Law school admission and elite colleges

Data10
Mon, 28 Jun 2021 23:22:44 +0000

CU123:

For this analysis ~ 5% is roughly the same. Let’s look at the reverse, how many Stanford undergrads are attending Stanford law vs the UC’s? If you include all the UC’s you’ll find a huge difference, but I am willing to just look at UCB/UCLA.

I haven’t seen numbers for Stanford, ,but I’d expect that law school applicants form Stanford who average ~3rd highest LSAT/GPA stats of all colleges in the United States are overrepresented to a greater degree than UCB/Berkeley who average far lower stats.

The point is what we really want is a stat table showing admit rate for a particular set of stats. This would allow us to see whether applicants with similar stats have different admit rates for different undergrad colleges (assuming sufficient sample size). Just looking at matriculations totals alone is measuring something very different. Using some real numbers, stats from colleges that have been mentioned are below

Average Applicant Stats
Stanford – 165.7, 3.71
UCB – 159.4, 3.55
USC – 158.9, 3.56
UCLA – 157.0, 3.55

Average Matriculating Student Stats
Stanford Law – Average and 25/75th Stats = 171 (169-174), 3.89 (3.77-3.96)
UCLA Law – Average and 25th/75th Stats = 169 (164-173), 3.79 (3.54-3.90)

Note that there is a huge difference in average stats between applicants form Stanford and the other discussed schools. Average applicants from Stanford are within the 25/75th range of matriculating students at UCLA law in both LSAT and GPA. However, applicants from the other schools have average LSAT scores far below the 25th percentile at UCLA law, and have GPAs near the ~25th percentile. Only a small portion of UCB/USC/UCLA applicants have stats in a range where admission to UCLA might be possible, while most applicants from Stanford have stats in range were admission might be possible.

So by stats alone, one would expect Stanford pre-law undergrads to be far more likely to be admitted to UCLA law than Berkeley undergrads. However, one also needs to consider which group is more likely to apply, among other factors including chance of accepted student attending. I expect kids who chose the UC system for undergrad are far more likely to think highly of the UC system and favor the UC system for grad than kids who attended Stanford. As such, I expect after controlling for stats, UCB undergrads to be far more likely to apply to UCLA law than Stanford undergrads.

So the net effect between these two factors is:

Admit Rate – Stanford has far higher average stats, so Stanford is far more likely to be admitted

Application Rate – UCB is far more similar to UCLA, so UCB is far more likely to apply

Matriculation totals depend on both portion who apply and admit rate. One of the two factors favors Stanford and the other favors UCB. The net combination could result in either one of them being more represented. I don’t find the 5.5% Stanford undergrads matriculate vs 4% UCB undergrads matriculate particularly surprising.

However, if you instead look at the reverse and see which is most likely to matriculate to Stanford Law, then the 2 factors are:

Admit Rate – Stanford has far higher average stats, so Stanford is far more likely to be admitted

Application Rate – Stanford is far more similar to Stanford, so Stanford is far more likely to apply

If Stanford is far more likely to apply and far more likely to be admitted, then of course you’ll find a large difference in matriculation rate. If anything else occurred, it would be surprising.