Does #20 LAC (not a specific college, just generally speaking) equate with nationals in the 40-50 range? Or in the 50-60 range? Higher? Lower?
@ncparent2, are you still trying to figure out which school is going to give your child an extra boost for law school admissions? If so, I’d suggest a different way than by trying to compare LAC apples with National University oranges.
Approx. 75% of last years incoming law school class at Harvard had at least 1 years work experience: they explicitly favor students with work experience. In turn, a number of DC law firms now hire recent grads for up to 18 months, after which they are expected to leave for law school.
So, if you are determined to try and game the system, look for colleges and universities where there are good mechanisms for getting internships and contacts that will set your child up for applying to law firms. Note that this doesn’t have to be a super-fancy school, or even a city-based school.
For example, I know a recent Dickinson student who used study abroad to get truly fluent in a second language, then did a ‘study away’ term in DC. She applied to law firms spring of senior year, who liked her (english) writing and (second) language skills and her (summer internship) office experience. Despite stats that would have sent her to a ‘higher’ ranked school, she chose Dickinson b/c of $$. She graduated with minimal debt, which her law firm job has paid off, and has built up a bit of nest egg towards paying for law school. She will be going to a T14 law school in September.
Find the school that’s a good fit for your child. Top law schools really care about GPA and LSAT. That alone will get you accepted into at top law school right out of college with no work experience.
If you want your child to go into Big Law you should aim for Columbia or NYU as their employment rates are the highest for this. (Someone pls correct me if my data is old.) Those schools want to see GPAs at or near 4.0 and they want to see LSAT above 172. It’s not that they necessarily set the bar at that level. Some people get in with lower stats, but it’s that there are so many other people applying to these schools with those kinds of stats that for your child to be competitive, he or she will need similar or better stats. Your child as an undergrad should major in anything at all, from theater and studio art to engineering and or chemistry; nursing or prehealth; labor; econmics; gender studies; sports; art history; area studies and languages, because there’s a type of law that relates to any and all of those fields.
Before you decide for your child that he or she will go into Big Law, I strongly caution you. The work is brutal. And often quite boring. Most people feel that they “made a mistake” by going that route. Young attorneys work writing contracts and briefs usually from templates that already exist, reading the same boring stuff over and over and altering them slightly. Every word is important so you need to focus on boring stuff for hours and hours straight every day. Closings for deals take days in a row, and go 24 hours, in closed rooms, filled with fumes from copying machines. The firms go 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. Boring, unfulfilling for most people, and brutal hours. This is why some people do a stint in Big Law–to pay off their debt and to get really great work experience–and then jump off of that ship for quieter, more interesting waters at lower pay. If your child is a girl, then add to that the fact that having a child is hard to fit into those hours–there is a big difference between a woman and a man still in this world in terms of hours he or she can fit in to get on and stay on the Partner Track.
Other forms of law don’t make that much money. Law is bimodal, with one big group making about $60K-$70K. The other group making about $160-$180K at least at first and then either figuring out how to make those hours work into their lives or by leaving and going to less-paying jobs.
Your child should try out that kind of work before deciding by getting a position after college as a paralegal in a Big Law Firm. Any top LAC will provide means to do this. They are as respected as top universities and have connections to Big Law too. Your child may want to “show interest” in law during college by interning for law-related places like Prisoner’s Legal Service or a small law firm where he or she can see various types of law work. But that’s not necessary if he or she has alumni relations to a Big Law firm.
That’s like comparing the top 20 New York City pizza joints to the top 20 Chicago pizza joints. You’ll get great pizza at either, but some people like NYC, some like Chicago, and some like both!
Pour out the prestige Kool-Aid! Where on earth do you get the idea that a #20 LAC “equates” with a national uni in the top 40-50? Why is your opinion of LACs so poor?
Also, there is truly no such thing as a “national” university. All schools have more students from the area where they are located than from other areas.
