Harvard/Princeton (etc) UG winding up at T2 Law schools Forum

[fwaam]

Anecdotal evidence: I know someone who went to Princeton UG, then turned down YLS for a full ride at a lower T14 because of her debt. I think she's not so thrilled with her choice now that she's a law professor.

At any rate, State U --> elite law school seems like the best route to me, not the other way round.

[D Brooks]

He stumbled to recover, but he couldn’t even get to “Hitter” before she asked: “So what club were you in?” referring to which eating club he had belonged. Gopal hadn’t been in any club; he was an “independent.” And upon hearing this, the girl gasped, pulled her hands close to her chest, and scurried away, as if having just confronted someone with full-blown AIDS.


I couldn't imagine what going to a T2 law school would be like.

[Kretzy]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

Is your middle-of-the-pack Harvard student more 'qualified' (hell, even 'ready') for employment or graduate school than your middle-of-the-pack Big-10 graduate? Probably.

Are the top graduates (let's say 5%) of most T50 state schools more 'qualified' for those same jobs? Probably.

The middle-of-the-pack HYPSMC student will almost uniformly get the good job directly from UG. The top state-school (or solid private school) grad will almost uniformly, replete with solid test score, get a top-tier graduate program.

This topic comes up over and over again. Go to a school and excel there. Do I think I would've done as well at Yale as I did at my UG? I don't know. None of us, barring students who transfer, will ever know.

[D Brooks]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

LOL. Stop trolling for west coast TTTs.

Chicago > CalTech. Although, objectively, CalTech is an amazing school.

[09042014]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

Man I finished bottom third of my big ten school, got T14. LSAT ftw.

[flyingpanda]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

Man I finished bottom third of my big ten school, got T14. LSAT ftw.

I think out of people applying to law school from my UG I was like the bottom 10% lol

[Kretzy]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

Man I finished bottom third of my big ten school, got T14. LSAT ftw.

Thus, numbers-wise, you weren't mediocre. 176/2.x isn't mediocre from a state UG (esp. as a science major) in the context of LS admissions. I should've said median, but I forgot how nit-picky things can be here...I'll resume my lack of engagement on posts such as this.

[NayBoer]

No mediocre student at any UG is going to get into a T14, even from HYPSMC (C is for CalTech, which is often ignored here).

Man I finished bottom third of my big ten school, got T14. LSAT ftw.

Thus, numbers-wise, you weren't mediocre. 176/2.x isn't mediocre from a state UG (esp. as a science major) in the context of LS admissions. I should've said median, but I forgot how nit-picky things can be here...I'll resume my lack of engagement on posts such as this.

You didn't say "mediocre numbers-wise." You said "mediocre student at any undergrad."

Also, I wasn't a science major. They don't care that much. USNWR doesn't let them report a different GPA for science majors.

[Tofu]

.

[blackacre]

I love when I see Ivy league kids at T2 schools. It warms my heart. Almost as much as when I see kids who went to private schools all their lives at the same school as me. I guess their parents didn't recognize a bad investment

[D Brooks]

I love when I see Ivy league kids at T2 schools. It warms my heart. Almost as much as when I see kids who went to private schools all their lives at the same school as me. I guess their parents didn't recognize a bad investment

Ewwww... pretentious public school student.

[philosoraptor]

I love when I see Ivy league kids at T2 schools. It warms my heart. Almost as much as when I see kids who went to private schools all their lives at the same school as me. I guess their parents didn't recognize a bad investment

I guess it's impossible to fathom that some people went to YHPSwhatever for reasons other than getting into law school. I know -- crazy, right? I didn't get all A's, but I certainly wouldn't trade my college experience for a free ride and a 4.0 at the local TTT state school.

[blackacre]

I love when I see Ivy league kids at T2 schools. It warms my heart. Almost as much as when I see kids who went to private schools all their lives at the same school as me. I guess their parents didn't recognize a bad investment

I guess it's impossible to fathom that some people went to YHPSwhatever for reasons other than getting into law school. I know -- crazy, right? I didn't get all A's, but I certainly wouldn't trade my college experience for a free ride and a 4.0 at the local TTT state school.

And I wouldn't trade my free ride at a TTT state school to wind up with >100K in debt just to attend the same school as some kid with a "public education."

[philosoraptor]

And I wouldn't trade my free ride at a TTT state school to wind up with >100K in debt just to attend the same school as some kid with a "public education."

Yeah, no debt. Financial aid ftw. But anyway, I'm not judging you because you obviously got what you wanted out of college, and I applaud all those who had the foresight to save money on college in order to start shooting for a T14 law school at age 18. Just don't assume everyone had the same goals as you.

[Unemployed]

TBF, if you look at the Yale UG chart, only 43% of law school applicants enrolled anywhere - most likely as a result of people who didn't get into top schools turning to alternative routes.

Also according to the chart, no one ended up at a T3/T4 school, and a grand total of 7 (out of 231 matriculants) ended up at schools ranked below 50 - 2 at Cardozo, 2 at Brooklyn, 1 at Temple, and 2 at UConn.

[robin600]

Is your middle-of-the-pack Harvard student more 'qualified' (hell, even 'ready') for employment or graduate school than your middle-of-the-pack Big-10 graduate? Probably.

Don't hate on the big-10! I turned down going to WUSTL (for UG) to go to MSU, and I love my decision. (one WUSTL doesn't have a Criminal Justice program (which if I wasn't going to law school I'd be doing research) and they don't have a naval rotc program which I planned on doing prior to surgery). MSU (like other big-10s) have crazy ass grading policies where there is only 4.0, 3.5, 3.0 etc. and usually a 4.0 is a 94%. At what school do you know of that a 3.5 is a 93%?

