Undergraduate Influence? Forum

[HopefulSplitter0000]

Do law schools show any preference for alumni from their undergraduate institutions? For example, do UVA alumni have slightly better chances at UVA Law? What about alumni from a university's postgraduate program? For example, somebody with an MA from UPenn applying to UPenn law.

I am asking out of curiosity, and I apologize if this question has been asked before.

[preamble]

I'm sure there's perhaps slight preference at the margins for alumni but nothing dramatic; certainly nothing that would suggest a severe departure from what would otherwise be a normal cycle.

[Kiwilaw]

I think it would depend on the school. Although if you're a UVA undergrad applying to UVA, you'll get preferences because you're an in-state applicant.

[cavalier1138]

I think it would depend on the school. Although if you're a UVA undergrad applying to UVA, you'll get preferences because you're an in-state applicant.

That's definitely not a factor for UVA. First, every law student establishes VA residency after their first year. Second, to the extent that the law school prefers admitting 1Ls who are already VA residents, going to UVA as an undergrad doesn't establish VA residency.

OP: As already mentioned, it matters at the margins for some schools. But not enough that you should rely on it and/or not apply to certain schools because of your undergrad. Your GPA/LSAT are 95% of the equation.

[UVA2B]

That isn’t exactly true. You can’t establish residency in VA solely based on being a student in the state. You would have to separately establish residency in the state for at least 12 months prior to matriculation. You aren’t a VA resident after 1L year just because you attend the law school.

There is likely a correlation between UG and law school, but that’s all it is, and it’s not because of some boost in admissions. If you went to UVA (or Duke, penn, etc.) and you were competitive for the law school, you might pick it over it’s peers because you are familiar with that environment and you’re already comfortable in it. Plus there’s probably a pretty small portion of competitive UVA UGs who aren’t applying for and heavily considering the law school. So for UVA, the UG is typically the most represented UG in the law school, but it’s not because of a boost in admission.

Edit: only thing that could push against this in my mind is that it might help avoiding YP for the adcoms. That still doesn’t make it a boost necessarily, but it would probably do a bit of work in allaying those fears of going to a peer school.

[cavalier1138]

That isn’t exactly true. You can’t establish residency in VA solely based on being a student in the state. You would have to separately establish residency in the state for at least 12 months prior to matriculation. You aren’t a VA resident after 1L year just because you attend the law school.

I could have sworn there was something at UVA Law about students being able to establish residency after the first year if they'd been living in VA. Might have just been my imagination, since I also remembered there being more of a gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition.

[LBJ's Hair]

at my CCN the undergrad alums totally get a boost. AdComs will tell them this when they're applying, you can see it in the class profile, friends who were undergrads here discussed it, etc. schools do it because they don't have to split alumni donations with two different institutions.

you shouldn't rely on it, obviously, but it's a factor.

[QContinuum]

Yes. Yalies, for instance, are disproportionately represented at YLS, and it's commonly agreed that there's a Yale College alum "boost."

That said, admission to any law school is still primarily numbers-driven (highest LSAT score and LSAC GPA). An alum "boost" will be a helpful soft, but I'd take an extra few points on the LSAT or an extra few tenths on the GPA over the alum "boost" every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

No high school graduate should base their decision re where to attend college on whether they'd get an alum "boost" to the university's law school years down the road.

[The Lsat Airbender]

schools do it because they don't have to split alumni donations with two different institutions.

That's important but not the only reason, to be fair. A lot of universities take pride in their community, or a sort of "we do things differently here" culture (UChicago comes to mind), and assume therefore that homegrown college grads will fit in better at the law school on the other side of campus. It's not unreasonable, either; yield is demonstrably better for those applicants.