‘Big Law’ is not her interest. And Top 14 (again, why is it Top 14 instead of Top 15? Or Top 25?) isn’t necessarily what she is thinking either. She only wants a solid law school after college. Maybe something in the Top 50. But that decision will come later. Hopefully after 4 years of college, she’ll have a very good idea what area of law she will pursue. Which, of course, will help determine the law school. She has already done a paid internship in a relatively small local law firm (large for here, but small by DC or NYC standards), and the next summer with an organization offering free legal aid to income disadvantaged people.
collegemom, the problem is that I don’t know which colleges may have strong internship possibilities. I would assume the rankings reflect that in some measure. I’m sure there are many LAC’s that do, but how would one find out, without spending a ton of time researching? Even with research, every college likely will claim to have those strong ties. And every one of them likely can offer examples. I’ve looked at the two or three law schools that provide information on where their accepted students attended undergrad. But the information is so scare as to be almost useless. Any pointers on other sources of information I can access? It would be nice if LSAT numbers were provided by undergrad college.
It’s too late to really worry about this, as far as applying. But I was talking to another parent yesterday and was curious as to how the LAC their daughter will be attending compares with the Nationals. So this is really just a ‘curiosity’ post rather than a ‘gaming the system’ post.
It’s the T-14 law schools because ever since the rankings started, the same law schools have been the top 14. They just change places with each other now and then. No school outside that group has ever broken into the group, and no school in that group has ever dropped out. Every law firm recruiter could recite those 14 schools in his or her sleep, because they are the only law schools where the students place nationally rather than regionally.
LAC and university grads appear together at highly regarded law schools. By one source, graduates from these specific schools achieve the highest representation by percentage:
Amherst
Brown
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Hamilton
Harvard
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Stanford
UChicago
UMichigan
UPennsylvania
U of Southern California
Yale
Yeshiva
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/top-lawyer-producer-schools-infographic/
here is a link to a past thread
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1835726-liberal-arts-to-law-school.html
Lawyer/parent here – the opportunity for lawyers has dropped dramatically in last 20 years. Attending a law school below a certain range may mean a student cannot get a law related job. If a student has not received substantial merit aid to attend that school, they have massive student loans without a higher paying law related job to fund the repayment of those loans.
Grads from T14 schools typically get law jobs, and typically are eligible for the most desirable firm jobs, clerkships and public interest jobs. Some grads of 15-some lower number may still get those highly desirable jobs, but generally require some other special attributes like law review, placing in the very top percentage of graduating class etc. Some students may roll the dice, and take merit money from lower ranked in order to reduce loans which works if they turn out to be high achievers in law school. But – everyone in law school was pretty much a top undergraduate student – and only a sliver of law students are on law review, top grades etc. Just being an excellent undergrad does not translate directly into being a top law student.
Internships and experience require a lot of leg work from the undergrad, no matter what the school. Sure, it helps to have schools with strong career services and active alums willing to provide internships. But, at the end of the day, the student is the one who has to identify, seek out, interview, and get, the internships. Spending some time on the career services website of a school will identify what resources are available for the search, how much support is provided to the student, including summer funding for unpaid internships, and the types of things students have done for summer experience.
Broadly, for a student interested in law school, go to undergrad where you borrow the least amount of money and have the most available college savings remaining to help with law school. Take advantage of the opportunities available, for campus leadership, working with professors etc. Get the absolute best grades possible, regardless of the school. Spend several months preparing for the LSAT. Law school admissions is not based on the name of the school on the transcript-- it is what the student has done before law school.
Lots of colleges in the US offer good internship opportunities and yes, as @Midwestmomofboys mentioned, much comes down to the student, not the school.
I know that humans (like many animals) like set pecking orders, but @magtf1’s analogy is spot on. Is being the #40 NY-style pizza equivalent to the #20 Chicago-style pizza? I can make my own rankings and tiers for pizza (just as I do for colleges), but I wouldn’t expect some website’s ranking to exactly match mine.
This may give something to think about for your original question. Median SAT Tiers and US News Rank among national LACs and Universities. Obviously a flawed metric of institutional strength, and there are many extreme outliers like Reed.
