<p>I recently visited Harvard Law School's website and on the list of undergrad schools attended there was a wide array, from okay schools to Ivy. So apparently you can get into Harvard Law from a state school, but I don't know I kind of feel as if I don't go to a good undergrad then I want get into a good law school, preferable Yale. Could anyone provide the perspective on this, bc I have the option of full tuition to state school or potential a top notch school? Which should I pursue and why? Any input helpful.</p>
<p>Speaking from personal experience, I simply did not have the funds to pay for a private education for four years and then three more years of law school. If I had parents with the money to pay it might have been a different story. Now that I am closer to law school I do not feel like I am at much of a disadvantage compared to kids at elite schools. My gpa at my state school is excellent and we all have to do extremely well on the lsat no matter which undergrad we attended. Numbers play such a huge part of the law school process that I do not regret saving the money for law school.</p>
<p>Harvard Law (as with most other law schools) is chiefly (although not entirely) a numbers game, and their preference undergraduate school is pretty minor.</p>
<p>Yale has the less-predictable, highly-subjective admissions process -- in that game, it's entirely possible that undergraduate school might matter some, depending on which professors you get. But even then, it's POSSIBLE to get in from anywhere.</p>
<p>i attended a state school and then YLS.
that was quite a number of years ago when law school wasn't as ridiculously expensive as it is today, but i was still glad to be able to enter law school debt free.
i also honestly don't know if i'd have gotten into YLS if i'd gone to a competitive private college. at my state school, i was at the top of my class (no official ranking, just from what i saw). at a highly selective private college i probably would have just been one of the crowd. one note -- at a large school, you may have to work harder to make sure a professor knows you well enough to write you a great letter of recommendation -- but that is certainly doable -- i had profs who got to know me well in classes with over 100 people in them and you would presumably have smaller classes in your major.
there are no guarantees regardless of which route you take -- you have to work hard and get the grades and do well on the lsat -- those are the two most important factors.</p>
<p>I would suggest that you decide where you'd like to attend undergrad, and then do very well there. That will give you lots of options of where to attend law school.</p>
<p>If you could tell us specifically which schools you're thinking of we could perhaps give better advice.</p>
<p>The schools that i am thinking about are: UT, Duke, UPenn, Harvard, and SMU.</p>
<p>Are these hypotheticals, or have you actually been admitted? If they're just hypothetical, then it might be best to just go through the process and let them help make some of the choices for you.</p>
<p>As I note in another thread, IIRC there are grads of 255 colleges currently attending Harvard Law. I don't have the Yale number, but I'm going to guess it's similar.</p>
<p>That should tell you something: you can go anywhere and, if you do very well, get into one of the top law schools.</p>
<p>So, my advice is to apply to undergrad schools that you've love to attend, get a 3.9 gpa (much harder in college!) and a 172 LSAT, and you'll have great options.</p>
<p>Any of the schools you listed can get you to Yale (though it is viciously, brutally competitive), so pick your undergrad largely upon where you want to go to undergrad.</p>
<p>" As I note in another thread, IIRC there are grads of 255 colleges currently attending Harvard Law. I don't have the Yale number, but I'm going to guess it's similar. "</p>
<p>Yes, but more than 70% come from IVY and IVY-like schools.</p>
<p>As has been repeatedly discussed, neither method is a compelling argument for or against an "advantage" during the process. (Although MSUDad convincingly demonstrates that it is in fact possible.)</p>
<p>The large proportion makes it seem easier coming from (say) Princeton, but it's confounded by the fact that Princeton kids are a highly concentrated population of very smart kids. The variety of schools makes it seem equally likely, but maybe the kids from (say) Berkeley had to be much smarter than the Princeton kids to have a shot at Yale. Who knows?</p>
<p>You'd have to look at more specific data: do kids from Princeton who get into Yale have lower GPA's and LSAT's than kids from Berkeley? Equal? Higher? So far as I know, nobody has this data.</p>
