Top Law Schools

Theoretically, if someone did so bad in high school that they had to go to an unranked state school for undergrad, would it still be reasonably possible for them to make it to a T14? Assuming they had the GPA and LSAT score that their peers who attend a higher ranked school have?

yes

I went to a state school (not one of the big names) and went to Northwestern. Plenty more like me, at even better law schools. 95% of it is LSAT and GPA, and the name of your undergrad matters very, very little.

softmer wrote:Theoretically, if someone did so bad in high school that they had to go to an unranked state school for undergrad, would it still be reasonably possible for them to make it to a T14? Assuming they had the GPA and LSAT score that their peers who attend a higher ranked school have?

Yes. I know because I'm one of these people.

What undergrad you went to means pretty much nothing in the law school admissions process.

rinkrat19 wrote:I went to a state school (not one of the big names) and went to Northwestern. Plenty more like me, at even better law schools. 95% of it is LSAT and GPA, and the name of your undergrad matters very, very little.

So basically, the application process from college to law school is similar to the process from high school college in the sense that the reputation of your high school has little effect to where you end up in undergrad?

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Where you went to college doesn't really matter much, and if it does, it has a very very slight impact.

softmer wrote:

rinkrat19 wrote:I went to a state school (not one of the big names) and went to Northwestern. Plenty more like me, at even better law schools. 95% of it is LSAT and GPA, and the name of your undergrad matters very, very little.

So basically, the application process from college to law school is similar to the process from high school college in the sense that the reputation of your high school has little effect to where you end up in undergrad?

Much less actually. UG admissions look closely at the quality of your high school (probably not specifically in most cases, but they know how much the quality of education varies from district to district, state to state, public vs. elite private, etc.). Except in extreme circumstances, it's a nonfactor for LS admissions

KissMyAxe wrote:School prestige could hypothetically affect you at YLS, because you never know if one of the random professors may be a prestige whore, but I really don't think your college name will hold you back anywhere. I went to a state school (one people have heard of but nowhere near the top to the rankings), and got into every T14. So I wouldn't worry too much.

Would you mind telling us your GPA and LSAT?

Thank you all for the responses! I am very glad to hear this!

Your UG school doesn't matter much at all except that attending the extremely prestigious schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT) can count as a small soft. College prestige drops off very quickly as you move down the rankings (the tiers might be like 1-4, 5-20, 21-40, 41-100, 101-rest), and LSAT and GPA are much more important than any soft factor.

For anecdata, I went to an average state school and so far this cycle I've gotten six-figure scholarships from a bunch of schools in the middle of the T14.