)

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 7:22pm

[quote]
don't see how it's fishy for Berkeley to post the info they have, although I can see that it's not particularly useful. They openly disclose: "The Top 20 Law Schools & California Law Schools report is based upon a subset of data and consists only of students who agreed to report their admissions data." We know there were 48 Berkeley students at Harvard in 2006-2007, but the site reports 12, 5 and 4 matriculating in the previous 3 years (a total of 21), so it is clear that the agreement rate is quite low (especially since those of the HLS caliber are probably more likely to report).

[/quote]

Ah ha! Thank you for posting that. I actually hadn't seen the actual website / link, but I knew those numbers were low.

So yeah, I'll stick with the per capita ranking as those numbers are verifiable.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 8:00pm

[quote]
As an applicant to college, the relevant question here is will attending a particular school materially enhance your personal chances of gaining admission to a top law school. You, the individual, are not an aggregate, you are a particular person with your own particular set of capabilties. So to what extent does the college attended affect your odds, personally.

Isn't that really the relevant issue at hand for most applicants to college, thinking about maybe a top law school down the road?

Not which college does better on some macro level, but which will do better by you, personally. Given your personal capabilities, which may differ from a particular college's aggregate profile.

And that's what's not so obvious to me from these statistics. If school x has a higher % than school y, but
-school x is a classic liberal arts college where a large proportion of students desire law school, but school y is a multi-college university with many scientific-oriented specialty programs, hence much higher % students don't want law school;
-students at school x are on average more capable than students at school y;

Then the fact that school x is more highly represented does not really indicate that your personal chances would be enhanced by attending school x vs. school y. Per the previous example I gave, one's chances might actually be worse, coming out of a pool comprised completely of the country's most capable students. Unless they all get in. Maybe if such schools don't show a 75% placement success rate they have actually shafted many of their highly capable students, who would have done better as bigger fish from school y.

What is relevant is, if you are capable, will attendance at school x enhance your chance of getting in. Or actually hurt your chances of getting in. If 80% of school x students are both interested and capable, and 40% of them get in, but only 1% of school y students are interested and as capable as the school x students, and half of that 1% gets in, then school y may in fact be the better choice.

I guess if there was data comparing success rates of applicants with comparable LSATs and (normalized/ adjusted) GPAs from the various colleges, that might get closer to what is really at issue.

[/quote]

Monydad, respectfully disagree with this thinking.

Take a look at the highly represented schools at HLS / YLS outside of HYPS: Amherst, Swarthmore, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams. What do they have in common? The nuanced analysis goes beyond a simple deduction that "the majority of these students want to attend law school, so of course they would have a higher representation at Harvard."

By that kind of thinking then, regardless of which school they end up, the majority of these graduates should end up going on to law school regardless of the ranking of those law schools -- but that just isn't the case.

Take a look at this quote from Brown's admissions site:

<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html</a>

[quote]
92 to 95% of Brown students are admitted to one of their top three law school choices. For business schools the figure is nearly 100%. Finally, Brown consistently ranks in the top 5 colleges **in the country in terms of the percentage of students accepted into **medical school.

[/quote]

Now of course, as I mentioned on another post, we should take what schools say about their own student bodies with a grain of salt, but it makes the point.

The takeaways I get from looking at those statistics aren't "these are a bunch of students destined to pursue law", the takeaways are [students from A / W / B / D]:

1) Are among the most highly qualified students out there, period (regardless of whether they want to pursue law or not).
2) For those that do, the courses / pre law curriculum at these schools attract the best and brightest (from both a student and faculty perspective) -- so, yes, these are particularly strong places to pursue pre law (along with H / Y / P / S).
3) The courses / pre law curriculum generally prepare these students extremely well for the rigors of law school at the top programs
4) Why? Because if year in and year out a program such as Harvard Law or Yale Law continually selected a high number of Brown and Dartmouth and Amherst grads, and they just couldn't keep up, would they continuously keep going back to that source? No.
5) The fact that they do validates that the quality is absolutely there
6) This creates, over time, a virtuous circle: top students go to these schools because they have a strong historical "feeder" relationship with the top grad schools --> the top grad schools continually "go to this well" because they graduate highly qualified students --> leading to high historical representation at the grad schools --> top students go to these schools because they have a strong representation, etc... REBOOT the circle 
6) Higher historical representation also provides students with an existing network to leverage (i.e. vs. say if you were a student coming from an obscure undergrad that never had a previous HLS grad)

But back to the point. If Amherst / Swarthmore / Brown / Dartmouth / Williams were simply glorified pre-law school programs, how does that explain their strong showing in other top grad programs (medicine and business)?