[094320]

..

[bigben]

Weird thread.

How are people voting for "bad grades" ??

Nobody ends up in tier 2 because of bad grades. You can have bad grades and go to a T14. It's all about the LSAT.

[DerrickRose]

Weird thread.

How are people voting for "bad grades" ??

Nobody ends up in tier 2 because of bad grades. You can have bad grades and go to a T14. It's all about the LSAT.

If you're under a 3.0, you would need at least a 174-5ish to sniff the lower T14.

And plus, law applicants consider like a 3.45 "bad grades". Those are better grades than most people at HYP (or any college anywhere ever) get.

[bigben]

Weird thread.

How are people voting for "bad grades" ??

Nobody ends up in tier 2 because of bad grades. You can have bad grades and go to a T14. It's all about the LSAT.

If you're under a 3.0, you would need at least a 174-5ish to sniff the lower T14.

And plus, law applicants consider like a 3.45 "bad grades". Those are better grades than most people at HYP (or any college anywhere ever) get.

I don't understand. Are you defending the "bad grades" answer?

Generally speaking,

High LSAT = necessary and sufficient for T1 (even T14 if high enough)

High GPA = not necessary, and definitely not sufficient for T1 (by any definition of high)

I understand grades could be the difference between T1 and T2 in any particular case. But generally the LSAT is the much more pertinent factor, and a low LSAT certainly better explains why someone did not get into a T1 school than a low GPA.

[elmagic]

He stumbled to recover, but he couldn’t even get to “Hitter” before she asked: “So what club were you in?” referring to which eating club he had belonged. Gopal hadn’t been in any club; he was an “independent.” And upon hearing this, the girl gasped, pulled her hands close to her chest, and scurried away, as if having just confronted someone with full-blown AIDS.

Is this a Fitzgerald quote?

Everyone I knew at my eating club, a bicker club, that applied to law school straight out of undergrad attended T-14's. Although law school at the time wasn't a very popular option for most in my eating club. A girl I knew apparently is attending BYU, but she wasn't a member of my eating club.

[MTC87]

i like looking up the bios of attorneys that i work with (not my firm), comparing where they went to UG with where they went to LS, and extrapolating from there to make nasty judgments about their intelligence and work habits

i am consumed by the fear that some pissant paralegal is someday going to see that i went from a HYPS undergrad to a non-HYS law school and make the same judgments about me

[Ryou]

Every adcom tells us with our rejection letters that the admissions process is not perfect. And this comes down to the two main criteria of admissions being imperfect.

UG GPA can be skewed for a number of reasons. Some students take harder courses while others cruise knowing the numbers matter most. Some students have legitimate medical or family problems that impair their GPA. And there can be no dispute that at some UG's it is much harder to get the same GPA.

When your peers are of a higher caliber, it becomes much harder to stand out. Even with grade inflation, A's are hard to get in top schools. Inflation usually just means that it's near impossible to get worse than a B- but it also means that it's equally hard to get an A. The professors get spoiled by brilliant papers all the time because it's uncommon to have a particular class where more than half of the students in there were valedictorians at their high schools. I'm not saying non-elite schools are devoid of smart students, but when your peers are less impressive it makes it far easier to standout there. If you want proof, consider the entering UG class of Harvard's median high school GPA (near 4.0) vs. their median GPA once they are actually in Harvard.

GPA is inescapably contextual. And as someone else mentioned when it's big fish in the small pond vs. medium fish in the big pond, the big fish wins because all the record keeper looks at is the size of the fish.

Thus the LSAT was made to create a standard to measure all students in an equalized setting. But the flaw of standardized testing is that intelligence is a complex quality too intricate to measure with a single test. The LSAT does marginally better than the SAT in the respect that it attempts to test a more specialized skill set... but the fact people can improve so drastically on the LSAT shows that LSAT is not pure intellect -- it's not even pure certain-type-of-intelligence for that matter.

So we want a criteria that takes into account a more varied evaluation of the student and their ability to work for their grades vs. cram for a single 3hr test... and we get all the way back to UG GPA.

[soundgardener]

He stumbled to recover, but he couldn’t even get to “Hitter” before she asked: “So what club were you in?” referring to which eating club he had belonged. Gopal hadn’t been in any club; he was an “independent.” And upon hearing this, the girl gasped, pulled her hands close to her chest, and scurried away, as if having just confronted someone with full-blown AIDS.

Is this a Fitzgerald quote?

Everyone I knew at my eating club, a bicker club, that applied to law school straight out of undergrad attended T-14's. Although law school at the time wasn't a very popular option for most in my eating club. A girl I knew apparently is attending BYU, but she wasn't a member of my eating club.

Fitzgerald died way before AIDS bro, and wtf is an eating club?

[SaintClarence27]

Man, if I had it to do over again, I would do things so much differently.

1) Go to community college for free first 2 years. Ring up the 4.0.

2) Transfer to SIU or EIU; major in history. Ring up the 4.0. Graduate with a minimum 3.9, and very little debt.

3) Work retail a couple years; break into management for the WE; pay off all of my loans.

4) Take the LSAT earlier, before I forgot all of that 'logic' stuff. Apply to schools early.

5) Accepted at NU with $$.

All of this is to say that the UG matters NOT AT ALL. It's about the numbers for the law schools. No law school is going to care that I went to CC and then SIU when my GPA is above median, and no employer is going to care that my UG was from SIU when he hires me out of NU (or better).