I guess Yale finally let someone from my school in, although they still accept more than half their class from the same 10 schools. It was so bad that Yale stopped publishing date on the numbers they admit from every school.
Harvard Law School is huge relative to other top schools, hence I mentioned Stanford, which didn’t admit any students from my school in their last reported data.
I get that it’s the student that matters, but it’s hard to believe that Yale has better students than anywhere in the world. Especially with the current announcements that schools want to take the LSAT into less consideration, making me believe that they’re going to care about “soft-factors” such as undergraduate institutions even more.
Couple of thoughts. Your 4.0 from a top 100 public and 175 LSAT will get you into plenty of T14 law schools. And if you go to a top 10 or even a top 30 law school and you get in top 10% of your law school class and make law review you will a big law job if you want it. Now if you want to be a clerk for a Supreme court justice then yes you probably need to be at Yale or Harvard or Stanford.
My D18 was a BS Econ major at Clemson. 4.0 GPA; 168 LSAT. Got full tuition scholarship from 3 top 20-30 law schools. Wait listed at a bunch of T14’s. Ended up at UF (ranked 21) and In first year ended up 4th in her class and got 3 big law offers for 2L summer jobs.
She will graduate from law school debt free and still make over 200K her first year.
Second Yale, Harvard, and Berkeley pulling out of USNWR rankings is not about letting in more kids from Ivies or Vandy or UChicago into law school. The stated goal is to get more students who want to go into public sector and social justice warrior jobs without worrying how that impacts their rankings.
You stated you can graduate debt free. I would not take on any debt to try to get into more “prestigious” school just to help get into law school. Keeping your 4.0 and studying your ass off for the LSAT will give you a better chance at at top law school than the “name” of the school you graduate from. Moreover at the top law schools the chances of merit money is very low. So if you get in you will be looking at $210,000 to $250,000 in debt.
As a side note. One great law school program for a an Econ major is at Vandy Law School. A six year combined JD/Econ Phd. Very hard to get into but it is a free ride if you get in. Everyone who graduated from that program got a circuit court clerkship and/or is a law professor. You should take a look at that. I tried to convince my daughter to peruse that program but she didn’t want to spend the additional years.
Based on profile criteria, a school such as the University of Miami, which was suggested, doesn’t seem to represent a lateral shift. If, hypothetically, you attend the University of Utah (95% acceptance rate, ACT range of 22–30), then the students at UMiami (28%, 30-33) would generally compare academically to those near the top end at UUtah. However, I’m not recommending UMiami specifically. It simply offers an example of how you might broaden your range of potential transfer options while still avoiding a “lateral” transfer.