<p>I really want to be a lawyer when I grow up. I know grad school's expensive, so I plan on getting through undergrad as fast as possible. The question is, will my undergrad decision affect where I go to law school? Does prestige matter in admissions? I know that the law school diploma I hold will have a huge impact on finding work at a firm after school, so I plan on applying to the best schools available. Also, another question. If I go to a college for undergrad that also has a graduate law school, would it make it easier or harder to apply into that law school?</p>
<p>The short answer is that, yes, it matters, but where you went as an undergrad is not as important at most law schools as are your grades and LSAT score. That said, when faced with two applicants with similar GPA and LSAT scores, if one went to a top ranked undergraduate school and the other one didn’t, the former will usually win out. Most law schools publish statistics about where their students come from. If you look a the top law schools, you will find that a large number of their students went to top undergraduate institutions. But certainly not all. A 3.9 from a state flagship will beat out a 3.3 from an Ivy or equivilent. But it may not beat out a 3.7 from an Ivy or equivilent.</p>
<p>As to your second question, that one is a bit harder to answer. I haven’t looked at the statistics in a while but I suspect that you will find that the undergraduate institution that sends the largest number of students to Harvard Law School is Harvard College, and Yale probably sends the largest number to Yale Law School, etc., etc. But that alone doesn’t answer the question because the applicant pools also reflect a similar bias, i.e., most Harvard undergrads applying to law school apply to Harvard Law School so the fact that Harvard Law admits a relatively large number of Harvard College graduates doesn’t necessarily mean it is easier to get admitted from Harvard than it is from Yale or Princeton (the latter of which has no law school). It may just be reflective of the relative number of applicants.</p>
<p>One other thing. Many people overstate the importance of going to a “top” law school, much as other people overstate the importance of going to a “top” undergraduate school. It is true that, if your career goal is to become an associate at one of the “biglaw” private law firms, then your odds of being hired are much better if you did well at one of the top 14 (“T-14”)law schools because those firms only hire from the top 5-10% of students from the other top quartile law schools and hire few if any associates from other law schools. But the vast majority of law students are not looking to go to work for those firms.</p>
<p>Many, many very successful lawyers did not go to a top ranked law school. While I generally recommend avoiding very low ranked law schools because it can be difficult to find any job for which a law degree is required from those schools (see, e.g., Cooley Law School), it is a myth that you have to go to a T-14 in order to get a decent job. And even graduating a T-14 doesn’t guarantee success. You are better off graduating in the top 5% of the 50th ranked law school than graduating in the bottom 5% of the #1 ranked school.</p>
<p>From what I have read and know from potential law school applicants, the LSAT is the most important criteria. Next comes GPA and then school and major. This is for the top schools at least.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I agree with ^^bonanza above. From what I have heard, law school grads are having a very difficult time getting a job. Some of it is because of technology. You do not need recent grads to do discovery anymore. </p>
<p>A friend recently graduated fron a NYC area law school (not top 14 and do not know ranking but certainly a known school) and she said not a single person in her class got a job!</p>
<p>My D1 always wanted to be a lawyer since 5th grade. She shadowed lawyers in middle school, won one of the top prizes in law day for the county in HS, shadowed with a lawyer in our capital her freshman yr of college, choose a college and major with the intent to go to law school, interned at Goldman Saks after her sophomore year in Global Compliance (employs a lot of lawyers) , and took the LSAT at the end of her junior yr. She did well above average. She was not happy because she wanted perfect. (175)</p>
<p>After all this and earning an internship in trading at JPMorgan after her junior yr, she desided to accept the offer for a job trading.</p>
<p>She recently sent her dad and I an article in the NY Times Or Wall St. Journal about how law school grads can’t find jobs. She indicated to us that she had made the right,for now,decision.</p>