<p>@xp1123
- First of all, I don’t even know if you’re interested in law school. I was just using that as an example. You may want to talk to an admissions officer for whatever sort of graduate program you are interested in to find out what emphasis they place on what criteria.</p>
<p>You will often hear claims on college confidential that law schools don’t care what college you went to because, as it turns out, the top law schools may accept students from 75 to 200 schools:</p>
<p>[Entering</a> Class Profile | Yale Law School](<a href=“http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm]Entering”>http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm)</p>
<p>However, there are 2719 four-year colleges in the U.S. and the fact that top Law Schools are taking students from less than 10 percent of them does not mean that where you went to school does not matter. And a lot of those 100 or 200 schools send maybe 1 student to a top school whereas the top undergrad schools may send quite a few. And indeed the top undergrad students seemed to be accepted at a higher rate than students from other schools.</p>
<p>Yes, LSAT and GPA are very important. But it is not clear that simply getting high LSATS and a 4.0 GPA at any school in the country will get you into every law school in the country. As we all know, top colleges turn down many applicants with high GPA’s and test scores and I imagine it works the same way with law school.</p>
<p>This person seem to have a good explanation of the relative importance of undergrad:</p>
<p>bonanza said: “The short answer is that, yes, it matters, but where you went as an undergrad is not as important at most law schools as are your grades and LSAT score. That said, when faced with two applicants with similar GPA and LSAT scores, if one went to a top ranked undergraduate school and the other one didn’t, the former will usually win out. Most law schools publish statistics about where their students come from. If you look a the top law schools, you will find that a large number of their students went to top undergraduate institutions. But certainly not all. A 3.9 from a state flagship will beat out a 3.3 from an Ivy or equivalent. But it may not beat out a 3.7 from an Ivy or equivalent.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1290766-will-my-undergrad-college-affect-law-school-admissions.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1290766-will-my-undergrad-college-affect-law-school-admissions.html</a>
2) I do not mean to minimize your concern about finances and paying the bill. It is a big deal. I do not know how much your parents can or will contribute, etc. However, I will just suggest considering these few points:</p>
<p>–indeed, people on CC can get a bit nutty about insisting you must go to school X or your life is over; still I wouldn’t always just recommend choosing a college by always taking the cheapest option. I paid more to go to UChicago and I don’t regret it.</p>
<p>–what do you mean by ‘worth it?’ clearly, you think it would be academically. but if you mean, will you make more money by doing it, that is impossible for any of us to predict, though UChicago does have a strong alumni network in business and academics. It has more billionaire alums that many schools and has more Nobel Prize Winners and Rhodes Scholars than many schools.</p>
<p>–after you get into grad school or get your first job, people won’t care about your GPA anymore. They’ll just know where you went to college.</p>
<p>–I didn’t have to pay (much) for grad school because of graduate research assistantships (tuition waiver plus stipend) I received and I definitely feel that the fact that I went to UChicago carried weight and helped me receive them. (Those were not based on financial need but were awarded based on merit.)</p>
<p>–are you likely to go into a high-paying field or not? (In some fields, coming out with some loans may not be a big deal, but in others it may be a tremendous burden.)</p>
<p>–although I would tell anyone to go to UChicago over another school :), I would also tell anyone to go to a top 10 or 20 school if at all possible over one further down the list. So this is not just my saying go to UChicago over Tulane. I would tell you to go to any top school 20 school over a second-tier school IF you can reasonably manage it financially. </p>
<p>Anyway, it’s a big decision–and good luck.</p>