<p>I’m a junior at Williams College and plan on applying to law school during the fall/winter of my senior year. Though I’ve known I wanted to attend law school for some time now, I’ve only recently begun to seriously research schools. Below is a tentative list of schools divided into reach, target, and safety. I have two concerns: 1. Is this list too long? And 2. Is it too top-heavy? I won’t divulge my GPA, but I think I should be competitive for most of these schools. And I’m taking the LSAT in June, so I won’t bother to predict that yet.</p>
<p>(in no particular order)
Reaches: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and NYU
Targets: Georgetown, UCLA, USC, and UVA
Safety: Boston University</p>
<p>Congratulations on a good gpa. Until you get an LSAT score, or at least some consistent practice scores, you have no way of estimating what are reaches, targets and safeties for you (except that Harvard, Yale and Stanford are reaches for everyone). Good luck.</p>
<p>I think it is next to impossible to predict what your “safety school” will be until you have an LSAT score.<br>
In the event you do actually score in the mid to high 160’s with at least a 3.6 GPA, you probably have a good shot at BU and USC. Of course the higher the LSAT and GPA, the more choices you have. For most of the other schools on your list, it would be good to aim for a 170 + on your LSAT’s, but realistically only about the top 2% get that score.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Again, I hesitate to estimate my LSAT score, but I plan on doing a huge amount of preparation for the test beforehand and have formulated this list under the assumption that my score will be around a 170 (hopefully even higher). As for GPA, all I’ll say is that it is above the 75th percentile for all the schools except for HYS.</p>
<p>If your GPA is what you say it is, and you score a 170 on the LSAT, you really need only to apply to six schools (unless you want a different location): Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, and NYU. </p>
<p>Some posters here will say that this is too risky. I disagree: personal experience confirms perfectly that students with the numbers will at least get into Chicago, Columbia, or NYU, and at the most will attend Yale Law School.</p>
<p>OK- at least you are being realistic and understand that you do have a “hugh amount of preparation” ahead of you.<br>
My d just got her score back- she too will be applying to a bunch of T-14’s and probably Fordham, Cardoza and GWU. Hopefully those schools are safeties for her. You may want to keep this site in mind
<a href=“http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law[/url]”>www.ilrg.com/rankings/law</a> Just double click on the column headed - “LSAT
High”<br>
it will give you a quick look at the “numbers” needed to get into the individual schools. By sorting it by High LSAT, the most selective schools will be displayed on top and the info becomes very readily available to decipher.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Most LACs and universities keep records–scattergrams or grids-- of which law schools their students applied to and the median gpa and LSAT of those admitted. I’d be stunned if Williams doesn’t. When you actually have a LSAT score, look at those grids. They will give you a much better idea of your chances than anyone on this message board can. </p>
<p>For your targets and above as listed, you should have an LSAT in high 160s (say 167-168) or better and a GPA of above 3.5 for that list to make sense.</p>
<p>Your list has some schools in common with Mr. Bitsy’s applications. So far, he’s been accepted everywhere but Stanford. His GPA fell almost exactly in the middle of the range posted (not necessarily the 50th percentile) on their website for the class of 2008, so I think he definitely had a shot, applying late in the cycle was probably what got him dinged.</p>
<p>It’s stupidly risky unless those are the only schools you’re willing to attend. Considering that anyone with numbers good enough for those schools would almost certainly get fee waivers from the lower T14, there’s absolutely no reason not to apply. </p>
<p>To repeat what’s been said, there’s absolutely no point in speculating without an LSAT score, because even a couple of points could make a significant difference.</p>
<p>I’m agreeing with Americanski on this one- IMO even with a 3.7 from Williams and a 172, one cannot assume admission to Columbia-NYU-Chicago etc. You gotta throw in a bunch of the other T-14’s too. And if the LSAT is closer to the 168 range, I’m sure a few schools outside the T-14 would be appropriate too (like BU and others).<br>
You have alot of kids with very similar stats applying to the same schools. Also kids with very high stats might be offered some merit money. Why not apply to the lower T-14 schools to see if money is offered??
Though I have only looked at some applications, there seems to be alot of redundancy. Therefore to send out a few more applications doesn’t seem to be such a big deal.</p>
<p>–I just threw out the 172 LSAT as an example-- My understanding is that the OP has not taken the test yet.–</p>
<p>OK- but if you have the top scoring 1000 kids (which is probably less than the top 5 %), there are not enough available seats at NYU, Columbia, Chicago to accommodate all those that want to go. I would strongly suggest, you broaden your sight to the other T-14 schools too.
I’d agree that those scoring 173 and above may have a better shot at their top three choices, but those who get 171 (and that’s probably top 2 %) and below need to apply to at least 5 to 7 schools T-14 schools (IMO) and then a safety or two wouldn’t hurt either.</p>