<p>I go to a college called Luther College in Iowa, majoring Political Science and minoring both Philosophy and Economics. I maintain a 3.6 GPA and am very, very involved with student government, habitat, mock trial, etc.</p>
<p>I want to know how important the unknown nature of my school will play in admissions. The coursework is by no means a breeze and I was wondering whether transferring to a well-known institution (like UIUC or Drake) would be a good idea. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Transferring to a well-known institution would be a very minor help. The two that you mentioned are not well-known institutions.</p>
<p>Stay put and do your best on the LSAT.</p>
<p>Mike, I respectully disagree re UIUC, if it’s U of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain. (Sorry if I misspelled.)</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter. UIUC or Drake isn’t going to give you the edge, especially at HLS. If you have the GPA and the LSAT, then you are fine. The name of the school only have marginal affect for candidates to SLS and YLS or for those applicants on the border line (but the school has to be in lines of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, etc. for both cases).</p>
<p>Depends on whether you are aiming for a top regional school, or a top national school.</p>
<p>Check your college’s records to see its law school acceptance history.</p>
<p>doesn’t matter, do NOT transfer unless it is to a T10 ugrad school. even then it probably wouldn’t be worth it</p>
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<p>this is bad advice. your LSAT is far more indicative of your chances. if you go to a lower ranked school with a low average LSAT, that would be the cause for failure of admission to top national law schools, not the reputation of the school. you can’t assume the school placement will be your placement, either favorably or unfavorably. it will depend on your #s.</p>
<p>“you can’t assume the school placement will be your placement, either favorably or unfavorably.”</p>
<p>Well, acceptance records are accompanied by detailed breakdowns of past applicants by GPA, LSAT, gender, and race. If the data is properly and cautiously interpreted, I imagine such records would be helpful for applicants.</p>
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<p>Not really, if most of the applicants had terrible numbers to begin with.</p>
<p>it is true that a CAREFUL analysis of the stats might be useful, but the LSAT plays such a major factor that errors could easily be introduced. </p>
<p>suppose the OP has 176/3.9 stats, and looks at his tier-iv u-grads law school placement. he might then think he has no or little shot at Harvard law school, where in reality he has an 80%+ chance.</p>
<p>another case might be someone at harvard u-grad who looks at placement and sees a 20% acceptance rate to HLS. they might then think that they have a 20% chance with their 167/3.6 but there really have a slim chance.</p>
<p>those are the types of errors to avoid, and why i would suggest looking at law school numbers rather than school stats.</p>
<p>Thanks for the insightful comments, folks, I think I’ll remain here, develop my GPA, and try my best to slam dunk the LSAT.</p>
<p>Is a school like Williams good enough to aid an application to a top law school or would it be better to transfer to a research university?</p>
<p>The aid is never sufficient to justify a transfer. Plus, Williams might well be on the list.</p>
<p>Keep your GPA up and get a good LSAT score and your fine, dont transfer if you dont need/want to.</p>
<p>Williams has a sterlilng record when it comes to admission to top LSs.</p>
<p>So is the conclusion here not to transfer period if the goal is law school, or not to transfer solely for the sake of looking better on law school apps? </p>
<p>Also, how big a difference does quality of undergraduate education make on how well people do once they get to law school?</p>
<p>1.) The latter.
2.) It’s a good question. I’m curious myself. Never seen any data.</p>