<p>1) does ranking of your undergraduate school play a big part in getting into harvard or yale law schools or is it like med school where GPA and test scores determine mostly where you go?</p>
<p>2) I've been doing a lot of volunteer work at hospitals and such because i used to think that I wanted to be a doctor. Should I put this into my apps and how should I deal with this?</p>
<p>Thanks for any help!</p>
<p>Ranking is not as important as GPA and LSAT.</p>
<p>Volunteer work (of any kind) will not improve your chances of getting in to Harvard or Yale.</p>
<p>why the urgency?</p>
<p>Volunteer work is always good.</p>
<p>GPA and LSAT are the primary factors for getting into a top law school -- or any for that matter. However, for HYS, the quality of your schoo will probably be considered more seriously.</p>
<p>What, like you're the first person ever to have thought about med school before law school? </p>
<p>Volunteer work is good. For all they know, you want to do health law. Worried about it? That's what your personal statement is for. :)</p>
<p>GPA and LSAT are very important; however, quality of UG may be important at Yale, which is uber-selective. Also, as faculty read many of the applications, having the good school on your record can be a plus. Harvard is supposed to be very numbers-oriented.</p>
<p>I agree completely with ariesathena. It sounds like you have the makings of a fine personal statement there.</p>
<p>As far as quality of undergraduate program goes, it definitely matters, particularly if you're planning to apply to a top law school. (I've said this before on cc and I've gotten a lot of pushback.) The reality is that while top law schools take one or two or even a handfull of students from a very wide variety of colleges, they take 20, 30, 40 or even 50 students from top undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>Here is an example:</p>
<p>Undergraduate Schools of J.D. Students Enrolled at Harvard Law School in 2005-2006 (this comes straight from the HLS website)</p>
<p>These undergraduate schools are represented by more than 30 students each at HLS - Brown (51), Columbia (44), Cornell (40), Dartmouth (31), Duke (55), Georgetown (33), Harvard (232), Princeton (65), Stanford (91), UCal-Berkeley (43), UCLA (41), Penn (53) and Yale (126). </p>
<p>Here is sampling of many other schools that are represented - Amherst (16), BC (3), CUNY (1), Colgate (1), Denison (1), Emory (14), FSU (2), GW (8), Howard (8), Michigan State (3), NYU (17), Ohio State (5), Pepperdine (1), Penn State (7), Rice (17), SUNY Binghamton (3), Syracuse (1), Temple (1), Texas A&M (1), TCU (1), Trinity (1), Tulane (3), U of Alabama (2), UCSB (3), UConn (1), U of Georgia (7). U of Maryland (6), UNC (13), Notre Dame (12), U of San Francisco (2), UVA (23), U of Wisconsin (5), Wake Forest (1), Washington and Lee (5), Wichita State (2), Williams (13). </p>
<p>Now, there are over 120 undergraduate schools that send students to HLS. I argue that where you go to school for your undergraduate degree matters, in this case, because it's easier to get 1 of 91 spots that were given to Stanford students than 1 of 1 spots given to students from UConn. </p>
<p>Yes, I've made a lot of assumptions here. First, these are enrolled student numbers, but I'm assuming that they reflect to some degree the number of students from any particular undergraduate school who were admitted (this is Harvard Law, right?). Second, I'm generalizing Harvard's admissions numbers to other top law schools. I base this both on my own assumptions and my real life experience in law school and as an employer recruiting on campus at top schools. Third, I have not taken size of undergraduate institution into account here (i.e. a bigger college will lead to more applicants and more "chances" for admission from a particular undergraduate school). That said, there are huge schools that don't send very many students to HLS at all, despite their size. I've made other assumptions as well. </p>
<p>I hope that this is helpful to you.</p>
<p>wow thanks very much! exactly what i was looking for. one question: where did u find these numbers and are they up for other schools?</p>
<p>I am not positive if the numbers are readily available. I have tried looking at some other schools such as yale and columbia without any luck. However, here is harvard's:</p>
<p>I'm not sure whether other law schools offer such detailed information. My experience at my top ten law school, and the experience of my colleagues who went to top law schools, show generally the same trend. While many different undergraduate schools are represented in the student body, there will typically be only one or two students from each of them except for the top undergraduate schools, which will have many more representatives in the class. In my ltop 10 aw school (this is several years ago now), graduates of ivy league schools plus Stanford and a few other top schools made up about 50% of my class.</p>