^ You know that law school admissions is (largely) a numbers game? There’s no “deck stacked” against someone from attending CSU or any other accredited school for law school. Someone with a 173+ LSAT and 3.7+ GPA will basically have a same law school admissions no matter where the degree is from.
Maybe “top” schools are more represented because they attract people who can get high LSAT scores in the first place.
@WildestDream - not necessary. If that’s the case then applicants would hear within days after they have submitted their applications. They wouldn’t need anyone to read the applications, everything could be computer driven.
Re: #59
But how much of the apparent bias toward the most selective undergraduate schools in law school admission is due to stronger students to begin with in the most selective undergraduate schools, versus any actual preference in law school admission?
Re: #61
A purely stats based admission process does not have to be rolling, since they may want to get all of the applications before setting the admission threshold.
Law school admission is rolling.
@oldfort You can disagree all you want, but it’s a fact. I didn’t say all, because that’s just silly. Go ahead and look at the top firms in NY, DC, LA, Chicago, San Fran, etc and see which schools their associates attended. Columbia, Cornell, NYU…most grads stay in NYC or go to DC.
Harvard and Yale have a disproportionate number of students aiming for law school (and top law schools), and as they are generally stronger students, they are disproportionality represented. You’re not going to get the same number from say SUNY Binghamton applying to HLS or YLS each year let alone having the stats to get into YLS or HLS. Those other schools also have a much smaller number of students applying to YLS and HLS.
Then there is self selection. Again, you’re just not going to find that many Texas loving students choosing colleges outside of UT or SMU, especially given the low tuition at UT and the extremely strong network here. It’s going to be the same in Florida, Virginia, Georgia, etc. Students really need to be strategic when choosing law school, and where they’d like to practice is important. A top student at UT who wants to work in NY should aim for YLS, HLS, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, NYU, or Fordham. With top GPA and LSAT, they have a good shot at getting admitted to at least one. And competition from their classmates for those schools will not be stiff since most students will be staying local.
@socaldad2002 I don’t think those numbers can really be evaluated so generically bc how many of those students were tippy top caliber students to begin with?
I know that my kids have been incredibly successful from their lowered ranked schools. But, the caveat is that they aren’t at those schools functioning in the middle of the pack. They were high caliber students before they started attending those schools and they continue functioning that way once they get there.
They have been part of elite honors programs at their schools. The perks and mentoring these programs provide are pretty substantial.
So it is doubtful that those numbers are comparing top students at elite schools to the avg student at lower ranked schools. Both groups of top students are likely to be driven and successful.
There was research done ~5 years ago (at Vanderbilt?) that showed upward mobility for graduate school is limited. There are always exceptions, but the vast majority of highly selective grad school students come from highly selective undergrad institutions.
There are millions of singular examples of success from all levels of institutional rankings, but the OP is asking a question about tomorrows kids, not the results of the past.
In response to the question by the OP, I’m going to say “No”. I say that for 2 reasons.
The primary reason I say that is a belief there will be fewer “good” jobs in the future. Globalization, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence…they’re already taking low and mid level jobs. They are now focusing on taking executive jobs. With fewer exec jobs, the current assumed pedigree bonus will increase, not decrease.
The other reason is that future leaders and decision makers are going to come from the generation(s) that lived through the current increased emphasis. When confronted with several options, they will likely favor those from more selective backgrounds.
The experiential results of the past 40 years may have very little in common with the next 40. Who knows. Where you go to college may be more important than ever.
Any more so than Brown/Dartmouth/Princeton/Columbia/Cornell/NU/Duke/Georgetown/NYU…?
And West coast with many tech companies. Your assertion that Stanford/Berkeley law students chose Stanford/Berkeley because they want to work in the west coast is not completely true. My sister chose Stanford for the weather, but she always knew she would come back to the East coast, and the same for her husband.
@oldfort Again, I didn’t say all. You can focus on your singular examples and ignore the verifiable facts if you choose.
“How many does Harvard take from those schools each year vs number of student they take from top tier schools. Do you want to be that one or two from those schools or one of 10 to 20 from HYPS.”
