<p>what are the best extracurricular activities one can partake in to build a competitive application for the top 5 law schools in the country? harvard and yale specifically?</p>
<p>just wondering, i don't want to seem presumptive or dead set on attending one of those to the point of death if i do not...lol</p>
<p>It is difficult to typicalize the best ECs from the viewpoints of the admission committees at Harvard Law & Yale Law School. My best guess is that it would be something about which you are passionate & in which you have notable accomplishments. I am curious as to why your posts stress the “Top 5” law schools? Do you want to be a law school professor? Normally prospective law students seeking the best paying jobs and/or federal judicial clerkships reference the “Top 14” law schools.</p>
<p>The Top 14 law schools: Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, Penn, Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern Univ., Cornell & Georgetown.</p>
<p>why do they do the T14? is it not correct to assume that a t5 would get you a better paying and better job out of LS than a t 14 would…or are they the same?</p>
<p>Generally the tiers are considered: Top 3, Top 6, Top 14, Top 28, Top 100, Tier 3, Tier 4. Top 14 is often the most important cutoff; most all jobs are available to most graduates of the Top 14 schools.</p>
<p>Extracurriculars do not particularly matter to Harvard. They matter a great deal to Yale and generally have to be pretty spectacular.</p>
<p>Examples of good extracurriculars that friends of mine who have gone to Yale Law School have had: founded a soup kitchen in a major city, book(s) published by major publishing houses (several people I know fit into this category), professor at Ivy League college, Rhodes scholar (several people I know fit into this category), etc.</p>
<p>Of course, lots of Yale students do not have these profiles, but that’s the kind of stuff that it takes to truly impress YLS.</p>
<p>what about for kids right out of undergraduate lol..i assume soup kitchen would be possible for a very motivated individual, but on a more earthly yale level?</p>
<p>but wait, if they don’t matter at harvard and its all numbers then essentially if you have 3.85 172 you stand a good shot but could easily get rejected while someone with those numbers gets in..correct..is there a threshold where you are just going to get in l ike 3.95 176 or does that just not exist</p>
<p>I checked your previous posts and note that you are a senior in high school. You are aiming for a moving target. Nobody can tell you what numbers will be needed 4 years from now. There are no cut-offs for LS and the 25th/75th #s at top schools will probably go up–but could go down a bit. (One factor is the economy. When there’s a recession, USUALLY more people apply to LS and more apply directly from UG. )</p>
<p>ECs are a LOT less important for LS than for college. There are, after all, no sports teams, except intramural ones, just for fun; if there are orchestras, they are just for fun too–admissions isn’t going to let in an oboe player because one is needed; everyone is “majoring” in the same subject, so there’s no need to admit some classics majors, some pre-meds, some business majors, etc. ; there’s much less interest in geographic diversity. The whole process is just a lot more #s driven. </p>
<p>Even at schools that care about ECs [mostly Stanford and Yale] there’s no need to admit people who excel in specific ECs. </p>
<p>Your personal statement is MORE important in admissions to LS than essays are for college at the top law schools and recs from profs are also more important at the top LSs. </p>
<p>If you are really curious [or neurotic] take a look at Montauk & Klein’s book “How to Get Into Top Law Schools.” But I’d suggest you just “chill” and enjoy your senior year now that you’re into Emory. Congrats!</p>
<p>ya, i’m just generally excited about these things not really neurotic</p>
<p>thanks for the posts though and thanks for the congrats…so excited!!</p>
<p>At most schools besides Yale and Stanford, there does exist a pair of numbers which I will call “default to admit.” (DTA.) This means that unless an applicant actually does something WRONG, he will be admitted to the school.</p>
<p>For example, if he applies after the deadline, or has a typo in his application, or a letter of recommendation is actually negative, or if he says something antisocial in a phone interview, or if he actually has zero extracurricular involvement, or a not-just-average-but-actually-bad essay. If nothing remarkable happens during the application process itself, he will be default be admitted thanks to his numbers.</p>
