Hi. I believe I saw something - maybe on cc, or a brochure or on the Vandy website - that showed the Top 5 law schools that Vanderbilt undergraduates matriculate too after graduation at Vandy. I can’t find it. I seem to recall it included Georgetown, UPenn, UVA and 2 others…Does anyone know what they might be. I have a child looking in the future to go to Vanderbilt and off to law school. Would be interested in this list or where I could find or if anyone has information. Thank you!
https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/major/Pre-Law.pdf Feel free to PM as our Vandy alum followed this pathway. In today’s law schools, 23 year olds are less common. It is wiser to work at least two years. Gain skills and grow up a bit before showing up at law school. There are many people who already have master’s degrees or who have been in the armed services or who have some adult living behind them in first year classes in law school today. To have been an engineer or an accountant before showing up is pretty golden. Have you ever tried to take engineer depositions when you didn’t study the sciences at all? Although I don’t like to say this, in this terrible downturn in the entry job market in law firms, do not make this plan unless you can excel and compete. The job market is in a permanent shift to “smaller” in law. Entry to the T-14 Law schools is all about high LSAT scores, something that most Vandy students have the potential to conquer since Vandy also has high stats students. But on the negative side, law schools are still stuck in the past and seek high GPAs to maintain their ranking-- which inhibits pre-law students from taking the very quantitative courses that would make them more sought after in the job market later.
Secondly, expect to pay at least 70% of the costs of most T-14 law schools even with top scores. Your income as parents will be required by FAFSA. Our son chose to go to a school ranked in the set of schools just below the T-14 because of a very large merit offer. It has been fun not paying! but now the rub comes. Firms prefer the top named law schools.
A recent Harvard Law School class had 562 students that were drawn from 188 different undergraduate colleges.
The undergrad brand name has surprisingly little to do with a kid’s ability to get into a top law school. You need a strong high GPA transcript and a high LSAT score. Kids who can get into top 15 schools like Vandy will tend to be good at doing those two things. So attending a top 15 school is correlated to doing well in law school admissions, but is not really causing the kids to do well in law school admissions. Those kids would do well wherever they attended college.
My 3.9998 GPA from a meh undergrad college was perfectly fine to get me into a top 10 law school. We had one or two kids a year get into HLS. While I had plenty of law school classmates who attended fancy top undergrad colleges, I also had plenty of classmates like me.
In fact, you could argue that it was easier for me to put up strong GPA numbers at my meh college than it would have been at a top 15 college. Given the expense of law school these days (and the relatively meh job prospects for newly minted J.D.s), you can also argue that it is dumb to blow the 529 on just to obtain a name-brand undergrad degree.
So law school admissions odds is perhaps the single worst reason to pick an undergrad college. Your kid should pick someplace that he likes, that he can get admitted to, that is a fit for his interests, that you can pay for, which has good food in the cafeteria, and that has cool school colors and mascot. Law school will take care of itself (or not) regardless of where he goes.
@northwesty : Why do you keep saying “top 15” as if it is something so distinct from “top 20” (note that there are schools above and below 15 that are considered elite that are actually less “selective” than VU or WUSTL which is number 19. Stanford, Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Georgetown, Emory, Berkeley, Michigan, UNC, UVA, still have lower scores than VU. There is simply a correlation in these cluster of schools because scores are so high compared to the national average.
There are however, branding effects that have nothing to do with scores or even current rank which will fluctuate. Like Duke and Stanford will place better than many places with higher scores even if they dropped out of the top 10. WUSTL likely did not perform better when it was well above 15 than it will now. Cornell was number 8 at one time and likely performs better now. I could go on). Places like Georgetown for example have more people applying to and better placement than schools ranked higher and technically more selective. That could be a branding effect, but I think WUSTL Berkeley, Emory, Rice, Tufts, and many public schools outside of the “top 15” do extremely well in law admissions. Regardless, undergraduate reputation and brand could influence things like the internships that a student gets access to while still an undergrad (law and business related opps. are often very prestige oriented sadly I think. So their screening will often reflect this to a degree). And assuming that the person attending any top undergraduate program will also get the stats for a T-14 law school, their chances for the tippy top among them could be enhanced by differentiators such as the internship and fellowship opps offered at many of these elite tier schools. Now, what I would perhaps not do is pay much more for an elite undergrad if I was sharp enough to get into an honors college for much less. Usually an honors college “showers” the students in resources whereas someone at an elite school may still have to somewhat compete.
@hcmom65 : Be careful when reading those stats. Some elite schools may actually place better than the matriculate data shows. Due to the law school market, it appears many are willing to pass up bids to the top schools if their isn’t enough assistance and another top (but not as high) offers them more. Maybe look at acceptance rates. May give a more flattering picture. Interestingly enough, Fortunately, to get placement at a top law school, at least the GPA does not have to be nearly as high as it used to (same for LSATs I think), which means that even pre-law students can afford to be challenged by the curriculum a bit (more so than pre-health students for example).
