Top Law Schools

Are public law schools more competitive to get into than private ones? They have lower tuition rates?

Tuition differences are often negligible, especially out-of-state. Relative selectivity follows the rankings closely (but not perfectly). The University of Virginia (public) is significantly more difficult to get into than Boston College (private). The University of Chicago (private) is significantly more difficult to get into than the University of Texas (public).

Bronte wrote:Tuition differences are often negligible, especially out-of-state. Relative selectivity follows the rankings closely (but not perfectly). The University of Virginia (public) is significantly more difficult to get into than Boston College (private). The University of Chicago (private) is significantly more difficult to get into than the University of Texas (public).

TITCR. There's a pretty direct correlation between school ranking and difficulty of admission. A higher-ranked school will in general be more competitive than a lower-ranked school, regardless of whether the schools being compared are public or private.

Bronte wrote:Tuition differences are often negligible, especially out-of-state. Relative selectivity follows the rankings closely (but not perfectly). The University of Virginia (public) is significantly more difficult to get into than Boston College (private). The University of Chicago (private) is significantly more difficult to get into than the University of Texas (public).

Not good examples unless you are talking about the raw GPA/LSAT numbers required. For someone with school-competitive numbers, Virgnia is easier than BC and while Chicago is harder than Texas, Texas still rejects almost 8/10 applicants - much worse if you are out of state because of their hard quota.

Boston College had 6321 applications & 1224 admissions last year. ~ 19% acceptance rate.
Virginia had 4869 applications & 1225 admissions last year. ~ 25% acceptance rate.

Chicago had 4818 applications & 766 admissions last year. ~ 16% acceptance rate
Texas had 4999 applications & 1085 admissions last year. ~ 22% acceptance rate.

Virgina is also only nominally public and neither Texas nor Virginia is a real good example of a public school.

^^^ I didn't do all the fact checking because who cares, but taht guy doesn't know what hes talking about. UVA had almost 8000 apps last year.... http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospe ... lass12.htm

Flanker1067 wrote:^^^ I didn't do all the fact checking because who cares, but taht guy doesn't know what hes talking about. UVA had almost 8000 apps last year.... http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/prospe ... lass12.htm

I took all sets of numbers from LSN; any undercounting by LSN of numbers of applicants should be reasonably common.

ScaredWorkedBored wrote:

Bronte wrote:Tuition differences are often negligible, especially out-of-state. Relative selectivity follows the rankings closely (but not perfectly). The University of Virginia (public) is significantly more difficult to get into than Boston College (private). The University of Chicago (private) is significantly more difficult to get into than the University of Texas (public).

Not good examples unless you are talking about the raw GPA/LSAT numbers required. For someone with school-competitive numbers, Virgnia is easier than BC and while Chicago is harder than Texas, Texas still rejects almost 8/10 applicants - much worse if you are out of state because of their hard quota.

Boston College had 6321 applications & 1224 admissions last year. ~ 19% acceptance rate.
Virginia had 4869 applications & 1225 admissions last year. ~ 25% acceptance rate.

Chicago had 4818 applications & 766 admissions last year. ~ 16% acceptance rate
Texas had 4999 applications & 1085 admissions last year. ~ 22% acceptance rate.

Virgina is also only nominally public and neither Texas nor Virginia is a real good example of a public school.

What else would he be talking about?

ScaredWorkedBored wrote:

Bronte wrote:Tuition differences are often negligible, especially out-of-state. Relative selectivity follows the rankings closely (but not perfectly). The University of Virginia (public) is significantly more difficult to get into than Boston College (private). The University of Chicago (private) is significantly more difficult to get into than the University of Texas (public).

Not good examples unless you are talking about the raw GPA/LSAT numbers required. For someone with school-competitive numbers, Virgnia is easier than BC and while Chicago is harder than Texas, Texas still rejects almost 8/10 applicants - much worse if you are out of state because of their hard quota.

Boston College had 6321 applications & 1224 admissions last year. ~ 19% acceptance rate.
Virginia had 4869 applications & 1225 admissions last year. ~ 25% acceptance rate.

Chicago had 4818 applications & 766 admissions last year. ~ 16% acceptance rate
Texas had 4999 applications & 1085 admissions last year. ~ 22% acceptance rate.

Virgina is also only nominally public and neither Texas nor Virginia is a real good example of a public school.

Do you mean someone with competitive numbers for Virginia, BC? Because obviously someone competitive at UVA will not have much trouble getting into BC, while someone at the medians at BC will need some significant help to get into UVA. If you mean for the average median candidate for each school...well, I don't need to go into that. Many applicants not competitive will not apply to schools with more difficult admission standards.

While I agree about the difficulty staying close to the rankings, I think the real answer to this question is probably yes. According to the article on TLS on UVA, they had 7000 out of state apps for about 240 seats and 800 in state apps for about 160 seats. So that suggests that if you are out of state, its harder to get into then peer private schools, and vice versa for in-state. I believe the leaning is even more intense for Texas and anecdotally I have seen alot of rejects on LSN who then got accepted to Chicago/Berkeley/NYU.

Edit: I just realized Berk was a terrible example there, being public itself. I think you get the point though.