These are very different schools. F&M has Greek social life & is half the size of Brandeis when including grad students at Brandeis.
If you visit both, you should prefer one over the other.
Both are fine for pre-law, but if you change your mind regarding law school, which school do you prefer ?
Thanks your information!
Thanks your input! I will consider it again carefully.
Thanks your information! Would you please tell me more about the difference? When you’re talking about Greek social life, you mean it’s more casual and comfortable in FAM, and Brandeis is more formal and reserved?
Law school admissions is about two things; undergrad GPA and LSAT score. Name of undergrad college is not a factor unless perhaps it is Univ of Phoenix.
Either can get you to a top law school, so pick the one that could feel like home for the next four years, or which is more affordable.
I have relatives who teach or who have taught at both these schools. Both are wonderful schools, but you’d very likely get a more rigorous education at Brandeis. You can’t go wrong though. Would you rather be near a big city or more rural?
Tbf, Brandeis is not in the big city…,
Which is why I said “near.” 
“Greek” meaning that F&M has more fraternities and sororities which usually have a lot of wild parties with alcohol. Brandeis does not have official fraternities and sororities and so there are less parties with alcohol.
Got it, thanks a lot!
Greek life refers to social clubs where young men (or women/they’re typically not coed) are into “work hard play hard”, which means do everything you can to get good grades during the week and party/drink with abandon during the weekend. They go through a recruitment process with interviews, sometimes tasks to accomplish, then those who are selected go through various rituals that are controlled because too many veered into hazing, and finally they’re part of a group that organizes parties and volunteer for good causes (but mostly drinking parties).
To counteract that phenomenon, F&M has set up Houses - think Harry Potter - where all years live together 
Brandeis is nerdier, the students party but it’s not as raucous and they’re as likely to play board games or videogames, etc. Freshmen have their own buildings with traditional rooms and advisers. The system is set up so that you make many friends among your classmates. Then as you grow and become more independent you move into suites and then apartments, always on campus. There’s no Greek life, parties are open to everyone.
Thanks for the details!
Give that Harvard first year is represented by 147 schools of less than 600 students, Yale is 170 over 5 years…UVA (144, 131, 133 in the last three years), UPenn and other top schools the same - you have kids from U of you name it - Bama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky to Youngstown State, Georgia State and more - the where you go to school won’t likely impact your ability to get into a top law school - and law school in general.
So go where you prefer.
You listed two great names - and both will be great.
You want great grades, a great LSAT (very important) and then obviously strong relations with profs, get involved, etc.
I didn’t read the other 30 notes - but affordability matters too - so that you have money to pay for law school. So if one is noticeably cheaper so you can avoid loans later (if your folks can’t afford both undergrad and law), that matters too.
Good luck.
I note that the cited data does not address what percentage of applicants from each college were successful. And you would need that information along with all sorts of other data for controls to actually be able to do a reliable assessment of whether attending certain colleges does or does not add any value to your individual prospects of admission to a top law school.
Like if 1% of applicants with GPA/Rank X/Y from College A are successful, and 25% of applicants with the same GPA/Rank X/Y from College B are successful, that would potentially be relevant information, but then you would at least want to also control for LSAT score, and possibly more.
But in cases like this, meaning considering colleges that are generally peer colleges, it is probably safer to bet there is not a strong value-added effect, absent reliable affirmative evidence to the contrary.
Thanks a lot for your input!
Thanks a lot for your great input!
This is correct - and that’s from every college, not just the non prestious.
But if UVA says 5 from Arkansas are attending, while we don’t know if 5 applied and got in and 25 got in and 5 are attending (the other 20 choosing elsewhere) or we don’t know if 5 of 500 got in, we also don’t know that info from the elite schools either.
We also don’t know if the home school gives one an advantage - does a UVA student have an admission advantage over the Arkansas student?
Does the Arkansas student have an advantage over the UVA student at Arkansas law?
Everyone is assuming - well someone from Youngstown State is at Yale (and we don’t know how many, most don’t publish by quantity) - and we don’t know the acceptance rates from the lesser pedigree schools - just like we don’t know them from the higher pedigree schools.
One can think, if they want, going to that higher pedigree schools gives an advantage - but they have zero proof of that.
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My sense is that the LSAT score and not the school, combined with the GPA and other items, are what gives the advantage.
Again, a Harvard will show up more than a Youngstown State in law school - because like undergrad, they also had a higher pedigree kid to begin with. The kids coming from high tier schools to law schools (let’s say top law schools) are often from higher level undergrads - because they were higher level coming in - but all schools get high level kids - whether for financial purposes, location purposes, special programs, etc.
But there’s nothing data wise that shows the where matters - and if anything, my hypothesis is that it’s showing the where doesn’t matter.
And back to OP - the where in this case only matters from a where they want to be and what makes sense financially for the seven year plan - because reputationally, these schools are in the same realm.
Thanks
I agree with you through the point you are explaining why we don’t really know what sort of value-added effects are happening, and then I depart from you when you start asserting you actually might know anyway (“My sense” and following).
But I think it is sufficient for the OP just to understand that there are differing opinions on this subject, and that we lack a reliable means to determine whose assertions might or might not be correct in fact.
But I think if you go back to OP - and my entire hypothesis was simply of these two schools - there where doesn’t matter.
We are talking about Brandeis and F&M.
Not Brandeis and Frostburg State
These are two like schools - and I don’t think either gives an advantage.
Yes, I think Frostburg would work too and you don’t (I don’t think) but I think we can both agree (I think) in this set of two, there’s not a winner on paper - but there might be a winner based on where the student could excel academically, socially…and financially if there’s a difference.
That is not my view, but you are right it is not a relevant discussion for the OP.