<p>Georgetown is a huge surprise here since a large chunk of the undergraduates there apply to law school so you would think it would be at least as well represented at Yale Law School as the non-HYP Ivies. Is it possible Yale doesn’t consider GU undergrad to be that prestigious or rigorous?</p>
<p>Yale law is like Stanford law in that being above their average LSAT+GPA values is not a guarantee of admission. The soft factors matter a lot for Yale and Stanford compared to Harvard and the rest.</p>
<p>Hmm… it appears that, at least for Yale College’s stats, LSAT/GPA doesn’t matter as much. As seen in the link:</p>
<p><a href=“http://ucs.yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Law_School_Application_Statistics.pdf[/url]”>http://ucs.yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Law_School_Application_Statistics.pdf</a></p>
<p>Look at the numbers for yale matriculants at some of the top non-HYS schools: </p>
<p>Columbia (168.4/3.66 for Yale matriculants, maybe a 171/3.8 median generally)
UChicago (166.8/3.87 for Yale matriculants, maybe a 171/3.7 median generally)
UPenn (167/3.7 for Yale matriculants, maybe a 170/3.7 median generally)
Northwestern (167/3.52 for Yale matriculants, maybe a 170/3.7 median generally)</p>
<p>It seems as if the Yale matriculants at least, got a bit of a “bump” for some reason or another. Sure, the sampling size is small, but it’s interesting that the ~45 yale students going on to Columbia, Chicago, and NYU (the 3 best schools after YHS) have considerably lower median numbers than most of the students at C,C,N. </p>
<p>I’m not exactly sure why this is. I think part of it is because, well, Yale is one of the most coveted brands in higher ed. Also, the Yale applicants probably have tremendous “soft” factors that make up for lower LSAT/GPA numbers. Still, it’s strange because the Yale matriculants just have noticeably lower numbers at top schools than most of their counterparts. </p>
<p>The list of Yale matriculants though, throws some doubt into the “it’s all just an LSAT/GPA game” theory. For some reason, most Yale matriculants to most of the top law schools come in with numbers that are generally a bit below the actual medians for those schools.</p>
<p>
That’s put very well, and no doubt is what a lot of parents are thinking when they shell out $60K or more per year of schooling. However academic studies of things like earnings have been unable to find this effect. As an article in the NY Times last year notes
I’m not aware of any studies done on admission to top law schools, but I suspect they would find the same result – smart high-potential kids do well no matter what college they end up attending.</p>
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<p>But is this necessarily the same for law school, if law employment has a much higher level of school-prestige-consciousness than most types of employment for bachelor’s degree graduates?</p>
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<p>Well, we don’t actually know that they got a “bump” from the numbers in the chart you link to (which is helpful, by the way). That’s because, except at the very highest levels, law schools flip-flop, accepting students with high LSAT scores and lower GPAs, or high GPAs and lower LSATs. The admitted Yale grads at these schools are very much in line with the schools’ medians on both LSAT and GPA. But the Yale grads who actually matriculated at these schools had lower average GPAs and lower average LSATs. Why? </p>
<p>Well, look at the drop-off from admitted to matriculants at these schools:</p>
<p>Columbia, 81 admitted, 23 matriculated
Chicago, 39 admitted, 5 matriculated
Penn, 41 admitted, 8 matriculated
Northwestern, 32 admitted, 6 matriculated.</p>
<p>So it seems pretty clear that the best-qualified Yale grads are not choosing these law schools. And it’s not just high-GPA/high LSAT applicants choosing higher-ranked law schools who are opting out; it’s probably also a lot of applicants deciding not to throw in with law school at all, once they don’t get into YHS. And once all those people drop out, the only Yale people who are electing these next-level law schools are people who were just barely above the schools’ targets in LSAT but well below the median in GPA, or vice versa. That would explain the huge gap between the stats of admitted Yale grads and matriculated Yale grads. A hypothesized “Yale bump” actually doesn’t explain that gap, because the law schools decide who they admit; they don’t decide who matriculates.</p>