Finally, where did these schools rank in the WSJ Feeder School Ranking (which looked at top grad schools beyond just law schools -- i.e. medicine and business):

<ul>
<li>Williams, no. 5 (i.e. ranked right after H, Y, P, S)</li>
<li>Dartmouth, no. 7</li>
<li>Amherst, no. 9</li>
<li>Swarthmore, no. 10</li>
<li>Brown, no. 12</li>
</ul>

where did UMich and Cal rank?
- UMich, no. 30
- Cal, no. 41

RML · March 7, 2009, 8:40pm

monydad: I agree with you one hundred and one percent.

the_prestige:
all I was saying is that schools like Berkeley, UMich, UCLA, and to some extent, UVa, are huge and mostly run by departments. Meaning, each department has its own missions and visions, thus they work almost independently. They are more similar to the whole Claremont Colleges rather than just one of its colleges like Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Scripps and so on. If we would follow your logic, then Pomona, McKenna, Scripps and so on would appear superior to Harvey Mudd, which is a science, math, comsci and engineering school. But are those sisters schools of Mudd really superior to Mudd? I don't think so.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 8:55pm

[quote]
all I was saying is that schools like Berkeley, UMich, UCLA, and to some extent, UVa, are huge and mostly run by departments. Meaning, each department has its own missions and visions, thus they work almost independently. They are more similar to the whole Claremont Colleges rather than just one of its colleges like Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Scripps and so on. If we would follow your logic, then Pomona, McKenna, Scripps and so on would appear superior to Harvey Mudd, which is a science, math, comsci and engineering school. But are those sisters schools of Mudd really superior to Mudd? I don't think so.

[/quote]

WSJ Feeder Ranking:

<ul>
<li>Pomona, no. 13 (right after Brown, just ahead of UChicago)</li>
<li>Claremont McKenna, no. 22 (right after Northwestern, ahead of Johns Hopkins and Cornell)</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd? Not ranked.</li>
</ul>

rjkofnovi · March 7, 2009, 8:59pm

^^^^^Which just proves the point RML was making.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 9:07pm

[quote]
^^^^^Which just proves the point RML was making.

[/quote]

Huh?

Here is a direct quote from above:

[quote]
If we would follow your logic, then Pomona, McKenna, Scripps and so on would appear superior **to **Harvey Mudd, which is a science, math, comsci and engineering school. But are those sisters schools of Mudd really superior to Mudd? **I don't think so**.

[/quote]

Let's translate that simply: RML says that Pomona / McKenna ARE NOT > Harvey Mudd.

However, the **WSJ Feeder Ranking **clearly demonstrates that:

Pomona / Claremont McKenna are superior to Harvey Mudd: Pomona / McKenna ARE > Harvey Mudd.

This absolutely proves RML's point false. What posts are you reading exactly? Would you like to respond to that rjkofnovi?

RML · March 7, 2009, 9:35pm

the_prestige, your lack of data doesn't say anything either. Besides, I don't think the WSJ ranking is accurate.

Why is Mudd not in the ranking? Is it because it's not a great school?

Alexandre · March 7, 2009, 9:47pm

the_prestige, the WSJ isn't very telling. For one thing, it has a heavy East Coast bias. 11 of the 15 programs selected are located in the East Coast. Not that I see anything wrong with Michigan's and Cal's WSJ placement rating mind you. Their #18 and #21 standing among research universities puts them in the same league as Caltech, Cornell, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rice and UVa. But we should acknowlege that many of those schools are not located on the East coast and as such, a survey as East-coast centric as the WSJ probably does not favor them.

