<p>I absolutely cannot stand the innumeracy here. The only figure that matters is what % of applicants who applied to (target law school) got into (target law school). It matters not if the class itself is larger or smaller because the denominator is the raw number of applicants, NOT THE COLLEGE as a whole. It matters not if these applicants came from a class where lots of other people applied to other law schools or if they were the only law-school-applicants in the class. It is beyond stupid to do what they are doing … a horizontal measure of what % of HLS is made up of people from undergrad X, Y, and Z … when the relevant measure is a vertical, what % of Elite Undergrad applicants to HLS get into HLS. This is Math 101, guys.</p>
You attempt to sound like an expert in statistical reasoning here but you really have no idea what you are talking about. A general acceptance rate doesn’t tell you anything about the qualifications of the applicants themselves. For instance, Michigan has the same acceptance rate to Harvard Law as Princeton. In your mind, that would mean that they are both equally good at feeding into HLS which is not true. What likely happened was that the Michigan grads who applied to HLS in the first place were a much more self-selective bunch than those at Princeton i.e. some seniors and alumni at Princeton who would have been long shots at HLS decided to submit applications anyway since maybe they’re overconfident or thought they would be a given huge boost since they went to Princeton undergrad. Whereas, everyone who applied from Michigan was incredibly qualified statistically to being with. I’ve noticed that graduates of public schools tend to be more risk-averse than their counterparts at private schools for some reason. Even for the best Michigan and Berkeley students, HLS often seems like a long shot when its clearly attainable many times.</p>
<p>You don’t graduate from Princeton and go to Cooley Law School. End of story.</p>
<p>
You need to take Math 101 over again.;)</p>
<p>
Why would Cal’s numbers be incomplete? Every law school applicant has to submit applications through their university and LSDAS I believe. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
How does this even matter? We are looking at absolute placement figures here and both Cal and Michigan have approximately 8x the law school applicants as Amherst and 10x as many law school applicants as Williams. Yet, Cal only has 4x as many YLS students currently enrolled as Williams and only 2x the number of students at YLS as Amherst. The figures for Michigan are even worse as UMich only has 2 more grads currently at YLS than Amherst and 5 more than Williams despite the large disparity in law school application volume.</p>
<p>Your data on law school interest at these 4 schools is slightly off to at any rate. I’m still sure this matters.</p>
<p>Amherst: 111 law school applicants/~436 undergrads per year= ~25%
Williams: 88 law school applicants/~531 undergrads per year= ~17%
Michigan: 829 law school applicants/~6300 undergrads per year= ~13%
Cal: 962 law school applicants/~4110 undergrads per year= ~23%</p>
<p>I do believe that the Amherst and Williams name carries more weight than the Cal or Michigan name in elite professional school admissions. This small edge won’t make up for glaring academic deficiencies however.</p>
<p>
What are you implying here? This doesn’t change the fact that there exists a high concentration of smart students at Cal and UM but they aren’t getting into the top professional schools at the same rates as their Amherst and Williams counterparts.</p>
<p>
Boalt and Michigan Law are top 10 law schools but they are not considered the best law school in the world like Yale. Yale Law is far superior to both and the smartest students from both Cal and Michigan would attend YLS if admitted no question unless Columbia or Chicago Law gave them a full ride. The reputation that YLS enjoys in the legal academic community, professional law circles and in the court system is far and away better than any law school named Harvard or Stanford.</p>
<p>My point is those Wolverines and Bears who are attending Michigan or Boalt Law respectively would have stood no shot at admission to YLS. You’re falsely stating that there exists a contingent of students at these two public schools that are qualified enough to attend YLS (3.9+ GPA, 173+ LSAT) but decide to go to their alma maters instead and this is off the mark.</p>
