<p>my friend, a UPenn grad (~3.8 gpa)</p>
<p>where do you think he is goin to law school?</p>
<p>a) Harvard
b) Yale
c) Columbia
d) Penn
e) Cornell
f) UVA
g) Michigan
h) U Maryland</p>
<p>answer: Maryland</p>
<p>i am totally shocked…supposedly, he didnt do that well on his LSAT</p>
<p>he got a 1490 on his SATs (780 V) (710 M)</p>
<p>i dont geet this???</p>
<p>The LSAT will wreck fools.</p>
<p>If you don’t do well on LSATs or your GPA isn’t good you can get wrecked on for law school. I’ve seen someone who went to Cornell and ended up with a sub 3.0 GPA, their law school choices were pretty limited after that</p>
<p>If you friend did very poorly on the LSAT (well below the median scores for the schools to which he or she applied), that would be a factor. Perhaps your friend failed to put together a well-written and thoughtful application. Perhaps your friend’s recommendation letters were less than stellar. Perhaps your friend waited until the very last moment to submit his or her application.</p>
<p>Have you considered that perhaps your friend chose to go to Maryland for family, personal or financial reasons?</p>
<p>Unless he totally bombed the LSAT, I’m pretty sure he chose Maryland for family, personal, or financial reasons as sallyawp said.</p>
<p>actually</p>
<p>i found out tonight where he applied and his results</p>
<p>harvard - rejected
penn - rejected
cornell - rejected
northwestern - rejected
chicago - rejected
fhordam - waitlisted
boston u - waitlisted
maryland - accepted</p>
<p>go figure</p>
<p>First of all, there are absolutely no guarantees in law school admissions. The top law schools receive enough applications of students with high GPAs and LSAT scores that they could probably fill their classes several times over. </p>
<p>Second of all, you don’t know what other factors went into the decision to accept/reject your friend. His or her applications might have been sent to the schools right at the application deadline (never a good idea). His or her applications might not have been thoughtful or well written or may have contained typos or other errors. His or her references may not have been stellar. Perhaps he or she failed to meet some other requirement on time (e.g. sending all transcripts into LSAC). You just don’t know.</p>
<p>If this seems so odd to you, I’ll tell you that I got into Yale Law but flat out rejected from UVa Law. Why? I’ll never know. </p>
<p>One of my best friends from college got into and attended Harvard Law but was rejected from Cornell Law, Penn Law, Hastings and Brooklyn Law. Why? He will never know either. </p>
<p>It really didn’t matter in the long run for either of us. </p>
<p>The best advice to come of this is that if you have your heart set on attending a T14 law school and no other, you had better apply to quite a few of them.</p>
<p>
Without knowing his LSAT that information is worthless. Looks like he got a 160-165.</p>
<p>no way will a 165 do that to you… are you serious?</p>
<p>So what might I ask is wrong with Maryland? They’re on my list of schools that I plan to apply to. I think people need to realize that not everybody in the world can manage to get into schools like Harvard and Yale, and there is nothing bad about it. Personally I’m hoping to go to either Penn State or Ohio State. I know they might not be Ivy league, but likewise I know I’ll be happy there. Whole point of this post, just realize that NOT everybody gets into the Ivy’s, and there is no shame in going to a school outside of the top 10.</p>
<p>“So what might I ask is wrong with Maryland? They’re on my list of schools that I plan to apply to. I think people need to realize that not everybody in the world can manage to get into schools like Harvard and Yale”</p>
<p>it’s not that maryland is, in general, a bad law school, it’s how it is relative to someone who attended an upper-ivy league school and graduated with a 3.8. Someone like THAT should manage to get into schools like harvard and yale.</p>
<p>it’s especially weird that his own undergrad school would reject him, i think, after he proved he could do well there, and probably made at least one or two good relationships with professors</p>
<p>It’s actually not at all unusual for someone to be rejected by the law school at the school where that applicant went to undergrad. Law school admissions is a completely separate process, and there are never any guarantees. Again, if his or her application is lacking in some way – poorly written personal statement, typos, submitted at the deadline, nothing in the application to show a dedication to the practice of law – it won’t win you any points in the admissions process at any law school.</p>
<p>i don’t think it never happens, i was just explaining why it was such a shock that his didn’t get into a “top law school” and why he was making maryland seem like it was bad</p>
<p>Here are some statistics to help you understand. This information comes from the career office at the University of Pennsylvania (undergrad) and presents information about the 2004-2005 Penn applicants to top 20 law schools:</p>
<p>2004 - 2005 Law School Statistics for Penn Graduates</p>
<p>Number of Applicants - 189 seniors, 445 alumni
Rate of Acceptance* - 88% overall seniors, 76% overall alumni
Average GPA - 3.5 seniors, 3.32 alumni
Average LSAT - 163.5 seniors, 160.8 alumni</p>
<p>Totals - 634 applicants, 80% acceptance rate, 3.38 GPA, 161.6 LSAT </p>
<ul>
<li>National Rate of Acceptance is 56% </li>
</ul>
<p>Most Competitive Schools (US News Top 20)</p>
<p>Law School - Accepted/Applied/Matriculated
Yale - 7 91 5
Stanford - 12 98 5
Harvard 32 174 24
Columbia 50 246 14
NYU 55 226 15
University of Chicago 23 106 5
University of Pennsylvania 56 330 19
University of California, Berkeley 19 142 3
University of Michigan 25 121 9
University of Virginia 27 125 6
Duke 33 101 5
Northwestern 25 100 6
Cornell 21 92 4
Georgetown 81 299 15
University of California, Los Angeles 28 111 7
University of Texas, Austin 12 54 2
University of Southern California 31 106 3
Vanderbilt 20 55 5
George Washington University 69 240 13
University of Minnesota 6 20 0
Washington University, St. Louis 19 53 4<br>
Total number of reported matriculants in this group 169
Percentage of all reported matriculants 40% </p>
<p>So, you’ll notice that out of the 330 Penn graduates who applied to Penn Law, 56 were accepted and 19 matriculated.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why YLS is so much more selective than HLS, judging by those numbers.</p>
<p>it’s a 7.7% acceptance rate compared to a 12.2%, and who knows, the applicants were probably better, too, note how only 91 students applied to yale, whereas 174 applied to harvard. The students who applied to yale were probably the best of the best and thought they might have a chance… self selectivity.</p>
<p>This kind of information is available from many colleges, but please don’t use this anecdotal information (only 169 Penn grad matriculants certainly represents only a percentage of those who applied to and chose to attend law school who were Penn grads) to start discussing admission percentages, etc. I pointed this information out simply to show, by way of example, that not every graduate of Harvard, Yale, Penn, etc. who applies to law school will get into the schools to which they apply. Yes, overall there is a very high rate of admission, but there is never a guarantee of admission to any given law school.</p>