Universities for future lawyers?

College Search & Selection
1

I am planning to go to a community college and then transfer to a university. I am interested in prestige universities such as Notre Dame and University of Chicago. I would like to study either Linguistics,Economics, Philosophy, or Business. Can you guys give me a list of universities that are focused on these majors around the Illinois,Wisconsin, and Indiana area. I don’t want a college with a acceptance rate less than 10%. I know I am not fit for there colleges. I would appreciate it.

P.S What I mean by focused is that it is known for its studies for in Linguistics. Urbana Champaign, for example, is know for its Engineering programs.

Thank you!

2

There are probably 40 freshman spots for every transfer spot at uChicago

3

The “prestige” of your undergrad will matter extremely little in terms of law school admissions, which is like 95% determined by LSAT (more heavily weighted) + GPA.

Law Schools will not care one bit whether or not your undergrad linguistics program is highly ranked, most adcomms won’t even know or care! Why do you want to be a lawyer? Is it because you don’t know what to do with your linguistics degree?

4

There are lots of jobs in computational linguistics. It’s hard to get a job as a lawyer.

5

How much can your family afford?

6

As others have said law school ( like med school) is primarily a numbers game. They care that you have a high standardized test score (obviously the LSAT in this case) and a high GPA.

7

Respectfully – could not disagree more. The quality and rigor of the undergraduate education will matter a great deal. Law Schools know the difference between 3.5 GPA at Uchicago and an easier school. If you majored in finger painting with at 4.0 GPA at a party school, a top 10 Law School will see it.

8

From College Transitions

“In recent years, the legal field has become increasingly competitive and less job secure, as many graduates of second and third tier law schools struggle to find employment. Elite law schools, on the other hand, still provide graduates with abundant access to stable and high paying positions, and should be on the radar of any aspiring lawyer. Using . . . data provided by LinkedIn, we were able to identify which colleges and universities send the highest percentage of students to a top-ranked law school.”

The 20 Schools

Amherst
Brown
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Hamilton
Harvard
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Stanford
UChicago
UMichigan
UPennsylvania
U of Southern California
Yale
Yeshiva

https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Top-Producers-Lawyers-Infographic-e1459562437296.png

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.usecondept.html

You can screen these colleges for any that might be appropriate for you.

9

Re: #7

Since these are highly selective undergraduate schools that are presumably loaded with students who can earn high grades in school and do well on standardized tests, it is not surprising that they have many students who can get into top ranked law schools. But that does not say that a highly capable student will necessarily do better at getting into top ranked law schools at those undergraduate schools versus other ones.

In other words, like so many other lists that show better outcomes for graduates of the most selective schools, it does not necessarily show that there is a treatment effect of attending such a school (as opposed to showing a selection effect).

10

A couple of comments:

–While I agree that a high performing student can get into law school from any solid college, it is my understanding that law schools do look at the undergraduate institution when evaluating an application. The undergraduate institution would be one of many factors considered and I would not want amass a great deal of debt just to go to a somewhat higher rated college.

–If you are just pursuing linguistics as an undergrad, I don’t think you really need a college that has a particular specialty in the area. That comes more into play on the graduate level. You can look at the courses offered online at any college to get a sense of the offerings.

11

Let’s try to answer the OP’s question. What schools in the Midwestern area have great linguistics programs?

12

@ucbalumnus "Since these are highly selective undergraduate schools that are presumably loaded with students who can earn high grades in school and do well on standardized tests, it is not surprising that they have many students who can get into top ranked law schools. But that does not say that a highly capable student will necessarily do better at getting into top ranked law schools at those undergraduate schools versus other ones.

In other words, like so many other lists that show better outcomes for graduates of the most selective schools, it does not necessarily show that there is a treatment effect of attending such a school (as opposed to showing a selection effect)."

For most law schools, I would agree with this, but for the top 14 law schools, I don’t think that it is true. At those few places, there is a preference for students who went to the more rigorous/prestigious undergraduate schools.

A good example is Yale, the best law school in the country. Here’s a chart from 2015, covering three graduating classes at Yale Law.

http://bulletin.printer.yale.edu/htmlfiles/law/law-school-students.html

Looking at the chart, we can see that at Yale Law, most there are 37 students who went to Princeton, and 18 who went to Amherst College. Many large and very good state flagships like UMinnesota, Utah, PennState, Missouri, have zero students at Yale. Many more have just one or maybe two.

This is true even though we all know that every single state flagship has a substantial subset of students who are excellent students, just as good as those at Princeton and Amherst.

Heck, tiny Amherst has as many of its graduates at Yale Law as the entire Southeastern Conference, twice as many as the Big East Conference, nearly three times as many as the Big 12 conference. As many as the entire ACC (if you exclude Duke).

Those large universities collectively produce thousands of graduates every year with Yale level LSATs and GPAs approaching 4.0. Amherst probably graduates only a few dozen students each year who even want to go to law school at all. Yale Law admissions can’t possibly be a “numbers game” based solely on LSATs and GPA, regardless of where you got that GPA.

13

There aren’t all that many colleges that have very strong undergraduate linguistics programs. The relatively prestigious ones that do, that also have solid business programs, and that aren’t extremely selective (< 10%) especially for transfers, are likely to be relatively large state schools. So check out some of the top midwestern state flagships, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio State, and yes, UIUC.

