does undergrad matter at all? Forum

[elmagic]

if anything a HYP GPA might need to be counted down, because they do so much inflation. At Harvard, 50% percentile is like a 3.6, at my undergrad its a 2.9

No offense here, but I was 3.9 at HYP and can tell you that at least in my experience for the majority of the people to get less than 3.6 just seems wrong. Granted I was in the humanities but still some of the smartest and hardest working people I've ever met were in my class.

FWIW I don't come from old money (or any money)

[imchuckbass58]

if anything a HYP GPA might need to be counted down, because they do so much inflation. At Harvard, 50% percentile is like a 3.6, at my undergrad its a 2.9

I mean...the flipside of the coin is the people you are competing against at Harvard are numerically much, much stronger. In terms of undergrad stats, for a class of 1500 kids, Harvard recieves 2500 perfect SAT verbal scores, 3300 perfect SAT math scores, and 3300 HS valedictorians, most of whom are not admitted (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/educa ... ssion.html).

In terms of LS stats, the median Harvard kid gets an LSAT of 165 or 166, which I'm sure the median kids (or even the kids who got 3.6s) at your undergrad aren't hitting.

Also, HYP all give full need-based financial aid which basically means you don't pay anything if your family makes less than $60,000. If your family makes between $60,000 and $120,000, you pay 1%-10% of income. Considering over half of undergrads were on financial aid of some sort when I went, I would dispel the notion that all HYP undergrads are "rich" (although there certainly are some).

[englawyer]

if anything a HYP GPA might need to be counted down, because they do so much inflation. At Harvard, 50% percentile is like a 3.6, at my undergrad its a 2.9

I mean...the flipside of the coin is the people you are competing against at Harvard are numerically much, much stronger. In terms of undergrad stats, for a class of 1500 kids, Harvard recieves 2500 perfect SAT verbal scores, 3300 perfect SAT math scores, and 3300 HS valedictorians, most of whom are not admitted (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/educa ... ssion.html).

In terms of LS stats, the median Harvard kid gets an LSAT of 165 or 166, which I'm sure the median kids (or even the kids who got 3.6s) at your undergrad aren't hitting.

Also, HYP all give full need-based financial aid which basically means you don't pay anything if your family makes less than $60,000. If your family makes between $60,000 and $120,000, you pay 1%-10% of income. Considering over half of undergrads were on financial aid of some sort when I went, I would dispel the notion that all HYP undergrads are "rich" (although there certainly are some).

article:

http://www.boston.com/news/education/hi ... advantage/

so 1/5 of harvard students came from families with less than 60k income.

yet here we see that 66% of families make less than that in the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cla ... ted_States

even with generous financial aid programs, people from lower socio-economic strata face huge obstacles in gaining admission. their parents don't know or even want to know how to "play the game" and sign their kids up for the right activities and what-not.


nonetheless, harvard undergrad kids are usually pretty damn smart so i think the grade inflation is fine as long as they still have to work for it. LSAT boost is kinda sketchy though IMO

[09042014]

Lol, there is someone in here dissing Purdue?? This is downright ridiculous, I grew up in Indiana and Purdue is great. All these kids who think their private school is so great because they had to show up to the profs office hours every week to get that full participation grade really need to stop.

Purdue engineering > ND anything.

HTH

[RVP11]

The reason you've heard numerous things is that no one knows, and everyone has anecdotes that run the range from "no, only numbers matter" to "no, I went to a tiny/unknown undergrad and got into Harvard" to "no, I went to a top Ivy and didn't get into Harvard" to "yes, I went to a tiny/unknown undergrad and didn't get into Harvard" to "yes, I went to a top Ivy and got into Harvard" and everything in between.

I think the general consensus in the end is:
- A "good" undergrad can sometimes help, but we're talking like HYPS or similar caliber. And even then, negligible boost, if any. And only at certain law schools (for example, Chicago, Columbia, and Penn are "known" for liking "elite" undergrads).
- A "crap" undergrad will rarely hurt you.
- Absolute numbers still rule.

Well to put some numbers around it, here are some actual stats.

http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gra ... wstats.pdf

If you look at the mean GPA of matriculants, it's near the 25th percentile at most of the top schools, and about .1-.2 off the medians. This would imply that HYPS students are getting a .1-.2 boost on average. LSAT averages for matriculants are also 1-2 points off the median.

We can argue until our heads turn blue about whether this is justified or not, but that's a rough estimation of the effect.

Mean =/= median. It makes a difference.

