<p>For prelaw, which one is stronger? Swarthmore or Brown?</p>
<p>Six in one, half dozen in the other. I don't think either of them have a "pre-law" major.</p>
<p>Brown has MUCH MUCH more grade inflation, but your success in pre-law really comes down to you, not a "program" at any school. With a high GPA and LSAT, top law schools will find you attractive. Without these things, regardless of how good your schools "pre-law" program is, they will not even consider you.</p>
<p>(1) Brown has MUCH MUCH more grade inflation, and
(2) With a high GPA and LSAT, top law schools will find you attractive. </p>
<p>Sounded like Brown could help towards a higher GPA?</p>
<p>goldie, I can't remember exactly where I heard this (possibly on a Swarthmore tour several years ago), but I seem to remember that grad schools (including law and med schools) have GPA "multipliers" to account for grade inflation. Swarthmore has one of the highest multipliers. </p>
<p>It's possible that having a higher GPA at Brown would give some advantage, but I don't think it's enough to warrant choosing Brown over Swat. Swarthmore students haven't had significant trouble getting into law schools or other grad schools that I've heard about.</p>
<p>Berkeley Law's (now illegal) list of undergraduate GPA adjustment factors:</p>
<p>I believe this is about 10 years old but probably still indicative.</p>
<p>Descartesz, very interesting article. Where did you find it?</p>
<p>Why is Berkeley Law's GPA adjustment factor list now illegal?</p>
<p>Because everything is illegal in California?</p>
<p>My first link to this list was provided by Wikipedia, although I am not sure exactly wherein.</p>
<p>My understanding is (and I implore anyone who knows otherwise to correct me) that this list of ratings came to light in an admissions discrimination case against Berkeley. Because the values were used in an explicit calculation to adjust GPA's and then used to directly compare candidates, and because the list favors "exclusive colleges", it was considered a piece of evidence that Berkeley's admission practices were discriminatory. The court eventually agreed with this, hence it is now "illegal".</p>
<p>I believe, however, the Law School Admission Council (who run the LSAT) still makes such undergraduate institution comparison data available to its member schools, but its use has probably been finessed so as to accord with the current anti-discrimination rulings. At least I have found references to such data from law school profs posting on the internet, although I can't find the actual data itself.</p>
<p>They rated Virginia higher than Berkeley (80 vs 78.5), and more interestingly, UC Santa Barbara higher than UCLA (77 vs 75.5). </p>
<p>The "Exclusive colleges" rated 85+</p>
<p>Swarthmore: 89.5
Williams : 89
Duke: 88.5
Carleton: 88
Colgate: 88
U Chicago: 87
J Hopkins: 87.5
Wesleyan: 87
Darthmouth: 87
Cornell: 86.5
Harvard: 86.5
Middlebury: 86
Pinceton: 86
MIT: 85.5
Pomona: 85
Haveford: 85
Virginia: 85</p>
<p>The ""Exclusive colleges" that didn't cut the 85
Amherst: 84.5
Tufts: 83.5
Bowdoin: 83.5
Penn: 83
Yale: 82.5
Stanford: 80.5
Columbia: 80.5
Wellesley: 80
Georgetown: 80
Brown: 80</p>
<p>According to this article, if you want to go to an elite PUBLIC law school, going to an "exclusive private liberal arts college" provides an advantage.</p>
<p>oh my. how fantastic if that's still the case, but does this really still convey the rigor of a school's curriculum? I was under the impression that Wesleyan is not as difficult as Cornell, or at least I'm hoping I'll have a social life. I only wonder how this list was created, particularly with regards to order.</p>