Fair enough! Certainly I realize that with many years of experience in watching and working with law school applicants that you have insights that someone who has applied during a single application cycle does not. I think you're a good dude who is trying to help. From my own admittedly anecdotal experience, I wouldn't recommend an applicant spend any time worrying about this particular factor, which is already long baked into the cake by the time application season rolls around. Mainly, I think the advice to ask a fellow classmate to withdraw apps at all other schools that two applicants have in common was what struck me as a bit, er, extreme, and maybe a bit unhelpful in calming nerves about a rather secondary factor in the admissions game.SullivanLSAC wrote:
I didn't say YOU don't like to rely on common sense, I just said that for those who don't, someone has provided something additional, and that person's name is EnderWiggen. You were on my side of this issue the last time with those Yale numbers, EW! Where did the love go?
Competition with others from same undergrad? Forum
- EnderWiggin
- Posts: 1217
- Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 9:55 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
- EnderWiggin
- Posts: 1217
- Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 9:55 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
Clearly those admits' decision-making faculties are atrociously subpar for otherwise intelligent, rational humansQuentonCassidy wrote: Yeah tbh Ender, your posts are generally very well-written and rational, but that implication alone completely invalidates your point
- Jordan Catalano
- Posts: 100
- Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2016 5:04 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
I went to an "elite" UG and got into a T14. There is exactly one student from my UG that gets admitted to this law school every year. Exactly one, four years in a row now (at least). Since scientific evidence on this doesn't exist, and all we have here is anecdotal evidence, for me that is enough to think that it is likely that this T14 pulls one of us every year from my UG (provided the applicant pool at my UG has good stats, which it always does).
Another anecdotal story: I became close friends with the pre-law adviser at my UG. This pre-law adviser told me that a certain law school within the top three pulls one of my UG's applicants almost every year, like clockwork.
I don't think you are going to find any scientific evidence to answer this question, OP, but I think you should remember that law school admissions offices know the pre-law advisers for some UGs, especially ones in their same region, and there is interaction at forums and other academic events between people who work at undergrad institutions and people who work at law schools. It's a mutually beneficial relationship: law schools want applicants, and it looks great for a UG to send their students to prestigious law schools.
LSAT/GPA trumps all, but it also wouldn't hurt to chat up your pre-law adviser or a professor in your UG who was a lawyer for application advice.
Another anecdotal story: I became close friends with the pre-law adviser at my UG. This pre-law adviser told me that a certain law school within the top three pulls one of my UG's applicants almost every year, like clockwork.
I don't think you are going to find any scientific evidence to answer this question, OP, but I think you should remember that law school admissions offices know the pre-law advisers for some UGs, especially ones in their same region, and there is interaction at forums and other academic events between people who work at undergrad institutions and people who work at law schools. It's a mutually beneficial relationship: law schools want applicants, and it looks great for a UG to send their students to prestigious law schools.
LSAT/GPA trumps all, but it also wouldn't hurt to chat up your pre-law adviser or a professor in your UG who was a lawyer for application advice.
- cavalier1138
- Posts: 8007
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2016 8:01 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
Just out of curiosity, is that counting students who took a gap year, or is it only an observed K-JD phenomenon?Jordan Catalano wrote:I went to an "elite" UG and got into a T14. There is exactly one student from my UG that gets admitted to this law school every year. Exactly one, four years in a row now (at least).
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- Posts: 52
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2016 4:29 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
Admitted and choosing to attend are two different things. From my undergrad I know three people who got into the same t-14 but only one of them will be attending that school. Schools have data that tells them how many offers they can make and how many will likely accept. There are also scenarios where you have two or three highly qualified candidates that you can't reject in good faith. I'm an urm and one of my white buddies got into the exact same schools I did plus 1 more t-14 school with a 169, 170, or 171 LSAT and bad gpa (not being too specific because I wish to remain partially anon). There is a lot of overlap in acceptances but it works it way down when people make their selections based on money and personal factors.Jordan Catalano wrote:I went to an "elite" UG and got into a T14. There is exactly one student from my UG that gets admitted to this law school every year. Exactly one, four years in a row now (at least). Since scientific evidence on this doesn't exist, and all we have here is anecdotal evidence, for me that is enough to think that it is likely that this T14 pulls one of us every year from my UG (provided the applicant pool at my UG has good stats, which it always does).
Another anecdotal story: I became close friends with the pre-law adviser at my UG. This pre-law adviser told me that a certain law school within the top three pulls one of my UG's applicants almost every year, like clockwork.
I don't think you are going to find any scientific evidence to answer this question, OP, but I think you should remember that law school admissions offices know the pre-law advisers for some UGs, especially ones in their same region, and there is interaction at forums and other academic events between people who work at undergrad institutions and people who work at law schools. It's a mutually beneficial relationship: law schools want applicants, and it looks great for a UG to send their students to prestigious law schools.
LSAT/GPA trumps all, but it also wouldn't hurt to chat up your pre-law adviser or a professor in your UG who was a lawyer for application advice.
