UK vs US undergraduate choice for US law school goals

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Hello!!

I am hoping to get some guidance as I decide between several undergraduate offers. My long-term goal is to attend law school in the United States and hopefully work in the US government, so I am trying to make the best choice now while also considering personal growth.

I’ve been admitted to strong programs in both the US and the UK to study Politics / International Relations. While studying abroad is very appealing to me, especially in London, I am concerned about how a UK degree would be evaluated by US law schools, particularly with LSAC GPA conversion and differences in grading systems. I also want to ensure I have access to US-based legal internships, recommenders, advising pipelines, etc.

I would greatly appreciate insight from anyone who has experience with (or knowledge of) applying to US law schools from an international undergraduate background.

Specifically:

  • How significant is the GPA conversion risk from the UK?

  • Do admissions committees view international study as a meaningful advantage, or is GPA still the primary factor?

  • In hindsight, would you recommend this path for someone aiming for US law school?

For context, I am deciding between the following offers:

United Kingdom

  • King’s College London (Politics / Politics & International Affairs)

  • University College London (Politics / Politics & International Affairs)

United States

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • University of Virginia

  • University of Texas at Austin (Plan II Honors)

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Why not reach out to law schools and ask.

But here’s the truth - whether you go to UNC or W Carolina is not relevant for law school.

Your GPA, your LSAT and what you do during and now after college will be what matters. At the top schools today, many aren’t direct from college but have a year or more off. At Penn, the average age is 24. At Harvard, 84% were one year out of school and 69% were two years. Of course, most law schools aren’t to this level but given your admits, I imagine you are aiming to this level.

So whether you go to UNC, UVA, or UT won’t matter - unless you are spending so much you can’t afford law school.

Want to know why I say that?

Harvard’s first year class of under 600 has 163 schools - and that includes foreign schools plus others like Christopher Newport, Iowa State, Towson, and U of many flagships and regionals like Louisville, North Dakota State, Oklahoma, and more. Penn has over 200 schools represented - from Bowie State to Marshall to Western Washington.

They all have students from foreign schools - so:

  1. Make sure you can afford law school should you choose one of these three - as all are expensive if OOS. If you can’t afford law school, then these may not be right for you.

  2. Check on possibilities - or best way to set yourself up - if you go abroad.

  3. If you decide you have foreign school concerns - forget law school, what if your desires change - so just coming back - you can always do a semester or year abroad and / or summers too.

Congrats on great admits - but do research on the foreign and ensure budget is ok on the domestics - and then pick the one you like best.

Good luck.

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You won’t have a GPA from King’s or UCL. You will have a transcript with individual course grades and then a final degree standing (a first or an upper second class) at the end of your three years.

My Oxford son did experience a little bit of “sticker shock” during the US summer internship process when potential employers saw 60s and 70s on his transcript. He had to explain how different the grading system is in the UK. That shouldn’t matter that much by the time that you are applying for internships during law school as you will have your final degree classification by then.

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Probably (my best guess) it is significant if your British academic record receives less than a rating of “Superior” (ratings are Superior, Above Average, Average, & Below Average). Because the LSDAS converts British academic grades in this manner, this will place more emphasis on your LSAT score for purposes of assessing your candidacy for admission to law school.

LSAT & GPA are the primary factors regarding law school admissions.

International study is a positive factor especially for one with your multi-lingual fluency and career goals/interests. It should give life to your application in the sense that you will be a memorable candidate for elite law school admissions if your LSAT score is above median for the target law school and if your LSDAS academic rating assessment is Superior.

It’s fine. You need to pursue your interests. The goal is to enhance your abilities in analytical reasoning and to practice writing in a clear, concise, and analytical fashion.

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Consider the study of Economics as well if you want to pursue a career involving International Relations. Fluency in the international language of Economics can make you a more well qualified candidate in the field of international relations. Also, continue the study of Mandarin throughout college to work toward a high level of proficiency or fluency.

Unlikely that you will receive strong advising with respect to US law schools if you study in England. But, US advising at US colleges and universities regarding law school admissions is usually not worth much.

Several US based law firms have offices in London so an internship with a US law firm while remaining in London is possible. Also possible to secure an internship with a US law firm in the USA, but you will have to take the initiative and pursue this avenue on your own.

