So I have narrowed down my choices to Emory and Middlebury (UCLA, Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech are both significantly more expensive). And I was looking for some advice on which to choose? I could see myself going into IB or finance on Wall Street, but also am interested in law school. Emory seems to be pump kids out on pre professional tracks and also has good job placement, but I have heard Middlebury has a great alumni network and faculty as well. It also seems like there is large anecdotal evidence that supports Middlebury being “well regarded” or seen as “prestigious” amongst grad schools and employers alike? Does Emory carry the same weight? Both schools cost me about the same so cost is not a factor between the two. Rank the schools out of 10 on the following criteria, and I can take the average score and input it into a model I made weighting the categories based on what I deem most important. Thank you!
Campus-
Location (for internships/jobs)-
Major Selection/Strength-
Prestige-
Student Body (collaborative//vibrant)-
Alumni Network-
Academic Strength-
Job Placement-
Faculty-
Food-
In my opinion, Emory University is more prestigious than Middlebury College. This is due in large part to the fact that Emory is a National University with prestigious business, law & medical schools as well as other graduate degree programs.
Nevertheless, both are prestigious schools.
Based on one of your prior posts, you are very well rounded with significant accomplishments academically, athletically, in debate & in leadership / student government.
If you cannot pick one school over the other based on majors offered or based on location & fit, then take the larger stage located in a major US city.
However, that may be enough to go into patent law, but since their CS majors are not ABET accredited, be sure to follow the patent exam course requirements listed in III.B.iv and III.B.x of https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OED_GRB.pdf .
Admission to law school is mostly based on LSAT and college GPA. See http://lawschoolnumbers.com/ for more information. Getting a law job is heavily influence by law school ranking (which is closely related to law school admission selectivity). See https://www.lstreports.com/schools/ .
Please don’t. A search on LinkedIn is statistically worthless. If you want some law school info, just head over to cc’s own thread, which is much more relevant.
I was in a similar position as you (debating between Emory and a LAC). I chose Emory because I know that while the community of a LAC is unmatched, I wouldn’t be able to be in the wilderness for months on end. I also really liked how diverse Emory is demographically (we have one of the highest Pell Grant populations by percentage among “elite” universities). Being able to meet people from all around the world and getting to know some grad students from clubs was also something that makes me happy to have chosen Emory.
But yeah I feel like instead of choosing with a model, you should choose with your heart. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions.
@merci81 and everyone else. Emory’s pre-law placement is actually really strong. I get the feeling that the statistic also correlates with volume originating from the school (law school is highly stats driven and may not be as hard as it used to be, so unlike medical school, probably doesn’t yield diminished returns with increasing application volume originating from an undergraduate school). At many places (including Emory), it has fallen. And it may have also historically have been a bigger thing at other schools. I think this title characterizes what happened, but it does say something: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2018/05/er_law_school_admission/campus.html
“Production of lawyers” is not very informative. Basically just says: “Schools attract and then have lots of pre-laws, who actually stick with it and apply”. All that is required is a strong GPA and solid LSAT. That is up to the student and has little to do with the school (especially since specific courses are not required for pre-law. You do what you want for 4 years and perform as well as possible). I wouldn’t necessarily say that a pre-med should go somewhere with tons of pre-meds (may actually hurt depending on the selectivity of the school). Why do the same thing here?
@CrudeOptimist I think these are very different schools, and since “pre-law” is not an actual academic track, you should decide whether you want an LAC versus a university. That is what matters. Both options will get you where you want, so choose what type of academic/social environment you want, or whatever resonates with you. Please get rid of the “prestige” consideration. Useless here.
@bernie12: I’m glad you added a few comments on that link. If the list had been extended a few more places, then Emory may have appeared. In this sense, I think the list’s inclusions seem more reliably determined than its exclusions. That is, Middlebury appears to be a fine college for a student with law school ambitions, but it shouldn’t be concluded that colleges such as Emory, Williams, Princeton and UVa wouldn’t be. As for the statistical aspects of the analysis that were questioned by another poster, well, it’s normalized for enrollment size, which is good, though I doubt it would have been feasible on that level to have considered many aspects beyond that. I’d note additionally, though, that the quality of the law schools themselves was considered, and this seems accessible by simple research
It should be no surprise that undergraduate colleges with relatively high admission selectivity would get lots of students into high ranking law schools. But that does not mean that, for a given student, that such a college would necessarily be better for getting into a high ranking law school than some other college.
This is similar to taking a college’s graduation rates as purely a treatment effect, rather than mostly a selection effect.
However, if the belief is that treatment effects do not manifest during, and subsequent to, an immersive four-year experience (i.e., college), then – beyond non-academic factors such as cost – little information of any type would seem relevant to the college selection process.
Certainly there are treatment effects of college. But how different the treatment effects are for different colleges for the purpose of generic measures like graduation rates and law school admissions (as opposed to things more specific to what is taught in courses and curricula at each college and how it is taught) may be smaller than commonly assumed by those who mistake selection effects for treatment effects.
@merc81@ucbalumnus “Treatment effects” do not turn huge (and for Middlebury, a fairly small LAC compared to research universities, the amount must be huge) chunks of a student body into pre-laws. To get a lot of people into law school, you must first have an insane amount of them, and they have to stay committed to it. The requirements are high GPA/solid LSAT. I suppose things like grade inflation and the amount of it “may” help achieving those. I am more so in agreement with uc on this one. Pre-law is NOT wed to any specific academic curriculum, so that at least rules out our ability to measure any academic treatment affects.
I do wonder if these sorts of “productivity” levels are also vestiges of when the aspiration was far more popular (basically before the job market saturation became clear. Also, when you look at Emory’s actual stats for pre-law placement, what I noticed is that today, many get into certain top schools, but just don’t matriculate. My guess is that the costs are perceived as two high unless they get into a certain level of law school. Usually T-14, but sometimes it looks like only the most elite are worthwhile. Either way, a lot are choosing not to matriculate. I’ve witnessed this with elite med. school admissions too, but it seems more common with law school). Some LACs and many research universities have been more relevant in the realm of “elite education” much longer than Emory has (Emory has been relevant here maybe for a little over 2 decades). That seems to drive up the numbers of those admitted and matriculating who pursue pre-professional tracks like pre-med/health and pre-law, and the newer thing at many of the ultra elite schools (or elite schools in the right location/top business school) is an obsession with Wall Street investment banking (thank goodness Emory hasn’t gone done that road!).
Nope, not even close to the key issue, which is selection bias. In other words, how representative of top law schools’ grads is LinkedIn profiles? Statistically is is not representative of anything other than people who are members of Linkedin (and who have their profile open?). Over what grad period is this survey of LinkedIn ‘customers’ or members, (as they have a free service and a pay service)?
This is the same issue for those on cc that love to use Payscale to justify ‘college x kids earn more than college y’.
Other than Yale Law and Stanford Law, law school is 95% about two numbers, so it that sense most any college is a fine college for a student with law school ambitions. Sure, attending HY may receive a small bump to their own LS, but absolutely no Adcom is gonna look at a Midd app and say, ‘wow, Midd’, and and Emory app and think ‘ewww, put in the directional state Uni pile’.
Both Midd and Emory are high quality institutions and their grads will be well received by law schools.