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- bretby
- Posts: 452
- Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 5:15 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
This misses the point - I find it very difficult to believe that demonstrating diversity in undergraduate schools is itself a high priority.SullivanLSAC wrote:I understand, but that very real contradiction in intentions makes the very point: since they have to take so many from so few schools off the top, they have to spread the remaining spots over so many schools to create the appearance of diversity in undergraduate schools represented. Hence they can have 172 schools represented, with one third of the class from only 3 schools. Hence the original poster here (where did she go?) has to worry about competition from her fellow less-than-prestigious school classmates.bretby wrote:I just don't see HLS admissions officer setting undergrad institution diversity as a very high priority - especially since, as you say, they take a number of students from a few schools every year.SullivanLSAC wrote:I’m a bit puzzled and surprised that a topic such as this one, which so comports with common sense, would cause such controversy, and even excite anger in some. It didn’t when I first introduced it in the Free Advise forum here that I referenced early in this thread. Yes, there was there a bit of back-and-forth about harder evidence, but that quickly resolved itself on both sides. Maybe it’s just that some find it difficult to come to grips with a reality that does not favor their circumstances. If so, I regret being the bearer of bad news, and I try to be the bearer more of what to do with the bad news. For some, that doesn’t solve the problem.
In any event, I feel I do owe those of you who are serious about this topic some additional information, if only to clear up the original, now muddied, points.
First, let’s not lose sight of the fact that most, and I mean most, of what’s going on with this broad issue is a product solely of applicants from more elite colleges having gotten high SATs to get them there, and so probably having high LSAT scores too, and thus – solely because of that -- having an easier time getting into the top law schools. In other words, for most of this, correlation is not causation – but not for all of it, which was my only point.
Next, take a look at the lists most law schools publish identifying the schools of students they have in attendance. Go to this site, http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/jdadmission ... -colleges/ , for example, where Harvard lists the 172 schools its students attended (it’s interesting that they no longer list the number from each; since law schools are loathe to appear elitist, what does that tell you?). You know they didn’t fill the class of 650 or so with 3 or 4 students from each school, and since this is a zero-sum game, and they probably enroll, say, 100 from Harvard and 100 more from Yale and Princeton, that doesn’t leave a lot of spots to spread evenly over the other 169 schools. Do the math. I’ll bet most of those schools are singletons. (Here’s a thought: ask a friend who is currently a law student to send you a copy of whatever biographical info they were given on their classmates. It surely lists the college attended for each.)
So this should be just common sense, but for those who don’t like to rely on that, EnderWiggen, in response to my earlier post, drew our attention to a list from Yale that was reproduced here at this site. http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 7#p8963557 . It has numbers for each school and supports my suspicions about Harvard. In addition to all the singletons, note that more than one third of the students went to just 5 schools. Also, I just had reason to look at Vanderbilt’s class of 2018 list. Check it out here: https://issuu.com/vanderbiltlawschool/d ... 5348430%20 . It has a few surprises, and some that could even rise to the level of “counterexamples” like those EnderWiggen cited, but what in life doesn’t? (Although unless your “non-prestigious public state university” is Michigan, Berkeley or Virginia, EnderWiggen, I find your 7 number at HLS hard to believe. Sorry.) In any event, it has many singletons, and Vanderbilt does not have many Harvard, Princeton and Yale students left to admit at its spot in the rankings (and for Vanderbilt, some of those less prestigious state schools aren’t so “less prestigious”).
So I stand by my original analysis. As for Cavalier1138’s latest contribution to our discussion, I will let it speak for itself, except in that I must correct one distortion that he made. I suggested that if you have a classmate that you know is applying to some of the same schools you are, and is admitted to one, and has decided to attend it, you might ask him if he would withdraw from the others and sort of get out of your way. That’s not a big thing to ask, but you might get a push back as he has paid an application fee, and you would now have him, essentially, walk away from it. That is not an unreasonable concern for him to have, and so I suggested you offer to “reimburse” (my exact word) him. In law that’s called damages, or “making him whole,” and such application fees are quite small. Cavalier1138 chose to replace that concept with the vaguely stated and in consequence more nefarious concept of “paying someone to withdraw,” as if to suggest a bribe or at least a great deal of money, so as to allow him to characterize the whole matter as “desperate.” It’s nothing of the kind, and I’m sure thoughtful readers see the difference.
- Jordan Catalano
- Posts: 100
- Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2016 5:04 pm
Re: Competition with others from same undergrad?
From our conversation, I gathered that these were K-JD students they were pulling from. However, in the same breath he also talked about students who had been accepted to these schools who deferred admission and did a gap year where they did something impressive (intern at the U.N., White House, etc.)cavalier1138 wrote:Just out of curiosity, is that counting students who took a gap year, or is it only an observed K-JD phenomenon?Jordan Catalano wrote:I went to an "elite" UG and got into a T14. There is exactly one student from my UG that gets admitted to this law school every year. Exactly one, four years in a row now (at least).