Is it possible to go state school to Harvard

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<p>Well, let’s keep in mind that there is a strong confounding factor here. Let’s face it. The average student quality at the top elite private schools is significantly higher than the average student quality at the public schools. Yes, every public school has its superstars. But even a top public school like Berkeley and Michigan has a long tail end of students who are not that good, relatively speaking. Hence, the fact that you see lots of Harvard undergrads going to top grad schools is partly a function of the fact that Harvard undergrads in general tend to be high quality, and has nothing to do with Harvard specifically. Some of these Harvard students would have been highly successful even if they had gone to no-name undergrad programs, just because they are very hard-working and high quality people.</p>

<p>Let’s not also forget that there is also a strong geographic preference among students. For example, you might say that UVA Law has lots of former UVA undergrads. But part of that has to do with the fact that people who went to UVa for undergrad often times tend to prefer to go back to UVa for grad school simply because they’re already used to the area and nobody likes to move. Couple that with the fact that people who go to UVa for undergrad tend to be Virginia state residents, and if you are a Virginia resident, then UVa Law school is going to be cheap for you, and that’s another reason for you to prefer to go there. </p>

<p>The point is that a lot of the notion of grad-schools “taking care of their own” is nothing of the sort, but rather that those particular undergrads prefer to go back to that school for undergrad. Hence, it’s often times not that the grad-school prefers those undergrads, but that the undergrads prefer the grad-school. I’m sure that lots of Harvard undergrads got into UVa Law but turned it down to go to some other law school. Why? They’re probably not Virginia state residents (at least, not to the same proportion as are UVA undergrads), and they’ve never lived in Charlottesville before, so they have no reason to prefer to matriculate at UVa Law. </p>

<p>The real way to see if there is any preference is to look at admit rates of similar people. For example, is a guy from UVa undergrad and is a Virginia state resident more likely to get admitted into UVa Law than another guy from Harvard with similar stats and who is also a Virginia state resident?</p>