[Unemployed]

The reason you've heard numerous things is that no one knows, and everyone has anecdotes that run the range from "no, only numbers matter" to "no, I went to a tiny/unknown undergrad and got into Harvard" to "no, I went to a top Ivy and didn't get into Harvard" to "yes, I went to a tiny/unknown undergrad and didn't get into Harvard" to "yes, I went to a top Ivy and got into Harvard" and everything in between.

I think the general consensus in the end is:
- A "good" undergrad can sometimes help, but we're talking like HYPS or similar caliber. And even then, negligible boost, if any. And only at certain law schools (for example, Chicago, Columbia, and Penn are "known" for liking "elite" undergrads).
- A "crap" undergrad will rarely hurt you.
- Absolute numbers still rule.

Well to put some numbers around it, here are some actual stats.

http://www.yale.edu/career/students/gra ... wstats.pdf

If you look at the mean GPA of matriculants, it's near the 25th percentile at most of the top schools, and about .1-.2 off the medians. This would imply that HYPS students are getting a .1-.2 boost on average. LSAT averages for matriculants are also 1-2 points off the median.

We can argue until our heads turn blue about whether this is justified or not, but that's a rough estimation of the effect.

Out of 527 applicants, 299 (57%) chose not to go to law school.

Out of the 228 who decided to go to law school, 121 (53%) went to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and NYU.

Chicago accepted 53, only 1 matriculated.

[whitman]

No offense, but some of you are not thinking this through. Of course the median GPA at HYSP __ (insert high ranked school here). Those people were selected for being really smart and really hard working. Most of the people at Random State University were not. Not to say that some of the kids at RSU aren't as smart as some of the people at Stanford, BUT, the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

By the way, I did not go to a HYSP nor did I go to a Random State U, so I'm not defending one or trying to bash the other out of any sort of vested interest. Nor am I trying to bash anyone at less prestigious schools either.

[Unemployed]

No offense, but some of you are not thinking this through. Of course the median GPA at HYSP __ (insert high ranked school here). Those people were selected for being really smart and really hard working. Most of the people at Random State University were not. Not to say that some of the kids at RSU aren't as smart as some of the people at Stanford, BUT, the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

By the way, I did not go to a HYSP nor did I go to a Random State U, so I'm not defending one or trying to bash the other out of any sort of vested interest. Nor am I trying to bash anyone at less prestigious schools either.

I DID go to HYSP, and the bolded part is just not true.

[keemos]

Lol, there is someone in here dissing Purdue?? This is downright ridiculous, I grew up in Indiana and Purdue is great. All these kids who think their private school is so great because they had to show up to the profs office hours every week to get that full participation grade really need to stop.

Purdue engineering > ND anything.

HTH

I don't know much about purdue engineering except that it is better than nd engineering but nd undergrad business school is ranked number 2 in the country

[OG Loc]

UG doesnt matter assuming u didnt have a serious run in with the law.

I killed a guy but went to Princeton. Where does that put me?

[OG Loc]

Lol, there is someone in here dissing Purdue?? This is downright ridiculous, I grew up in Indiana and Purdue is great. All these kids who think their private school is so great because they had to show up to the profs office hours every week to get that full participation grade really need to stop.

Purdue engineering > ND anything.

HTH

F'realz.

[ndirish2010]

Lol, there is someone in here dissing Purdue?? This is downright ridiculous, I grew up in Indiana and Purdue is great. All these kids who think their private school is so great because they had to show up to the profs office hours every week to get that full participation grade really need to stop.

Purdue engineering > ND anything.

HTH

And undergrad specialty rankings are meaningless. Every single engineering student at Notre Dame could have gotten into Purdue and many got into far superior engineering programs (Michigan comes to mind) and chose ND for the overall academic experience (among other things). Not disparaging Purdue engineering, it's definitely a solid program, but to say that these program rankings really mean that much for undergrad is exaggerating reality.

[RVP11]

the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

Dude, no. The bottom of HYPS class would probably not be top 10% at most other universities. Elite schools have their slackers, too. Some people get to a prestigious school and don't care anymore. Some people are legacies. Some people are "scholar"-athletes. Every school has its dispshits.

If we're talking about liberal arts majors, the material is not going to be all that rigorous or challenging at nearly any school. Basically, if you put in a decent amount of work you get a 3.5+. If you slack, you can still pull a 3.0. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to succeed in a liberal arts major at 99% of American universities.

