Applying to Wellesley, Amherst, Georgetown, Williams... [Pre-Law, 3.95 GPA, 35 ACT, FL resident]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Most colleges have pre-law advisors. Some may offer LSAT prep (some) but it’s like the SAT, it’s on you. And at some, there might be a fee or it might be private advising, just like the SAT.

Pre law is an intention. Many that apply to law school don’t declare pre-law.

Given the amount of colleges that top law schools (and others) pull from, I think maybe that’s slick marketing - to get that perception into your mind that we have these great pre-law resources - whatever that means. I put Amherst site below but most any school will have the site and you can be assured many are in law school without ever doing any “pre law” advising/activities.

I see nothing here that’s stand out - so you can have 1:1 meetings. You can do that anywhere. Do kids necessarily need that? If you need handholding, maybe.

The other thing today at top schools is many students work or do something post graduate first. My daughter is in a two year public service program. She isn’t law school bound and may continue in her current role after two years. But many in her program will be law school and other types of school bound. Some work, others may have schooling beyond a bachelor.

Harvard Law reports - 86% were one year out of college, 73% two years out and 21% four years out.

Penn Law - 81% one year out or more - they don’t report other years out.

UVA 74% have prior work experience

Sure, Fordham is different than a top 8 so a higher percentage of people will be without work experience.

But if the initial goal is top law school, also realize, it’s unlikely to be a linear path from college in today’s world…which I think is a good thing.

Law School Advising – Amherst College | Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning

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I’m going to say something that will probably bring the CC establishment down on my head: there’s nothing wrong with attending a school populated by some of the smartest students in the country. You are 17 y/o. Your brain is still growing and will continue to grow for the next ten years. This is precisely the time to start challenging it. Don’t listen to the cynics suggesting that the best path is to “protect your gpa” (ostensibly, by surrounding yourself with people who have poor work habits.) The grad schools are not that stupid. They know what a bachelors degree from Wellesley, Amherst Georgetown and Williams really means.

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I agree with you. There is nothing wrong with aiming high for a top-ranking school. But, olibb is not going to get admitted to schools like Williams, Amherst, & Georgetown by some mathematical formula or automatic admission the way most state schools admit students. Under a subjective holistic review process, essays, co-curricular activities, ECs, LOCs, leadership is what will count toward the admit, deny, or waitlist.

As an an intended pre-law student, olibb will need to weigh the pros and cons of each college choice, especially since the stated goal is to gain admission to a top law school.

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I do understand the idea of protecting GPA, however I am excited by the idea of the intellectually challenging environments of the schools I have listed here. I don’t think that is something I would neccessarily want to give up. I think I am in a good position to get a good GPA even from these schools, though I know of course it will be challenging. I am also a good test-taker so I feel confident in being able to do well on the LSAT given I give myself enough prep time. Is there any truth to the fact that law school admissions know that certain schools may be more rigorous than others and take that into account? Or no?

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Law school admissions will assess the college you attended & grades received when assessing the academic transcript. I’m going to use Yale Law School as an example since they publish an informative profile. The median GPA of enrolled students is a 3.98 with a range of 3.48 to 4.27. The median LSAT is 175 with a range of 158 to 180. A student or two got admitted with a 3.48 and/or a 158 on the LSAT but from where? The top 50% need >=3.98 GPA and >=175 on the LSAT. I won’t breakdown the GRE data provided, which is an acceptable testing alternative.

Yale Law School By The Numbers (2026)

Law schools tend to admit from a wide variety of educational institutions, Tier I through IV. Students are representing 87 undergraduate institutions at Yale. But from a lower than Tier I undergraduate institution, the more likely you’ll need as close to a 4.0 GPA & 180 LSAT score as possible.

Just as attending a Tier I undergraduate institution isn’t going to increase your chance of getting admitted to a Tier I law school. Many students end up attending Tier II, III, and even Tier IV law schools.

