<p>These rankings do not consider how many people actually apply from each school.</p>
<p>Average LSAT: 165 & Up
Harvard University - 166</p>
<p>Yale University - 165</p>
<p>Average LSAT: 160 & Up
Stanford - 164
MIT - 164
Duke - 164</p>
<p>Princeton -163
Columbia - 163
Amherst - 163
Williams - 163
Pomona - 163
Brown - 163</p>
<p>UPenn - 162
Chicago - 162
Cornell - 162
Claremont McKenna - 162</p>
<p>Rice - 161
Northwestern - 161
Georgetown - 161</p>
<p>Weslyan - 160</p>
<p>Average LSAT: 155 & Up
Brandeis - 159
Grinnell - 159
Notre Dame - 159
Virginia - 159
William & Mary - 159</p>
<p>Vanderbilt - 158
Michigan - 158
McGill - 158
Macalester - 158
Emory - 158
BYU 158
NYU - 158/155
Kenyon College - 158
UC-Berkeley 158
Tufts - 158
Connecticut College - 158
Oberlin - 158
Davidson - 158 (in 2000)</p>
<p>UCLA - 157
UC-San Diego - 157
Wake Forest - 157
USC - 156
UMass-Amherst - 156
Smith 156
Texas - 156
Trinity (TX) - 156
Wisconsin-Madison - 156</p>
<p>Boston College 155
Lehigh - 155
University of Dallas - 155
Washington - 155</p>
<p>Average LSAT: 150 & Up
Boston College - 154
Florida - 154
Georgia - 154
Miami (OH) - 154
Missouri - 154
Southern Methodist - 154
Texas A&M - 154
Utah - 154
Western Washington Univ. - 154</p>
<p>Oklahoma - 153
Boston University - 153
Nebraska-Lincoln - 153
Minnesota-Twin Cities - 153
Butler Univ. (IN) - 153
UMD - 153/147
Montana State Univ. - 153
Utah State - 153
American - 153</p>
<p>Arizona - 152
Kentucky - 152
Hiram (OH) - 152
Pittsburgh - 152
St. Louis University 152
Kansas State University - 152
Penn State - 152
Syracuse 152/150</p>
<p>UConn - 151
Wisconsin-Milwaukee - 151
Loyola Marymount - 151
UMinn-Duluth - 151
University of North Florida - 151</p>
<p>Florida State 150
Northeastern - 150
Ole Miss - 150
Wyoming - 150
Washington State - 150</p>
<p>Average LSAT: 145 & Up
DePaul - 149</p>
<p>Georgia State - 148
Stockton - 148
Temple 148
University of New Orleans - 148</p>
<p>Middle Tennessee State - 147</p>
<p>City University of New York - 145
Howard - 145
West Georgia 145</p>
<p>Your LSAT list is clearly incomplete. It makes me wonder if the numbers themselves are accurate.</p>
<p>This list came from another thread at LawSchoolDiscussion, compiled from school whose averages were released and available. Take it or leave it, but if a schools average is not listed, it was not found. Feel free to find it.</p>
<p>There have been studies shown that say that students who are accepted at top schools, but choose to go elsewhere prove to be just as successful. That same concept can be going on here. It's not so much that going to HYP is going to help you get into YLS as much as the people who get into HYP, on average, would be the best candidates. If someone is good enough to get into HYP, but instead goes to Bowdoin, Middlebury, Colgate, Hamilton, UVA, UMichigan, Davidson, whatever, it doesn't necesarily make them a worse candidate for YLS; it's just that there are a lower % of top accomplished candidates attending these other schools.</p>
<p>First, Harvard Law School is far from being "kind of like a safety school." </p>
<p>Second, as Marian mentioned, you have to keep in mind that some colleges tend to have a lot more students interested in and applying to law school than others. MIT is an excellent example. The same would be true with medical school and many other graduate/professional programs. A much more meaningful statistic would be the percentage of students admitted into Yale/T14 law schools out of those who applied from any given college. Please consider, too, that Yale Law School is a very different kind of law school (e.g. more theoretical in many respects) than many other law schools, and knowledgeable students geared towards a particular practice or area of law may choose not to apply to or not to attend Yale Law. Again, that's why looking at admission to the top law schools generally from the pool of applicants at a given college would be much more meaningful than the information given by the OP.</p>
<p>Harvard Law is not viewed as a safety school, but the fact is that almost everyone - over 90% of those - who get into Yale Law choose to attend. And many, if not most, of YLS applicants also applied to HLS. That said, you are probably correct it is not viewed as a "safety" because Yale is so selective that even the most perfect applicants are still unlikely to get in.</p>
