<p>I think there are a few issues that partially explain UChicago’s relatively low rate of alumni attending T14 law schools.</p>
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<li><p>Geography – Nearly all T14 law schools schools are on the East Coast or California. So are many of the undergraduate institutions that feed into them at very high rates. Despite their national scope, even highly selective schools (law and undergraduate) end up having somewhat regional flavors. One-third of the incoming class at HLS is from New England or the Mid-Atlantic region, and only 18% comes from the Great Lakes or Mid-West. UChicago’s undergraduate population is, compared to most Ivy-League schools, substantially more Mid-Western. Illinois is by far the most represented state, and there are relatively more students from other Midwestern states, especially Wisconsin and Indiana than at most Eastern LACs or Ivy League universities. For someone from Illinois or Wisconsin who plans to practice law in his or her home state, it makes a lot of sense to attend the state law school. Many midwestern state law schools are quite well-regarded, and if you look at the law schools represented by the top firms in these states (including Chicago), you will see quite a few University of [insert state]. Casually flipping through biographies of top firms in Chicago when I was applying to law school, I was struck by how many associates and even partners at the top firms went to the University of Illinois law school (there are still plenty from T14 schools, too, but I was surprised at the healthy representation of the local state schools). So for a midwesterner, the decision to attend a top-top tier law school is a bit of a different decision than for someone from the East Coast. The cost is a huge factor, as is the not-inconsequential consideration of moving across the country. If someone plans to stay in the midwest for their career, it’s not clear that the benefits of a T14 school outweigh the costs. And in some ways, it might be a handicap (making personal connections is a huge part of any profession, and if most of the top lawyers in an area went to the local state university, it isn’t necessarily a huge advantage to have attended Harvard/Yale/Stanford/Columbia/NYU). One piece of advice I received from a UChicago Law student when I was applying to law school was that unless Big Law was my goal, if I knew where I wanted to live after law school, I would be well-served to find the best law school in that area that wouldn’t charge me very much.</p></li>
<li><p>GPA – While the average GPA at UChicago is somewhere around 3.35, it does differ from many other top schools in the distribution at the very top. Getting a B+ isn’t too hard in many classes. Getting an A- is also usually quite doable, but getting a full A is often quite a challenge. Only about 8% of the student body earns 3.8 or above, and 3.9+ is almost unheard-of, which is quite different than at some notoriously grade-inflated schools. Law schools admissions officials try to consider this, but when they get a bushel of 3.9+ applications from certain schools, a lot of those people will get in, even if the officials know that they grades are slightly inflated compared to grades from some other schools.</p></li>
<li><p>I think the culture at UChicago is noticeably less focused on a specific plan for after college. I think it’s probably a good thing that the University is trying to change that a bit, but I also think it’s somewhat reflective of the type of student the school attracts. It is true that you need to pay attention to your GPA if you want to go to a top-top tier law school, and it’s true that GPA is really de-emphasized among students at UChicago. My experience was that students who really did want to go to a top-top law school knew that LSAT and GPA mattered and quietly took care of business. </p></li>
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<p>[For some context, I’m an '08 graduate of UChicago. I applied to law school last year, with a decent GPA (but not a single quarter with straight-As) and a solid LSAT. I was accepted to NYU, Columbia, Michigan (with some $$), Chicago, and Stanford; wait-listed at Yale and Harvard. While this is entirely anecdotal, most acquaintances I have who really wanted a top-top tier law school experience were able to go somewhere that fit that goal (2 Yale, 2 Harvard, 3 Stanford, 1 NYU, 3 Chicago) and many others who were not academic standouts got in to law schools that are plenty good enough for their own goals. I only know of one student who was severely dissappointed with the process. The general sense I got was that if you wanted to go to a good law school, avoided destroying your GPA and did well on the LSAT, you were in good shape. {The general sentiment toward medical school admission was quite different – UChicago seems to struggle more in this area}]</p>