<p>There are two points to be made. First, obviously many candidates whose numbers are below DTA thresholds will be admitted. They will often have excellent essays, extracurriculars, or whatever. Second, (jonri just said this but it’s important) DTA thresholds change every year. Third, it is extremely possible to be above threshold and screw it up – many, many students do every year. DTA is not an entitlement but a retroactive prediction.</p>
<p>(Another discussion board feels that the most common DTA rejections are those who spend less than four years as undergraduates.)</p>
<p>Getting into Yale straight as an undergrad is … well, of the kids I know at Yale, not a single one of them came straight from undergrad. I’m sure it’s possible, but I’ve never met one – and my classmates at Duke were not exactly bottom-of-the-barrel kids.</p>
<p>EDIT: Actually I do know one. He is a novelist-quality writer and likely used Yale’s short essay to demonstrate his flair.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Law School | Entering Class Profile](<a href=“http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm]Yale”>Profiles & Statistics | Yale Law School)</p>
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<p>Ummm..I’ll disagree with Mike a bit. I know of many students who got into Yale LS direct from UG. However, many of them deferred for a year or two or in at least one case three years. In one recent Yale LS class, almost 80 of the students had deferred at least one year since they were first admitted.</p>
<p>I agree with jonri. I know of several people who were admitted to YLS directly out of UG and either entered directly or deferred to pursue an interesting work opportunity. And for what it’s worth, I think it definitely it possible to get yourself into a numbers range with YLS and SLS that gives you a huge chance of admission. Granted, that numbers range is probably 3.9+/175+, and major/school probably matter, but it’s still possible.</p>
<p>I suspect that 4.0/180/Harvard undergrad/tough major is still a long shot absent some excellent (as opposed to astounding) soft factor.</p>
<p>Of course, numbers are still very important. And even if he’s rejected from Yale, he still gets to go to Harvard Law. Not a bad deal.</p>
<p>so is it even feasible if you are a normal overachiever and not extraordinary like novelist writer applicants to go to a t14 law school out of UG…harvard and yale and stanford right out of UG?</p>
<p>what does one do in the time between the two then, i was always under the impression that time existed mostly between UG and MBA not for JD, but idk…</p>
<p>Well, the mean age for first year medical students is 25 years old, meaning three years in between. People do lots of things in between. Among others, see the link I posted above.</p>
<p>Anyway. T14 and HLS straight out of undergrad are pretty straightforward: you need the numbers and non-horrible-others. Yale and Stanford are trickier.</p>
<p>For most T14 law school applicants, though, there is some “soft factor” analysis that goes into their law school applications. Yes, if you have a 180 on your LSAT (or something fairly close to that score) and a 4.0 GPA, you may very well be almost assured of admission to most of the T14. For the majority of the applicants to the T14, however, who have LSAT scores and GPA that are “in the range” that may qualify them for admission, there is clearly something else that is taken into consideration by law school admissions officers to determine why candidate A is admitted and candidate B is not. I think that those factors differ from law school to law school, from year to year and perhaps, even depending upon how early or late in the cycle an applicant submits his or her application. </p>
<p>The most frequently cited “soft factors” that I have heard mentioned over the last few years are work experience (which, depending on the law school, can actually make or break an applicant’s chances), community involvement, demonstrated passion for practicing law and demonstrated dedication to an activity/cause where results from that dedication can be shown (in other words, some ECs carry a lot more weight than others).</p>
<p>Yale, Harvard, Stanford, NYU, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern Univ., Cornell & Georgetown.</p>
<p>In that order, I think.</p>
<p>According to bluedevilmike, default to admit is usually if you’re 75th and above on both fronts (GPA and LSAT). No freaking way I’ll be in the default to admit range at NYU Law considering my first semester ended with a 3.4 and my first practice LSAT came with a whopping 143. Where does that get me into…like, 4th tier crappo law school?</p>