<p>Blah2009</p>
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<p>PROVE IT.</p>
<p>
Gee, am i the only one who got hung up on that comment? Gosh, my poor kids didn’t go to any “feeder schools”, so I guess they aren’t ready to “mingle comfortably” (whatever that means–familiarity with yachting terminology? ability to manage the household staff?) with the “highest strata” (whoever the hell they are–robber barons of Wall Street? major donors to the GOP?). Well, darn. </p>
<p>I went from a non-feeder college to an Ivy law school. Mingled with all sorts of folks, quite comfortably. And I didn’t even play golf.</p>
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<p>A century ago, some of the robber barons ensured that their names would live on as universities… Carnegie, Drew, Duke, Mellon, Stanford, Vanderbilt.</p>
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<p>I would think self-selection factors also come into play (to what degree, I don’t know). #26 already touched on this aspect. More generally, I would expect students who choose to attend the most prestigious colleges also are pre-disposed to apply to the most prestigious law schools where they have realistic admission chances. Some Yale College students, or recent graduates, may be disposed to apply to YLS because they’ve established personal ties to the New Haven area (working spouses, etc.) Selective colleges with the wealthiest student bodies have more students who can afford the high cost of 3 more years of post-graduate education. And so forth. In comparison, Berkeley has a much larger undergraduate student body than the Ivies, so we’d expect it to produce more LS applicants; however, many of them might not be so inclined to chase prestige a continent away.</p>
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<p>I don’t know what either of you are referring to, but here are Berkeley UG’s stats:</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm</a></p>
<p>Top law schools seem to hold Berkeley alumni up to extremely high standards, with respect to both GPA and LSAT (see HLS). Surprising, when one considers that the average GPA at UCB is ~3.30, whereas the average GPA at Harvard UG, for example, is ~3.60.</p>
<p>According to the posted statistics, the average Berkeley alum has to graduate in the top 5% of her class (~3.95) to earn a spot at HLS, whereas the average Yale alum need only rank in the top 30% of her class (~3.75).</p>
<p>bclintok:</p>
<p>Very good points, but I’m still a bit curious about this. Using a school where we have the biggest sampling size, here are the numbers:</p>
<p>23 of 81 Yale accepts went to Columbia Law, with a 3.66/168.4 average score. The Columbia school average is 3.7/171. </p>
<p>I’m quite surprised that nearly a quarter of the yale students admitted to Columbia had a 3.66/168.4 average. According to a law school admissions probability calculator, applicants with 3.66/168 numbers would have, at best, a 5-10% chance at admission. Somehow, though, at least about 30% of yale admits to Columbia law had those numbers.</p>
<p>Similarly, at UPenn, 8 of 41 (20%) Yale admits had a 3.7/167 average. According to the law school admissions calculator, someone with a 3.7/167 would have about a 12-15% chance of getting into Penn. Nevertheless, at least 20% of the Yale admits to Penn Law had these lower numbers. </p>
<p>Again, this just seems a little strange to me, but maybe I’m missing something, as could easily be the case.</p>
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<p>I don’t necessarily read the figures that way.</p>
<p>Columbia Law School:
2011 admitted Yale grads: 3.73 GPA / 173.2 LSAT
2010 admitted Berkeley grads: 3.89 GPA / 172 LSAT</p>
<p>Harvard Law School:
2011 admitted Yale grads: 3.77 GPA / 174.1 LSAT
2010 admitted Berkeley grads: 3.95 GPA / 174 LSAT</p>
<p>NYU Law School
2011 admitted Yale grads: 3.71 GPA / 173.2 LSAT
2010 admitted Berkeley grads 3.87 GPA / 173 LSAT</p>
<p>University of Michigan Law School
2011 admitted Yale grads: 3.63 GPA / 171 LSAT
2010 admitted Berkeley grads: 3,86 GPA / 169 LSAT</p>
<p>Now first, notice these figures aren’t exactly comparable because they’re for different years, but that’s what I have access to. It could be that GPAs for students admitted to top law schools in 2011 were down across the board due to a shrinking applicant pool. But setting aside those problems, the Berkeley admits’ GPAs are consistently higher than the Yale admits’ GPAs. On the other hand, the Yale admits’ LSAT scores are consistently higher, at least by a little (Harvard, NYU) but in some cases by a significant margin (Columbia, Michigan). </p>
