<p>Would have picked Stanford because of prestige/location and my friends were all going there. Now I’m glad I didn’t get in, since it wouldn’t have helped me at all for my current job, but would have cost another $115,000 and another year (since I did Berkeley in 3).</p>
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<p>Well, the volume of Berkeley prelaws who apply to Stanford Law isn’t exactly insignificant. Far from it, in fact - Stanford is one of the most popular law schools for Berkeley prelaws to apply to. </p>
<p>But that’s simply about applying. Admission is an entirely different story. According to the Berkeley career center, less than 5% of Berkeley students who apply to Stanford Law are actually admitted - half the admissions rate of the general Stanford Law admissions pool of 9%. Furthermore, like Berkeley Law, Stanford Law seems to demand higher GPA’s from Berkeley applicants than it does from its general admittee pool. That’s right - higher. </p>
<p>[Career</a> Center - Profile of Law School Admissions - UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20080729203714/http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm]Career”>http://web.archive.org/web/20080729203714/http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm)</p>
<p>The upshot is that while I can’t speak for whether attending Stanford undergrad will help your chances to win admission to Stanford Law, the data clearly shows that attending Berkeley for undergrad doesn’t seem to help those chances either; if anything, it seems to hurt them. {Whether Stanford undergrad or Berkeley undergrad hurts your chances more is unclear.}</p>
<p>Besides, I find the entire logic towards strategically choosing an undergrad program to maximize your chances towards admission to a particular graduate program to be highly presumptuous anyway. After 4 years of undergrad, you may not want to go to law school anymore, as your interests may have shifted. I suspect most people, upon college graduation, wind up not doing what they thought they would have been doing when they were high school seniors. Many college students find that what they had thought to be the passion of their lives is not as interesting as they thought. </p>
<p>Even if you do maintain your desire to attend law school, that’s not to say that you’ll maintain your desire to attend Stanford Law School specifically, or that such desires are actually realistic. As shown by the data, the vast majority of Berkeley applicants to Stanford Law are not admitted because they simply don’t have the nosebleed GPA’s & LSAT’s required for admission. Perhaps Berkeley Law or another UC Law School is more suited for your talents, although as shown by the data, the majority of Berkeley applicants to even UCDavis Law are not admitted there either. No incoming Berkeley student can presume that they will be admitted to the law school of their choice, or any law school for that matter, with even low-tier law schools such as Chapman Law and Thomas Jefferson Law School rejecting some Berkeley applicants. {Heck, you may not even graduate from Berkeley at all - as some Berkeley students do indeed flunk out.} </p>
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<p>I’m afraid that I find this attitude to be simply inexplicable. On the one hand, you mock Stanford’s admittedly bizarre arboreal motto, and state that you dislike their campus and academic calendar apportionment system. But on the other hand, you then say that you want to go there for law school. Pardon me if I’m missing something, but what’s wrong with this picture? It’s not as if the law school is a separate entity, far removed from the rest of the university. Last time I checked, Stanford Law was located smack dab in the middle of the same university campus, (now) run on the same quarter system, and represented by the very same motto that you decry. Law school is also 3 years long, which is not much shorter than the typical 4-year undergrad program, and hence one ought to make sure that you like the campus and environment of whatever law school you might choose. Let’s face it: if you’re not comfortable with the Stanford environment for undergraduate studies, you’re not going to be comfortable with Stanford for graduate studies either.</p>
<p>If you want to go to law school, Stanford will give you a slight boost over Berkeley. Law schools care basically only about LSAT and GPA, and Stanford students have more inflated GPAs. Stanford Law is one of two schools which look a little more holistically, but even there, you’re need at least a 3.8 or so to even be in the running. </p>
<p>With that said, I certainly wouldn’t pay $120,000 for this slight boost. If you are borderline for Stanford, you’ll get Columbia or Chicago with 50-64K scholarships, maybe Michigan with full tuition+, maybe Harvard, which might actually be better options and certainly won’t hold you back.</p>
<p>In the interests of diversity, an admissions committee would limit the NUMBER of accepted students from each university. Given the much larger population at Berkeley, 25000 undergrads compared to 7000 at stanfurd, a higher admissions percentage is quite likely for Stanfurd. </p>
<p>Stanfurd law accepted 1 to 3 Cal students each year according to the link provided above. If you assume they accept similar numbers from their own undergrad program, and that roughly the same fraction of the student body applies from each university, then their accept rate would be more than 3.5 times as high just to admit the same 1 to 3 students into law school. The average admit percentages are higher on average (9%) since so many applicants come from small populations at private universities. </p>
<p>Once you need to reduce 30 or 50 applications down to 1-3 admits, you pick the ‘best’ and that determines the historical GPA for admission from that university.</p>
<p>Sakky, I mean no disrespect. Stanford is an awesome university. Seriously, though, Fear the Tree is funny. It’s okay to laugh. I’m sure whoever designed it had a sense of humor… 
I know you are laughing deep down inside… hahaha</p>
