<p>I would say that even top law schools draw a somewhat regional student body. At the Stanford admitted students weekend last year, one of things that SLS tried to emphasize was that it wasn’t just a California school. There were a lot of people admitted to both Stanford and Harvard, and many of them made lots of comments like “I really like it here, but it’s so far away from my home (on the east coast).” It’s enough of a concern that Stanford pays for you to fly to their admitted student weekends.</p>
<p>Northwestern is a very unique law school. They specifically target students with 2 years of post-undergraduate work experience, and their percentage of Midwestern students has gone from over 50% in 2000 to around 25% in 2008. I’m somewhat surprised UChicago doesn’t sent a few more students to Michigan, but they still send a decent crop (in the 10-19 range for Autunm 2008, according to the Michigan Law School site). The UChicago Law School admits a pretty large chunk of undergraduates from the college. </p>
<p>As I said, regionalism isn’t the only issue with UChicago. But I also think that fewer students from UChicago apply seriously. I think a higher percentage of UChicago students are drawn to academic graduate school than at some peer institutions. And I think that the students are less focused on specifically what they will do after graduation, in general, than at some of the schools that send hoards of students to top law schools. As I said, pretty much everyone I knew who wanted to go to law school was admitted to a school that matched their goals.</p>