I am a Junior in high school and plan to pursue an undergraduate degree in political science and potentially international relations. I also plan on going to law school. So, is it really worth it to spend the money on a more prestigious undergrad university like Georgetown, U Chicago, etc. (assuming I got into any of these :neutral: ) or just go to a good in state university (in my cas UW-Madison)? Does undergrad really matter that much in law school admissions?
(Sorry about the long question)
Thanks!
Oneâs undergraduate school is not a factor considered in law school admissions.
Agreeing with @Publisher, and will add that 1) law school is expensive- the less debt you can manage at undergrad the better and 2) UWi has a âWisconsin in Washingtonâ option, which includes an internship.
For a career in PolSci or IR, internships are everything, and they are typically barely stipended. Debt makes it harder to take them (b/c you need to earn enough to live on + make your loan payments, which is hard on the stipend/low paid jobs that are typically in the early years).
Also; UWi will let you do more than one âawayâ program. You may well be able to do WI in DC, plus some of the international options. If you do Study Abroad go for the âDirect Enrollâ option, where you are taking classes as a regular student (not other US students), in your target language. There is also an International Internship program, which helps you find internships all over the world. There are some good ones at the Hague, which might be interesting to you, for example. Whereever you end up in college, make sure that you are on track for genuine fluency in another language- and get to know the study away office early!
Forbes suggests that colleges on UChicagoâs level might be worth their costs, though they wouldnât, of course, have considered your particular goals.
It is an opinion piece of one person, who may or may not have herself gone into debt to attend her âeliteâ college. Moreover, as I wrote elsewhere, Forbes is aimed mostly at people in the finances industry. The fact that kids who graduate from âeliteâ colleges AND who go into this industry tend to make good money, translates, for the Forbes readers, as âeverybody who attends these schools will make a lot of moneyâ.
This may not be the case for any other industry or career track. Of course, once you correct for family income and connections, this may not even be true for many in the financial industry, though the opportunities that these colleges provide for internships do increase the chances of getting a good job quickly, and, financially, getting a job with a good salary immediately on graduation is better than getting a job with a great salary a few years down the road.
We have also discussed the issues of the databases that Forbes uses in other threads. Payscaleâs data base is extremely biased, and there is absolutely no attempt to correct for those biases in any analysis that Forbes performs. You cannot generalize results derived from an uncorrected biased, whatever the people at Forbes claim.
Their results from the College Scorecard suffer from the issue of small sample size, since they only record the data from low income students, who are a small minority of students who attend âeliteâ colleges. Since this group often has extremely good FA at these âeliteâ colleges, it goes without saying that attending an âeliteâ college is usually worthwhile for low income students, despite the many difficulties that these students have at the âelitesâ.
I wouldnât consider a prestigious school unless you can actually afford it without significant debt. Law school is very expensive, so you want to keep your undergraduate debt to a minimum. Law schools look at GPA and LSAT scores above anything else.
This is a really hard question to answer. If you replace UW with tOSU, my DS is currently in that decision process. A lot depends upon what type of person you are and what the money means to your family. I wouldnât go as far as @Publisher and say that there is no benefit from the name of your UG school. It is neither necessary or sufficient to go to a very top UG school to get into a top Law School. However, they are correlated. Yale Law School currently has 18 students from UChicago, 13 from GâTown and 2 from UW. How much of this correlation is causation is endless years of debate on CC.
You also have to consider what happens in 3-4 years if you decide not to go to Law School. @collegemom3717 comment about low/no pay internships and early career jobs is very valid. Having debt can really limit your choices. One thing that all of the DC schools will sell is the ability to intern during the regular school year.
The in and outside classroom experience will also be very different at the three schools. Remember, you do have to live there for four years. The outside experience definitely goes to UW. But I might be a little biased. I slept in Badger PJs last night and have a statue of Bucky in my foyer.
Of course the reality is that you have to be accepted to these schools first. I would strongly suggest that you have an open and honest talk with your parents about finances. Make sure that you run a few Net Price Calculators to see what your actual cost would be.
