<p>RML, why not? Stanford is one of the best universities in the world.</p>
<p>If I had to go back and choose, Stanford would probably be my no. 1 or 2 choice. When I was graduating it was barely in my top 5.</p>
<p>"Except for the WSJ Feeder ranking, of course."</p>
<p>the_prestige, the WSJ feeder study does not list admission rates into top graduate programs. It merely lists the percentage of students attending top graduate programs from the total student population. It does not consider how many students apply based on actual demand and interest. So no, the WSJ does not provide evidence in favor of one argument or the other. Don't get me wrong, I like the WSJ study and I find it useful, but it does not measure a university's efficacy of placing undergrads into top graduate programs. I want to see actual admissions rates. Like I made a comparative list between Cal, Cornell, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. Yale and Princeton have a clear advantage over Cal, Cornell and Michiggan, Stanford has a clear but not major advantage over those three. Cal, Cornell and Michigan are pretty much in the same league. My contention is that other private universities, such as Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern etc..., would not have much higher acceptance rates into top graduate programs than Cal, Cornell and Michigan. If you (or anybody else on this forum) have evidence that ACCEPTANCE RATES into top graduate programs from schools like Brown, Dartmouth and Northwestern are indeed as high as acceptance rates into top graduate programs from Yale and Princeton, please share them with us. </p>
<p>"You and Alexandre continue to debunk every study out there that doesn't tout Michigan as being directly before the Big Five, even when a majority of the data out there confirms that private schools besides HYPSM have a slight advantage over Michigan."</p>
<p>ring<em>of</em>fire, if your point of view were that attending private elites such as Brown or Dartmouth gave students a "slight" advantage over attending a public elite such as Cal or Michigan, I would not object. You are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion would be sufficiently begnign, albeit unsubstantiated, for me to respect it. Of course, I would still hold on to my belief that attending a private elite such as Brown or Dartmouth would provide undergrads absolutely no advantage overattending a public elite such as Cal or Michigan when applying to graduate programs. But with if your contention were that the private elites only offered a slight advantage, our two point of views could in fact coexist quite harmoniously. But saying that privates offer only a slight advantage is a major departure from your previous claim that private elites offered a MAJOR advantage over attending a public elite.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This would never happen at Stanford and Harvard because everyone is passionate about academics and will buckle down at some point or another, even if certain students are party hardy.
[/quote]
Yeah, they warned me about some Kennedy fellow at Harvard and some Bush guy at Yale...</p>
<p>
[quote]
In addition, a student who goes to a lower ranked school may be driven to hang out with the "wrong crowd" and ruin his gradees and LSAT preparations.
[/quote]
You mean I might hang around some lacrosse players and get busted?</p>
<p>ring<em>of</em>fire, the ratio of "wrong crowd" students at a school like Cal or Michigan does not far exceed (if at all) the ratio of such students at peer privates institutions. And since when are slightly weaker students considered the "wrong crowd"? Last time I checked, the "wrong crowd" is a negative term used to refer to people of questionable ethical character and not people with slightly lower SAT scores.</p>
<p>"I like the WSJ study and I find it useful, but it does not measure a university's efficacy of placing undergrads into top graduate programs. I want to see actual admissions rates."</p>
<p>Again, actual admissions rates won't tell you a "university's efficacy" unless you normalize for applicants of truly comparable profiles, but for the school.</p>
<p>You all are operating here as if every applicant from Dartmouth was an identical applicant, and every applicant from a large, multi-college university was an identical applicant to every other applicant from that large multi-college university.</p>
<p>In fact, every college admits, and graduates, students with a distribution of aptitudes and abiltities (and interests) . Some moreso than others. In particular, large, multi-college universities with separate admissions by college are likely to present a wider distribution of interests and abilities than a school that is a liberal arts college only.</p>
<p>I myself attended a multi-college university whose students represented a wide range of academic and personal capabilties. The students who were truly capable were accepted to the finest graduate institutions in their areas of interest. Less capable students by and large were not. In short, people pretty much got what they deserved, on their own merits. So what is the efficacy of the university? Is the goal that, because of the university name, the idiots are likely to also be admitted to harvard law school?