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The question isn’t “from where” if by that you mean the name of their undergrad institution. The “from where” may mean a kid growing up in a homeless shelter, who has accompanied a parent to numerous hearings in housing court due to unlawful evictions. It may mean a kid growing up in foster care who has been exposed to various parts of the criminal justice and social services system since they were a toddler. It could mean a kid with an incarcerated parent who watched the other parent successfully work with “Innocence Project” lawyers to overturn a miscarriage of justice.

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That could very well be. It could also be a full-pay student with strong political & judicial connections. The point is that those are very, very, very exceptional cases, like 1 in 5,000 or 10,000. Almost 37% of students at Yale Law pay the full sticker price and much higher percentages at Harvard & Stanford Law (LawHub)

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Yale law school doesn’t care about full pay students. They could fill their class 10 times over with full pay students. And Yale law students don’t need judicial connections- Yale is the “ne plus ultra” judicial connection.

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Please return to chancing the OP for the colleges listed. The back and forth about law school should be taken to PM or feel free to start a new thread.

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I just want to point out that all of the colleges you were looking at are in the north, where it is cold. As a Floridian, you may find that uncomfortable.

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At some point in a thread someone mentions it, so I’ll go ahead and do it in this one:

You should not apply ED unless you have a clear #1 school. Imagine if you decided to apply ED to a school because you thought it gave you the best chance of getting into a “top school”, and lo and behold, you got in. Let’s say that school was, oh, Cornell.

And let’s say your actual favorite school was Brown, but because you thought you would be “wasting” your ED opportunity on it, you decided to only apply RD there. Because you got into Cornell ED, you would have to pull your Brown RD app, and if you are a sap like me you might always wonder “What if?”.

Or, let’s say you don’t have an early favorite, so you apply ED to the one that, again, you believe gives you the best chance for an elite admission. This time let’s say (more applicable to you) you go ED at Wellesley. But while you are waiting on that decision, you fall in love with Amherst. Oops! IF you get into Wellesley ED, you must pull that Amherst app.

That is why a kid should only apply ED to a place – unless they are, and will forever remain, pragmatic and emotionally unaffected – if it is their clear top choice. And, of course, only if it will clearly be affordable.

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Just to be clear, there are these caliber of kids at most every school and most certainly UF and FSU and likely every flagship type in America. One of my daughter’s bffs at Charleston turned down Rice, Penn, and Vandy (the kid at Gtown SFS for grad school). So you will not necessarily be shorted by an intellectually challenging environments anywhere you would consider (meaning UF, FSU outside of high end LACs).There are demanding professors and often classes (often defined by the majors, moreso than the schools) everywhere - and every college has a colleges of arts and sciences (that more or less align with an LAC). My daughter, as a social science major, wrote and wrote and then wrote some more - at her regional public.

Will there be a higher concentration of intellects at top LACs - and maybe LACs not top in general. Likely - but they are not the only places. Don’t forget, UF and FSU have many Ivy caliber kids on campus and they have Honors Colleges and other enrichment programs and more.

I’ll agree with @circuitrider on grades but maybe for a different reason. Loads of schools, Ivy level included, give out As like Santa Claus passes out gifts - in abundance!! So one isn’t necessarily hurt by going to a competitive school.

In the end, find the right school for you. Fit is important - you will likely do better where you are happiest. But fit also includes budget and if you are a full pay family, you are about to go on a potential $750K endeavor. A UF/FSU or check Wilkes Honors College will put you at room & board - so say $15K a year vs. $90K. So that’s a $300K savings.

That’s part of fit - maybe not to you personally but your family and / or you if it helps you avoid law/grad school loans.

There’s no right answer. These are things to think about - all families need to - so that when they make a decision, they make the best for them. For some, they’re all in on cost. Others like me could afford but didn’t want to. Then others stretch and pay full pop, but it strains the family going forward and is that the right thing? Only families themselves can answer that.

But if someone really wants an LAC but does not qualify for need and doesn’t want to pay the full price, there are other options.

You can find a Rollins or Miami (a bit bigger) and use Bright Futures - plus they have merit.