2200 or higher: Harvard (2), Yale (3), Princeton (1), Stanford (5), MIT (7), U’Chicago (3), Vanderbilt (15), WashU (19), Caltech (12), Columbia (5), Harvey Mudd (21), Northwestern (12)
Average rank for universities- 8
Only one LAC
2100-2200: Duke (8), Pomona (7), Dartmouth (11), Rice (15), U’Penn (8), Williams (1), Swarthmore (4), Amherst (2), Brown(14), Tufts (27), Claremont McKenna (9), Carnegie Mellon (24), Johns Hopkins (10), Notre Dame (15), Cornell (15), Georgetown (20), Haverford (12), Carleton (7), Vassar (12), Northeastern (39), Bowdoin (6, test optional)
Average rank for universities- 17
Average rank for LACs- 7
2000-2100: Middlebury (4), Wellesley (3), RPI (39), Grinnell (19), Colgate (12), Colby (12), Hamilton (12), Georgia Tech (34), Washington and Lee (11), Reed (87), Rochester (32), USC (23), Emory (20), Cal (20), Michigan (27), Boston College (31), Macalester (24), William and Mary (32), Oberlin (24), Brandeis (34), Scripps (23), Barnard (27), Case Western (37), U of I (44), UVA (24), NYU (36), Davidson (9), Tulane (39), Wesleyan (21, test optional), Smith (12, test optional), Mt. Holyoke (36, test optional)
Average rank for universities- 31
Average rank for LACs- 21
1900-2000: Kenyon (27), Colorado College (24), UCLA (24), St. Johns Annapolis (53), Lehigh (44), University of Richmond (27), UMD (60), Whitman (41), UNC Chapel Hill (30), Villanova (50), Bucknell (32), University of Miami (44), SMU (56), Occidental (44), UCSD (44), Wheaton (77), George Washington (56), USAFA (32), Boston U (39), Rhodes (44), Lafayette (36), UMN (71), USNA (12), UW-Madison (44), Colorado School of Mines (82), New College of Florida (90), UT Austin (56), SUNY Binghamton (86), TU (86), IIT (103), Thomas Aquinas (53), Wake Forest (27, test optional), Bates (27, test optional), Holy Cross (32, test optional), Bryn Mawr (31, test optional), WPI (60, test optional), Pitzer (32, test optional)
Average rank for universities- 55
Average rank for LACs- 37
Here’s another source of data- the mean LSAT of students from particular LACs and universities http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1190895-mean-lsat-score-by-undergraduate-college.html The grads at LACs, even those lower ranked like Wheaton, do very well.
Echoing @Midwestmomofboys She has it spot on.
The T14 metric basically ensures two things 1) that your child will actually be able to practice law when she graduate and 2) that she will be able to pay for her loans.
Personally? I think you should aim for any school that also has loan-forgiveness programs. This will allow your child to opt for public interest law upon graduation and she can avoid Big Law to pay her loans. They may also have post-graduate fellowships to get her started in a cool PI career, which a less deeply resourced school may not have, and fellowships while she’s in law school to gain her experience and exposure to the entities who will hire her.
While your child may be talented enough to be in the 5% of people in Local Law School to actually land a job that requires a JD, most people don’t want to risk that and opt instead to study at a school with better employment stats, those would be the T14. It’s not elitism per se, it’s practical decision making because the field of law has been over saturated by local law unis using their law schools as cash cows.
They accept nearly anyone, charge the same tuition as at T14 (or close to that) and their grads can’t pass the bar and/or if they do manage to pass, firms that pay enough to offset their loans won’t hire them. Why? because they have hired from a T14.
Also several T14s have extensive alumni networks that are actively maintained by the school at the highest reaches–through alumni events in X remote location, through education forums that bring in alumni to the school, through invitations in to speak at events and at school, through requests to donate for those scholarships and fellowships that your daughter will benefit from while in school, through invitations to recruit and hire their best and brightest, etc. If your daughter needs to make a career adjustment later, the Career Services office can help her network into another position. It’s part of what you’re paying for.
Employment stats should be on each law school’s web page. The ABA also lists schools’ employment stats as an FYI.
FYI I can’t put the link to the list here, because it’s a blog and CC rules won’t allow it, but if you google the title “Surprise: Where Harvard Law Students Got Their Undergrad Degrees” you should pull up a list of all of the undergrad schools of the 2013 class that entered Harvard law school.
@Dustyfeathers has a good point about loan forgiveness programs for working (and staying) in public interest law. Again, it is usually T14 schools that offer good loan forgiveness programs which are available to all graduating students working right away in public interest. In contrast, some 20-50 schools I know don’t offer it universally, it is only awarded through a competitive application process to a few graduating students. Not a good risk to take.
Also, as the availability for law jobs has contracted, public interest law jobs have become highly competitive, they are not jobs that a student can just walk into.