<p>You may think I'm thinking ahead, but I've got to set goals for myself, and this is a crucial decision. Would I be better off doing well at a big public U near DC (good rankings, etc.) or going to a CC and transferring somewhere with more prestige (ie, UVA) in order to be accepted into the law school. I don't know if I should give up on my UVA dream and be successful at this other nice school, or pursue it through CC, in order to get me where I want to be--Yale Law. There will obviously be some sort of masters/job in between as well, but where should I do undergrad?</p>
<p>Profile for the YLS Class of 2013:
[Yale</a> Law School | Entering Class Profile](<a href=“http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm]Yale”>Profiles & Statistics - Yale Law School)</p>
<p>[UP</a> CLOSE | Tracing the elite law cycle | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/18/tracing-the-elite-law-cycle/]UP”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/18/tracing-the-elite-law-cycle/)</p>
<p>It looks like the breakdown of top colleges at YLS goes something like this:</p>
<p>Yale/Harvard
Stanford
Princeton/Columbia/Brown
Dartmouth/Penn/Cornell/Duke/Berkeley/Chicago
Michigan/Georgetown</p>
<p>Based on historical numbers.</p>
<p>165.0 – Yale
114.4 – Harvard
52.8 — Princeton
50.4 — Stanford
45.9 — Swarthmore
35.7 — Dartmouth
33.6 — Brown
28.4 — Columbia
25.8 — Wellesley
25.1 — Wesleyan
23.5 — U of Chicago
21.3 — Duke
11.7 — U of Penn
11.4 — Wash. U.St. Louis
7.2 ---- Cornell
4.7 ---- UC Berkeley</p>
<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2010?2011 | Law School Students](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)</p>
<p>Of course, one would expect a representation breakdown similar to that in the above post even if there were no directly causal relationship between undergraduate schools and admissions chances at Yale Law: on average, students at highly ranked colleges earn much higher GPA’s and higher LSAT scores, and they are likelier to aim for top law schools. </p>
<p>In comparison to the importance of your LSAT score and GPA (especially the former), where you attend college (excepting, perhaps, Yale in this case) matters so little that the many other consideration factors for picking a school render it properly negligible.</p>
<p>I should also caution that, given the super-selective and subjective nature of Yale Law’s admissions, getting stuck on it is dangerous. Setting a goal for top law schools in general is perhaps a more realistic plan and one that should still motivate you sufficiently.</p>