Top Law Schools

Hello, I recently got accepted to a top 10 university as a transfer student. I currently have a full scholarship to a T4 school that does not have anywhere near the prestige of the school I recently got accepted to. In terms of applying to law school, would this prestige be taken into account more heavily than the T4 school or does law school not care of where I complete my undergrad? Should I save the money I would pay at the top school or would the benefits outweigh the costs? My ultimate goal is to attend a t15 law school after my undergrad.

Thank you so much for your time and input.

Edit: Attending the top 10 university would put me at about 80k in debt due to out of state tuition.

osmlpz wrote:Hello, I recently got accepted to a top 10 university as a transfer student. I currently have a full scholarship to a T4 school that does not have anywhere near the prestige of the school I recently got accepted to. In terms of applying to law school, would this prestige be taken into account more heavily than the T4 school or does law school not care of where I complete my undergrad? Should I save the money I would pay at the top school or would the benefits outweigh the costs? My ultimate goal is to attend a t15 law school after my undergrad.

Thank you so much for your time and input.

Edit: Attending the top 10 university would put me at about 80k in debt due to out of state tuition.

As someone who has done this, it really depends. I am working harder and doing worse in classes at my new school. But I also will have much better chances at investment banking, consulting, and other prestigious jobs after graduation. But my GPA would have been about .15 better at my old school. For me it will probably be worth it because I want to work before law school anyways, and I think that there has been some intrinsic value to attending a better institution. But law schools don't take into account the differences in schools because they don't know exactly what the difference is.

Better school opens more doors for sure.

Also note that the top 25 UGs or so all are well represented in the top law schools whereas the lower ranked UGs are not. That might be because top schools are given an admissions boost, but more than likely is because smart individuals go to good schools so take that how you want.

If you end up with a great GPA, great LSAT, and good softs from a weak UG, you can get into any law school in the country.

If you end up not wanting to do law, your options will be limited from the weaker school though so that should be weighed in. And never consider yourself to be 100% sold on the idea of law school or any idea, the statistics say you are likely to change your mind and you should have some respect for that.

Go to prestigious UG, get a job, pay down the debt, and law school will be there if you still want it.

Thank you so much for the feedback everyone.

Ugrad isn't worth 80K unless you doing something that actually gets you a job, like engineering, actuary, nursing, accounting.

For law school, it's even less than worthless. Very few law schools care about school prestige, and even then it isn't insurmountable.

You'd be crazy to pay 80K for the better school.

People keep telling me that the last degree is the one that matters. I went to state UG for free, got great grades, then moved up to a top grad school with grants. Now no one cares about where I went to UG. If you are going to go to a top school for law, or grad, then save your money, get the best grades (presumably easier at your old school, not just quality or competition, but they know you better). When you graduate from law/grad school, the name on that diploma counts. If you are planning on working a little while after UG, then you may want to consider if the $80k will translate to $80k worth of extra income during the time window that you want to work in.

r6_philly wrote:People keep telling me that the last degree is the one that matters. I went to state UG for free, got great grades, then moved up to a top grad school with grants. Now no one cares about where I went to UG. If you are going to go to a top school for law, or grad, then save your money, get the best grades (presumably easier at your old school, not just quality or competition, but they know you better). When you graduate from law/grad school, the name on that diploma counts. If you are planning on working a little while after UG, then you may want to consider if the $80k will translate to $80k worth of extra income during the time window that you want to work in.

This is very true. However in some fields, undergrad prestige matters in getting into grad school, and some fields it doesn't. There are some ugrads that have such shit Physics programs that they can't get into a PhD program. However law is the most egalitarian. At 190/200 law schools it doesn't even matter, and even at those handful of schools that do care, its only a small soft factor.

If you want law school, don't transfer.

Desert Fox wrote: If you want law school, don't transfer.

So true. I assumed OP was maybe a sophomore who even if they were sure about law, might want to change later on. No UG debt is a beautiful thing when you're gonna blow 100k+ on LS.

Better school opens very few more doors for law school, especially if you're doing well enough GPA-wise to transfer to a T10 school. I know plenty of people at HLS with me who came in with near-4.0s from random state schools and the same LSAT scores (as far as I know) as everyone else. My sample size is small, but it's not like you automatically need a 178 to get in to HLS from a worse undergrad. If you have scores in the LSAT range and your GPA is sky high, you're golden. And there's always a (very good) chance that you'll transfer, your grades will go down, and you'll be worse off. If you're transferring to get into a law school, don't. If you're transferring to get into law school AND taking on nearly 100k of debt, absolutely don't.

Seems like I had the misconception that transferring to a top 10 school would give me some sort of boost, but it seems obvious the debt would not be worth thesmall boost. I would be transferring as a junior, for those wondering. So pretty much as long as the school is accredited, the prestige of the school has very little influence. Once again, thank you all for your input, extremely helpful community here.

Again, if you are 100% sure law school is where you are going directly after undergrad then don't transfer. But the better school will open up a lot more doors for you in other areas of work so if you are not sure or may want to go to a different type of grad school it is probably for sure worth it.

Patriot1208 wrote:Again, if you are 100% sure law school is where you are going directly after undergrad then don't transfer. But the better school will open up a lot more doors for you in other areas of work so if you are not sure or may want to go to a different type of grad school it is probably for sure worth it.

I'm pretty sure law school is where I want to end up. I'm a political science and philosophy major and I have already enrolled in a course for the LSAT as well.

osmlpz wrote:

Patriot1208 wrote:Again, if you are 100% sure law school is where you are going directly after undergrad then don't transfer. But the better school will open up a lot more doors for you in other areas of work so if you are not sure or may want to go to a different type of grad school it is probably for sure worth it.

I'm pretty sure law school is where I want to end up. I'm a political science and philosophy major and I have already enrolled in a course for the LSAT as well.

i'm finance and poli sci, and I thought I was sure about law school, in fact i'm taking the LSAT in two weeks, but I realized I need to get into the work force at least for a little bit first. And the job opportunities from my current school VASTLY outweight my old school. Just keep everything in mind. I'm not trying to sway you one way or another but I just know even with my .2 worse GPA I am glad I transferred.