<p>How important is the ranking/prestige of your undergrad degree when applying to a top law school?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Man, we have a thousand threads on this matter, just use the search function.</p>
<p>Although law schools say they aren't important, the admissions statistics suggest otherwise. If you look at rankings for the top law schools, you'll see they like accepting Ivy League grads (especially if the grad school is Ivy) and other top schools. The background thinking is that at lower ranked schools, it is easier to achieve higher GPAs, also taking into account a person's major. The LSAT is meant to equalize everyone, which is why it accounts for the highest deciding factor for admissions. </p>
<p>However if you do very well at a lower ranked school and your LSAT is competitive, you should have no problem at a top ranked LS.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Although law schools say they aren't important, the admissions statistics suggest otherwise. If you look at rankings for the top law schools, you'll see they like accepting Ivy League grads (especially if the grad school is Ivy) and other top schools. The background thinking is that at lower ranked schools, it is easier to achieve higher GPAs, also taking into account a person's major. The LSAT is meant to equalize everyone, which is why it accounts for the highest deciding factor for admissions.
[/quote]
The reason why top law schools are mostly composed of Ivy league grads is because applicants from those schools are more likely to have scored high on the LSATs.</p>
<p>leo, while your agrument highlights one factor that may shed some light on why graduates of top colleges and universities often fill the classes of top law schools, it is impossible to argue that it is the only possible factor in play. Don't rush to discount the value that top law schools place on having graduates from "name brand" schools in their student bodies. Touting the credentials of their students is one way that top law schools keep law firms, government agencies and other employers chomping at the bit to recruit at that law school.</p>
<p>One of my good friends is one of few students in her class to have attended a high-powered undergrad. Coincidence of coincidences, they choose to put her in all their brochures, with her undergraduate degree featured prominently.</p>
<p>(Being a very pretty young lady doesn't hurt anything, either.)</p>
<p>I know this doesn't prove anything -- certainly HLS doesn't care about adding an extra kid or two from Penn to put in their brochures -- but it might be suggestive of the value that schools see in advertising.</p>
<p>Going to Back-Woods-University won't keep you out if you do well enough, and going to Harvard won't get you in if you bomb. That's the general consensus. Like Soul said, you can do a search for many other related threads. There are also a few that contain undergrad data for top law schools (definitely Yale, and I think Harvard). You will see that the top schools tend to take many students from other top schools, but various possibilities for that have also been discussed here.</p>