I don't think that happens much at these alleged "feeder schools, either. I think they probably just admit a higher proportion of truly outstanding students in the first place.</p>
<p>But if they have outstanding students in, and those students achieve outstanding results out, this says nothing necessarily about their college's efficacy. In fact, as I argued earlier, their efficacy might actually be horrible. If 50% of their class consists of truly outstanding individuals who want to go to law school, and only 35% get into top law schools, then their efficacy is in actuality terrible.</p>
<p>Wheareas a university where only 15% of students,who want to go to law school ,are as talented as the "good" applicants from the above college , but 18% get into top law schools- actually can be considered to have higher efficacy.</p>
<p>You will not discern their true efficacy by looking at aggregate admit % by school. Unless you represent all applicants from a school as being the same as each other. They aren't.</p>
<p>"It's only when "other things" are truly "equal"---i.e., when the adcom is choosing between candidates with identical or near-identical stats---that the candidate from the top-tier school may have a slight edge."</p>
<p>I think that's right.</p>
<p>I do think that there's a positive kind of peer pressure that goes on at HYPwhatever. I spent half my college years at Bryn Mawr and half at Harvard. Yes, a smaller percentage of the BMC class is interested in law school compared to the H class. But within the law-interested group at each school, the peer group expectations are quite different. There's an assumption at HC that you aim for the top, period. Going to a law school outside the top 6 is a serious disappointment; one outside the top 14 is a catastrophe. The counseling is also completely different: BMC and Haverford share one law school admissions advisor, who never went to law school. At Harvard, there are two law school resident advisors living in every 400-student upperclass House, all of whom are either HLS students or JDs. The upshot is that YHS Law seem like accessible and realistic options, not pipe dreams. Every single H student interested in law school gets maximum encouragement to reach the top.</p>
<p>Now, for college applicants, that aim-for-the-top attitude is a bad thing IMHO. But with law schools, it's quite rational. There's a huge difference in the opportunities available to you as a graduate of a top 10 law school versus a tier 2 law school. To some extent, that difference follows you your whole career.</p>
<p>All these % lists over-reward institutions merely for having the least diverse(by interests and/ or abilities) student bodies.</p>
<p>This came up in the discussions of %pHd lists, where once the %engineering phd lists were posted. (Then pulled, when it demonstrated this point, which ran contrary to the notion of purported superiority of certain non-diverse LACs).Surprise, surprise, high on the lists were a number of schools with middling student body capabilities, but whose name all ended with "tech".</p>
<p>Do you feel that a qualified engineering grad of Brown, Yale or Dartmouth would really be at a disadvantage over an engineering grad of Worcestor Poytech or Clarkson Institute of Technology when applying for engineering graduate programs? I certainly don't. Yet all these tech schools would show up higher than Brown, Yale or Dartmouth on a % engineering PhD list. Why? Because a much greater % of their student bodies at these tech schools are interested in engineering PhDs, whereas most students at Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth have other interests. Pretty meaningless then isn't it?</p>
<p>If one looked at the undergrad origins of students in top engineering programs, perhaps WPI would show up with a higher proportion than Brown or Dartmouth. Which would again be pretty meaningless.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You mean I might hang around some lacrosse players and get busted?
[/quote]
ouch... :D</p>
<p>Let me get this straight:
High SAT -> admitted to elite private -> get high grades due to rampant grade inflation -> ride elite private university coattails to top graduate programs -> you've arrived.</p>
<p>So, essentially, your whole life is determined by what you did on a 3.5-hour test in the 11th grade.
No wonder kids stress about this stuff... :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Re: Bryn Mawr vs. Harvard:
My 2007 college book shows the 75%ile Sats at Bryn Mawr = the 25%ile at Harvard.
