@HappyAlumnus: Do you have a link to that study? I honestly can’t recall ever paying attention to where a prospective candidate went to undergrad. I also have no idea where my colleagues went, though I know most of their law schools.
@ThankYouforHelp, to add to my post, I’d say (and I’m sure others would agree) that law schools care most about GPA and LSAT numbers, with everything else at best secondary. I had a decent amount of people in my class from no-name schools, and they got in when people from Ivies did not.
The Harvard Law Record has the study about law firm hiring, but there must also be other studies online about it. Someone from HYS Law with a top Ivy undergrad degree is in a strong position.
Comparisons to med school applicants aren’t as valid as the Top 14 Law schools mean a ton for one’s law career. For the thousands of med school grads, they mostly want to be practicing physicians at the end-- and thus, the “name” of the med school is much less important. The labor market will swallow up every single graduating physician (sure, there will be gradations for plum fellowships/academia/research and residencies – but no one will be unemployed). There are plenty of unemployed newly minted law school graduates.
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
@merc81: There’s a serious correlation/causation problem there. Just because students from the best undergrads get into the best law schools more often doesn’t mean one is caused by the other. Poorly performing students from top undergrads do no better than poorly performing people elsewhere. Similarly for well performing people. The correlation comes because both undergrad and law school require good grades in the previous school and good test scores. It’s not surprising that being good at those things, and getting into a good undergrad, continues on to help those students in getting into law school.
@Demosthenes49 : I’m familiar with correlation/causation considerations. However, acknowledging this as a possible factor would not obviate the possibility that overperformance vs. underperformance, as relates to undergraduate colleges and law school admissions, could be a substantial contributing factor that would differentiate schools. On this thread in particular, the OP appears to be seeking any clues that may be superior to random college selection. The link above (#23) could credibly serve that purpose in this context.
@merc81: Of course undergrad name is a possible factor, but the question is whether it is an actual factor. The link above is nicely put together but has no explanatory power. Admissions data simply doesn’t support the claim that undergrad prestige matters. It may or may not be the case that it affects hiring, however.
There’s also serious self-selection problem there. The authors used LinkedIn for their ‘study’. Not every uses LinkedIn, obviously.
fwiw: HLS shows that it has students from 185 undergraduate colleges. GULC has students from 235 different undergrads.
Sure, HLS probably has dozens from Harvard College, but Harvard College students have a built-in advantage: Harvard College only admits top test takers, so naturally, Harvard College students have the highest mean LSAT score.
btw: hard to argue that 200+ colleges are “highly selective.” If you can score a 175 on the LSAT, with an excellent GPA from Podunk State, there is an extremely high probability that HLS will give you an interview.
That list seems odd; where’s Princeton?
If the question is, “do students coming from elite colleges have better admissions prospects at elite law schools because of those colleges, and not because of the students’ innate abilities”, I’d say that the answer is “probably somewhat.”
Elite schools have pre-law advisors and faculty who are more familiar with the elite law school application process and can help students through it. Elite colleges are filled with successful students who have high expectations of themselves and their futures, so the peer pressure from being around them must push some students to aim higher than they would otherwise.
This is just my personal experience; I have no data to support my belief, though.
Re #28:
With Ivies, NESCACs and Claremonts collectively comprising all but eight of the included schools, the list (#23) seems more stereotypical than odd to me.