<p>You make some other good points, but I still maintain that this is probably the best ranking out there, as I explained before. As in science, the simplest demonstration of a point is usually the best demonstration. Adding other ratios and facts and figures dilutes the essential fact that YLS is the "best" school, that, unlike other law schools where admitted students may make some kind of choice, almost everyone who gets into YLS goes there, and that by definition, the "best" prelaw programs are the ones that send their students to the "best" law school.</p>
<p>I think this calculation is flawed. (This is an intellectual quibble--I am not arguing with anything substantive here :))
The OP used yield--which doesn't tell the whole story. To get an accurate figure, the OP would have had to divide the total number of ACCEPTED applicants from each school by the total number of applicants to YLS. Instead, the OP divided the the total number of ATTENDING APPLICANTS by the total number of applicants to YLS. A full 15% of accepted applicants turn down YLS. Accepted and attending applicants are therefore two very different groups, numerically speaking. The percentages in this ranking are so small that the error is pretty significant. The OP is going to have to find out the number of students attending YLS from each of those undergraduate colleges. Good luck with that search!</p>
<p>Just for the purposes of debate (to demonstrate how the flaws of this ranking could play out)...imagine a Harvard undergrad who got into both YLS and HLS. Which would the Harvard student pick? Imagine a Yale undergrad in the same position. There will probably be some biases toward the applicants' alma maters. That could explain the higher percentage Yale got in this ranking compared to Harvard. This is, of course, pure speculation, but I did want to point out a possible facet of the yield versus total acceptance issue.</p>
<p>Good point, but that issue is minimized by the fact that only a tiny handful of people turn the school down, and because the yield rate (officially 87% last year, much higher if you consider intangible factors like admits who choose medical school instead) is so much higher than any other law school. About 20 people across the country turn the school down every year for other law schools, and those are not the kinds of numbers that would significantly affect the OP ranking. </p>
<p>I've looked at the numbers for Harvard and Yale and the "alma mater" factor does not have any significant impact on the yield rate among the alumni of those two universities. They are virtually identical in that they are both extremely high -- if anything, Yale alumni are more likely to turn YLS down. And there's no disputing that HY are at the top, anyways - the rest of the list is what is interesting.</p>
<p>Well, as I said, it's not substantive :D Your ranking isn't wrong even though I'm right (that isn't meant to sound pompous). It's no big deal and I happen to agree with your points (Yale rules, etc.). Nice job calculating all that stuff by the way!</p>
<p>That "20 people" statistic is interesting. Out of curiosity, how many people ARE accepted to YLS every year? Is 13% really only 20? That would mean that only around 150-160 people are accepted each year! Is that really true, posterX?</p>
<p>There are about 200 accepted per year; 180 enroll.</p>
<p>PosterX is so incredibly biased toward YLS that he or she reeks of the infamous Yale inferiority complex. In response to your posts, I've come up with a few points (this post is so late, but I just came across the thread today while surfing the net and I think your flawed reasoning needs to be censured and corrected):</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Harvard Law is definitely not a safety. You corrected yourself, but I still get the feeling that you are under the impression HLS is a safety, which is really incomprehensible and inane. Calling a school a safety implies that an applicant will apply to YLS and assume he will get into HLS. That of course, is ludicrous. It is true, however, that nearly everyone enrolled at YLS got into HLS but ONLY BECAUSE OF ITS SMALL SIZE. This will ALWAYS BE TRUE. Why? Because HLS and YLS both target the same kind of applicant - high LSAT and high GPA. Since YLS is smaller, there will always be plenty of people at HLS who did not get into YLS, but does this really mean anything, other than that YLS is smaller than HLS? There are many high gpa/high lsat combos out there who apply to HLS and don't get in. The fact of the matter is that anyone who got into YLS feels lucky and didn't know if he/she was going to get into either YLS or HLS in the first place. It is more accurate to say that any school below SLS is probably a safety for anyone with a high gpa/high lsat.</p></li>
