<p>^An easier way to go about it is to look at the websites of the mid-ranked/safety schools your D is considering, and find a list of grad school admissions for recent years. I did this with my S and also looked at faculty bios in a range of departments to see where professors got their PhDs. After doing these two things (and learning more about and visiting the schools her was interested in) I was convinced that it was not only not the end of the world to consider second-tier schools, but that with merit money we would be in a better position to help pay for grad school later.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so. The 3.7/172 from HYPS would be in the bottom quartile for GPA in the Harvard Law School class (middle 50% 3.78-3.97, median 3.89), and in the third quartile for LSAT (middle 50% 171-176. median 173). There would be no rational reason for HLS to admit such an applicant, who would hurt HLS’s entering class stats in both GPA and LSAT. HLS admissions is not stupid, nor do they have such a soft-headed sentimental loyalty to Harvard College that they’d admit the 3.7/172 as some kind of charity case.</p>
<p>The 3.9/172 from “directional state U” would marginally strengthen HLS’s entering class in GPA (but just ever so slightly; it’s my understanding that the 3.89 median is the key figure for the US News law school rankings), and marginally hurt the entering class stats in LSAT scores. Questionable admit at Harvard Law, perhaps, because this candidate probably gets edged out by someone with a 3.9/173. But the 3.9/172 is going to be seen as a likelier admit than the 3.7/172, for the simple reason that the nameplate on the undergrad degree has no place in the US News law school rankings.</p>
<p>And if you think that mighty Harvard is too proud an institution to be compelled to play this game, think again. My friends in the legal academy tell me that it’s a source of no small humiliation and consternation to HLS, its students, and its alums to be ranked #3 behind arch-rival Yale and upstart Stanford. HLS is neck-and-neck with YLS (median GPA 3.90, median LSAT 173) for top entering class stats, but ends up #3 overall because it scores slightly lower in some other areas. If HLS lets those entering class stats slip even a smidgen, it locks in its third-place position. If it can edge them up, it could move to #2 or maybe even #1, which it regards as its rightful place. It’s high-stakes, cut-throat competition, and that makes law school admissions a pure numbers game at HLS.</p>
<p>How do our two candidates fare at other top law schools? The 3.7/172 from Harvard is below the median in GPA (3.72) and just at the median in LSAT (172) at Columbia Law School, probably a longshot for admission. The 3.9/172 from East Podunk State is well above Columbia’s median GPA and just at the median LSAT, thus a likelier admit (though not a sure thing).</p>
<p>At Chicago, our Harvard grad is well below the median GPA (3.87) but slightly above the median LSAT (171). Because high LSAT scores are rarer than high GPAs, and because LSAT counts more heavily than GPA in the US News ranking, our Harvard grad might have a decent shot at admission. But the 3.9/172 from East Podunk State helps Chicago’s entering class stats in both GPA and LSAT, and is therefore a much stronger candidate for admission.</p>
<p>At NYU, our Harvard grad comes in just ever so slightly below median GPA of 3.71 and right at the median LSAT of 172. Maybe they decide a 3.7 is close enough to a 3.71 that it doesn’t really move the needle on the GPA median, and they admit him. But the 3.9 from East Podunk clearly helps them on GPA, and gets in first.</p>
<p>By the time you get to a #7 UC Berkeley (median 3.79/167) or #7 (tie) Penn Law (median 3.86/170), top LSAT scores are becoming scarcer. Since both our Harvard grad and our East Podunk grad come in comfortably over the median LSAT score for these schools, their chances of admission improve sharply. Schools at this level will generally take some applicants with below-median grades if their LSAT scores are above the school’s median, and balance them off with some high-GPA/below-median LSAT applicants. Notice, though, that our East Podunk grad is still in a stronger position, helping both those schools in both GPA and LSAT scores.</p>
<p>You need to go down to #14 Cornell (median 3.63/168) before our 3.7/172 from Harvard is above the median in both GPA and LSAT, therefore a likely admit, and probably on equal footing with our 3.9/172 from East Podunk.</p>
<p>Of course, this is all hypothetical. The reason top law schools aren’t crawling with high-GPA students from East Podunk State is that very, very few students at the East Podunk States of this world score as high as 172 on the LSAT. Those few that do should do very well in law school admissions if their grades are high. LSAT scores of 172 and higher are much more common at places like Harvard, not because Harvard is better preparation for that particular test, but because the students at Harvard got there in part by scoring 2250 or higher on their SATs–they’re just great test-takers, and most people find their SAT skills are transferable to the LSAT. Because few, if any, students at East Podunk State scored 2250+ on the SAT, we can expect that few, if any students at East Podunk State will score 172+ on the LSAT. That, in a nutshell, is what accounts for HYPS grads doing as well as they do in law school admissions. But even a 172+ LSAT and a sheepskin from Harvard won’t help you gain admission to the tippy-top law schools if your GPA is not also within their target range.</p>