There are many academic LACs that give merit aid to help defray costs. They may not have the perceived prestige of your desires (not I say prestige because I showed you b4 that WSJ (and that’s just one) doesn’t even rank Williams a top 100 - but I mentioned a few before - Bryn Mawr and Agnes Scott (which is very aggressive for female colleges), Grinnell, Macalester, Allegheny, Wooster, Denison, Kenyon, Connecticut) - these are schools that while excellent, don’t have the name brand per se and pay to get kids in the door. There’s many - that’s just a sampling.

So there are no absolutes out there like kids entering college want to think and like the colleges like you to think - but there is likely not one but several or many best fits for you - whether it’s an LAC, a mid size like Miami or a UF/FSU - where while big, they still have opportunities via Honors Colleges, Living Learning Communities or more - to narrow the focus for you.

Keep an open mind and explore different possibilities. Best I can tell and I only know about your GPA and test but not about rigor, ECs and more - but you seem bright and focused.

If that’s the case, you’re going to be fine no matter where you go because in the end, it’s about you moreso than your school.

But find that one that fits your family’s finances without strain and then where after visiting, you feel most comfortable as you’ll be spending four years.

In your case, I would avoid ED - you’re not remotely close in your decision making process.

Good luck.

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It sounds to me like you might still want to apply to places like Yale or Princeton, and might well choose them over any of the colleges with ED if you had the choice. If that is correct, I personally think you could then go ahead and apply REA/SCEA to one of those. But even if not, I would not apply binding anywhere else. So, for example, you could do Georgetown instead if you liked.

In support of this advice, I personally do not believe places like Wellesley, Amherst, or Williams offer any sort of generic ED “boost”. A few special categories like recruited athletes might benefit, but I don’t think that works for everyone who applies. So basically, if you want an offer from them, I think you need to actually just convince them to want you enough as a student, and I personally think applying ED won’t really help make that case. You’ll have to actually do it the regular way, with the actual content of your application.

I also think if you are concerned about none of those admitting you, the logical response is not force yourself to apply ED, which again I don’t think is likely to help anyway. The logical thing is just apply to some more colleges with similar virtues.

Like if you preferred a women’s college, there are some other great ones besides Wellesley. You also talked about intellectual culture, and there are a lot of other LACs I think of as being particularly academicky in nature. You also have an interest in politics, and there are some great options for colleges in, say, the greater DC orbit, including some LACs. Like I often recommend Gettysburg to people interested in both LACs and political affairs, including because they host the very cool Eisenhower Institute. And so on.

Anyway, that’s getting a bit far afield, but my point is I don’t think you should apply anywhere binding out of fear. Out of love for that school? Sure, that’s fine. But if the only real reason is you are feeling anxious about how your college applications will go, there are better ways of addressing such concerns than applying binding somewhere you don’t actually have as your favorite.

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Generally, reading, writing, and logic* practice will be needed to prepare for the LSAT and law school. Of course, there is also test familiarization through sample questions found on the LSAC LSAT prep web site.

*As found in some philosophy courses and math courses with proofs. Perhaps it is not surprising that math and philosophy majors tend to do well on the LSAT.

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Agree that the remedy for being shut out by the Ivies is to just apply to more good schools.

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…just slightly-to-substantially less-rejective ones.

Every sub-10% admit school has a cohort of less selective schools that are like it in multiple ways. If a kid has defined the characteristics they’re seeking, and is willing to put in the time and toil to read about a lot of schools, there’s little reason (aside from cost/budget, but even sometimes that fails to prevent this…) they cannot create a list of matches, reaches, and safeties that fit their desires. When that happens, regardless of which schools say “yes”, they’ve done all they can to ensure a prosperous time at school.

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Deleted, as we were asked to move on from the topic.

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I don’t think that strangers on the Internet can help you resolve this dilemma :slight_smile: You have excellent statistics, so you just need to follow your gut and decide which one is the best fit and one that you can “demonstrate” in the strongest way possible. And if you get deferred, you are already have the other essays ready to go, which should help. If you just can’t decide, maybe ED isn’t the right path for you.