I’m going to go out on a limb here and say all things – GPA, LSAT, etc. – being equal the kid from Dartmouth gets in over the kid from Bama.
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Tuscaloosa’s 220 feet above sea level, and it hasn’t snowed since Reconstruction. But the football’s elite and I’ve heard the Greek scene is flourishing.
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May be - don’t know - but I’d say work experience will play a much more important role than where you attend - + LSAT. These graduate schools know there are brilliant kids at most every school but of course, not at the same concentrated level of the elite. That test (unlike for a TO school) is the great equalizer.
One thing you’ll see more and more from top schools - POC and work experience - at Yale, the average age is 25 with only 12% directly out of undergrad (another reason the school name would matter less - unless one assumes “better” work experience comes from an elite school. Yale has students from schools like Boise State, Elon, FAU, FIU, Marshall, Michigan State, Alabama, UTD, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Western Washington and the list goes on.
Good luck whatever OP decides.
HLS 1L Profile and Facts - Harvard Law School | Harvard Law School
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Would it be too extravagant to interpret your point here to be that those who might want to one day attend Harvard Law School should choose to do their undergrad at Georgia Southern on a full scholarship, as long as the GPA’s strong and the LSAT is 
? At some point, we have to assume that admissions committees at the nation’s most prestigious law schools will favor what they know – kids from Penn, Amherst, and Dartmouth – over kids from schools they’ve literally never heard from (and not necessarily because they aren’t paying attention). Sure, they want to diversify their classes; they like to point out they brought in that one kid from University of West Florida. But it’s a stretch to suggest that the existence of a single representative from such schools allows us to conclude that the school you attend as an undergrad is irrelevant. While I’ve never sat in on an admission committee meeting at Harvard or elsewhere, I feel confident a degree from Swarthmore is going to mean something to them, and that they can sort out the difference between a 3.9 at Swarthmore and the same GPA at…Georgia Southern.
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My point would be - that your LSAT, work experience and more will trump where you go - not just a GPA and/or major and/or school attended - hence the Professor we met (and it was at a prestigious school) - but he was so excited that his student scored in the 99th percentile of the LSAT and said - they can go anywhere they want.
I took that to mean - that matters more. The score itself got him giddy. Of course, there will be more at Harvard, Yale, Swat, Amherst with that score than Arkansas, Kansas, Kalamazoo, U Denver or wherever - so yes, those schools will have more students in total and per capita - but I’m saying that’s in large part because of who attends those schools in relative concentration to who attends the second set of schools. Does the school note that it looks at the quality of undergraduate institution? If it does, then how does it rate that quality? I’ve seen some talk about major. And of course, anyone might have an inherent bias toward one school over another - but simply looking at the # of schools represented at top schools leads me to believe - you can get to anywhere from anywhere. Might it be harder? Perhaps. Perhaps not - it’s not for me to say - but is that worth $400K? That’s the question here I believe.
I took this table below from a 3rd party site - so I’ll assume it’s accurate - but if you have a 160 and went to Tufts or Dartmouth and a 170 and went to name your school and the rest of your app fits with the need, I’d assume the 160 has little to no shot and the 170 will at least merit consideration - regardless of undergrad attended.
If you’re the kid who is a top test taker and you’re at Lamar or Central Oklahoma or Fairleigh Dickinson - or if I recall from the Harvard List of last year, they had Cal State Northridge and more - if you went there with a top SAT and thus likely a top LSAT, I don’t see why you would be disadvantaged. Clearly, by having 170 schools represented last year and nearly 150 this year and Yale at 87 this year - they are looking beyond the name. That LSAT (and work experience) are part of the equalizer. In fact, these top schools are looking to diversify - and yet required top LSAT scores (not every elite college required a top or any SAT).
The OP asked to sell them on attending the big merit school - and rather than sell them on that, I simply provided info - that going to an elite school is no assurance of getting into a top law school and going to a non elite school will not remotely disqualify them but rather what they do in school, after school, and on the LSAT will be what matters. And yes, their race/socioeconomic status may also matter (white and wealthy might not be be an asset here based on what the schools are reporting - although I don’t know how the Supreme Court decision on race impacts here).
