Richest Students Forum

[hoogs23]

Which law schools have the richest students or parents attending them?

[TheThriller]

Do not go to a law school based on how wealthy your co-students will be.

[TripTrip]

Which law schools have the richest students or parents attending them?

lolwut

[toothbrush]

Which law schools have the richest students or parents attending them?

lolwut

i said the same thing in my head

[Borg]

I don't understand why this would be important or how anyone would possibly know, but I'll bite anyway. It's SMU.

[kalvano]

I don't understand why this would be important or how anyone would possibly know, but I'll bite anyway. It's SMU.

Beat me to it. Dammit.

[bdubs]

I'm going to go with Harvard. No question that, in aggregate, it's got the richest students of any law school.

[Borg]

I'm going to go with Harvard. No question that, in aggregate, it's got the richest students of any law school.

By aggregate do you mean that you're including alumni? If not, what's the rationale?

[Stanford4Me]

Although I went to SMU UG and experienced the richness thereof, I have to say the students here on the East Coast probably have more money than those Southern Princes and Princesses do.

[bdubs]

I'm going to go with Harvard. No question that, in aggregate, it's got the richest students of any law school.

By aggregate do you mean that you're including alumni? If not, what's the rationale?

It's one of the largest top law schools with over 550 students per class. Those students generally came from top undergrads and did extremely well there which is generally correlated with having wealthy parents.

[kalvano]

Although I went to SMU UG and experienced the richness thereof, I have to say the students here on the East Coast probably have more money than those Southern Princes and Princesses do.

The Audi R8 and the Gallardo in the student garage that almost got into an accident the other day disagree with you.

[goldeneye]

Getting that dual JD/MR(S) degree?

[JamMasterJ]

probably H. They have the worst need based aid of the T3

[dowu]

OP is a gold digger. HTH

[dowu]

probably H. They have the worst need based aid of the T3

What qualifies one for need based aid? How do you know if you'll get it?

[JamMasterJ]

probably H. They have the worst need based aid of the T3

What qualifies one for need based aid? How do you know if you'll get it?

need

[Borg]

I'm going to go with Harvard. No question that, in aggregate, it's got the richest students of any law school.

By aggregate do you mean that you're including alumni? If not, what's the rationale?

It's one of the largest top law schools with over 550 students per class. Those students generally came from top undergrads and did extremely well there which is generally correlated with having wealthy parents.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I have a couple of thoughts. The first is that there is a question of whether we are discussing the median or the total. If it's the total, then I agree that the large class size and likely outliers probably puts Harvard squarely in first place. If it's the median, I wonder if the meritocracy works against it. As a student at one of HSCNCP who grew up far from rich, I know that there are a lot of people like me at my school. Wealth might help, but you really have to bust your ass to get into a school like that, and a lot of people both rich and poor don't have what it takes. The average Harvard undergrad only gets about a 165 LSAT, which isn't even close to good enough to get into HLS.

Schools with more reasonable GPA and LSAT medians have fatter sections of the curve from which to choose, and some of those schools have reputations as rich kid havens (USC, Vanderbilt, and SMU come to mind). I wonder if rich kids who aren't T-14 material (including Ivy undergrads) tend to flock to those schools over their peers, inflating the median income level. No way to know, but it would be interesting to see.

Anyway, I guess this is just a long way of saying that I'm guessing and can't offer anything of real value.

[AreJay711]

Idk some of these small schools might surprise you.

[bdubs]

I'm going to go with Harvard. No question that, in aggregate, it's got the richest students of any law school.

By aggregate do you mean that you're including alumni? If not, what's the rationale?

It's one of the largest top law schools with over 550 students per class. Those students generally came from top undergrads and did extremely well there which is generally correlated with having wealthy parents.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I have a couple of thoughts. The first is that there is a question of whether we are discussing the median or the total. If it's the total, then I agree that the large class size and likely outliers probably puts Harvard squarely in first place. If it's the median, I wonder if the meritocracy works against it. As a student at one of HSCNCP who grew up far from rich, I know that there are a lot of people like me at my school. Wealth might help, but you really have to bust your ass to get into a school like that, and a lot of people both rich and poor don't have what it takes. The average Harvard undergrad only gets about a 165 LSAT, which isn't even close to good enough to get into HLS.