“…why has Harvard (Law) taken a lot more students from HY than from other schools/”
@oldfort, you are making my case for me. If “I” were in the situation you pose, I may well want to be from a lower ranked or no name undergraduate college without debt and at the top of my class than struggling with no merit money at HYPS ahead of law school costs and in a middle or even lower quartile (see Gladwell’s argument regarding relative deprivation in “David and Goliath.”) The number of admits from any given college is irrelevant to the original question. There simply is no objective evidence that undergraduates from tippy-top colleges have significant career outcomes based on where they take their undergrad degrees. There are too many variables - the different schools and the different individuals, different majors. College drop out Steve Jobs could help your argument had he attended HYPS. Or Zuckerberg or Gates had they graduated. Does gaining admittance to one of these places magically create career success? In the case of Zuckerberg, it could be argued that had he not attended Harvard, he never would have founded Facebook. Yet, thousands of students all around him, all attending Harvard during his time there, didn’t do what he did.
Career success is about persistence, emotional intelligence and - my fave - recognizing opportunities and then acting on them. We should encourage our children to pay attention to those aspects, to celebrate their inherent self worth, assure them that all will be well and let them find their places in the world. This obsession with access to a few status colleges leads to tremendous pressure and a deep sense of failure for most kids who buy into it. It says that, like a game show or a lottery, only a few will succeed and everyone else is a failure. This is hardly a healthy societal premise. It is also a false one. There are many roads one can take, HYPS being merely four of them.
The argument is being made that a disproportionate percentage of HLS, YLS, etc, is represented by top UG including HYP, and is so because those are the type of schools that would have the top test takers and overall UG students. Another argument is being made that it doesn’t matter where you go to school, if you get the grades and test scores, you have the same chance as anyone else.
Two observations to these arguments are:
1.Most kids at state U whether they attend for regional purposes or not, will not meet the criteria (grades, scores, ECs, LORs) to gain admission to HLS or most of the top schools.
Maybe the original theme of this post shouldn’t be " you can go anywhere and do great". Maybe the thought process should be “why wouldn’t you want to attend the best place you can possibly attend”? Especially if these kids are disproportionately placed at the top law schools, companies, etc.
We do have to be careful about the predictive value of past results. The college landscape has changed dramatically. 30 years ago, a kid who worked hard and made good grades and a decently high SAT score could almost guarantee an acceptance to a top school. 30 years ago, college costs were far more reasonable. The high achieving, motivated kids who are being shunted towards lesser known schools are not simply going to disappear. They will start companies, work their way up in corporations, make names for themselves in academia and they will change the landscape of hiring in the future. Part of the reason that so many top jobs are dominated by graduates of a very few schools is because thats where the high achieving students were concentrated. As that changes, the rest will follow.
Assume your child is an incoming college Freshman, and intends to go on to graduate school. Which matters more? That’s what we are grappling with.
Why can’t there be a college with both “prestige” and a reasonable price tag??
Because it is all schools interests to collect as much revenue as possible to support the excessive costs they’ve created in the current arms race. Why charge less than the market will bear?
@rickle1 My D had no interest in any top school. She loves D1 sports and school spirit so that alone ruled all of those elite schools out. She wanted a business degree, so that ruled them out for a different reason. She is still surrounded by many smart, driven students. She is plenty challenged and is having the college experience she wanted. The opportunities available to her are unlimited and would not have been available to her at any elite school. Being a top student at a good, but not tippy top school has many perks. The best part? I’m paying $0. So explain to me why she should have chosen differently? And no it’s not a money thing. As I said on another thread, I don’t think any school is worth $70k. Costs have far outpaced value, in my opinion.
@itsgettingreal17 - the only reason this site gets any traffic is that nobody knows the cost / value math. I’ll tell you in 40 years if she made a mistake…
Hmmm, if I am spending time on CC, what make you think I am not reading up on most of law school forums? I am in the business of collecting data and there is nothing more important than what’s relevant to my kids. I have done most of slicing and dicing of law school data and that’s how we came up with her list.
Believe that if you want. There is already sufficient data.
@itsgettingreal17, what kind of job does your D want with that business degree and how much do you think her starting salary will be? Will she need grad school?