So I’m not pushing them to one over the other but rather saying - and to their question - there’s a big financial delta and that spend assures nothing and they should discuss that delta with their parents since close to $400K is a lot of cheese.
But to answer you, I do think that the LSAT matters big time - and going to Swat or Amherst vs. Central Oklahoma likely matters little if the score is the same. In fact, the latter may give an advantage so that the law school can show an expanded reach - I don’t know, just a hypothesis since they’ll have enough of the top school kids. But I do think program of study and other things matter too - too many poli sci majors 
Hope that answers you - at least from my perspective - and I understand yours as well.
| Yale University | 175 | 171-178 | 3.94 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard University | 174 | 170-176 | 3.92 |
| Columbia University | 173 | 171-175 | 3.87 |
| Cornell University | 172 | 170-174 | 3.87 |
| University of Pennsylvania (Carey) | 172 | 167-173 | 3.90 |
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There was one top school - I think Vanderbilt - that used to (or still does but I can’t find) - it had a list of all the law schools it’s undergrads applied to with LSAT and it showed the decisions - whether accepted or declined - but I can’t find it. I’ll keep looking - but if anyone remembers what I’m talking about maybe they can access it easier.
Also, this is listed on their website, but seems it’s not directly from them more generic):
SENIOR YEAR— TIME TO APPLY!
If possible, it is best to apply to a variety of law schools, fairly evenly spread through three categories:
- Safety schools (average LSAT is 2-3 points below your score, and average GPA is 0.2 below your GPA)
- Target schools (average LSAT is your score, and average GPA is your GPA)
- Reach schools (average LSAT is 2-3 points above your score, and average GPA is 0.2 above your GPA)
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Agreed. I would also highlight that the vast majority of kids ambitions and concentrations change during their college careers. Consequently building your college plan around being the “golden ticket” kid to go to a top law school from a no name school is extremely risky and lacks optionality. Rather than focusing on those 1/2 “outlier” kids I would consider the outcomes for all the other students.
No one can quantify the differences, but I suspect the name recognition of the kid in the bottom quartile of Harvard’s graduating class has more doors opened and career options available to them than the kid at the bottom of the first quartile at a no name school.
Ultimately a strong kid can thrive from most any school but the further down the name recognition and prestige ladder you go, the higher and harder you have to climb and the further you have to fall.
I would talk to your parents. They know you best and have clearly prepared and prioritized to give you financial flexibility in choosing schools.
People will typically retrospectively validate their own decisions (in either the direction of value or prestige). That is human nature. They can’t however define or quantify what outcomes would have been had they made an alternative choice.
Your experience will be unique to you. What you are highly unlikely to read on CC is my kid chose school X and it was the wrong decision, I made a mistake and it is a total disaster. Those people likely don’t post or fade away. People come here to highlight how astute their decisions were, please don’t assume your experience will be identical.
My suggestion would be to apply in a manner that gives you some real options and see what happens. Ultimately are we talking “free” at Tulsa versus full pay at Yale or modest merit from a school in between? Keep your options open, talk to your parents and appreciate that you can succeed from anywhere but fit matters and some schools offer softer landings for those not at the tippy top of their class.
Good luck OP.
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Yale used to publish attendees per college. I don’t think they do it any more, but here is a version as of Fall 2018 (down on pages 114-16):
This is for the whole school, and Yale is much smaller than Harvard. But in that particular snapshot, 164 different colleges were represented.
Alabama was one of those, with 2 people. The highest was Yale itself, with 90. That is quite the ratio. At the time, adjusted for undergraduate population size, I think that is around a 260:1 ratio.
Harvard had 59, Columbia 34, Princeton 31, Stanford 22 (I suspect a bit of a regional effect there), Dartmouth 21, Cornell 19, Chicago 18, Brown 17, Penn 16 . . . . Again, these would all be high ratios.