My guess is that a portion of that lower 25%ile has in many cases some other distinctions as well.</p>
<p>Harvard students should have those expectations, because they are on the whole among the most highly selected group in the country. If not them, then who?</p>
<p>It would be kind of pointless advising a cohort of students who were not capable of being admittted to Harvard Law School, on their individual merits, to apply.</p>
<p>But I do take the point that if you are at a school that caters to this high-achieving group you should expect to have advising targeted to this cohort. Plus one for that. To be balanced with the possibiility that maybe 75% of this cohort is talented enough to be admitted to a top tier law school, yet not all of them will be admitted due to self-competition, crowding out, and possibly limitations on how many a given law school will take from a particular undergrad college. For example, I didn't see Harvard data, but the tables presented earlier showed only 53 out of 117 applicants from Yale were admitted to Cornell law school. Like Harvard, Yale undergrads are among the most highly selected cohort in the country. Maybe absent self-competition 25 more of them actually ought to have been admitted.</p>
<p>I guess the interesting question would be: do those graduates at the large more diverse universities, that desire and might reasonably achieve top law schools, have advising comparable to that at the more homogeneous colleges, and tailored to their particular objectives.</p>
<p>"It would be kind of pointless advising a cohort of students who were not capable of being admittted to Harvard Law School, on their individual merits, to apply."</p>
<p>I don't agree, at least not across the board. Yes, advising should be realistic and encourage students to apply to matches and safeties. But before I got to H, YHS law schools seemed like another planet. They didn't even seem like places mortals go. I'm not saying BMC could place 15% of its graduating class at HLS the way Harvard College does even if it wanted to (which it doesn't). But I think they could be placing more than one every 2-3 years, which has been the pattern this decade. Some students I knew were just settling for schools in the Philadelphia area, and no one was pushing them to be more aggressive in their search.</p>
<p>ring<em>of</em>fire wrote:</p>
<p>"(1)In addition, a student who goes to a lower ranked school may be driven to hang out with the "wrong crowd" and ruin his gradees and LSAT preparations. (2) This would never happen at Stanford and Harvard because everyone is passionate about academics and will buckle down at some point or another, even if certain students are party hardy."</p>
<p>Re (1): the converse is true as well. A 1450 SAT, A-student in the top 2% rank at HS who is admitted to Stanford will likely be in the middle of the pack. How will such a student, accostomed to being at the top of the class and all-everything, respond to being ... average ... in the new environment? SMALL FISH, BIG POND. Some get depressed, slosh on through with an ever eroding self esteem, and graduate middle or lower end of the class, while others take the challenge to rise to the top of yet another mountain as they always have. BIG FISH, BIG POND. It's a roll of the dice.</p>
<p>(2) that just makes me smile and wonder if you've ever been a student at either campus :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
My 2007 college book shows the 75%ile Sats at Bryn Mawr = the 25%ile at Harvard.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Don't forget that LSAT = 50% of law school admissions. Thus, the high testers who just happen to attend Harvard (YP) have an innate advantage before they ever set foot in Cambridge. Those same students are capable of scoring a 170+ regardless of which undergrad college they attend.</p>
<p>to all --</p>
<p>What if the 1485 SAT scorer (the average of the Harvard 25/75 data points) at Harvard instead attended William and Mary?</p>
<p>My assumption is that said student would score the same on the LSAT four years hence, and have the same chance of admission to law school, as applying from Harvard. This is assuming of course the law school adcom will view this student's 3.6 from W&M represents the same performance as the 3.5 from Harvard, which I think they're likely to get right.</p>
<p>Or my high school buddy who attended the University of Houston... then went on to Harvard Law School. He was smarter than me in high school by a long shot, and my attending a top 5 college and he U of Houston didn't change that one little bit -- he was still much smarter than me four years later.</p>