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<p>Columbia doesn’t offer any merit-based scholarships, and Chicago awards only a handful which are unlikely to be awarded to anybody who is borderline at Stanford (or anywhere else). Hence, whatever you’d be paying at Stanford, you’d likely be paying the same at Columbia or Chicago.</p>
<p>I meant Columbia and Chicago law schools. The “slight boost” might theoretically push you over the borderline for Stanford Law School, but the small chance of that wouldn’t be essential or worth 120,000, because the law school options at the borderline are so good anyway.</p>
<p>The Tree is a satirical take on traditional animal mascots (such as “golden” teddy bears with sweater vests). “Fear the Tree” is a mildly ironic slogan because trees are anything but intimidating. Trees are harmless and helpful to the environment!! :)</p>
<p>Many (if not most) law applicants would turn down merit money from Columbia/Chicago/NYU law for HYS law because they believe (and I agree) that the opportunity costs override the financial costs.</p>
<p>sakky and mathboy98,</p>
<p>I enjoy reading your informative posts! :)</p>
<p>Perhaps, although I’m not sure that’s the right decision (full disclosure: I took the full+ scholarship at Michigan). </p>
<p>However, that’s not the comparison I was making. It was whether it would be worth paying 120,000 for the chance that Stanford’s grade inflation it would push you over the borderline. So it’s not free, and it’s not 100% chance. </p>
<p>Obviously, the actual Stanford/Berkeley decision would be much more complex, since there are many other factors besides getting into Stanford Law School - that was just the strange fixation of someone earlier in the thread.</p>
<p>Anyway, a remarkably involved discussion for a fairly stupid goal - entering UG with a specific law school in mind. </p>
<p>My basic general rule would be:
If Poor (full need grants at S): Stanford, unless a) interested in state politics or b) yellow fever
If Middle Class (full freight): Berkeley, unless strong interest in investment banking
If Rich (don’t give a **** about money): Stanford, unless (same as poor).</p>
<p>Per post #51: Oh, I see what you’re saying. I originally thought that the $120K referred to the tuition costs of Stanford LS and that the “slight boost” referred to opportunities out of SLS vs. CLS. I misread. My bad.</p>
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<p>Many Stanford applicants are in between these two categories. In other words, they would receive at least some FA. Depending on factors such as (possible) home equity, these would be applicants with family incomes in the range between $60K-~$150K (or more). What about them?</p>
<p>Thank you sakky for your comments to MikeR’s post. The post re attending Berkeley
undergrad over Stanford undergrad to increase chances for Stanford law was absurd.
Just to clarify further (in case there are some naive readers) the Berkeley link posted above
by Sakky shows Berkeley’s stats for 2003-2007 with a 4% admit rate to Stanford law. On Stanford’s website it provides Stanford’s stats for 2006-2007 with about a 26% admit rate to Stanford law. Please disregard MikeR’s statement regarding the advice he received from a “Stanford Pre-Law advisor”.</p>
<p>Palo Alto is boring as hell. Easy choice for me.</p>
<p>Because Berkeley is such an exciting city as well.</p>
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<p>I’m confused by this argument. A borderline applicant for Stanford Law should be no better than the 25th-percentile of LSAT/GPA necessary of the admitted Stanford class, which would place that student at not significantly higher than the median at Columbia Law or Chicago Law, and probably no better than the 75th percentile at Michigan Law - highly unlikely to win significant merit awards at any of those schools. Only a student who was at least at the median, which would by definition preclude any borderline candidates, of the Stanford admittees could be confident of winning merit awards at any of those other schools. Heck, such a candidate wouldn’t even be completely confident of gaining admission at all at those other schools, as law schools do reject plenty of median applicants, and even some applicants at the 75th percentile. (Certainly, somebody at the 25th percentile of Stanford Law could easily win boatloads of merit awards at low-tier law schools, but that’s not what we’re talking about.) </p>
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<p>Perhaps I’m missing something, but that doesn’t seem to be the relevant comparison on the table. Rather, the comparison is that you pay $120k to attend Stanford for undergrad, or you save that $120k by attending Berkeley for undergrad, with the difference in outcomes being that by choosing the former over the latter, you would no longer be a borderline candidate for Stanford Law by leveraging the grade inflation in the Stanford undergrad program. </p>
<p>But as explained above, if you save that $120k by attending Berkeley for undergrad and thereby become a borderline candidate at Stanford Law, you’re probably not going to win significant merit money at any of the top law schools mentioned above. Such merit money would be available only to somebody who was a strong Stanford Law School applicant, and hence would be available only to one making the first choice - paying that $120k to attend Stanford for undergrad and thereby leveraging the grade inflation. But such a strong candidate might indeed win merit scholarships at those other law schools. In that case, it might now actually be optimal to pay that $120k, if one could then make it back via the full tuition scholarship at Michigan. Such a scholarship at Michigan Law over 3 years at OOS rates is worth ~$140k, and even after discounting for expected inflation, you would probably still come out ahead. </p>
<p>But of course all of that rests on what we all agree to be the highly dubious assumption that you should attend an undergrad program with the express purpose of strategically positioning yourself for a particular law school(s).</p>
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<p>I’ve been looking for that link. May I have it?</p>
<p>I took the poster to mean by “borderline,” the general admissions (and not strictly the LSAT/GPA) threshold. Under your (less generous) interpretation, the argument doesn’t seem to work.</p>