@hcmom65 : Here is the source: https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/major/Pre-Law.pdf
If only they broke down more numbers (like where people got in versus where they went and how many people applied. BTW, looking at my alma mater’s numbers. Appears applications by seniors overall have been cut in half since 2012. By that, I mean 34 seniors applied. Overall, for total apps there was a drop from 216 to 16something, a substantial decline. I doubt this trend is unique. Also, generally, it is T-15 to T-20 w/financial aid or “don’t go”(unless very cheap meaning in-state tuition or substantial scholarship) now-a-days especially if you went to a very expensive undergraduate institution. It is a bit too risky to go anywhere that you get in.
“Why do you keep saying “top 15” as if it is something so distinct from “top 20” (note that there are schools above and below 15 that are considered elite that are actually less “selective” than VU or WUSTL which is number 19.”
Bernie – Since Vandy is tied for #15 in this year’s USNWR, I said top 15. Which is really top 18 (since four schools are tied at 15). But feel free to draw the lines wherever you think they are best drawn. It’s a free country. But you missed my point.
Which is that a top 200 school will get you into a top law school just as well as going to a top 5/10/15/20/25 school will. Picking Vandy or any other top school as an entre to a top law school is really not a good reason for picking.
“Which is that a top 200 school will get you into a top law school just as well as going to a top 5/10/15/20/25 school will.” “The undergrad brand name has surprisingly little to do with a kid’s ability to get into a top law school.” Nonsense. @northwesty I went to a top 3 law school (H/Y/S), and like its peers, the classes there were disproportionately populated by Ivy Leaguers, grads of Stanford, Duke, the top LACs and select public Ivies.
Look at the matriculation list of the law schools at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UVA, Columbia, etc. and you will see that going to a top 20 undergraduate school gives you a huge leg up. Had I had the same GPA at a lower-ranked undergrad, even with high LSATs, I would not have been competitive for admission at any of the top 10 law schools. True, there was the odd Alabama grad or the like in the mix at my law school, but they were typically a “black swan” (infrequent admission) from their school, even with tippy-top grades.
“A recent Harvard Law School class had 562 students that were drawn from 188 different undergraduate colleges.”
That means the class of 562 had at least 168 black swans (i.e. kids who didn’t go to top 20 schools). I’m a black swan, as were scores of my law school classmates. My class had two SCOTUS clerks – one went to Duke undergrad, the other went to a meh college like mine.
Sure a 3.6 GPA from my meh college would have lost out to the 3.6 you got from your fancier college. But the 3.97 I had totally did the trick and probably was easier to obtain than your 3.6. My meh college sent kids to HLS every single year.
Most important thing for gaining T14 law school admission is a high score on the LSAT standardized test. Almost every kid at a top 20 school is a good standardized test taker – that’s how they get into those kind of schools. So of course those schools will tend to have a lot of high LSAT scorers. But those kids would still be good test takers no matter where they go for undergrad. Attendance at a top 20 college is merely correlation.
Attend Vandy if you like Vandy, you can get in, and your parents can pay for it. Not because you think it will increase your law school admit odds.
@northwesty : I got the point, it is just an interesting slightly shady choice of words that is designed to highlight that a school has ascended to a certain rank. I am just calling out that using it that way suggests that you or someone thinks that “15” is a magical threshold (a different tier) for the ranking of elite institutions simply because the school of interest reached it. In reality, most agree that the top 10 may be a more distinct tier of schools whereas everything else is top 20 or whatever. I have just never seen that threshold used liked that by any others who went to a school between 11 and 15.
And yes, the OP should not choose based upon prestige if pursuing law school but should consider that only certain level law schools get some mileage with of course the top 15 or so getting an unusual amount of mileage. They should consider cost of the undergraduate vs. the benefit. If it is affordable then, the resources at the elite school (provided you do not get into an awesome honors college) could help increase chances for those T-15 schools. There is also the LSAT and the fact that logic and philosophy courses which can apparently help, may be run more rigorously at the elite school. Again, if there is a low financial barrier, an elite private or public could be a good route to go (and then what if you change your mind? Experiences and resources may more easily lead to alternatives in something else) since there may be at least a mild branding effect for those top law schools. With pre-med, I would say do not pay a penny more for an elite school unless it trains unusually well because now-a-days it is much more risky than law school in terms of admissions chances to ANY medical school (versus chances at an elite or very strong law school). GPAs for Law School admits are not so high to the point where going to a more selective school would not be super detrimental unless it incurred lots of debt.
“I have just never seen that threshold used liked that by any others who went to a school between 11 and 15.”
Bernie – you must not get outside much.
3 (in any kind of ranking of college, cars, football teams, anything) always refers to the top 3, not the top 5. #5 always refers to the top 5, not the top 10. #20 talks about the top 20, not the top 25. #25 talks about the top 25, not the top 30. And so forth.
In the law school world, #14 always talks about being a T14 school. Which is definitely totally and completely different than being #15.
But if you think T15 is bogus but T20 is legit, whatev…
: )