<p>
They took the backdoor to Michigan Law knowing that they were incapable of scoring extremely high on the LSAT to get into Michigan Law the proper way. Its shameful that an esteemed school like U of M gives so much preferential treatment to its undergrads at the detriment of other fine professional school applicants. Schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke, et al. do this practice as well but at least their undergraduates are among the best in the world.</p>
<p>Michigan has a world-class faculty, an extremely strong professional student base but a rather mediore undergraduate population. The latter benefit very strongly from the presence of the two former contingents and that’s why Michigan is considered a top 30 school.</p>
<p>I guess that with the exception of HYSP, all schools self-select their graduates who apply to YHS Law Schools or even to all top 10 law schools. </p>
<p>Why is it wrong to base it on the whole student population?</p>
<ol>
<li>Not everyone is graduating. (So, only around 1/5 are graduating and eligible to apply for grad/professional school.) </li>
<li>Of those who are graduating, not everyone will apply to law school, especially true for those from the college of engineering, science and business. </li>
<li>Oftentimes, schools with a top 10 law school (Berkeley, Michigan, Penn, Northwestern, Chicago, Columbia, UVa) retain a few of their best bets (perhaps 2 or 3 a year).<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Now, let’s try using Whitman vs Vanderbilt as an example. </p>
<p>Whitman sent 1 grad to YLS this year and the school has around 1,450 undergrad students. Assuming Whitman graduates 300 students a year, that means the college has a .33% success rate to YLS. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt sent 3 grads to YLS for the same year and the school has around 6,900 undergraduates. Assuming 1,500 students graduate from Vanderbilt a year, that means the university has a .2% success rate to YLS.</p>
<p>Apparently, .33 > .2</p>
<p>In this case, it appears that Whitman is the superior school to Vanderbilt in terms of being a feeder school to YLS. But, in reality, is it really? Would you rather go to Whitman than Vanderbilt when you are preparing yourself to get into Yale Law School???</p>
<p>Ok, you are wrong. UC advising is pretty bad and many/most students do not use it – there is no need. UC has no way of knowing how many students actually apply to grad/professional school. It is not tracked. Students do not have to apply “through their University.” For example, Cal Career Services only has information – anecdotes, really – for a small proportion of its premeds. (I’ll admit i haven’t looked at LS applicants, but there is no reason to believe that it would be any different.) Back to Math 101: all UC reports are based on self-reported information, and as any AP Stats student knows, the plural of anecdotes is not data.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Besides ‘best school in the universe’ argument, do you have any source data to support your claim? Do you not think that some folks might have personal/family ties to say, the SF Bay Area such that they can’t leave? Perhaps a spouse is enrolled in UCSF/Stanford med? Again, why doesn’t Y have a 100% yield? Or, perhaps they are more interested in VC/high tech work than the “courts.” Do you believe that everyone of Yale’s rejectees are recieving/accepting a full ride to CCN, instead?</p>
<p>So, do you mean to say Amherst is superior to Williams too when it comes to law school preparations???</p>
<p>First of all, neither school (Berkeley nor Amherst) produce a 100% graduates with sterling GPAs, and grades as we all know are extremely important in getting into law school. </p>
<p>Second, you said it yourself, students self-select when they apply to YLS. So, we can assume that only students with superb marks apply to YLS. </p>
<p>Assuming only 25% of Berkeley grads received honors during graduation, that means, only around 1,200 students are likely to apply to YLS from Berkeley, if it’s true that everyone at Berkeley wants to apply to YLS. In contrast, a grade-inflated school like Amherst graduate almost everyone with superb GPAs. And, Amherst is in the same hemisphere as Yale’s (NE), whilst Berkeley is about 3,000 miles away. </p>