<p>But are the law schools holding Berkeley to a higher standard on GPA, or is that just what the school is producing? My general sense is that top LSAT scores are much scarcer than top GPAs. It could be that the only people with top LSAT scores coming out of Berkeley also have high GPAs, while at Yale some of the people with top LSAT scores have slightly lower grades.</p>
<p>For 2010, Harvard accepted 9 Berkeley grads with an average LSAT of 174 and an average GPA of 3.95; 8 of them matriculated. Columbia accepted 11 Berkeley grads with a somewhat lower LSAT average of 172 and an average GPA of 3.85; only 3 matriculated (possibly because some or all of the other 8 went to Harvard). NYU accepted 18 Berkeley grads with an average LSAT of 173 and an average GPA of 3.87; only 5 matriculated. From this we can infer that there were at least 18 Berkeley grads with LSAT scores in the vicinity of 172+, of whom 16 ended up at Harvard, Columbia, or NYU. Some (1?) may have also ended up at Yale, but Yale didn’t make Berkeley’s list of “most-attended” law schools (notice that Michigan and U San Diego made the most-attended list with just 2 apiece).</p>
<p>After those top-tier schools, the only law school at which the admitted Berkeley grads’ LSAT average was as high as 170 was UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall) itself, which admitted 24 Berkeley grads with an average LSAT of 170; of those, only 5 matriculated, probably because the 24 included some or most of the 16 who went to Harvard, Columbia, or NYU, and the rest were divided with UCLA, Michigan,. and USC. UCLA (23 admits, 5 matriculants, average LSAT 169), Michigan (5 admits, 2 matriculants, average LSAT 169), and USC (26 admits, 6 matriculants, average LSAT 168) absorbed a few, but with LSAT scores that probably wouldn’t have made them competitive at Harvard, Columbia, or NYU. After that it’s a pretty steep dtop-off in average LSAT scores (165 at UC Hastings, 164 at UC Davis, 163 at Loyola LA and U San Diego, 161 at Santa Clara, 160 at USF, 159 at University of the Pacific - McGeorge, 157 at Golden Gate)</p>
<p>My conclusion: there are just a tiny handful of Berkeley grads with LSAT scores high enough to get into top-5 law schools, and in some years, as a group, they tend to have very high GPAs. But even that isn’t consistent. The average GPA of Berkeley grads admitted to Columbia has ranged from 3.76 in 2008 to 3.89 in 2009 and 2004; at NYU the range is all the way from 3.69 in 2008 to 3.94 in 2005. </p>
<p>Yale, on the other hand, in 2011 produced 55 Harvard admits with an average LSAT of 174.1, and 81 Columbia admits with an average LSAT of 173.2, and 88 NYU admits with an average LSAT of 173.2, and 41 Yale admits with an average LSAT of 173. No doubt there’s enormous overlap within this group. Between them, these 4 schools enrolled 97 Yale grads. After that, Yale grads show a similar, if not quite as steep decline in LSAT averages, to 173 at UVA, 172 at Chicago, Stanford, and Texas, 171 at Northwestern, Michigan and Berkeley, 170 at UCLA, Penn and Georgetown, and so on, with those averages no doubt propped up by cross-admits to higher ranked schools–as evidenced by the fact that at every one of these schools the average LSAT scores of matriculated Yale grads were 3 to 6 points lower than the averages of admitted Yale grads.</p>
<p>From this I conclude that there were probably only 75 or 80 Yale grads with LSAT scores of 172+ in the 2011 class. But that’s still many multiples of the number of UC Berkeley grads in that LSAT range, and a large enough pool that their GPAs were probably a little more varied. But with top LSAT scores at a premium, they were admitted to top law schools despite GPAs that were, on average, a bit lower than those of 2010 Berkeley grads with LSAT scores in the same range. In short, I don’t think it’s a question of law school admissions committees holding UC Berkeley grads to a higher standard on GPA. I think it’s a question of what the GPAs of the top LSAT-scorers happen to be.</p>