<p>What’s interesting to me is that some top LACs don’t have students in the Harvard LS class, e.g., Bowdoin, Wellesley, and Haverford. Usually, you’ll have at least one or two of grads from these schools at Harvard. Certainly, anyone who finishes in the top 5% of the class from these schools should have a plausible shot at Harvard Law School.</p>
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<p>At Harvard Law School last year, both would likely have been in the reject pile, according to this graph: [Harvard</a> University - Admissions Graph | Law School Numbers](<a href=“Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers”>Recently Updated J.D. Profiles | Law School Numbers)</p>
<p>There does appear to be an advantage to attending an undergraduate school that prints A+ grades on the transcript, if you are able to achieve such grades. For law school admission purposes, A+ does count for more than an A, resulting in law school admission GPAs greater than 4.0. Some of the law school admission graphs on [Welcome</a> to LawSchoolNumbers.com | Law School Numbers](<a href=“http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com%5DWelcome”>http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com) indicate that some of the law schools appear to be significantly more lenient on LSAT scores for students with GPA >= 4.0, resulting in a “boundary” between the admit-dense and reject-dense areas of the graph looking like an inverted L instead of a .</p>
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<p>For Haverford at least, it may just be a small numbers phenomenon. Haverford’s graduating class is usually around 300, of whom roughly 1/3 are STEM majors, for the most part unlikely to pursue law school. Of the 200 or so non-STEM majors, who knows what fraction decide to pursue law school? My impression, through my D1 who attends Haverford, is that pre-law meetings and events on campus are generally pretty lightly attended.</p>
<p>FWIW, Yale Law School reports 68 undergraduate institutions represented in its Class of 2015. Some notable absences: Boston College, Bates, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Georgetown, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Macalester, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Rice, Smith, Tufts, Wake Forest, Washington & Lee, Wellesley–all top 25-ish schools in their respective realms. Of course, YLS’s class is much smaller than Harvard’s, so you’d expect more schools to be unrepresented.</p>
<p>[Entering</a> Class Profile | Yale Law School](<a href=“http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/profile.htm]Entering”>Profiles & Statistics | Yale Law School)</p>
<p>Really makes you think. Great thread. I have one son. Literally debate with myself to give him 4 years of tuition at 52 per year or the money to him paid out at some point in our lifetimes most likely. Seems like the boost of a top name brand school may be on the order of a couple of percentage points boost to his chances (med school in his case) versus the guarantee that he would spend 200000 for school at Branded school. How could you predict that this is the kid that will need the small bump from a big name place. Funny thing is I think that he might fit right in to that borderline pocket.</p>
<p>Sally305: “It’s funny that the “prestige hounds” on this site aren’t happy with just having the prestige school on their resume or their kids’ (along with the many opportunities they believe that prestige will afford them)–they have to dismiss the possibility that “lesser” schools can also produce successful alumni who go on to great things.”</p>
<p>Thank you for posting this. Exactly! I chortled because it’s exactly what I’ve thought as I’ve read through a number of different threads on this site. </p>
<p>Law school admissions really seems to be all about the LSAT these days. I’ve just watched a kid with a fairly low gpa from a good but not “acclaimed” LAC work very hard to achieve a top score on the LSAT and then gain admission to top ten law schools along with merit offers to lower ranked schools. On the contrary, his peer, a girl with a 3.9 gpa from Brown and a mediocre LSAT score did not get into the same set of schools. It’s all anecdotal I know but the results still surprised me.</p>
<p>I also wonder how demand plays into all of this. In the past few years, law school applications have shrunk considerably as highly qualified kids choose other paths over the uncertainty and huge expense of a law degree.</p>
<p>^Exactly. There is not a huge demand for newly minted lawyers right now. But even so, the “elite” schools cannot claim better results placing their students into top law schools (or med schools, or PhD programs). This is not to say that one should not consider those schools; only that it is a specious argument to suggest that attending a top-ranked university or LAC is a “necessity” for future success.</p>
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<p>Speaking as an Oberlin alum, the above doesn’t surprise me. While it is a larger LAC, very few classmates IME tended to be interested in law school. Most classmates and recent alums are much more inclined towards academia, arts/music, science research, education, political activism, non-profits, etc. </p>