LACs were also well represented, given their size. Amherst and Swarthmore had 6, Bowdoin 5, Barnard Pomona Williams Wellesley 4, CMK Haverford Middlebury Wesleyan 3 . . . . Given that Alabama is about 22 times the size of, say, Haverford in terms of undergraduate population, the fact Haverford actually had one more representative is pretty remarkable (33:1 ratio, in other words).
Among publics, the top were Berkeley 13, Michigan 8, UVA 7, UCLA UConn UNC 5 . . . pretty conventional list except for UConn.
Anyway, it is completely correct to say uncontrolled lists like this could potentially be misleading. In particular, we don’t know LSAT distributions, but personally–I am not sure it is plausible that is the full explanation. Like, is the ratio of high LSAT scores between Dartmouth and Alabama really about 75:1? I personally think when you start assuming things like that, you are probably underestimating how many good test takers actually do choose Alabama.
Then again, I don’t actually know the distribution of LSAT scores by college. And so I really need to stress my point here is not that there is obviously an advantage for every person with Yale Law ambitions to choosing particular colleges, nor am I suggesting there is obviously an advantage for every person with any sort of legal ambitions to choosing Yale Law.
Rather, I am suggesting merely pointing out that Alabama had a couple people at Yale Law does not quite prove it is irrelevant whether you choose Alabama or one of these other colleges. The ratios are simply too high in too many cases to make that sort of conclusion obvious.
And therefore my point is it is complicated, and I would avoid overly simple, overly generalized answers to questions like that absent truly compelling proof to support such answers. And I am not aware of any proof like that.
That is going to be both work experience and graduate schools. And while this is only compounding the complexity–yes, law schools are not the only areas in which per capita placement varies a lot between colleges. A higher per capita ratio of people from Dartmouth versus Alabama will go to top grad programs, the most selective investment and consulting firms, the most selective government agencies and NGOs, and so on. So the extent that kind of thing matters to law schools like Yale, it is actually likely to be part of the explanation as to why these colleges have a similarly higher per capita placement rate at Yale Law.
I would be cautious about relying on anecdotes like that, particularly given that sounds like hyperbole. A 99th percentile LSAT is a 174, and I can tell you with great confidence that people with 174s do not all get to go wherever they want. Indeed, I personally had a top 99.9th LSAT, and I did not get to go wherever I wanted. I ended up with some good choices, but part of the problem is that I was applying long after college, having been in a grad program (for too long, but that is another story), and grade norms had changed a bit. So my GPA was considered shockingly uncompetitive.
Nonetheless, I did end up with an interesting mix of choices, and while that very high LSAT was part of it, I think very likely so was the fact that GPA was from a very fancy college. So I am pretty sure I am personally an example of what I mentioned, that at least some fancy law schools were willing to overlook a very substandard GPA thanks to a combination of a very high LSAT, a fancy college, and for that matter a fancy graduate degree–which my fancy college might have contributed to me getting, because there is a whole other story about how my high GRE score and good grades in a different major than I started was enough for fancy grad programs in that second field.
This, again, is just an anecdote, and I cannot quite prove the counterfactual of what would have happened if I had chosen a different college–possibly, in fact, I would never have ended up changing majors and eventually applying to law school at all. Still, I do somewhat speak from experience when I talk about margins for error.
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I would apply and see what happens. You do not have to decide now.
It is common to work for a few years before going to law school, so I would keep that in mind.
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For that matter, I would say the same thing about law schools. Some people put a lot of emphasis on things like how many people become Supreme Court clerks. But that is still an extreme outlier outcome even at the top few law schools.
But I would agree the differences becomes more substantial, at least potentially, in the vast middle of the classes. Like, going to a top regional or local law school and doing very well is likely going to give you very good options in that region or locality. But, what if you don’t do as well as you are hoping? What if you don’t want to stay in that region or locality?