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<p>No, you’re still making the same mistake. You can’t assume that ANY of those admits to Columbia had a 3.66 AND a 168.4 (well, LSAT scores don’t come in tenths of a point, but you see what I’m saying). Many were likely either higher than those averages on GPA and lower on LSAT, or higher in LSAT and lower on SAT.</p>
<p>I think it’s a simple “tail of the curve” problem. Look, Columbia Law School admitted 81 Yale grads in 2011. Let’s assume they were the 81 strongest Yale grads in Columbia’s applicant pool. Only 23 of the Yale admits matriculated at CLS. What happened to the other 58? Well, probably most of them were absorbed by Yale and Harvard law schools, and some by NYU. Yale sent 33 matriculants to Harvard Law that year, with an average LSAT of 173.6. Another 25 stayed in New Haven to attend Yale Law School; they had an average LSAT of 172.3. That’s 58 right there, electing to attend a law school ranked higher than Columbia. Another 16 attended NYU, with an average LSAT of 171.3. That’s 74 Yale grads attending those three law schools. Most of the 23 Yale grads who actually attended Columbia Law School probably weren’t admitted to Yale or Harvard, either because they didn’t apply or because they didn’t make the admissions cut at either of those schools. Some of those who attended Columbia may have been NYU cross-admits, but it appears NYU absorbed many of those with higher LSAT scores because the average LSAT scores of Yale matriculants at NYU were almost 3 points higher than at Columbia. </p>
<p>Yale and Harvard Law Schools generally take applicants who have both super-high GPAs and super-high LSATs. But there aren’t so many of those, so by the time you get to Columbia’s level, and anywhere down from there, law schools are forced to accept some applicants with lower GPAs to get the LSAT scores they want, and close out the class by taking some with lower LSAT scores to get the GPAs they want (and to compensate for the lower GPAs of those in the first group).</p>
<p>Here’s one way you can get there:</p>
<p>Admit 1 3.75/165
Admit 2 3.5/ 172
Admit 3 3.9 / 164
Admit 4 3.5 / 171
Admit 5 3.6 / 171
Admit 6 3.6 / 171
Admit 7 3.8 / 165
AVERAGE 3.66 / 168.4</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Columbia’s Admit 8 (3.9 / 174), Admit 9 (3.8 / 175) and so on—those with both high GPAs and high LSATs—are off to Yale and Harvard.</p>
<p>In my example, every admitted applicant is at or above Columbia’s mean LSAT (171), or at/above Columbia’s mean GPA (3.7). But also in my example, Columbia is willing to accept some applicants with lower GPAs to get their high LSAT scores, and it’s also willing to accept some lower LSATs to keep up its average GPA. Friends who work at our local flagship’s law school (a top 20 law school) tell me that’s exactly how it works, except at YHS which can take the cream of the crop, applicants with both high GPAs and high LSATs. And again, I want to underscore that you can’t get a full picture just by looking at the stats of the Yale grads who ultimately enrolled at Columbia Law School. The stats of Yale grads who were admitted to Columbia Law School are fully in line with Columbia’s GPA and LSAT averages, 3.73 GPA (v. 3.7 for Columbia Law School as a whole) and 173.2 LSAT (v. 171 for CLS as a whole); it’s just that the top of that pool of admitted Yale grads dropped out of the matriculant pool, either to attend Y or H or NYU, or to do something else entirely, and the “tail of the curve” Yale grads who were lower than Columbia’s average in either GPOA or LSAT (but likely not both) were the Yale grads who ended up at Columbia, in most cases because it was the best law school they got into.</p>
<p>Further confirmation: look at how close the GPAs and LSAT scores of matriculants from Yale are to those of admitted students from Yale at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School. The two sets of numbers are almost identical, suggesting these schools admit only applicants with top GPAs and top LSATs. But at every school from Columbia on down—or even from Stanford on down—there’s a sharp drop-off in either LSATs or GPAs or both as you move from the admit pool to the matriculant pool, suggesting they’re losing a large fraction of their top (and balanced) admits, but also suggesting that they’re probably flip-flopping GPAs and LSAT scores. NYU managed to keep up its average LSAT scores among matriculants from Yale, but it dipped even lower on GPAs to get those LSAT scores; its Yale matriculants ended up with a lopsided 3.60/171.3 average.</p>