Top Law Schools

I'm quite new to this site -- I just learned about it like a week ago, I think I have <20 posts, but I've been seeing something that interests me. When people post their stats, they always post like, 171/3.5 or whatever, which is fine. But I always figured, for a school like, say, Columbia, wouldn't it matter where that 3.5 came from? I mean, surely it makes a difference whether it came from Yale or community college or somewhere in between...right? That makes sense to me, but when people post their stats here, mostly they don't mention where they got their degree, which suggests that by and large, for the purposes of predicting admission people here don't think it matters enough to mention. Why is that? Because it seems like a relevant qualifier on your GPA. Or are law schools interested enough in preserving their median that they don't care about the qualifiers at all?

People don't post their undergrad institution because
a) it doesn't matter as much as GPA/LSAT; and
b) they want to maintain some degree of anonymity.

It does, but it doesn't.

Indeed GPA/LSAT are more important, but law schools still like to say they have recruited students from the ivy league.

I mean, I guess it just seems to me like GPA loses a lot of meaning without the context of where it came from. And moreover (and maybe this is the bigger thing), these top schools must get tons of applications with very similar, very high numbers. They have to differentiate between them somehow, so wouldn't caliber of the undergraduate institution be a good place to start? Presumably it's harder to get a 3.5 some places than others, so some 3.5's represent a higher level of accomplishment.

ETA I mean, I'm no adcom, so what the hell do I know. But it just makes sense to me, you know? It seems logical.

ahaha sorry guys. I didn't notice someone asked this question about 3 inches down the page. In my defense, the title of their thread is really vague!

mmmadeli wrote:I mean, I guess it just seems to me like GPA loses a lot of meaning without the context of where it came from. And moreover (and maybe this is the bigger thing), these top schools must get tons of applications with very similar, very high numbers. They have to differentiate between them somehow, so wouldn't caliber of the undergraduate institution be a good place to start? Presumably it's harder to get a 3.5 some places than others, so some 3.5's represent a higher level of accomplishment.

ETA I mean, I'm no adcom, so what the hell do I know. But it just makes sense to me, you know? It seems logical.

This seems to be the case at HYS, Columbia and Chicago. NYu doesn't seem to care.

Outside of the T6, coming from HYP undergrad is a nice soft factor I'm sure, but they really seem to pick along the numbers.

As someone that went to any Ivy, I can say it doesn't matter much, b/c a GPA is a GPA (and that's what USNWR records). That said, it's a soft factor (I guess), and it's helpful for clerkships/academe.

toolfan wrote:It does, but it doesn't.

Indeed GPA/LSAT are more important, but law schools still like to say they have recruited students from the ivy league.

This is indeed true. But I've also noticed a fair number of law schools are increasingly happy to say they've recruited students from (insert relatively high number) institutions. If they can have 85 undergrad institutions represented instead of just 45, they'll opt for the former.

But again, I don't think it matters all that much. The focus for most of them, as others have pointed out, is the GPA/LSAT.