Top law schools are actually in that sense risk management tools, in that most of the class at such schools will still have good options in most of the major legal markets in the country.
Again, none of this is to say you have to choose a top law school, or a top college for feeding into top law schools. It is way too complicated for such generalities.
But I do think people sometimes go too far in proclaiming irrelevance, when I think the relevance can often more be in the form of risk management and options which do not show up in things like career earnings studies, but may be valuable options to some people nonetheless.
But then some people do well and don’t care about those options, in which case it probably was irrelevant for them. Because it is complicated.
I know two U of U students, family friends, who had/are having a great experience there.
OP, you’re smart and sensible to consider the money. To me, you 100% sound like a dream student: you’ll thrive anywhere, and you’ll be able to make the most of whatever opportunities you find at your chosen college. You’ll probably be a big fish in any size pond. Sure, Dartmouth would be great, but will it be better for you than, say UVM, UMass Amherst, or CU Boulder? I don think so.
You seem a very thoughtful person. The money you’ll save your family, should you go for big merit, will reap rewards for you and your family, especially if you decide to later pursue graduate education.
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Don’t ignore differences in the level of ambition and motivation. As I pointed out for my D’s experience at Utah (in a cohort where everyone had 34+ ACT, perfect grades, lots of APs), ambition is not evenly distributed.
OP needs to consider how self-motivated they are and how will they behave if surrounded by a peer group of strivers vs a laid back friend group. If they want to go to a top grad school from a lower ranking college then they will need to be capable of maintaining a high level of motivation in an environment where not many others have that, eg working many weekends instead of heading off to the ski slopes.
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Absolutely. There is so much we would really need to control for. Not just test-taking, but also goals. Like if you want to work in private practice in Alabama and choose to go to Alabama for college and law school, that might be a very good idea! But if you would like to be a law professor (which automatically requires a national search), maybe a less good idea. And so on.
And I think you are right having a lot of peers with similar ambitions can be helpful, including that usually means a lot of good advising too. But also those people are de facto competition sometimes, so it can be a double-edged sword.
Still, these paths where people go to selective independent private K-12s and then highly-selective private colleges and then highly-selective jobs/grad programs and then highly-selective law schools and then highly-selective legal jobs and then highly-selective next legal jobs . . . they do all sort of hang together in ways that make sense. And trying to break into those paths somewhere in the middle, or indeed right at the end, is never quite impossible, but also the odds can get very steep.
But on the other hand, so many people start off on those paths and at some point shift over to a different path. Maybe they couldn’t quite make it through the next gate, but also maybe they simply chose something different at some point, including deep into their careers. Either way, that is how you end up with so many stories of the form, “I went to a fancy school and I work alongside a bunch of people who did not go to a fancy school.” This is true whether you are talking K-12, college, grad school, professional school, or so on–most people get off the fancy path at some point.
So I do think the complex truth is that whenever you choose to get off the fancy paths, it can be harder to later try to get back on the fancy paths. And that actually starts with like pre-school, and doesn’t really end until you are in your final position with your final employer.
But, at some point, for most people, getting off the fancy paths is perfectly fine (or indeed not really their choice anyway). So making that sort of choice is not necessarily wrong, but nor is it necessarily without consequences at all.
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My advise to you is to tour a few of the NM schools on your list. Make sure you contact their NM office or school rep. Some of the schools you mention may have special programs that might meet your needs better than you think. My daughter went to OU (when their NMS was much better) and ended up spending almost a year of her college experience in Germany (2 summers and 1 full semester) and a summer in Colorado. My boys ended up at UT Dallas and because of their Fasttrack program ended up being able to finish their undergrad degrees early. I think you need to research what special programs these full ride schools offer and see what you think. I think the suggestions of U of U, Tulsa, Alabama and UTD are good ones to investigate farther. Then compare them to more prestigious $$$ you get into.
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OP does your school send a lot of kids to schools such as Williams and Yale? Do unhooked kids with ECs on the weaker side (your words) often get in? Without having enough information about you or your school, I feel like you/we are putting the cart before the horse.
