<p>is it possible for someone who went to sfsu and studied international business (had a college GPA of 4.0) to apply to UCLA law school and have a shot? with a good LSAT score?</p>
<p>is it harder to get into good law schools coming from a less prestigious 4 year?</p>
<p>Where you went doesn't matter for law school. Your GPA is all that matters. LSAT shows whether or not your GPA was a fluke or not.</p>
<p>Uh. Really...???</p>
<p>Reputation is taking into consideration for "brownie points."
GPA AND LSAT score are the main factors, weighed differently at different law schools.</p>
<p>Polite is right as the top law schools are primarily driven by gpa and lsat. With thousands of applications, law schools cannot weigh diffrerent factors such as institution, major, course load, ect.. In terms of brownie points for top undergrad schools, maybe yes and maybe no at some schools. The top law schools also want geographic diversity with students from many different undergrad schools, so coming from a top undergrad school may hurt you (depending on who else is applying from your school). Furthermore, adcoms know that many top undergrad schools have mega grade inflation. </p>
<p>UCLA is a great law school but there is a HUGE difference if you are instate or out of state. If you are out of state and you get in, you will likley also get into a top 5. UCB, UMich, UVA are also top state schools but my understanding is that they do not give the kind of priority to residency status as UCLA.</p>
<p>"Where you went doesn't matter for law school."</p>
<p>While it's not a "significant" factor, it may separate you from the rest. Top law schools, I understand, are receiving c.15 applications per seat available. If most applicants have similar GPAs and LSAT scores, being from a top undergraduate program will help you.</p>
<p>"Your GPA is all that matters."</p>
<p>Right, so the LSAT is just for S%%^ and gigles.</p>
<p>"LSAT shows whether or not your GPA was a fluke or not."</p>
<p>Not necessarily. While it does serve the purpose of confirming one's abilities as indicated by one's GPA, the LSAT score stands on its own--some school give more value to the LSAT than to the GPA, and, of course, vice-versa.</p>
<p>"Polite is right"</p>
<p>See above... </p>
<p>"With thousands of applications, law schools cannot weigh diffrerent factors such as institution, major, course load, ect.."</p>
<p>Gee, I wonder what LSs do when they have applicants with similar numbers...right, they just freak out and play bingo.</p>
<p>"In terms of brownie points for top undergrad schools, maybe yes and maybe no at some schools. The top law schools also want geographic diversity with students from many different undergrad schools" </p>
<p>Brownie points are given not only for undergrad school attended, if applicable, but also for the factors you mention and some others, too.</p>
<p>"so coming from a top undergrad school may hurt you (depending on who else is applying from your school). Furthermore, adcoms know that many top undergrad schools have mega grade inflation."</p>
<p>I really doubt it. Think about it: If you were an admissions dean, would you want more Harvard kids at your prestigious LS or more no name kids, for the sake of diversity? It may not be a major factor, but that does not negate the fact that some LS consider it.</p>
<p>Law schools admissions is a numbers game that operates under the status quo. If you are from a top undergrad, the assumption prevails that, provided you have the numbers, you truly belong at a top LS. On the other hand, if you are not coming from a top undergrad program, the question remains...why not?</p>
<p>Your number gets plugged into an index, with varying weights to GPA and LSAT, though in general LSAT should be 50-60% of your index. </p>
<p>Those that are high prob sure admits (high index) get considered first and approved. This is where soft factors matter. The quality of your institution is far down on the list. Things like Work Experience, awards won, recomenndations, etc. matter much more. Its a very low tiebreaker.</p>
<p>Schools do realize some gpa's are less indicative of talent than others (thats why certain schools adjust for gpa inflation by comparing you to the median gpa or something similar). However, this does not mean grade inflation will hurt you. Boalt's released academic index gives harvard students a big boost because Harvard accepts the best and brightest, even if they do have lots of gpa inflation. </p>
<p>In general though, you can expect little help from the quality of your institution, especially if you go to a state university from someplace diverse like South Dakota, the quality of your institution may be awash to your geographic diversity.</p>
<p>But insofar as soft factors are concerned, schools organize by likeley's, maybe's, iffy's and compare people with similar numbers according to soft factors.</p>
<p>Since .1 gpa points is worth 1 LSAT point, its probably better to go to the less known institution and work on the LSAT instead, though my information is for knowledge of top law schools, not smaller ones. Smaller ones would likely value quality of the institution a bit more since they have less competition.</p>
<p>Qualifier: Especially for Berkeley which overrates GPA.</p>
<p>I fully agree with polite on his penultimate post--for all that matters.</p>
<p>Whether the prestige of your undergrad school matters or not has always been confusing to me. 90% of the CC users say it doesn't, yet everything I read from law "professionals" (guides to law school, online advisors) say your undergraduate school does matter. The whole thing is confusing to me. Obviously your lsat and gpa are most important, but what's with the people writing books about knowing the application process saying your school matters? Are they stupid or lacking in knowledge? Are the CC users more knowledgeable?</p>