Secondly, 4 of the 5 schools (Dartmouth being the only exception with Tuck) you point to have no top 25 professional graduate programs of their own, which means that their students invariably must chose to attend another school for graduate school. You may not think that's a big deal, but generally speaking, students at universities that offer excellent undergraduate experiences (like Cal or Michigan) will tend to retain their top students should they have top ranked graduate programs. That's certainly the case with Michigan. With the exception of just Harvard and Yale Law school, Michigan students will tend to chose Michigan Law over most other Law schools. Those that do leave either leave in favor of Harvard, Yale or Stanford Law schools, or they leave for a hefty scholarship at a top 25 but not top 10 Law school. Only seldom will a Michigan student turn down Michigan law to attend a N14 Law program other than Harvard, Yale or Stanford. Fortunately for Michigan, its law school was selected as one of the top 5 Law schools by the WSJ. But Michigan students are also far more likely to chose Michigan Medical school over all Medical schools save perhaps Harvard Medical and Johns Hopkins. That's partly because Michigan has a top 10 Medical school of its own, but also partly because in-state tuition is significantly lower (to the tune of $15,000/year in tuition alone) when it comes to Medical school. That significant discount does not apply to Law school or Ross for some reason, but you can be sure it plays a significant part in keeping Medical school applicants in-state.

Finally, tell me the_prestige, what percentage of students at Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Williams apply to Law school? 30%? Maybe 40% or even higher? At Michigan (and schools like Cal, Caltech, Cornell, MIT and Northwestern), it is roughly 15%-20%. Out of over 5,500-6,000 students who graduate from Michigan each year, roughly 900 (15%) - 1,200 (21%) apply to Law school, depending on the year. Again, most universities do not publish this sort of information, but I am fairly certain that significantly more than 20% of students graduating from Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Williams apply to Law school.

For the three reasons listed above, I do not think the WSJ is very telling. It is certainly an interesting read, but it should not be used as an absolute rank. Schools like Cal, Cornell, MIT, Michigan and Northwestern (an to a greater extent, schools like Caltech and Harvey Mudd) have far fewer pre-law, pre-MBA and pre-medical students (as a percentage of their overall undergraduate student bodies) than schools like Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Williams.

Now don't get me wrong. I certainly believe that where one goes to college influences their chances of admission into top graduate professional programs, particularly top MBA programs and top Law schools. An applicant from a top university will probably be given a leg-up on the competition. However, I do not believe that graduate programs differentiate between top universities. It is highly unlikely that a candidate will be given less importance when applying from Cal or Michigan than when applying from Brown or Dartmouth. Students from those universities will all be given a lot of credit but ultimately, will be evaluated purely by their credentials (GPA, LSAT/GMAT/MCAT) and their personal essays. In the case of MBA programs and Medical schools, professional recommendations and interviews will also weigh heavily. But there is no evidence to support the claim that graduate school admissions committees give applicants from Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth or Swarthmore preference to applicants from Cal or Michigan. 16% of Cal and Michigan students who applied to Harvard Law school in 2007 were admitted. 25% of Stanford applicants to HLS were admitted. That is not a huge difference. I would certainly like to see Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Williams admission rates into HLS in 2007. I doubt they are great then 25%. In fact, I would be surprised if they were higher than 20%.

RML · March 7, 2009, 9:49pm

the prestige, here's your ranking:

Rank Name Ratio
1 Harvard University 6.80
2 Yale University 11.69
3 Stanford University 20.67
4 Amherst College 22.68
5 Princeton University 22.76
6 Swarthmore College 28.90
7 Brown University 29.98
8 Dartmouth College 30.69
9 Williams College 31.47
10 Columbia University 36.07
11 Rice University 40.11
12 Duke University 42.05
13 Pomona College 42.56
14 University of Pennsylvania 44.77
15 Georgetown University 48.47
16 Brandeis University 67.18
17 Cornell University 69.07
**18 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 71.14*
19 University of California-Berkeley 85.44
20 Emory University 89.93
*

Notice how MIT sucked in your ranking?

This is the point I'm trying to make. MIT is one of the top 5 US institutions. Yet, according to you (or your ranking) it only places at number 19.