[DoubleChecks]

the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

Dude, no. The bottom of HYPS class would probably not be top 10% at most other universities. Elite schools have their slackers, too. Some people get to a prestigious school and don't care anymore. Some people are legacies. Some people are "scholar"-athletes. Every school has its dispshits.

If we're talking about liberal arts majors, the material is not going to be all that rigorous or challenging at nearly any school. Basically, if you put in a decent amount of work you get a 3.5+. If you slack, you can still pull a 3.0. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to succeed in a liberal arts major at 99% of American universities.

i think it'd be safer to say the middle (or top or a random sampling) of HYPS would do better at x school than the middle (or whatever counterpart section) x students of that same school would do

[notanumber]

the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

Dude, no. The bottom of HYPS class would probably not be top 10% at most other universities. Elite schools have their slackers, too. Some people get to a prestigious school and don't care anymore. Some people are legacies. Some people are "scholar"-athletes. Every school has its dispshits.

If we're talking about liberal arts majors, the material is not going to be all that rigorous or challenging at nearly any school. Basically, if you put in a decent amount of work you get a 3.5+. If you slack, you can still pull a 3.0. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to succeed in a liberal arts major at 99% of American universities.

Your "major" has no bearing on undergrad acceptance.* Somebody who majored in the humanities at Yale could almost certainly have been accepted to UCLA and majored in engineering. Now, their GPA at UCLA might have been lower, but that's entirely speculative and doesn't deaden the fact that there are plenty of very smart people who major in the humanities.

Yeah, GPAs vary extensively between schools and majors due to institutional culture. That's what the LSAT is for (although interestingly enough history, english, and anthropology majors have higher average LSAT score than engineers - but everybody beats criminology majors!).

*Specialty schools like Caltech and Juilliard excepted.

[tomhobbes]

I've become convinced over the last few months that at the highest levels, UG prestige matters. Look at the current Yale and Stanford acceptances on LSN. Almost all of them are from Ivies or other prestigious schools. And that's not because LSN lacks state school applicants with good numbers. It seems that at Harvard there are a fair number of accepted people from state schools, but the bar seems to be set higher for them.

Maybe coming from HYP only gives you a "small" boost of .1-.2, but when you're considering the competition at the very top schools, that's not a small boost, it's a huge one, and it has the effect of crowding out a lot of people from state schools.

[RVP11]

I've become convinced over the last few months that at the highest levels, UG prestige matters. Look at the current Yale and Stanford acceptances on LSN. Almost all of them are from Ivies or other prestigious schools. And that's not because LSN lacks state school applicants with good numbers. It seems that at Harvard there are a fair number of accepted people from state schools, but the bar seems to be set higher for them.

Maybe coming from HYP only gives you a "small" boost of .1-.2, but when you're considering the competition at the very top schools, that's not a small boost, it's a huge one, and it has the effect of crowding out a lot of people from state schools.

Keep in mind people at HYPS also tend to have some ridiculous softs.

[imchuckbass58]

I've become convinced over the last few months that at the highest levels, UG prestige matters. Look at the current Yale and Stanford acceptances on LSN. Almost all of them are from Ivies or other prestigious schools. And that's not because LSN lacks state school applicants with good numbers. It seems that at Harvard there are a fair number of accepted people from state schools, but the bar seems to be set higher for them.

Maybe coming from HYP only gives you a "small" boost of .1-.2, but when you're considering the competition at the very top schools, that's not a small boost, it's a huge one, and it has the effect of crowding out a lot of people from state schools.

There's also the effect that the medians tell you the numerical composition of accepted students, but not of rejected students.

I imagine there are more people between the medians than there are spots in the class, and many people within the medians end up getting rejected for whatever reason.

Assume there's a school with 3.4/3.6 and 168/172 medians. I could imagine a very high percentage of HYP students with 3.5/170 getting in, but relatively low percentages of 3.5/170 people from other schools getting in.

I have no rigorous statistical evidence, but our prelaw counselors pretty much treated it as a forgone conclusion that if you hit both 25th percentiles, you were as good as in. Anecdotally from my friends, this seems to be true. I had a bunch of friends barely over the medians for HLS, and virtually all of them got in.

At HLS and YLS, up to 25% of the student body is from HYPS undergrad. I'd be willing to wager they make up a much smaller portion of the applicants with above-median numbers.

[Cleareyes]

I don't know if it's due to LSAT correlating with school attended or what, but a ridiculous portion of the class at Harvard comes from top undergrads. My impression is that undergrad does matter to some degree here. I have some classmates whose undergrad GPAs would make them "Don't bother" candidates for H on TLS but who got in. They all went to top undergrads. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I think it's possible that H is more willing to consider candidates whose numbers don't fit their profile if those candidates come from top schools. Then again, maybe it's just a correlation between really strong softs and attending top Ugrads. It's hard to separate these things out.

