My son wants to be a lawyer. He is currently attending a community college in California. After two semesters he has a gpa of 4.0. For ECs he did the debate team. He won a gold medal at both state and nationals in parliamentary debate.
He is now considering where he will transfer. He has two options: 1) A UC campus. That would be roughly 30,000 dollars per year. His college has a good track record of transfers to Berkeley and I think there is a good chance he could be accepted there. Option 2) we live right by a nice CSU campus. It is nowhere near as highly ranked as UC obviously. But it is not bad. Tuition there is about 8,000 per year (he could live at home).
We will be taking on debt to pay for UC. Not sure how much debt. But a lot. There would be no debt with option 2. Plus I think it will be easier to keep a high gpa at the CSU campus than at UC Berkeley.
From reading this forum it seems as if the key to acceptance at a good law school is a high gpa and a high LSAT score. The quality of undergrad institution attended does not seem to be a big factor.
So we think the CSU is his best bet.
Does this seem to be the right course? Is it better to graduate debt free/with best shot at high gpa from an average CSU campus than graduating from the much more prestigious school with lots of debt and much greater competition for grades?
Yes you are correct. What matters most is a high GPA and good LSAT scores. Where your son attends for undergrad will have a marginal influence. Also, law school is extremely expensive. Going to CSU and saving money for law school would be the smart thing to do.
If you are going in debt for a UC it is not worth it. A good GPA lsat and law related ECs are best for law school. Sac State is in a good location for gov/law related internships. My uncle is a superior court judge and lecturer at UC Davis Law and said getting a high gpa is the most important part of the app.
Generally, all that matters for law school admissions is LSAT and GPA. The only thing that may warrant UC is if your son thinks he might not want to pursue law and they have a program that CSU does not.
btw: don’t assume that A’s are easier to come by at CSU’s. Upper division at Cal and UCLA are are whole lot more grade generous that the Frosh classes.
I agree with the others here as far as law school admission is concerned, but I do pay attention to the undergraduate school when I am looking at applicants for employment, so that is not irrelevant.
^^are you really gonna be concerned about a job candidate who attended Harvard Law, but perhaps attended Cal State bcos they had to work their way thru school?
That’s a straw man and not even close to what I said. In fact, my experience is that it works the other way. I have had some excellent clerks who went to top schools undergraduate (UC Berkeley and the like) but then went to third tier law schools.
It is undeniable that some employers care about undergrads. Some ask for transcripts. It is equally undeniable that basing your undergrad choice on the preferences of these employers would be foolish. Go where you have the least debt. Far more employers don’t care where you went to undergrad than do. It’s not worth going $60,000 into debt (that will grow while you’re in law school, I believe) on the off-chance that your son will only want to work for an employer that cares about undergrad and that said employer will care enough about the difference to not hire based on a CSU/UC.
Is there no way to get financial aid or scholarships to a UC? In general, GPA and LSAT matter the most. But I would be concerned that top law schools would still discount academic achievement at a CSU. They might also open fewer doors if he decides to do something other than law school.
@SlippinJimmy Unfortunately, for our family there was not really much financial assistance available for UC. We may qualify for California’s middle class scholarship program which may give up to 20% off tuition. A year at UC is around $33,000 (tuition and room/board). When he applied as a freshman he did not qualify for any scholarships. Regents scholarships are offered to transfer students but I don’t know if he would qualify for that (if he did not as a freshman applicant it seems more likely than not he won’t).
There is no doubt that UC is more prestigious than CSU. But is that enough to make up for the cost difference? Two years at UC (assuming he could graduate in two years–and at Berkeley that may not be possible), will be roughly $65,000. Two years at CSU will be $16,000 (because he can live at home).
It seems the best course, as @Demosthenes49 put it above, is to ‘go cheap.’
I agree with the consensus above - save the dough and go to a CSU. About the middle class scholarship - it is only for tuition and has been inconsistently funded - and the rules to qualify have changed significantly since its introduction - articles like this are always in the press. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-middle-class-students-adv2016-story.html
As a parent, it is really frustrating not being able to count on a consistent award year to year. We got about 20% of CSU tuition when my son was a freshman and nothing since.
I wouldn’t count on getting a dime - that way you won’t be disappointed.
Obviously, this is a very personal issue and based on your family’s own financial situation. I’m at Stanford Law School now, and anecdotally, I think Berkeley and UCLA are probably the most common undergrads represented. USC, Stanford, and the Ivies are also pretty common. I’m not sure I know anyone who went to a CSU. That’s not to say everyone went to a fancy undergrad, and of course, there’s a correlation issue here. I don’t have any particular insider knowledge on admissions, but I have heard from a professor involved in the faculty review portion of the admissions process that they do pay attention to what undergrad people went to.
For me, I think I was motivated by other high-achieving students in undergrad. I didn’t go to the world’s most prestigious undergrad, but coming from a mediocre public high school, I think it was absolutely worth it to be surrounded by other sharp, ambitious students. It helped me gain a better understanding of what careers were out there and how people got into them.
I wonder if it would be possible to apply to some private schools with strong financial aid programs? Also, it seems like a big piece of the cost here is the cost of moving away from home. Maybe it’s worth also considering the potential benefits of living away from home.
Anyway, like I said, I’m not saying I have the right answer for your family’s situation. But for me, I don’t know if I would be where I am now if I had lived at home and gone to the local CSU. It’s unfortunate that the cost of public universities is so high.
I would actually recommend exploring secret option #3: Apply to some of the richly-endowed top private schools such as the Ivies and Stanford that nowadays provide such lavish financial aid packages such that they would actually prove to be substantially cheaper than state schools, especially California state schools, for most families - and are notorious for grade inflation to boot. For example, Harvard states outright that families making up to $150k need contribute no more than 10% of their income, and with no expectation of loans.
Of course, being admitted to such schools is no mean feat indeed. Nevertheless, it might be worth a flyer. All you need is to be admitted to one of those schools.
For graduate study we often hear that it doesn’t matter where you go for undergrad as long as you get a very high GPA! But when you look at the demographics of gratuate students in prestigious universities you see most are coming from elit (undergraduate) schools as mentioned by @SlippinJimmy as well!
(I often ask myself why a medical school should not differentiate (contrary to what we often hear) between two premeds with the same GPA of 3.9 …one coming from a cutthroat school such as UCLA (where my daughter is pushing herself to extreme to maintain such a GPA) and another coming out of an easy school such as ***(not mentioning any name lest offend someone) where even a 4.0 is not that hard to gain?)
The key word there is ‘similar’, with the question being how similar. While a UC 3.9 might well beat a CSU 3.9, it’s highly doubtful that a UC 3.5 would beat a CSU 3.9.
One simple reason is that the med-school rankings themselves do not differentiate amongst GPA’s from different schools. A med-school that admits ‘too many’ students with relatively low GPA’s from difficult schools such that its entire admitted class has a lower average GPA than other med-schools would be deemed by the ranking methodologies to be a (relatively) less selective med-school and would therefore have its ranking reduced. Med-school adcoms are not exactly delighted by the prospect of having to tell the Dean that the school’s ranking has declined. It’s safer to let sleeping dogs lie by simply admitting a slew of students with high GPA’s from easy schools so that nobody’s the wiser.