The only reason why it's ranked number 19 is because MIT -- by its very nature -- does not prepare their students to enter into law school. It's an engineering and science school. They make scientists and engineers that are said to be some of the finest in the world. Scholars go there to become scientists and engineers, not to better prepare themselves to law school. But according to you (or your ranking) MIT is inferior to schools like Brandies, Georgetown, Penn, Duke, Rice, etc. Come on...!

And, Caltech did not even make it in your ranking. Is Caltech a substandard, diploma-mill school?

rjkofnovi · March 7, 2009, 9:55pm

Medicine, business, and law are not what most graduates of Harvey Mudd are considering for their careers. If you added Harvey Mudd into the numbers at Pomona and Claremont McKenna, their WSJ feeder ranking would suffer. It's no different at schools like Michigan. If you subtract the schools/colleges of engineering, nursing, pharmacy, architecture, music, etc; their per capita numbers would rise along with their WSJ feeder ranking.

bjomountsi09 · March 7, 2009, 10:11pm

It would be interesting if we could dissect this into certain programs at different schools, you know what I mean? Like Michigan public policy (very strong) vs. Cornell ILR (which is supposed to have crazy law school placement), this would be especially beneficial for large research type schools that tend to get shafted in the rankings unlike smaller LAC type schools like Dartmouth or Brown.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 10:31pm

[quote]
Why is Mudd not in the ranking? Is it because it's not a great school?

[/quote]

You can draw your own conclusions, I'm not going to do that for you.

But clearly, the WSJ Ranking and even the US News World Report LAC rankings have Pomona (no. 6) / McKenna (no. 11) ranked higher than Harvey Mudd (no. 14), so it begs the question, what is your point?

You are the ones who have dragged them into this discussion. The only firm takeaways I see is that Pomona and to a lesser extent McKenna are absolutely a great places to go to undergrad if one aspires to attend a top tier grad school.

Alexandre · March 7, 2009, 10:39pm

The_prestige, Harvey Mudd is ranked #14 among LACs. CMC is ranked #11 and Pomona is ranked #6. First of all, the USNWR isn't very accurate in determining actual academic quality. Its ranking is based on a formula designed to reach a specific outcome. But even if the USNWR were accurate, I don't think there is a significant difference between #6 and #14 and there certainly isn't a significant difference between #11 and #14. But back to that formula. Looking at it, I would say that the primary reason for the difference in ranking is Harvey Mudd's relatively lower graduation rate, which isn't surprising since Engineers generally graduate at a lower rate than Liberal Arts majors. If you remove graduation rate from the equation, I'd say that all three would be ranked around the same.

But if you insist on drawing conclusions, I would say that Harvey Mudd is as good as CMC and Pomona.

the_prestige · March 7, 2009, 10:41pm

[quote]
Medicine, business, and law are not what most graduates of Harvey Mudd are considering for their careers. If you added Harvey Mudd into the numbers at Pomona and Claremont McKenna, their WSJ feeder ranking would suffer. It's no different at schools like Michigan. If you subtract the schools/colleges of engineering, nursing, pharmacy, architecture, music, etc; their per capita numbers would rise along with their WSJ feeder ranking.

[/quote]

I see. Now I get your point. But, respectfully, the facts are facts. We can add and subtract this, that or the other, for our own purposes -- but in the end, there needs to be consistency -- we can't just "make up" institutions along the way or ignore certain sections just to make a point.

Thread		Replies	Views
percentage of going to Law school? Law School	15	142	April 15, 2021
The elusive college to grad school numbers Transfer Students	11	85	April 16, 2021
Law School (Harvard, Yale, UVA) - Undergrad Representation Duke University	10	351	April 17, 2021
I'm curious... Law School	7	63	April 15, 2021
"Where Harvard Law Students Went For Undergrad" College Search & Selection	158	8164	April 15, 2021

Ranking For Undergrad With Highest Acceptance Rates To Law School?

POPULAR STATES

SEARCH SAT SCORES

SEARCH ACT SCORES

SEARCH GPA’S

Ranking For Undergrad With Highest Acceptance Rates To Law School?

Related topics

POPULAR STATES

SEARCH SAT SCORES

SEARCH ACT SCORES

SEARCH GPA’S

CONNECT WITH US