<p>One thing to think about, many people who pursue law degrees tend to have much more of a pre-professional inclination than many students at the top/respectable LACs and some LAC-like universities. </p>
<p>It just may be that most of the students…even those at the top are simply not interested in becoming lawyers, have around $200k in spare cash/parents’ money, and/or the inclination to take out that amount in loans for what is an increasingly uncertain future in an extremely work-intensive* and harsh profession. </p>
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<li>At many NYC biglaw firms, 70-80 hours/week is considered “normal”. An ambitious associate needs to jack that up if they want to have even a prayer of continuing on for the chance of being chosen as partner at years 8+.</li>
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If it doesn’t, it certainly should. You can pull an A pretty easily at a lot of schools turning in work that wouldn’t merit a C at Princeton. Just as not all high school grades are the same (hence the need for weighted GPAs), all college grades are by no means equal. </p>
<p>Many years ago Boalt at Berkeley admitted to adjusting the GPAs of applicants based on the undergraduate institution they attended, and those [numbers</a> were released](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm]numbers”>http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm) and circulated on CC. Whether other law schools have/had the same practice, I don’t know.</p>
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There’s no firm evidence either way, but one can speculate. For example, last year Stanford sent 34 students to Yale Law. Despite being similar to Stanford in size and closer geographically, Brown sent 22, Penn sent 21, and Duke sent 17. The difference is even more stark at Harvard Law (see coureur’s link above) – Stanford sends twice as many students (~120) to Harvard Law as Brown and Duke (~65).</p>
<p>The only data on [average</a> LSAT scores](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/760585-mean-lsat-scores-top-universities.html]average”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/760585-mean-lsat-scores-top-universities.html) I’ve seen is about three years old, but at that time the average LSAT score at Stanford was only one point higher than at the other three universities, a percentile difference of 1-2%. Certainly based on the SAT scores of entering freshmen, there seems little to suggest that a student at Brown is less likely to score well on the LSAT than a student at Stanford…and yet it seems underrepresented relative to its selectivity, particularly considering it has no law school of its own.</p>
<p>The performance of certain LACs is also interesting. In the list for Harvard Law above, Amherst and Williams sent 33 students each to Harvard Law. That same year, Pomona sent only 11 – despite actually having a higher average LSAT than either. Bowdoin sent only 6, and Haverford sent a mere 3. Perhaps there is some geographic preference in play, with Pomona kids heading to Stanford and Haverford kids to Penn, but that seems a surprisingly large gap.</p>
<p>One could of course take the opposite stance and argue that the numbers reflect admission based purely on GPA and LSAT. Princeton probably provides the best example – when it implemented its grade deflation policies, it immediately went from one of the top 3 law feeders to (barely) in the top 10, underperforming relative to its LSAT scores. It also noticeably underperforms at Hopkins Med relative to HYS. I calculated these rates [a</a> while back](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/11938653-post10.html]a”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/11938653-post10.html).</p>
<p>It’s especially interesting to track colleges over time. If you follow matriculations at Yale Law, for example, you’ll find that most colleges produce almost exactly the same number of matriculants every year. For example, Harvard produced 76 Yale matriculants in 2010, 80 in 2011, and 80 in 2012. Brown produced 21 Yale matriculants in 2010, 22 in 2011, and 22 in 2012. Emory produced 3 Yale matriculants in 2010, 3 in 2011, and 4 in 2012. Alabama produced 1 in 2010, 2 in 2011, and 2 in 2012. Similarly stable numbers apply to the other colleges. Are we looking at unofficial quotas at law schools, or are the average LSATs and GPAs and student application patterns almost exactly the same every year?</p>
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<p>You are assuming that an equally proportional number of students from all of these schools WANT to go to Harvard or Yale law school. And for all we know, there is someone on the admissions committee who favors Stanford grads (or in the case of Harvard, Amherst and Williams).</p>
<p>I am guessing what cobrat says is probably true–that at some institutions, law school is not as desirable a goal as it is at others. I’d be willing to bet that the same schools that “value” elite law school admissions (based on the percentage of kids who apply) are also the schools that send a large percentage of students to Wall Street–in other words, the pursuit of money is a huge object for these students.</p>