You may lose out on recruited paralegal opportunities (formal 2 year programs with major US law firms) for recent college graduates unless you pursue these opportunities on your own as it is unlikely that the law firms which recruit from elite US universities and colleges will actively recruit from London based universities for US based internships. These 2 year internships help many to decide whether or not a career as a US attorney is a path to pursue.

Are both London located programs 3 years in length ? If yes, then you can consider earning a master’s level degree in another country prior to entering law school in the US. Not necessary, but could make your law school applications more interesting and, possibly, your candidacy more compelling.

Be sure to attend an affordable school for your undergraduate degree as law school is expensive and few law schools award need based financial aid although many award academic based merit scholarships. In your case, this makes Plan II Honors at UT-Austin attractive due to affordable in-state tuition rates.

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For US Law Schools, GPA & LSAT are paramount. Little else matters for most.

Massive. It’s all about USNews’ ranking. Anything that brings down their mean GPA is a big negative.

A nice to have, but nothing beats the two numbers (GPA & LSAT).

Between your three choices, whichever is cheaper (instate?), or you will enjoy yourself the most over 4 years.

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It would be good to double check this, but most US law schools almost certainly understand how to convert your grades at one of the London universities to a 4.0 scale, so that shouldn’t be a factor for admissions (as long as it’s comparatively easy to “do well” at these schools. If they are known to have grade deflation, that would be a reason not to go to one of them). Also, it very difficult to get “legal internships” in the US as an undergraduate student. The vast majority of legal internships require that you be enrolled in an ABA-accredited law school as they require skills that you just can’t learn while getting your undergraduate degree. So, I would not factor that in, as it’s unlikely that you’ll get a legal internship even if you attend school in the US. Internships in business, politics, policy, etc would all be great experience experience prior to law school, so I would not focus on the availability of legal internships for undergrads as those are extremely rare.

I’d therefore recommend whatever option is the cheapest. Law school is expensive! And, if you want to go to an elite law school, it’s hard to get merit-based financial aid (although possible to get merit aid if you are willing to go to a lower tier school). The more money you can save for law school by not spending it on your undergrad education, the better off you’ll be.

Finally, some unsolicited advice, but it is the advice I give to every college student considering law school. Don’t go straight through from undergrad to law school. Take at least one, and preferably 2 (or more) years off after college to get some work experience. You will be in an immeasurably better position to seek a legal job if you enter law school with work experience. Here’s why. First, legal recruiting for post-law school jobs now starts incredibly early. If you are interested in pursuing a job in a large law firm, you will be applying literally during your first semester of your 1L year of law school. Federal government summer internships also have application deadlines in your first semester of law school. Due to this timing, you won’t have time to build up any legal skills, showcase good law school grades, or anything else to be competitive for these positions, and therefore the experience you’ve accrued prior to law school takes on undue importance. Second, depending on your law school, a good portion of your classmates will come in to law school with post-college work experience, and in some schools, like Northwestern, 90% of them will have it. Post college work experience is impressive to legal employers - they assume those students have developed professional skills, industry knowledge and maturity. So, if you don’t have work experience in a real (non-internship) job, you’ll be competing in an incredibly competitive marketplace, with students who on day one, already have an advantage over you. Also, students with work experience have had the benefit of time to gain maturity, self-knowledge, and confidence. This tends to some through in interviews, giving those students yet another advantage - they tend to interview better than their peers who went straight through. So, all in all, you will really do yourself a solid if you take the time after college to work for a couple of years. I know you didn’t ask about this, but just had to provide my two cents of advice.

Best of luck!

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My understanding is that your statement quoted above is incorrect.

The LSDAS converts British grades to one of the following categories: Superior, Above Average, Average, or Below Average. No numerical conversion to a 4.0 GPA grading system will appear on your LSDAS summary.

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OK, I stand corrected. But, the larger point is that law schools will have experience with these institutions and know how to interpret their grades in order to be able to make an admissions decision about applicants who attend them.

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Law schools will use the LSDAS assessment of the student’s transcript from a university based in England.

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So first, despite what some people here like to claim, we cannot rule out that undergrad attended at least sometimes plays a role in law school admissions, say in the form of a highly selective law school being willing to go deeper into a class assuming equally good LSAT scores.