<p>If Amherst graduate about 430 students a year and 80% of them are eligible to apply to YLS (as per your self-select theory), that means around 344 students are applying to YLS, assuming again you are correct in saying that everyone is interested to apply to YLS, which I seriously doubt that it’s true. </p>
<p>Now, let’s run down the numbers to compare Berkeley vs Amherst. </p>
<p>Berkeley: 16 students at YLS / 1,200 x 100 = 1.33%
Amherst: 7 students at YLS / 344 x 100 = 2%</p>
<p>The difference actually does not look that big, but it still favors Amherst. However,</p>
<ol>
<li>Amherst is in the East Coast whilst Berkeley is about 3,000 miles away from YLS.</li>
<li>Amherst does not have an engineering school and a business school whilst Berkeley has.</li>
<li>Amherst does not have a law school whilst Berkeley has one and a solid top 10 law school at that, which could potentially mean that not ALL top Berkeley graduates who wish to become lawyers would wanna do it at YLS. Berkeley regularly attracts a few of their best graduates. </li>
</ol>
<p>BUT,</p>
<p>I think the number one point that you failed to consider here is that, even when Berkeley or Michigan or UVa or Amherst will produce 1,000 summa cum laudes and all of them will apply to YLS, the fact would remain that YLS would not accept all of them, maybe only 100 of them, at most, because already about 150 slots are sort of like “reserved” for HYPS graduates. That in itself is disadvantaging Berkeley and Michigan, which makes your reasoning and logic incorrect.</p>
Because we have access to data that shows us how many grads from each school applied to law school in a given cycle…so that makes all use of data regarding whole student population totally useless.</p>
This is all taken into account by LSAC’s data as it shows us how many grads from each school apply to law school in a given cycle like I’ve said a million times. Despite the fact that Berkeley has many disciplines like business and engineering that don’t produce future lawyers, 900+ Cal students/grads still apply to law school during every cycle and this figure is 9-10x as much as Amherst and Williams.</p>
<p>
Uh again, stop with this total undergrad population nonsense. According to the LSAC study I posted, 279 Vandy grads applied to law school in the last cycle. I do not have the same information for Whitman since its not a top 240 school in terms of total law school applications. If we had that data, then we could make comparisons of how effective Whitman is as a feeder to Yale vis-a-vis Vanderbilt since we can just hone on our analysis on the pre-law population at both of these schools rather than the total undergrad population (which is useless since schools like Berkeley have large engineering and other vocational programs).</p>
<p>
Fair enough, I don’t know that much about the UC system I’ll admit.</p>
<p>
You’re right that there exists special circumstances that would cause someone to turn down Yale but they are like I said, special circumstances. For the most part, you can assume that someone enrolled in any other law school in the country besides YLS or who didn’t apply to YLS did not and would not have been admitted there. It’s the undisputed top place in the world to receive a legal education and the Supreme Court basically cherry picks those in the top half of Yale Law to fill up clerkships for their justices. It’s the elite of the elite. </p>
<p>
Stop making up random data and assumptions. You need at least a 3.9 GPA and a 173 LSAT to stand a fighting chance of gaining admission to Yale Law and perhaps 25 kids at most at both Michigan and Berkeley will have those numbers to begin with. Then, the subjective stuff will matter and that’s where Amherst, Williams, et al. will shine over Cal or UMich.</p>
<p>
The Yale Law School feeder data shows that the only preferential treatment given in the subjective admissions process at the school seems to be for Harvard and Yale alumna. Princeton, Stanford, Duke and Brown lag way far behind these two titans. Other state schools like Michigan and UNC are not really in the picture.</p>
<p>ok let’s state the obvious- those that go to the more “elite” schools probably had higher SAT scores and of course that might be reflected in their LSAT scores. And of course the higher the LSAT/gpa score the better chance one has to get into Harvard or Yale Law school. </p>
<p>as my kid was an UG at Cornell, I actually have some some info as to the # of UG’s & alum who applied to specific law schools. To my surprise (or maybe not) Yale and Stanford are not that popular with the Ithaca crowd.