<p>Conventional wisdom (which, so far as I know, is supported only anecdotally) says that prestigious undergrads can help offset lower GPA's but not lower LSAT's. That's been what I've seen person-by-person, but I've never seen enough data to make a convincing argument.</p>
<p>Visitor:</p>
<p>There are lots of unknowns here, but there are a few givens:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Harvard, Yale, etc take students from a broad range of undergrad degrees and programs.</p></li>
<li><p>If the OP gets into, say, UT, she remains fundamentally the same student as if she attends, say, Duke. The pool changes around her, but she remains the same.</p></li>
<li><p>Duke and UT regularly send students to Harvard, Yale law. An applicant would not need to be an exceptional case (vis the Duke/UT applicant pool) to get in.</p></li>
<li><p>So, while, say, Duke might have a larger acceptance rate to Yale, her relative presence in that pool does not differ from her relative presence in the UT pool. She's the same kid; unless: A. She loves one school and does better there than her benchmark performance, or B. The opposite.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Factor #4 is maximized by going to the school you really want to go to.</p>
<p>Just a pet theory of mine.</p>
<p>I was about to take issue with your point #2 until I read point #4. Makes sense to me.</p>
<p>I believe 250 of the 550 at Harvard Law School are from Harvard, another 100 from Yale and another 70 from Stanford.</p>
<p>Something I saw from their website a year or two ago....they might have changed since then. On the other hand, I hear NYU Law sort of turns on its undergrads and makes it harder for them.</p>
<p>MSUDAD,</p>
<ol>
<li>Yale has 79 students from Harvard and 1 from then University of Tulsa (it means that in three years only one was admitted)</li>
<li>Your point 2 is very controversial. Environment, environment, environment.</li>
<li>Duke is an Ivy-like school. UT has 50K students and only 8 are in Yale (less than 3 per year)</li>
<li>Same as 2.</li>
</ol>
<p>Law</a> School Students</p>
<p>Oh, another point I forgot: kids from the same types of schools -- and especially the same school exactly -- are much more likely to want to stay at that sort of place. If you're very tuition sensitive, or location-tied, you probably didn't go to Harvard or Yale for undergrad, and you probably won't go there for law school, either.</p>
<p>And if you did go to Harvard for undergrad, chances are high that you like the city, that you have friends in the area -- maybe you're even dating somebody who will still be at the law school, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
**MSUDad: **there are grads of 255 colleges currently attending Harvard Law
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
FNS: I believe 250 of the 550 at Harvard Law School are from Harvard, another 100 from Yale and another 70 from Stanford.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Just pointing out that these two are mathematically incompatible. If 420 kids at HLS are from three schools, then you can have at most 133 schools represented at HLS.</p>
<p>I'm going to go with the first set of numbers here.</p>
<p>EDIT: Conceding Visitor's point below. Still EXTREMELY improbable, but now possible.</p>
<p>The numbers are for the three years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Duke is an Ivy-like school.
[/quote]
Thank you. :D</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yale has 79 students from Harvard and 1 from the University of Tulsa [...] UT has 50K students and only 8 are in Yale
[/quote]
Again, again, again -- the numbers themselves don't tell us anything.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Environment, environment, environment.
[/quote]
Again, I think MSUD's point #4 addresses this pretty clearly.</p>
<p>Here is the list from Harvard:</p>
<p>I didn't count to make sure there are actually 255 schools listed, but it looks like it. They also report 555 students in the current 1L class from 146 schools.</p>
<p>I'm just a firm believer that students should aim for "fit" and perform their best. </p>
<p>The question for the OP is: "am I student #7 at UT or #80 at Harvard?" [The first got into Yale Law, the second did not. Could be that only 9 'Horns applied to YLS, while 600 Crimson applied; who knows?]</p>
<p>The answer is: "I have no way of knowing which I am, but I really want to go to ______ University because _______ ."</p>
<p>My humble suggestion to the high school OP is to select from her wonderful list the school she'd like to attend, and back-burner the Yale Law School factor.</p>