<li><p>YLS is much smaller but its admissions process is not significantly more competitive than either HLS or SLS, and especially not HLS. The gpa and lsat ranges are nearly identical for HLS and YLS every year. If you look at the USNEWS rankings (which you must do because you say YLS has a big lead over all other law schools), it is pretty odd that YLS is ranked above HLS every year, when nearly all the numbers for the two schools are almost identical, the only exception being the faculty/student ratio and the 15% devoted to faculty resources (which includes the f/s ratio). Saying that YLS is more competitive than HLS in terms of admissions is only true when comparing admission PERCENTAGE - not the "eliteness" of the two student bodies. Imagine what the rankings would look like if you considered endowment or some unit of measure that does not penalize HLS for its larger size.</p></li>
<li><p>YLS does not hold much more prestige in the legal world than HLS, if any. On the other hand, HLS holds SIGNIFICANTLY more lay prestige and more international recognition. Research the opinions of LLMs. There is a reason why HLS is mentioned in movies, whereas YLS is not. Two words: lay prestige.</p></li>
<li><p>I would argue that Harvard Law Review is definitely more prestigious than YLJ, but not by a huge margin.</p></li>
<li><p>Your ranking is very flawed for two main reasons. #1: YLS always admits way more yale undergraduates because they favor their own students, which is why their percentage in your ranking is higher. Similarly, HLS always admits far more harvard undergraduates than any other school. It is clear though that both Y and H undergraduates dominate in numbers. #2: As other people have pointed out, you must have the # of applicants applied vs # of applicants admitted to really determine if one school is actually more represented. You use all this flowery rhetoric to negate this point, but it is undebateable. You pointed out that comparing LSAT and GPA numbers won't help, which is true, but only because anyone who gains admission to YLS will have nearly identical numbers, except when you're comparing between a state school and say, Harvard. Taking points 1 and 2 together demonstrate your ranking is highly flawed. ALL IT SAYS IS WHAT SCHOOLS YALE LAW, WHICH IS THE MOST SELECTIVE SCHOOL BASED ON ADMISSION PERCENTAGE, MAY HAVE A PREFERENCE FOR IN TERMS OF ADMISSION. Your ranking has nothing to do with quality of supposed "pre-law" programs or the quality and prestige of the universities. Think about that for a moment...</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Disclosure: I am not a student or alum of Harvard, but I really believe that HLS is probably the best and definitely most influential law school in the world; the latter is not debateable.</p>
<p>interesting.. what does pre-law programs consist of? does it like take the place of a major? or do you major in something else as well.. im so confused haha</p>
<p>Pre-Law is useless. That is putting all your eggs in a basket. Most people that go on to law school major in</p>
<ol>
<li>Philosophy</li>
<li>Political Science </li>
<li>History</li>
<li>PRE-LAW</li>
<li>Communications</li>
</ol>
<p>new yorker it is a major</p>
<p>At Amherst College, there exists a highly comprehensive and unique "Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought" major that involves courses in practice, theory, research, and historical/cultural perspectives.</p>
<p>I thought it might be worth mentioning because, although it's not exactly a "pre-law" program, it's an intensely challenging and interesting major that really inspires and prepares students to pursue careers in law. And, it's unique to Amherst.</p>
<p>Anyway, these rankings are unreliable. Why not expand them to include the T14 schools?</p>
<p>Wow, Bowdoin and Davidson~</p>