What we know is that some undergrad programs end up with a lot more students than others in the most selective law schools, a disparity which can be even more stark when you compare undergrad program sizes. There are some people here who will argue that if, say, a large flagship public university typically has 0-2 students in a certain law school class, and a small LAC has 10-15, that means it doesn’t matter which you choose. Of course that is not a reasonable thing to simply assume given such a disparity.

If you are interested in raw data like that, you can google “The Legal Launchpad: Unveiling the Undergraduate Pathways to Law School” (I can’t link it directly). Another way to put the point–according to that data, say, 4.8% of Amherst undergrads ended up at what they defined as a top law school for the purposes of that study. At Ohio State, it was 0.2%. That sort of disparity is hard to simply assume away with reasonable confidence.

That said, we can’t just assume that all represents value-added either. The problem is we can’t easily control for LSAT scores, and we also can’t easily control for self-selection, like what percentage of students would even want to go to a highly selective law school.

Like I picked Ohio State in part because Ohio State actually has a very good law school. Amherst of course does not. I have zero doubt some very good HS students in Ohio are choosing Ohio State for undergrad for financial and other reasons, then doing it all again for law school. The fact they didn’t, say, follow an East Coast LAC to East Coast private law school path isn’t necessarily showing they couldn’t have done that, they just might not have been interested in that path at all.

Still, the disparities can be so large I personally find it implausible the entire explanation is always just LSAT scores and self-selection. Like at that source, you can actually look up the “pipeline” for Ohio State undergrads going to law schools, and sure enough, a lot of their kids go to Ohio State for law school. But a lot go to other law schools as well.

So that can’t be the full explanation for why Amherst is so much higher than Ohio State in the top law school placement study. Maybe LSAT scores, but I actually believe too many people capable of getting high LSAT scores are likely going to Ohio State for that to be the full explanation either. I can’t prove it, I just don’t find it plausible the difference would really be that stark because of just those factors.

Anyway, with that context in mind, what we can say is it is easy to observe that various UK universities are represented at the most selective US law schools. Like Yale’s recent multi-year list includes all of LSE, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, and York.

But again, despite what some here argue, this is not sufficient to know whether it helps, hurts, or is neutral to make such a choice of undergrad program. We would again need data about LSAT scores, self-selection factors, and actual total admissions to even begin to assess that question, and I don’t know of a source for such data.

OK, so to be blunt: I think the safest thing to do is choose one of your US schools, probably UVA. All those are high on what that study called their Public Powerhouse list of placement in law schools generally, with UVA at #3 with 5.4%, UNC #5 at 4.9%, and Texas #8 at 4.5%. But for top law schools, Virginia was #28 overall with 1.7%, UNC was #64 with 0.8%, and Texas #113 at 0.4%. I note UVA and not North Carolina or Texas was considered a top law school, so that is part of the issue. But still, UVA undergrad in fact DOES feed to UVA Law, which is no small thing, and then also does well outside of that pipeline too (for a public university).

But, I don’t think safe is always best. Heck, you might not even go to law school. If you want an amazing experience outside the US for undergrad, I say go for it, and then be open to where that can take you. It may not be where you are currently thinking, and that could be great.

But that’s how I would see the nature of the choice.

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Not relevant. A prospie might benefit personally from hanging around a law Firm to better understand the culture but Admissions won’t care one iota.

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I was responding to the OP who mentioned a concern about “access to US-based legal internships” as a factor for whether to choose a school in London or the US. I agree that law school admissions won’t care, and am neutral on whether the experience would benefit the OP personally. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. The point I was making is that it’s very unlikely that OP could get even a legal internship as an undergraduate student regardless of where they go to college, so it should not be a factor in their choice of where to attend.

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This advice (by a practicing lawyer, I believe) is by far the most valuable on this thread. There is a fair amount of misinformation in some of the other posts. Specifically, law firms don’t offer undergraduate internships. And it would be very difficult to impossible to get a summer internship at the London office of a US firm as a law student let alone an undergraduate.

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Yes, on the subject of doing any sort of law-related thing during undergrad: your best bet would probably be to see if you could work some sort of family connections to get hooked up with some sort of summer position at a law firm, possibly a small-to-mid-sized law firm, possibly shadowing/volunteering versus being paid. Sometimes state and local government offices also have some sort of undergrad program.