[whitman]

No offense, but some of you are not thinking this through. Of course the median GPA at HYSP __ (insert high ranked school here). Those people were selected for being really smart and really hard working. Most of the people at Random State University were not. Not to say that some of the kids at RSU aren't as smart as some of the people at Stanford, BUT, the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

By the way, I did not go to a HYSP nor did I go to a Random State U, so I'm not defending one or trying to bash the other out of any sort of vested interest. Nor am I trying to bash anyone at less prestigious schools either.

I DID go to HYSP, and the bolded part is just not true.

Sorry, I really meant top schools in general, not just those four. I know I specifically just stated those four in that sentence, though. Also, the poster who broadened my statement was onto it better than me. I way oversimplified and exaggerated my argument. I really just meant that the majority of people at top schools were selected because they tend to work harder and be smarter. I know people that were no where close to getting into a top school and ye cruised to high 3.9s at low-ranked state schools because it's just a completely different ballgame. Maybe they would have gotten that 3.98 at Yale of UVA or wherever, maybe not. But odds are that the majority of Yale students would not go to the state school and get a 3.0 and certainly not a 1.x or 2.x. Some maybe. There are always the few.

[Unemployed]

Sorry, I really meant top schools in general, not just those four. I know I specifically just stated those four in that sentence, though. Also, the poster who broadened my statement was onto it better than me. I way oversimplified and exaggerated my argument. I really just meant that the majority of people at top schools were selected because they tend to work harder and be smarter. I know people that were no where close to getting into a top school and ye cruised to high 3.9s at low-ranked state schools because it's just a completely different ballgame. Maybe they would have gotten that 3.98 at Yale of UVA or wherever, maybe not. But odds are that the majority of Yale students would not go to the state school and get a 3.0 and certainly not a 1.x or 2.x. Some maybe. There are always the few.

I'd agree with this. I respected most of my peers and what they brought to the table, but in many cases, it wasn't due to their intellectual horsepower.

(Things are different in law school - my CCN peers are, on average, a lot smarter than my HYP UG peers)

[ScaredWorkedBored]

the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

Dude, no. The bottom of HYPS class would probably not be top 10% at most other universities. Elite schools have their slackers, too. Some people get to a prestigious school and don't care anymore. Some people are legacies. Some people are "scholar"-athletes. Every school has its dispshits.

Yeah, this +1000. Seriously, you're evaluating people on what they did in high school (and in a lot of cases, what high school they went to). That's not a proxy for serious adult academic ability in any way, shape or form.

[09042014]

the bottom of the HYSP class is probably the top 10% at most other universities. Do you think that suddenly they spread out and some work hard and some skip all their classes and some become stupid? No, then should people who work hard and are smart not receive good grades just because it looks like grade inflation to a casual outside observer?

Dude, no. The bottom of HYPS class would probably not be top 10% at most other universities. Elite schools have their slackers, too. Some people get to a prestigious school and don't care anymore. Some people are legacies. Some people are "scholar"-athletes. Every school has its dispshits.

Yeah, this +1000. Seriously, you're evaluating people on what they did in high school (and in a lot of cases, what high school they went to). That's not a proxy for serious adult academic ability in any way, shape or form.

I did very well in High School and on the ACT, and I would have been competitive at Harvard(and I have an LSAT significantly higher than the Harvard median), but I finished in the bottom third of my class at a T1 undergrad. Why? Because I was lazy as hell. High school is so easy many people can destroy it without much effort.

This is especially true in fields of study that aren't exactly rigorous. Being smarter than your classmates isn't a huge advantage in poli sci courses. The concepts just aren't that hard to grasp.

[pollaclc]

i understand. i still find it curious considering the difference in academic rigor between say notre dame and usc, or yale and purdue or something like that.

This is a really annoying comment. Some of the top-rated UGs are the most notorious for grade inflation. And Purdue and USC are both perfectly good undergrads.

i agree i transferred from purdue to notre dame. unfortunatly i find your comment really annoying as every professor at notre dame has a personal vendetta with grade inflation so its so fucking difficult to get an A for the majority of the classes. and we dont have a+'s so lsac gpa=fucked over.

wait, there are schools that have A+ as a grade???

[Esquared]

My school as gold stars as a grade option.

I believe it counts as an even 10.0 for lsac.