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Chicago's carreer services (or prelaw or whatever) office should have a file showing previous law applicants from UofC undergrad. See how well students do with their numbers compared to LSN norm. I'm guessing a tiny bit better but not too much.

I graduated a while ago so thats not really a possibility. So, any current uchicago students feel like checking that out? Any one else have any perspective from experience etc?

bump. anyone?

with a mean gpa of ~3.35, Chicago's grade deflation days are long gone.

btw: I believe that Dartmouth's top third is just below 3.6.

Depends on where you are applying. Chicago has a good academic reputation around the country, but not everyone knows about the rigor of the undergraduate program. I'd venture to guess that the places you're applying with a 177 will, though.

Northwestern let me in with a not so great GPA, so I think they're aware.

I'm an alum of the graduate division, but please, allow me to share my insights.

Based on the evidence available (LSN graphs, personal anecdotes) attending a particular institution for undergrad has a marginal effect at most, if there is an effect at all. I enjoyed reading an M.I.T. discussion on the matter, and trust me, they are dealing with the same kind of angst and cynical jealousies that the students at U of C deal with during the law school admissions process. As it turns out, the law school admissions cycle is primarily economics at work: It is in the school's best interest to report a high GPA, regardless of how that GPA was acquired or where. It is also in the school's best interest to lie about grade trends and difficulty in major as relevant considerations, as doing so assists them in getting as many applicants as possible (only to axe them two months later). In fact, from an economics standpoint, it is downright irrational for schools NOT to be handing out fee waivers to people they believe would not have applied had it not been for the "free chance". Virginia is doing it right if you ask me. The take away point from all of this: Imagine the most cynical scenario you can rather than the rosiest. This will lead you in general, and in law and economics particularly, to the right answer to your question more often than succumbing to wishful thinking.

If you earnestly believe that having "The University of Chicago" on the diploma behind your desk and on the resume you give to employers will help you, then let the system/society/business culture decide if that optimism is correctly informed. As a personal matter, if I am hiring someone and I see the University of Chicago on a person's resume, barring they were on athletic scholarship (haha, jk) and/or got under a 3.0, I would certainly be inclined to give preference to their case. That is because I am a human, and as such, I am inclined to caving toward my biases. In law school admissions offices, as they are run presumably by humans, the bias-effect is also at work. Having said that, these people have in most cases been trained to look at two numbers and two scholastic numbers only: GPA and LSAT, and even to OVERLOOK numbers such as an abnormally low first LSAT at times. Since the "University of Chicago" is an institution, (and a damn good one at that), it should not in theory (based on schools admitting students for ranking purposes) affect the admissions process in the affirmative or negative. In reality, the theory is nearly proven with exceptions every now and then.

There. Good luck to all of you. I personally have tremendous respect for U of C undergrads. I find that you guys are on average almost as intelligent as the U of C graduate students, which is a major compliment.

An aside: My colleague (a uchicago UG alum with a 3.92 GPA in history) is applying to law school this cycle and he didn't ace the LSAT (a 166), but is faring well as you can imagine.

That's not entirely true. The median/mean GPA may be much higher than it used to be and on line with a lot of other schools (though, notably, still much lower than HYP, etc.), as the OP says, grades that are nowadays usually required for admission to a lot of T10 law schools (3.8+) are still rare. I think more telling than "3.6 is top 1/3" would be what, say, the 90th percentile is. I think that number is still significantly lower at Chicago than it is at almost every other UG.

As to how adcomms treat this...iunno. Probably a very slight bump, if anything..

Guys, please read my post (above). It took me a cup of coffee and a back spasm to finish.

-HL

Yeah, which part? (Hint: my source was a published doc from UoC...)



Source, please? (Sure it's lower than those grade-inflated colleges in Cambridge, Providence and a Farm south of San Francisco, but it's similar to many other top privates...)

Dartmouth has a mean GPA of 3.4. Northwestern is 3.4

Cornell, another college with reported "grade deflation" is 3.35 as is Chicago

But yet Princeton is down to 3.28?

Hmmmmm

A 3.6 at my college is top 15% (compared to the top 33% you say it is at UChic). I'm sure this is not particularly unusual. Having UChic on your app shouldn't be a trump card for a lower GPA.

I read your post and appreciated it. I tip my hat to your friend with the 3.92; what schools has he gotten into (just so I can see if he's out performing the average 3.92/166 applicant).

A 170/3.0 at NU (unless you had some pretty original work experience) is pretty damn good, though they do tend to dip pretty low for GPAs for high lsat applicants. Though from LSN that they tend to take 170 applicants with a 3.2+ and 3.0 applicants from 172+.