This sort of thing is highly unlikely to do anything for admissions per se. What it could do, however, is give you some clarity on whether a legal career is really what you want to be pursuing at all.

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Will disagree -

There is no proof that high level schools do better because they are high level schools.

It can easily be argued that it’s student base - that this student, no matter where they go, will have every opportunity to attend a high ranking school.

Since you mentioned UVA and of course a school will have more kids from its own school because it’s natural they’d apply there - but 131 schools are represented from its 309 students in the 2028 class. Top schools include Arizona State (6) and Alabama (8), more than Cornell, Princeton, and Stanford.

The 308 students in the class of 2027 came from 140 schools. The 305 students in 2026 come from 144 schools with Arkansas a leading feeder.

So there is so much school disparity - and yes certain schools will represent more than others - but I’d argue it’s because:

  1. A student at a top school (UVA) is more likely for a post grad outcome to begin with
  2. A student at a top school (UVA) is more likely to have an LSAT than - say a W Carolina.

All three - UNC, UVA, and UT - will afford this student equal law school opportunities. UNC and UT are both heavy on the UVA colleges attended list- and given the amount of schools, while they don’t list those with 1 or 2 attending, so are many others.

But the truth is, this type of student doesn’t generally go to UNCC or W Carolina - they choose UNC. But my guess is if they did go to W Carolina and deliver GPA and LSAT, they’d have equal chance. If not, why are 140 schools represented?

I also think - if the student truly wants to go abroad, that’s something they should talk to the law schools about and get a better understanding vs. making a decision off of this board. There are many foreign colleges represented on the colleges attended list (not UVA as they only list the most common).

That’s a life altering decision for them - and I wouldn’t just dismiss it from an internet chat board but rather do more research (be thorough) before giving up a dream if studying abroad is truly the dream.

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Here’s the problem- the OP has not been admitted to LSE, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford or York (or did not even apply). So the logical leap of faith- that somehow Yale law adcom’s believe that ANY UK undergrad experience is comparable to Oxford or Cambridge (et al) just doesn’t work.

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I agree we really don’t have the data we need to “prove” anything.

But that goes for claims like that it doesn’t matter, that everything is strictly “equal”–we can’t “prove” such claims to be true either.

OK, so in the end, people can look at things like the source I mentioned and make their own call. Again, I personally find it implausible that the whole explanation for some of the disparities there is just LSAT scores and self-selection, but I am also fine with people looking at that information and making that call for themselves.

I am not fine with confidentally assuring them it never matters, that everything is always equal, or so on. There really is no proof of that either, and in fact it would take a lot of work to show that was even a plausible theory given the stark disparities in question.

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The bottom line is - a class of 300 is represented by 140 schools with sizable multiples from schools like Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona State. No one puts them on a UVA/UT/UNC plateau.

With 300 kids from 140 schools, what else do you need to know? It’s similar at the other top law schools that share this data.

If the school name mattered, you wouldn’t see that.

We don’t need to “debate” as it’s not allowed. This will continue to come up and we’ll continue to disagree.

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I agree, that is a problem, although the presence of York and Edinburgh on that list is at least more encouraging as to the OP’s options. And Yale is just one law school, and a small one at that.

Generally, though, I have periodically looked at lists like this, and I think it is fair to say the “sample size” is so low it is basically impossible to say anything meaningful. Which makes sense. Only so many US HS students go to UK undergrads to begin with, a tiny fraction compared to those who go to US undergrads. And then I would bet those US HS students who go to UK undergrads also disproportionately choose other things besides going on to US law schools. In a good way, they likely have more knowledge of other options. But I strongly expect that experience is going to pull some of those people away from the most beaten next-step paths for US HS students who go to US undergrads.

And again, just to be blunt, I do think there is some risk to going off the beaten path. I’d like to believe it doesn’t ever matter, but realistically, I think there can be a lot of institutional support you are giving up, peer support, networking, all that stuff that can end up mattering in ways that then show up in gross placement statistics and such.

That doesn’t mean the door is completely closed. It just may take more work, more initiative, more luck, and so on to find your way through it.

And yes, is it possible the door would start cracked open a bit wider if you were coming from Oxbridge rather than KCL? Again, I wouldn’t claim to be able to prove it, but I don’t think it would be easy to rule out either.