Ghost73

No, law schools are concerned about maintaining their GPA and LSAT medians, so assuming equal LSAT scores, a 4.0 from anywhere will beat the Harvard 3.5 nearly every time. Long story short, if you have the numbers, you'll get in.

Xwords59

So the next question is, if you go to a school with a lesser reputation, will you get a better GPA than going to a school with a better rep? Or will it be the same? Let's take a hypothetical: someone gets into umass and Harvard. They get 4.0 at umass; what would the GPA be at Harvard? is a 4.0 student going to be 4.0 no matter where they go? Of course there is no definative answer, butnAi am interested in what people think?

Ghost73

There is no way of knowing for sure. A lot of people assume that higher ranked schools are more difficult than lower ranked ones, but this isn't necessarily true. Check out this link for information about grade inflation at different schools:

National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities

MidwestMom17

The top law schools all consider the quality or rigor of the undergraduate institution. And students at top colleges whose pre-law advisors have shown them data on their graduates report that those top-school grads had GPAs and LSAT scores significantly below the medians at law schools where they were accepted.
I would recommend students go to the best college they can get into, and try to get the best grades possible.

NYULawyer

Take it for what it's worth. From my experience of meeting many students at my school (top 6 law), I've met dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals who went to colleges I've never heard of. Yet, they all made it to a top school.

In reality - it is all about your LSAT score, followed by your GPA. You can be a chemical engineering major from MIT with 3.8 GPA, but if your LSAT is 162, your application to HLS is most likely going straight to a garbage can, while that kid with 174 LSAT with a B.A. in history from Rutgers would merit a serious consideration in front of admissions committee at HLS. Fair? Perhaps not. But it is what it is.

One piece of advice - it is a terrible idea to treat your college as a mere stepping stone to get into a law school. Law industry isn't very healthy now, and won't be for a long time in future. Plenty of my classmates are jobless at the moment, despite having T6 law school credentials. What I am saying is don't hedge 100% of your bets on law. Go to college and learn what would be useful to employers. Trust me, you will be thankful that you did.

Prelaw726

It's interesting that you mentioned those schools, because my boyfriend goes to Harvard and I attend Umass Amherst.

I will tell you this: Harvard is infamous for grade inflation because they never want people to flunk out, as it would hurt their rankings. Umass has no problem letting you flunk out if you do poorly; Harvard won't let you. Sidenote: Harvard will also not expel you unless you literally do something drastically heinous; I know someone at Harvard that was politely asked to "take a year off" for selling drugs on campus.

Anyways, from what I have seen, yes, you're going to have approximately the same GPA from both schools if you majored in the same thing and worked equally hard. However, since Harvard practices grade inflation (not to say that Umass doesn't, but definitely not to the same degree), you would have to keep that in mind when comparing the two. I'm not saying one is easier or harder, I'm just saying you can't say that a 4.0 at Harvard is way more difficult to obtain than one from another school.

Greybeard

Avoiding failing grades at Harvard is relatively easy for most the people who get into Harvard. That doesn't mean that most people would find passing such classes to be exceedingly easy.

Prelaw726

I definitely agree. I know people at Harvard that work insanely hard-as hard as you humanely can-and still have a 3.9-an INCREDIBLE gpa, but the 4.0 is indeed a herculean achievement.

jonri

What planet do you live on? Seriously..you are so "out to lunch" it's comical.

Do you really think that Harvard could do this and Yale and Columbia wouldn't retaliate?

In the real world, getting into Yale Law is one heck of a lot harder than getting into Harvard Law. Yale Law is consistently ranked#1 by almost every ranking out there. If Harvard Law suddenly stopped letting in Yale grads...Yale would retaliate. If Yale Law stopped letting in people with Harvard UG degrees...Harvard Law would change its admissions policies so fast it would make your head spin. If Harvard messed around with Columbia grads, Harvard UGs would have a hard time getting into Columbia Law. Again, Harvard would change things very, very quickly if Columbia Law retaliated.

A slight preference? Okay. 3 or 4 times? Utter, total nonsense.