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A degree from University of Wisconsin is a prestigious undergraduate degree, unless you are of the opinion that anything public is inferior, as some CCâers are.
You do not need to attend school in DC to have fantastic poli sci opportunities- internships, paid summer jobs, paid full time jobs. None of my kids went to school in DC, all of them ended up spending at least some time in DC, they were absolutely not at a disadvantage because they were not local.
There was a bit of scrambling to find housing- true- but as long as youâre willing to sleep on someoneâs couch until you come up with your own place (and as long as youâre a good couch surfer) you wonât have a problem.
And fyi- there are âinternational relationsâ opportunities all over the country. Every single state in the US has a trade office which sends delegations overseas (some efforts more sophisticated than others). Every governor in the US maintains an office in DC staffed by folks who follow legislation closely, have relationships with all the relevant agencies to make sure that the stateâs needs and concerns (and budget) is being taken into account. And every Fortune 500 company has operations overseas and the need for people who speak foreign languages, understand international issues whether trade, diplomacy, environment, infrastructure, culture, etc.
If you search âTop Lawyer Producer Schools â Infographic,â youâll find a group of colleges associated with successful law school matriculation that includes Georgetown and UChicago:
The 20 Schools
Amherst
Brown
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Hamilton
Harvard
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Stanford
UChicago
UMichigan
UPennsylvania
U of Southern California
Yale
Yeshiva
I have a friend who attended a small LAC that has a ~70% admit rate. She then went to Harvard Law. Just sayânâŠ
Is it worth it? It depends. If you have financial aid/ merit scholarships or family willing to cover the cost then it does. Even some debt is fine for an academically strong prestigious school. If you canât afford it and have to go in high debt then no itâs not worth it.
As far as top law school like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or top graduate programs in international relations like ones at Harvard Kennedy, Johns Hopkins or Georgetown then no, it doesnât matter, you can get in from any school with a good GPA, LSAT/GRE, ECs, internship/job experience.
Where itâs worth is a good undergrad education, faculty, peers, alumni, social prestige, opportunities etc. As top colleges often have generous financial aid, they often can be more affordable than lower ranking school so cost or worth are different for every person.
@merc81: Princeton ?
Well, yes â virtually all of the top feeder schools to law schools are highly selective colleges that almost exclusively admit students who score well on standardized tests. Chicago has higher average SAT scores than any other college except Caltech and MIT, for instance.
Law applicants from Chicago and Georgetown reported average LSAT scores of 165.98 (93rd percentile) and 163.48 (~88th percentile) in 2017.
Considering that law admissions is based heavily on your GPA and LSAT score, it is hardly surprising that students from these colleges fare better than applicants from, say, U Arizona (154.15 - 60th percentile), Berkeley (159.44 - 77th percentile), or Villanova (157.59 - 72nd percentile).
At University of Wisconsin, wouldnât you have a front row seat for state government politics in Madison?
@Publisher: Absent.
@merc81 Yeshiva? I guess that Talmudic arguments do prepare one for a career in law.
Really attentive, driven, smart students attend top schools in bulk and will of course end up at great law schools as well.
Those same students who choose to attend UW or OSU attend top law schools too.
To me, itâs the student, ability, drive and focus that determines much of this grad school placement. Much less about school.
The overall experience. Thatâs a different question. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If this is the terminal degree and IR is the focus without law school. Thatâs a different question. I would choose Georgetown.
How they do once there or who is better prepared is a different question.
Sure, you can get into Law School from anywhere. The enrollment at Yale Law School represents 164 institutions. However, the reality is that 11 of them make up almost half of the population (2 short). The 11 are 8 Ivies + Stanford, UChicago and Georgetown. For the public schools, UCB is tried with Georgetown at 13. It then goes UMich (8), UVA (7), UCLA (5). Yale has 90 from their undergraduate program.
Many who attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison probably make UW School of Law their first choice school becauseânot sure if still trueâgraduates of the UW law school do not have to sit for the Wisconsin state bar exam.
Also, many prefer their in-state flagship university law school if they intend to practice in that state. Certainly true for Ohio State & many other states. Not everyone wants to attend a T-14 law school & not every law student wants biglaw.