<p>Also Posted in College Search & Selection:</p>
<p>Matriculation to law schools has changed over the past decade or two as top law schools increasingly prefer that their students spend some time in the “real world.” Thus, many (most?) top law schools today have 33% or fewer of their students coming directly from undergraduate schools. This lessens the importance of the undergraduate institution in the law school admission process and, just as with graduate business school admissions, elevates the importance of time spent working after the undergraduate years. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, some students like to know the grad school placement record of a college and try to understand how their selection of an undergraduate school might affect their chances at law school acceptance. Law schools will insist that the undergraduate school is not that critical and it is the rigor of the curriculum and the student’s performance that will most determine the value of the four years spent in college. </p>
<p>In checking the websites of a number of top law schools, very few will fully post the undergraduate schools of their law students. However, Yale Law, Harvard Law, and Virginia Law do provide this information which allowed me to compile the following information on the top 50 “feeders” to these schools. While these results are not an exact statement of how each of the “feeder” schools fare at the entire universe of top law schools, it is probably a pretty good proxy. If anyone has matriculation data on any of the other top law schools (eg, NYU, Columbia, Georgetown, U Penn, Duke, Vanderbilt, U Texas, U Chicago, Northwestern, U Michigan, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, etc), would you please post it and I will try to add it to my analysis. </p>
<p>Based on Absolute Numbers at Yale Law, Harvard Law, and Virginia Law, following are the numbers of students from these undergraduate schools (*Note: numbers from Yale, Harvard and Virginia are likely to be comparatively inflated as those law schools likely give higher weight to students from their own school or have an in-state matriculation requirement). </p>
<li>Harvard (339 graduates)</li>
<li>Yale (209) </li>
<li>Stanford (125)</li>
<li>Princeton (97)</li>
<li>U Penn (71)</li>
<li>U Virginia (69)</li>
<li>Columbia (69)</li>
<li>UC Berkeley (68)</li>
<li>Brown (66)</li>
<li>Duke (65)</li>
<li>Dartmouth (59)</li>
<li>Cornell (59)</li>
<li>UCLA (50)</li>
<li>Georgetown (45)</li>
<li>Brigham Young (41)</li>
<li>U Texas (36)</li>
<li>Notre Dame (35)</li>
<li>Amherst (33)</li>
<li>Williams (33)</li>
<li>Northwestern (30)</li>
<li>U Michigan (30)</li>
<li>NYU (26)</li>
<li>U North Carolina (26)</li>
<li>Emory (23)</li>
<li>Rice (21)</li>
<li>U Chicago (21)</li>
<li>Vanderbilt (20)</li>
<li>USC (20)</li>
<li>W&M (20)</li>
<li>Swarthmore (18)</li>
<li>MIT (17)</li>
<li>Brandeis (15)</li>
<li>U Washington (15)</li>
<li>Wash U (14)</li>
<li>Wesleyan (13)</li>
<li>Tufts (12)</li>
<li>Middlebury (11)</li>
<li>Boston College (11)</li>
<li>Pomona (11)</li>
<li>Wellesley (9)</li>
<li>U Wisconsin (9)</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon (7)</li>
<li>Carleton (7)</li>
<li>Wake Forest (6)</li>
<li>Bowdoin (6)</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins (6)</li>
<li>Haverford (3)</li>
<li>Davidson (3)</li>
<li>Vassar (3)</li>
<li>Caltech (2)</li>
<li>U Rochester (2)</li>
<li>Lehigh (2)</li>
</ol>
<p>Another, probably better, way to evaluate this is to consider the enrollment at each undergraduate school and calculate what % of its students find their way to the top law schools. These numbers reveal the great feeder strength of the LACs and expose the relative weakness of those schools with much larger student bodies. However, the percentages for some universities may be a bit understated because those schools also have good Law Schools that would likely accept higher than average numbers of students from their own undergraduate bodies and/or in order to meet in-state requirements. However, this phenomenon is widespread and likely would not dramatically change the results. Examples of undergraduate schools with high ranking Law Schools include NYU, Cornell, Georgetown, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, W&M, U Texas, U Chicago, U Michigan, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford. USC. </p>
<li>Harvard (339 graduates, enrollment of 6649, 5.10% of its enrollment)</li>
<li>Yale (209, 5409, 3.86%)</li>
<li>Amherst (33, 1623, 2.03%)</li>
<li>Princeton (97, 4906, 1.98%)</li>
<li>Stanford (125, 6576, 1.90%)</li>
<li>Williams (33, 2017, 1.64%)</li>
<li>Dartmouth (59, 4110, 1.44%)</li>
<li>Swarthmore (18, 1479, 1.22%)</li>
<li>Brown (66, 6176, 1.07%)</li>
<li>Duke (65, 6534, 0.99%)</li>
<li>Columbia (69, 7319, 0.94%)</li>
<li>U Penn (71, 9841, 0.72%)</li>
<li>Pomona (11, 1533, 0.72%)</li>
<li>Georgetown (45, 6719, 0.67%)</li>
<li>Rice (21, 3185, 0.66%)</li>
<li>U Virginia (69, 14213, 0.49%)</li>
<li>Wesleyan (13, 2764, 0.47%)</li>
<li>Brandeis (15, 3267, 0.46%)</li>
<li>Middlebury (11, 2455, 0.45%)</li>
<li>U Chicago (21, 4671, 0.45%)</li>
<li>Cornell (59, 13,515, 0.44%)</li>
<li>MIT (17, 4066, 0.42%)</li>
<li>Notre Dame (35, 8275, 0.42%)</li>
<li>Wellesley (9, 2331, 0.39%)</li>
<li>Northwestern (30, 8023, 0.37%)</li>
<li>Emory (23, 6510, 0.35%)</li>
<li>W&M (20, 5594, 0.36%)</li>
<li>Bowdoin (6, 1666, 0.36%)</li>
<li>Carleton (7, 1959, 0.36%)</li>
<li>Vanderbilt (20, 6400, 0.31%)</li>
<li>UC Berkeley (68, 23482, 0.29%)</li>
<li>Haverford (3, 1168, 0.26%)</li>
<li>Tufts (12, 5078, 0.24%)</li>
<li>Caltech (2, 913, 0.22%)</li>
<li>UCLA (50, 24811, 0.20%)</li>
<li>Wash U (14, 7466, 0.19%)</li>
<li>Davidson (3, 1683, 0.18%)</li>
<li>U North Carolina (26, 16764, 0.16%)</li>
<li>Wake Forest (6, 4263, 0.14%)</li>
<li>NYU (26, 20,566, 0.13%)</li>
<li>Brigham Young (41, 30,798, 0.13%)</li>
<li>Vassar (3, 2378, 0.13%)</li>
<li>Boston College (11, 9019, 0.12%)</li>
<li>U Michigan (30, 25467, 0.12%)</li>
<li>USC (20, 16897, 0.12%)</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon (7, 5623, 0.12%)</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins (6, 5678, 0.11%)</li>
<li>U Texas (36, 36878, 0.10%)</li>
<li>U Washington (15, 27488, 0.05%)</li>
<li>Lehigh (2, 4679, 0.04%)</li>
<li>U Rochester (2, 4696, 0.04%)</li>
<li>U Wisconsin (9, 30106, 0.03%)</li>
</ol>