<p>smileygerl - What I did for my daughter was to advice her on what courses to take at Cornell, and getting her first non-paying internship sophomore year. It was a way for her to find out if she even wanted to go into IB. </p>
<p>She went through recruiting at Cornell junior year. She didn´t want any help from me in getting her the job. Nevertheless, family and friends followed her progress. I knew she was getting moved to the next round before she did, but I did just let it take its course. She ultimately went with a firm of her choice, not one I would have picked for her. At the end of internship, when they were selecting interns to make offers to, a close friend asked if we wanted to put in a good word for her, she said, “No, I am doing fine, and please don´t let people know I know him.” I am pretty certain my daughter would have gotten those offers without our help, just like so many students from Cornell.</p>
<p>As far as who you know to help land that first job, even if your parents are not “connected,” at Cornell (or any school) there are friend´s parents and great alumni network. We are not that connected, but after working for 30+ years I do know quite a few people in my business and business that supports us (law firms, marketing, consulting). Some of my kid´s friends have asked me for help in getting internships, which I have done whenever it was possible. They did the asking, and I didn´t do it unless I knew they were outstanding (I have my own reputation to consider). </p>
<p>My personal view is connections will get you that first job, but connections won´t help you keep the job (unless if your father is a partner at a law firm, even if you are an idiot you could still continue to work there). As far as getting into HYP through connections, we have always known about that - legacy, donor, sports, URM…but there are still a lot of students getting into HYP on their own.</p>
<p>I heard back from some students and friends about law school admission. There is a service (LSAC) that is responsible for standarize GPA and LSAT from different UG schools into a single number and transmits that to each law school. It is to take into factors of different schools´ GPA calculation. Some schools are more numbers driven, and some take a more hollistic approach. Berkeley cares about campus involvement and leadership, and Dean of Admission from Stanford reads each application individualy (not as numbers driven, but takes longer for decision), Duke is very numbers driven and could give very fast decision. Columbia does not “like” its own graduates, whereas Harvard does. Most replies I got was, all else being equal, a Cornell graduate´s 3.9 would be worth more than other lower ranked schools.</p>
<p>Most of response I received from Cornell students were very well written, went into detail of each top law school´s criteria. I also got a view on strength of each school, whether they are liberal or conservative.</p>