Here is my question. My son was offered an academic scholarship to a smaller and lesser known school in NC. Assuming he gets good grades and a decent LSAT score in the future can he get into a decent law school like UNC or Elon coming out of the small university? Could the size of the school and academic rank hurt his chances enough for us to decline their ride?
Not knowing the smaller lesser known school you are considering and what other colleges he may get into and can afford it is hard to opine. Would your S be happy to attend the smaller lesser known school? If so perhaps the smaller lesser known college can give you some indication as to law schools students have got into in the past. Certainly it would be a plus to save money on undergrad education to use for law school.
Nobody here can predict the future – but to a certain extent his chances for law school will depend on how your S does at the college, his LSAT scores and to some extent recommendations/essays etc.
Thanks
Law schools don’t care what undergrad you went to. LSAT and grades are paramount.
^^^I would disagree with the above statement and believe that the undergrad school does come into play at least to some extent (ex. would probably need a higher GPA from a lower level undergrad college), especially for the top tier law schools.
And to the OP…see below which I found with a quick google search. You can see if you can find something similar for Elon.
http://www.law.unc.edu/admissions/classprofile/institutions.aspx
I suppose that’s true. I did not go to a top tier law school, just a top public law school, so i am not sure how much prestige matters to them. I suppose it depends on how tight the budget is for your undergrad. Debt is a bad thing, and bear in mind the legal job market is predicted to remain tight.
Some LAC’s offer 3+3 programs into law schools and/or a guaranteed admission, (depends upon grades and LSAT scores). You may want to look into those programs as well. The market is still pretty flooded with law school grads that are working below their degree. An undergrad program that is flexible and affordable is a bonus.
The top 14 law schools definitely care about where you went to undergrad. And the legal market is extremely oversaturated these days. To ensure getting a decent job out of law school you need to either 1) go to one of the top 14 law schools or 2) be right near the top of your class at another law school. Of course, some people already have jobs lined up before they go to law school, with a family firm or whatever.
What’s the evidence for this?
I’m not certain it isn’t true, but can you point to data showing different law school admission rates for applicants from different colleges despite equivalent GPAs and LSAT scores?
The 562 students in Harvard Law School’s class of 2019 represent 188 different undergraduate schools (http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/hls-profile-and-facts/). Certainly, all 188 aren’t equally represented. However, it may be the case that some selective colleges are over-represented primarily because their students are (a) are better test-takers, and (b) more inclined to apply to the most selective law schools.
Here’s a list of ~80 colleges represented in a recent YLS entering class of 210 students:
https://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profiles-statistics/entering-class-profile
T14 law schools care somewhat about your school. Here are two I picked randomly:
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospectives/class18.htm U Florida is one of the top OOS provider of students
From UMich:
Undergraduate college program quality, with the concomitant academic preparation that may entail, might matter to highly regarded law schools:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/top-lawyer-producer-schools-infographic/
Here is Harvard Laws list of undergrad colleges from which it selected students–
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/surprise-where-harvard-law-students-got-their-undergrad-degrees/
@Dustyfeathers Thanks for that link! Daughter is considering law school in the future. All of her safeties and matches are on that list.
Isn’t that great news! : )
I am a law school admissions consultant and Harvard Law grad. GPA and LSAT are the overwhelming factors for law school admission. The OP asked this question:
“Assuming he gets good grades and a decent LSAT score in the future can he get into a decent law school like UNC or Elon coming out of the small university?”
There is a single correct answer here: yes. There’s nothing gray about it unless the college is unaccredited.
Thank you for answering my post! This helps me tremendously.
@tk21769 All of the elite law schools will have a student or two from many different undergraduate schools. But how many get in from each undergraduate school - that is part of the equation.
For example, the top ranked law school is Yale. Here’s a chart from 2015, covering three graduating classes at Yale Law.
http://bulletin.printer.yale.edu/htmlfiles/law/law-school-students.html
If you look at that chart, you can see that at that time, Yale Law had 18 current students who were graduates of Amherst College. Meanwhile, the University of Florida had 4 students at Yale Law. This is despite the fact that the entering class at Amherst has only 450 students, while the entering class at UFlorida has about 7000 students.
Doing the math, it appears that a graduate of Amherst College has approximately a 40 times better chance of ending up at Yale Law than does a graduate of UFlorida. Not 40% better odds - 4000% better odds. That’s enormous.
Now you are correct when you say that the typical applicant from Amherst probably will have better LSATs than the typical applicant from UFlorida. But there is no way to evaluate that factor, because that information is private.
@ThankYouforHelp That’s assuming the same application rate from each school. We have no way of knowing how many actually apply. UFlorida is also much further away geographically. The students may not want to travel that far north esp if they want to work in Florida afterwards.
There are many factors that go into how many people apply and are accepted into each institution.
Well, literally zero students graduated from Yale Law during a three-year period from large, nearby schools such as UVM, UNH, UMaine and URI (link, #16), and only one attended from each of UConn and UMass. In contrast, seven (Amherst, Bowdoin, CC, Hamilton, Middlebury, Wesleyan and Williams) of the ten relatively tiny NESCAC LACs saw representation.
^ correction: “Graduated from” should include “attend,” based on the range of the YLS classes.