<p>Is it better to be a stand out at a great school that isn’t well known (i.e. Swarthmore) or middle of the park at a hugely prestigious school like mit or stanford? I just feel like the more well known your school, the more opportunities you have and the easier it is to find said opportunities.</p>
<p>moonman, many people like you “just feel” that the more well known your school is, the more opportunities you will have. The facts in most cases do not bear this out. Why would it be easier to find opportunities just because you are at a top school (and actually, Swarthmore is well known among LACs)? Isn’t the individual going to be an opportunity seeker (or not) no matter where he/she attends college? What makes you think there are more opportunities available to kids at elite colleges? The point of this thread is that students from a whole lot of obscure, second- or third-tier colleges get into law school…and not just any law school, but HARVARD LAW. So it seems pretty obvious that they are finding opportunities and making the most of them.</p>
<p>I think my grandmother said it best – “The cream always rises to the top.”</p>
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Well, a lot of times there ARE more opportunities at top schools. Top colleges tend to have a lot of funding for undergrads, have a lot of (quality) research, bring famous scholars and other people to campus for talks and networking, dedicate offices to undergraduate fellowships and grad/prof admissions, have useful resources (e.g. a large art museum with extensive holdings), etc. </p>
<p>Graduate admissions illustrates this pretty well. A lot of PhD programs tend to be a fair bit less egalitarian in admissions than law schools. This is for a number of reasons. For one, test scores are one of the <em>least</em> important factors in an application, with the other subjective factors being more important. For example, recommendations, one of the most important aspects of an application, mean a lot more coming from well-known scholars, most of whom congregate at a select few colleges. </p>
<p>To provide a few perspectives:
I once analyzed classics PhD programs for another thread, and I found that graduates from top undergraduate programs in classics and archaeology virtually dominated the best PhD programs in the field; only a few graduates from other programs were successful, often after a MA or post-bac.</p>
<p>Note that the emphasis in all of these fields is on top <strong>programs</strong>, not top <strong>universities</strong>. This is highly field dependent…you’ll get a lot more access to marine biology research at U Miami than you would at Dartmouth, for example, or more exposure to astronomy at Hawaii than Duke. If top colleges are overrepresented, it is only because they tend to have more top programs than their less selective cousins.</p>
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<p>If this were a true determinant of success in PhD program admissions, top PhD programs around the country would be absolutely dominated by the graduates of a handful of schools (your “select few”). But they’re not.</p>
<p>This thread is about where HLS students went for undergrad. Some went to top schools, others did not. To elaborate on what smokymtngirl says, the cream rises to the top…no matter which cow it comes from.</p>
<p>“For example, Harvard produced 76 Yale matriculants in 2010, 80 in 2011, and 80 in 2012.” </p>
<p>Warblersrule, I don’t know where you are deriving your numbers for law school classes, but you must be mixing something up. Yale Law has a class size of around 200; there is no way that Harvard undergrads make up more than 1/3rd of the class. I would hazard a guess that you are using four year totals or five year totals. I went to a top 10 law school around the size of Yale and there were maybe 6 Harvard grads in my class. Harvard Law School is much bigger (around 550 per class), but again, I don’t think any school made up more than 75 students in the class.</p>
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Good call. It seems to be the three year total. Harvard and Yale make up about 25% of the total student body.</p>
<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | Yale Law School 2012-2013 | Law School Students](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)</p>
<p>I’m far from an elite college fanboy, as anyone who’s read my past posts can tell. I often speak very highly of a number of colleges that aren’t particularly selective - I think I’m the resident CC cheerleader for the College of the Atlantic, to name only one college of which I’m very fond. At the same time, I don’t believe that all colleges are created equal. At some colleges, it <em>is</em> easier to succeed, or at the very least you don’t have to work quite as hard to get to where you want to go. Why this makes people uncomfortable, I’m not quite sure. </p>
<p>Interestingly, one could take this thread and turn the argument for top colleges on its head. If LSAT scores and GPA are all that matter for law school, one could argue that a highly capable pre-law student might be a lot better off at a somewhat mediocre college that would allow him/her to develop a high GPA, especially if merit money comes into play.</p>
<p>^^the point is still relevant, however. The total number of enrollees doesn’t change much year to year.</p>
<p>I see Ohio State and Michigan State on the list!! :p</p>