You have to be careful about comparing SAT and ACT scores for test-optional or test-flexible schools. For example, Middlebury reports SAT I scores for a greater percentage of entering students than does Hamilton.
Hamilton: SAT I scores reported for 56% of enrolled students, ACT 27%
Middlebury: SAT I scores reported for 68% of enrolled students, ACT 44%
Vassar’s numbers are closer to Middlebury’s, so comparisons are more appropriate.
Getting back to the original question, any reasonable undergraduate school (LAC or otherwise) will be fine for pre-law students. There are no specific major or course work requirements, but some suggestions are given at http://lawschoolnumbers.com/application-prep/ugraduate . Some specific types of law would benefit from specific types of undergraduate majors (e.g. science or engineering major for patent law). Law school admissions is heavily LSAT and GPA centered; you can browse http://schools.lawschoolnumbers.com/ to see what it takes to get into high ranked law schools.
The heterogeneous figures in post 20 can bear no relationship to the conclusion drawn from them. However, since an accurate statistical foundation, from which further posts can then proceed, has been . . . under-appreciated on this thread (#15, possibly #17), I won’t analyze the topic further.
haha Thank you all for your informative posts. As to answer a previous post, I a especially interested in intellectual property law. Also, I appreciate the concern for lesser acceptance rates for females, but I do know this going in and am still deciding that LA is the place for me.
Since intellectual property includes patents, will your major be science or engineering? Note: science is part of liberal arts, but engineering is not. LACs commonly offer science majors, but many do not offer engineering.
Not to beat a dead horse here, but not every LAC with a significant gender imbalance has appreciably different acceptance rates for men and women. Some schools seem like they try to apply consistent admissions standards across the board, and if they get more female applicants, they just let in more women and accept a skewed gender ratio as a consequence.
We were looking at St. Olaf and Whitman for my son, and I was curious whether being male would give him an admissions advantage, since both schools are fairly gender imbalanced (58/42 and 56/44 respectively). But when I looked at the numbers in their common data sets, the acceptance rates for men and women were essentially identical, and, in fact, both schools had admitted a slightly higher percentage of their female applicants, despite getting far more applications from women.
So, bottom line: the blanket statement “It’s harder for women to get accepted to LACs”, is, like most blanket statements, an over-generalization.
OP could major in Bio or Chemistry and go into patent law (also Engineering, yes, but not available at many LACs.) But IP law also includes trademarks and copyright, so I think any Liberal Arts and Sciences major might be helpful with the latter two… My husband, a patent attorney who majored in Engineering, works with some trademark and copyright attorneys who majored in English and History as undergrads.
This link is a few years old but it probably has not changed that much as far as the schools you find with the top LSAT scores. Many are LACs.
Just in, I got a 1260/1540 on my PSATs and a 195 SI in NY.
You must mean 1260/1520 and that your SI is 195 and that you live in NY?
Did they provide you with a percentile for the SI itself?