<p>Any of this make sense?</p>
<p>The majority of people on this board will contend that the college that you attended does not have a significant impact on your acceptance. In all honesty, the top law schools could fill their class with grads of ivy caliber schools, but we know that this is not the case. </p>
<p>At any given school some majors are much harder in terms of grades than others. Schools like Swarthmore and JHU have reps for grade deflation, and most of the ivy's have a rep for grade inflation. Typically science and engineering majors have lower gpa's from the same institution. At any given school one prof may almost never give below a B, and another prof at the same school teaching the same classes thinks that a C is a good grade. My point is that adcoms for law school simply cannot quantify this info. Furthermore, top law schools are slaves to the national rankings in which gpa and lsat are published benchmarks. I know that it is dissapointing for many to hear this, but your undergrad school does not carry that much weight.</p>
<p>Please provide a site for law professors saying that the undergrad school that you attend has a significant impact.</p>
<p>so then what kind of students are getting into top law schools? i mean,lets take harvard for example.</p>
<p>what is their ideal applicant? what kind of schools do harvard law students generally attend as undergrads?</p>
<p>Their ideal applicant is 4.0 and 180 of course :P</p>
<p>Quality of the institution doesn't matter to them because they are competing on USNews rankings which is retarded and based on moronic factors, among which include the quality of the admitted class in terms of raw gpa and lsat (ignoring for the quality of the institution). </p>
<p>Yes its unfair that people with 3.5's in extremely hard majors from MIT or Berkeley can't make it compared to some guy with a 3.9 in some podunk major in squaresville South Dakota, but dems da breaks.</p>
<p>i was browsing through an LSAT study guide and i hate to sound stupid but it looked so hard! it looked like a freakin IQ test. i don't know how i'm going to do well on that, since i'm a bad test taker to begin with = /....but o well, i have plenty of time</p>
<p>You're in luck. UCLA favors in-state students to out-of-state from what I've read so you have a lower threshold to overcome.</p>
<p>Since each gpa point is worth .1, that also gives you slack to score a few points lower than the median LSAT score and get in.</p>
<p>So Harvard wants a 4.0/180, no big surprise. It is obvious that a low gpa and lsat won't get you into a top school. What do they do, they take all the auto-admits and minorities and that leaves however many spots left. There are many many more applicants than spots, applicants with scores in the 50th percentile at least. What are the deciding factors??? If law schools could care less about course load and undergraduate school, etc, then what are they looking at? If the scores are there, and you have 1000 students for 200 spots, what are the deciding factors?</p>
<p>Uh ... 180/4.0's are not auto-admits except for at harvard (because they need to keep their lsat and gpa interquartile high enough to compete with Yale). You can probably get a below 25th percentile gpa if you can get an above 75th quartile lsat. </p>
<p>Keeping the LSAT interquartile range is harder for harvard. They have a class of 550. The top 25% of that would be 137 people. A 180 is 99.98 percentile. A 176 (the current top 75th quartile range for harvard's 2005 entering class) is the top 99.67 percentile. What does this mean? </p>
<p>104,000 people took the test in 1997. 137,000 took it in 2005. For 2005 then, 180 = 27 people. For 178, there are 123 people who get it. For 176 there are 495 people who get that. For 170 there are about 2452 people that get that. </p>
<p>Since the harvard needs 137 people each year to get above a 176, there is only about 301 people to choose from split between all the other top law schools. This is only recent numbers which are historically very high because of the previous recession. Numbers taking the test are likely to decrease, making harvard more likely to accept those with high lsats but weak gpa's as time progresses.</p>
<p>However, Harvard's interquartile range for gpa was about 3.68 to 3.92 for the class entering in 2005. Literally thousands of college grads have more than 3.92's each year, perhaps tens of thousands.</p>
<p>As such, harvard has many people with above 3.92's but with mediocre (for harvard) lsat's which would be a 170 for the 25th percentile and approximately 2452 people. As such they can easily fill out their gpa 75th quartile "quota" for US News, but need to get at least half the people that make a 176 or above each year in order to stay competitive with smaller schools like yale and stanford.</p>
<p>As such, lsat's are much more important than gpa in general.</p>
<p>It would seem that while gpa can be lower than 3.7 (but not by much), it is only a necessary factor for admission, not a sufficient one. Your LSAT plays a larger role in your being selected if you fall into the top 25% range. </p>
<p>So in short, LSAT>GPA>>Soft Factors.</p>
<p>I'm guessing you use common sense for soft factors. They like to have diversity, (ethnically and geographically) among other things. The soft factors are pretty similar to the ones used in college in priority and kind I suspect, but your lsat score is pretty important for harvard.</p>
<p>(I did this analysis quickly and ad hoc and I know I ignored a few exceptions but I think the general analysis is spot on).</p>
<p>EDIT: "For 176 there are 301 people that get that."
Not 495.</p>