Midwestern schools with respected programs in both linguistics and business include Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, and (if you consider Pittsburgh “midwestern”), Carnegie Mellon. By transfer time, though, you’d really want to decide which it is you want (business, linguistics, or something else.)

What about costs? Can you afford a private or OOS public university that may not have much financial aid available for transfer students? If cost is an issue, you might want to take advantage of in-state public tuition rates.

14

There really aren’t any rankings or magazines that compare undergraduate linguistics programs. For a variety of reasons, rankings in most undergraduate liberal arts majors aren’t really that useful for undergrads - one of which is that you need to choose a school with a good overall reputation, since 2/3 of your classes will actually be in other areas and especially since you intend to go to law school.

Also, transferring into schools like Notre Dame and Chicago is difficult. Not many students transfer out of those schools, so there aren’t as many slots to get in past freshman year.

Lastly, you said that you don’t want to attend a college with an acceptance rate of less than 10%. First of all, acceptance rate alone isn’t a good indicator of quality of a college - a lot of that has to do with name recognition (more students apply to Harvard than Amherst, in part, because more students have heard of Harvard than Amherst). But secondly, Notre Dame doesn’t have an acceptance rate of less than 10% - their 2015 acceptance rate was 18%. There’s really only a very small handful of elite universities that have less than a 10% admissions rate, so if you limit yourself only to those schools you may find yourself without a college to attend.

That doesn’t mean there’s a preference. It could mean, for example, that simply more students from elite colleges and universities apply for Yale Law. (Which would make sense, since those students are probably more likely to want to go to law school anyway - they’re more likely to have grown up around lawyers and be encouraged to consider law as a career.) They are also more likely to be able to afford Yale Law, as opposed to taking a scholarship at a lower ranked college. I’m not saying there’s not a preference; I’m simply saying a simple list alone doesn’t prove there is.

15

@juliet

But since we don’t know whether there are simply no students with high LSAT scores applying to Yale Law from PSU, or whether Yale tends to give preference to students from Amherst, if your goal is to go to Yale Law, it would make sense to go to Amherst over PSU.

I often hear on CC that “grad schools don’t care which school you came from”, and while that may be true, I have a hard time believing it because it doesn’t make sense to me. If I know that X school has a more rigorous course and higher entry requirements than Y school, then if I’m faced with an X applicant and a Y applicant with similar LSAT and GPA scores, isn’t it reasonable to assume I would go with X?

16

I’d add to the above that LSAT scores themselves can be influenced by the instructional environments across various undergraduate institutions.

17

Something odd about the original post…He says he wants a prestige college, then says he’s not fit for an under-10% acceptance school. Perhaps he was typing in a hurry and meant to say he’s NOT interested in prestige schools?? That would make more sense.

For business, econ, & philosophy (don’t know about linguistics), try Loyola in Chicago, DePaul, Marquette, & U of Illinois at Chicago. Also Northern Illinois, Western Michigan & u of Nebraska. U of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana is good in a lot of subjects, not just engineering.

18

W.r.t. admission preferences, I agree with ucbalumnus (#8) and juillet (#13).
This issue has been discussed often on CC without resolution. There does not seem to be enough good data to determine the relative impact of selection v. treatment effects, or college reputations, on law school admissions.

To get back to the problem of finding schools strong in the OP’s preferred fields (in case s/he’s still watching this thread) …
the challenge is to find a combination of strong linguistics and business, along with a Goldilocks balance of prestige v. selectivity, all in a midwestern location. That almost rules out the most prestigious/selective, private midwestern schools (UChicago, Northwestern, WUSTL, ND, or LACs like Carleton). They are either too selective (esp. for transfers) or don’t have strong programs in both linguistics and business.

My top picks for the 3 states mentioned would include:

  1. Indiana-Bloomington (NRC/Chronicle #5 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #4 ranking for undergraduate business)
  2. UIUC (NRC/Chronicle #9 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #37 ranking for undergraduate business)
  3. Wisconsin-Madison (NRC/Chronicle #27 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #28 ranking for undergraduate business)

If you want to consider ~nearby states, then check out:

  • Michigan (NRC/Chronicle #11 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #8 ranking for undergraduate business)
  • Ohio State (NRC/Chronicle #8 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #14 ranking for undergraduate business)
  • Carnegie Mellon (NRC/Chronicle #9 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #26 ranking for undergraduate business)
  • Michigan State (NRC/Chronicle #21 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; Bloomberg #20 ranking for undergraduate business)

If you want to relax other criteria (besides location), consider:

  • Northwestern (NRC/Chronicle #4 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; no undergraduate business program, but strong in econ)
  • UChicago (NRC/Chronicle #15 S-Rank High rating for graduate level Linguistics; no undergraduate business program, but strong in econ)

Caveats: The NRC/Chronicle rankings may or may not be good indicators of relative program strengths at the undergraduate level. The S-Rank High rating isn’t necessarily the only or most appropriate NRC rating to consider.
Personal fit and net cost might be much more important considerations than any of these rankings (especially if you plan a career in law not academia.)

19

A curricular aspect that would seem to be of potential interest to any future lawyer would relate to strength of preparation in writing:

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/writing-programs