Schools with more reasonable GPA and LSAT medians have fatter sections of the curve from which to choose, and some of those schools have reputations as rich kid havens (USC, Vanderbilt, and SMU come to mind). I wonder if rich kids who aren't T-14 material (including Ivy undergrads) tend to flock to those schools over their peers, inflating the median income level. No way to know, but it would be interesting to see.

Anyway, I guess this is just a long way of saying that I'm guessing and can't offer anything of real value.

I think the (vast?) majority of ivy league UG kids went to "feeder" high schools that were either private and extremely elite or public and in very wealthy areas. This might be a biased view from the subset of students I know from ivys though. In addition, there are studies that show that students which come from "disadvantaged" backgrounds tend to, in a statistical sense, struggle to do well at elite schools.

But by the time we get to HLS I guess we're talking about the people who placed in the top 15% (maybe higher?) of their graduating classes and then scored in the 99.8th percentile on the LSAT. So that larger sample from UG might sort itself out into something a bit more merit based.

[ksllaw]

At the elite universities, only 8% of all students come from the bottom 50% of the socio-economic class in the U.S. Nobel Laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz, discusses this, along with other issues relating to economic inequality in the U.S., in this brief clip/chat (about his new book, The Price of Inequality):

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 38674.html

Stiglitz argues that there's a myth of socio-economic mobility in the U.S. Rather than being the great land of opportunity, he argues, the U.S. has a more rigid class structure than even old Europe. By and large, the class you are born into in the U.S. is the one you will remain in.

As for law school inequality, I think that while merit may play a greater role in law school entrance than in undergraduate admissions, it may still be difficult to completely decouple "merit" from family wealth.

The types of resources available to the wealthy can give them advantages throughout life and throughout the "merit" building process (of attaining grades and entrance exam scores). Access to private tutors and better schools throughout secondary school, for example, may have contributed signficantly to the building up a stronger set of skills that were used to attain better grades in UG. Likewise, access to expensive LSAT prep courses may have given a wealthy student an advantage over someone without the means to pay for that type of help (I do know that people attempt the LSAT without such private tutoring and training). Perhaps the most valuable asset provided by wealth is simply the time available to study that working students may not have as much of.

There are a number of things that wealth may provide that contributes to the success of a student, so that I think it's still difficult to completely decouple wealth from merit in law school admissions.

[dingbat]

I'm gonna go with NYLS: the vast majority of the student body has no problem pissing $50k/year down the toilet, so they got to be rich

[teachmehowtoraji]

probably H. They have the worst need based aid of the T3

What qualifies one for need based aid? How do you know if you'll get it?

need

[ksllaw]

I'm gonna go with NYLS: the vast majority of the student body has no problem pissing $50k/year down the toilet, so they got to be rich

I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I believe it's more likely that misinformation is the cause of student attendance (at full-tuition) at those types of law schools (ones with high cost of attendance and poor job prospects).

Otherwise, by your initial logic, we would probably be better off identifying schools like Cooley as the place which has the most wealthy students. But, from testimonial evidence, it appears that many students who attended Cooley were simply misinformed or uninformed about their prospects of obtaining high-paying employment after graduation. These weren't necessarily rich students who went there.

I'm not sure if there is an analogue to this situation with law schools, but in undergraduate education, the low ranking, for-profit types of schools (such as, University of Phoenix) often "prey" on the poor (and minorities).

[dingbat]

I'm gonna go with NYLS: the vast majority of the student body has no problem pissing $50k/year down the toilet, so they got to be rich

I can't tell if you're joking or not,

I would sincerely hope that no one took this seriously, but:
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer

[TripTrip]

I'm gonna go with NYLS: the vast majority of the student body has no problem pissing $50k/year down the toilet, so they got to be rich

I can't tell if you're joking or not

He's not joking. NYLS students got bling bling. It's actually ranked #0 on USNWR, but you have to pay $300,000 to access those rankings. Only rich people know it's the best.