Cornell has an Action Summary in their law school guidebook which gives the # of Cornell students who apply to specific schools. They only list the schools where the highest # apply (usually the most popular 15 to 20 schools). I have never seen Yale listed and I might have seen Stanford listed once. As a comparison- Harvard, Columbia and NYU are always on the list.<br>
FYI- for admission cycle in 2010:
179 cornell grads/alum applied to Harvard
248 cornell grads/alum applied to Columbia
259 cornell grads/alum applied to NYU
If school not on list, it implied that less than 130 cornell grads/alum applied to particular school in 2010 admission cycle. Though Cornell is a large school, only 164 graduating seniors applied to law school for the 2010 cycle. There were probably 3 times more alum applying than graduating seniors for a total of 637 total Cornell grads (includes alumni) applying to law school for admission in 2010.</p>
<p>bottom line is- get a 174 on you LSAT and you have a shot at Yale Law school.</p>
LOL! A set of “general acceptance rate” would already be few steps ahead of the original data in your OP; you refuted this one but made a big deal out the original set. You are kinda funny. By the way, I am pretty sure Pizzagirl, a MMSS alum, was well aware of what you just said, which is pretty obvious.</p>
<p>ivy- it’s still about 15 %- not chopped liver. I noticed with Cornell over the years, the acceptance rate to Harvard was a fairly consistant 10 %. Ya think the law schools have some type of formula as to the % they accept from certain schools?? Only reason I thought it was possible, is that I have the last few years of data from Cornell and that 10% acceptance from Harvard is a constant.<br>
I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to do- I’m sure the law schools want to ensure they are not getting too many UG alum from a particular school and make sure they get a representation from a fairly wide array of schools.
point is- there probably are 25 to 30 schools that act as “feeders” and of course there will always be a handful of students coming from lesser known schools.</p>
<p>Yale’s LSAT average is a 166 now according to that report. Also, Elis enjoy higher grade inflation than their counterparts at Princeton and the data available suggests that the professional schools at both Harvard and Yale have a strong affinity for one another and favor each other’s undergraduates disproportionately in comparison to other institutions. Princeton is like the awkward 3rd wheel that’s trying to latch on but is unfortunately left out of the party.;)</p>
<p>At any rate though, Yale’s placement rate into Columbia, NYU and Georgetown is north of 40% in addition to a 30% clip at Harvard, a 32% clip at Penn and a 25% clip at Yale. This is simply staggering. Harvard and Yale are simply stronger options if one intends to apply to law school and medical school. I hear graduate programs love Princetonians though.</p>
<p>call me a cynic- but is it possible that because Princeton has no medical or law school and Princeton cannot reciprocate acceptances into these programs, it is wiser for law schools to take a higher % of students from schools that have a Law School component?
HYS can all play nice with each other because they will all accept a certain % of UG’s from each others school. This keeps HYS (UPenn, Columbia, NYU Cornell and Georgetown too) UG’s content as they just shuffle the cards and get into each other’s law school. Princeton just doesn’t bring enough to the table as it has no law school so law school doesn’t benefit sufficiently by admitting too many Princeton UG’s.
Now, I am not saying UG’s from these schools are getting an unfair advantage, the Cornell UG’s who got into Columbia and Harvard pretty much had the median LSAT/gpa’s that were necessary for admission. They were not given an advantage, but a certain % of them were accepted into these programs every year.<br>
Just an interesting theory- have no proof. But this idea might explain why the % of Princeton’s UG gaining admittance into certain law schools is a lot lower than peer institututons.</p>
<p>Not me! I was a Stats minor and know better than to assume facts not in evidence. </p>
<p>Yale Law has an 80% yield, that is 20% (one-fifth) of YLS admittees choose to go elsewhere (or not go at all). You may choose to assume what you will about these 20%, but unless you have any data sources… :)</p>
<p>btw: not everyone aspires to the Supreme or federal Courts.</p>
<p>jhaverford, graduate schools do not favor Amherst or Williams students to Cal or Michigan students. I do believe, however, that for various reasons, comparing Cal and Michigan representation at the Harvard or Yale Law schools to those of Amherst and Williams is a poor frame of reference. LACs and research universities are way too different to compare, and if one were to do so, it would be wiser to compare Michigan to a midwestern LAC (perhaps Carleton) and Cal to a Western LAC (perhaps Pomona or CMC).</p>
<p>“someone enrolled in any other law school in the country besides YLS or who didn’t apply to YLS did not and would not have been admitted there.”</p>
<p>That’s going too far. YLS is not for everyone. I know lawyers who did not apply and who would have been competitive. Many would not have gotten in, of course, because that’s the nature of the system, but some might well have. Within tiers, students do make judgment calls based on fit – and that’s before you factor in merit money.</p>