My real question though is:
Since I don't have access to career services anymore (I live in DC and graduate a few years ago), can anyone speak to uchicago student's experience in previous cycles: do they over-perform their gpas or not?
I understand the explanations for why not etc I'm just asking if anyone has some examples or has actually looked at career services' records.

Hey ernst I'm a U of C undergrad as well and I've had the same questions you do. Unfortunately I don't think there's any reason to believe U of C students would be handicapped during law school admissions. Take a look at this thread, especially post #47: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/col ... ool-4.html It's clearly a lot easier to get into HLS from Yale, Stanford, or Princeton than from Michigan or Cornell. Also keep in mind that HLS and YLS has pretty consistently enrolled 24 or so UChicago undergrads every year for the past several years (if I remember correctly), which is about on par with Cornell. Cornell, of course, has a larger undergraduate population than we do. Given all this, I wouldn't be surprised if the acceptance rate for U of C undergrads at HLS hovers around 15%. My guess is that, if the top 1/3 of the class has a GPA of >3.6 (where did you find this information btw?), most of the students accepted to HYS will have GPAs in the high 3.7s or above.

I appreciate the effort it took to write that (I have back problems too) and I think you make some good points, but I'm basically a walking contradiction to your thesis. I had just under a 3.0 and a 170 on the LSAT (and, yes, my undergrad degree says The University of Chicago... though really, the font on it is such a disappointment...) and I got into a very good law school.

I had work experience for a year, but it wasn't spectacular.

I'm not so sure it's that clear. Y, S & P end up with the highest test performers in their student bodies (outside of H). Thus, their undergrads KNOW how to do extremely well on standardized tests before they matriculate to campus. By almost definition, those same kids will do well on the LSAT, and better than kids at Cornell (or lower ranked school). Since LSAT is ~50% of LS admissions....

Looked at another way: Does Harvard College have the highest mean LSAT score bcos of its undergrad teaching (cough, cough), or are its high LSAT scores a foregone conclusion bcos H has the highest SAT-CR scores of 18 year-olds?

pisha, I went to uchicago with a 1580... but yea, point taken.

Well as a current U of C undergrad you can still go check out the office of career services' records of previous applicants...

I'm a URM Uchicago alumnus, but so far I've done better than number twin URMs from TTT undergrads. I do have substantive work experience, but i think Undergrad Prestige played a factor.

Northwestern Law is a special school my friend. They see a 170+ and you are an auto-admit, barring a 2.5 GPA or a serious criminal record. WE mattering at Northwestern is also overstated. I have three friends with no WE but with 170+ LSATs who got schollies. Great school though and make sure you represent U of C well up there!

To the person who asked about my friend with the 3.9+ at U of C: He's been accepted to Columbia, NYU, Northwestern (AJD), and I think he got into Harvard but I can't trust him on that one. He lies like a historian.

I think auto-admit is a bit of an exaggeration. If you check out LSN and look at the 07-08 and 08-09 cycles you can see there are plenty of red and yellow data points on there at the 170 level, even with above 3 GPAs. I'm not on there, but it still holds true. Northwestern's love of work experience does mean that they have a more limited pool to choose from, though, which perhaps explains their friendliness to splitters.

3.6 is top 20% at my schools electrical engineering. Hell 2.8 is only the bottom 33%. Median is 3.12. So I have no sympathy for U of C undergrads.

Also interestingly enough, the median is 3.12 +/- .02 for white students, asian student male or female.

Northwestern's friendliness to splitters is because its LSAT median is higher than its rank. 172+ with decent GPA's go to CCN, and 172+ with a fairly bad GPA go to MVP. So they need to take some 172+ with dog shit GPA or their 75% would drop.

That may or may not be right, but even if it were true it wouldn't explain the friendliness towards splitters who aren't in the 172+ group. Not to mention the fact that MVP and Northwestern are essentially ranked the same, with perhaps a movement between being completely tied and not depending on the year. Last year, Northwestern, Michigan, and Virginia were tied, with Penn only one spot ahead. This year, Northwestern and UVA are tied with Michigan and Penn only one spot ahead. I'm not sure how you claim this stark division between MVP and Northwestern... unless you're just pulling it out of your ass.

Also, engineering at most schools is known as a hard major. It's not uncommon for more difficult majors to have lower overall GPAs. The thing about U Chicago and the schools like it - it's not just the "hard" majors that have low median GPAs. Even us lowly social science majors get to deal with it too.