<p>We are what we are. Where we attend college does not change our clockspeed, drive, creativity, or ability to test well.</p>
<p>and the fact that you went to a school so much better probably fueled his desire to get into a top law school, so his drive would have likely gone up.</p>
<p>DunninLA,</p>
<p>My take on that is those students may not get into HLS anymore. I mean, not all of them anymore. The reason being is that, they might not get the grades that they'll need to get into HLS because W&M is known to have been practicing grade deflation. Another thing is that, the kind of assistance those students get from H might not also be the same kind of assistance they'll get at W&M. But any W&M student admitted into HLS is just as competent as any student from Harvard undergrad who got into HLS. And, like kb10 has said, the desire (maybe brought about by cultural factor at a particular school) is intense at schools that are extremely selective.</p>
<p>I just noticed that I made a typo on the table for Yale graduates applying to Cornell (I typoed the Duke info for Duke and Cornell.) 78 applied to Cornell, and 33 were accepted (42%).</p>
<p>Here are the median LSAT scores and GPAs for for Yale and Stanford grads who were accepted at six top law schools:</p>
<p>Harvard Law School: Yale grads, 173, 3.81; Stanford grads, 172.5, 3.83
Yale Law School: Yale grads, 172.9, 3.84; Stanford grads, 173.7, 3.87
Stanford Law School: Yale grads, 170.7, 3.79; Stanford grads, 170.8, 3.83
Columbia Law School: Yale grads, 171, 3.72; Stanford grads, 170.4, 3.77
NYU Law School: Yale grads 170.6, 3.74; Stanford grads, 17.02, 3.77
Berkeley Law: Yale grads 170.6, 3.74; Stanford grads, 168.3, 3.75</p>
<p>Similar info for Berkeley grads in 2007:</p>
<p>Harvard Law School: 172, 3.87
Yale Law School: Not available
Stanford Law School: 173, 3.9
Columbia Law School: 170, 3.86
NYU Law School: Not available
Berkeley Law: 169, 3.81</p>
<p>"We are what we are. Where we attend college does not change our clockspeed, drive, creativity, or ability to test well."</p>
<p>There's definitely some truth to this, but I'm not convinced that colleges can't change things like drive and creativity.</p>
<p>Here's an example from a non-academic setting. I tried out for a cappella groups at Bryn Mawr. By any measure, the groups there, at that time, were not very competitive. They didn't get many auditionees per spot, there was just one round of callbacks, the group sound wasn't that good. Plus, two of the three groups were all-women, and thus had twice as much room for female voices as a coed group. I got one callback, no offers, in two tries.</p>
<p>At Harvard, I auditioned for the three co-ed a cappella groups, which had an audition pool of ~100 women. I was called back to all three and survived three rounds of callbacks to get into my first choice...one of only 4 altos to make it into any of the co-ed groups that year. These groups were, and are, excellent.</p>
<p>I'd had no additional vocal training in between. What changed? I think my confidence did. I think I was inspired by my peers. I saw a bunch of kids doing something that blew my mind, and I was going to do anything in my power to be a part of it. And just being on that campus, which I'd thought was impossible, made me think that I could reach more goals that looked impossible.</p>
<p>I think there's an academic parallel here. Some people are just bad at taking tests, sure, just like some people are crummy singers. But you can get a really different performance out of the same kid depending on where you put them and what they believe they might be capable of.</p>
<p>Hanna... some respond well to being small fish, big pond. Some don't. I'd say it's about 50/50, but one doesn't really know until college because ALL the admitted students to the top 10 or so schools were always big fish, small & big pond.</p>
<p>A student's choice to remain a big fish (let's call that top 3% of HS, top 20% at college) is a critical one and 18 year olds often have no appreciation for the variance in the way people respond to setbacks and challenges. -- some positive, some not so. After all, we are not computing machines. Each of us hits a wall at some point and how we respond... it's a coin flip. To choose to become a small fish (middle of the pack at CHYMPS) has an unknown outcome. Being top 20% at a school say ranked 20-30 is a more predictible outcome. I chose CHYMPS and things have worked out fine. I know others who chose CHYMPS as well who simply couldn't cope with not being all-everything anymore.</p>