Apply to a mix of schools and see what happens. You will have a lot of time to decide.
My kid’s friend went to a college that rejects almost all applicants and then transferred out to attend a school I never heard of. They worked for a few years, now in law school. There are a lot of variables to consider.
I would probably recommend the free ride at Alabama over the likely partial OOS tuition scholarship at Utah. Pros for Alabama - full ride. Can get tuition for a 5th yr, so maybe could add in a masters, maybe an MBA. Large cohort high achievers, since Bama is offering so much merit money. Pros for Utah: extreme proximity to fantastic skiing and hiking. Opportunity to establish residency after one year, could lead to essentially free tuition. Cons: room and board. Crowded dorms, would have to move off campus, housing has gotten ridiculously expensive and just keeps climbing. Bad air quality, especially in winter. We’re talking pea soup toxic inversion that can last for weeks at a time. Sometimes wildfire bad air too. Strong LDS influence, but also plenty of non-LDS, liberal thinkers. Isolated location, you essentially have to get on a plane to reach Denver or west coast cities. Very white, not much diversity.
For what you’re saving by going to Bama instead of a top private, you could buy yourself a season’s ticket at Snowbird or get an IKON pass and ski in Utah or all over North America for a month of winter break, and two weeks of spring break, get in 6 weeks a year of skiing, travel to New Zealand to ski in the summer, and you’d STILL come out way ahead on money, since the top private would cost close to 90K a year.
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Let me repeat - I was simply answering OP’s question and I didn’t really answer vs giving advice - talk to the fam about the delta.
I simply noted that you can get to anywhere from anywhere but I also noted that you’ll have higher concentrations from the higher tiered schools because they have higher level students to begin with. I don’t believe the name in and of itself adds tremendous value.
As for the student with the 99 percentile LSAT, yes it was an anecdote from a W&L prof but I’ll assume the student was qualified in other ways although given the high amount of work experience that appears prevalent today, maybe no one out of undergrad is truly qualified.
Anyway - my responses in my opinion were balanced.
I acknowledged the concentration of more elite schools but noted the quantity and name of schools and advised the student to speak to the family on budget.
Truth is anyone going to college for any level of grad school may change their mind once in college on what type of grad school or even grad school at all. My daughter appears there right now.
OP said to sell him - that’s the title.
My responses were more to inform than persuade. I didn’t answer - but your life may change and you may want something else. OP didn’t ask for that and I tried to stay in the parameter of what’s asked.
Good luck to OP.
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In some ways this factors into the school ethos too. From what I hear, at places like Columbia, you are a failure if you don’t get a career-oriented summer internship. Whereas D’s favorite professor gave this quote in an interview:
“I plead with my students not to just take an internship somewhere, as good as those things are, but to use their college summers to go out and throw themselves into a different life and meet people they would otherwise not rub shoulders with.” It’s advice that often falls on deaf ears. “I can’t get their attention on this, partly because their parents are saying ‘résumé, résumé, résumé.’”
In several cases it worked, one of her friends took a semester off to be a firefighter for the USFS, another spent summers as a kayaking and rafting guide in Alaska.
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Be aware on the 529 to Roth IRA rollover (which is only available starting in 2024) the total max that can be rolled over into a Roth IRA is $35,000 and $7,000 a year. So your parents can’t just roll 300K of 529 money into a Roth IRA.
That said if you have scholarship money the 529 money can be distributed to the beneficiary with no penalty and only paying taxes on the gains. Also it I my understanding that the money needs to distributed in the year and for the amount of the scholarship. In other words you can’t just sit on it then at the end distribute it all without paying the penalty.
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Even if you aren’t going to grad/med school, and even if your family can afford full freight… it is financially advantageous for them, and for you (since you are likely to inherit from them), to go with a much cheaper option provided that it fits your preferences.
Obviously, if you plan on grad/med school, and if your family can’t get much need-based aid and paying for school is difficult because of it… all the more reason to chase that merit.