<p>How much weight is placed on the quality of one’s undergraduate college? I am going to be attending GMU’s honors program this fall… is it going to behoove me to look for transfer opportunities to tougher schools like UVA, Stanford, etc.?</p>
<p>Supposedly doesn’t matter too much, just know that if you’re head to head with someone from Harvard with the same GPA or close, they win.</p>
<p>See how happy you are at GMU before you think about transferring. A year from now, if you love it there, and you’re getting top notch grades, there’s absolutely no reason to leave.</p>
<p>Dude. Basketball. Stay.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, it’s generally understood not to matter an awful lot - so the question is where you feel like you’ll get the better education.</p>
<p>I’m just curious. If it’s generally understood not to matter an awful lot, how does one explain the fact that, at Harvard Law School, there is one student enrolled who went to GMU undergrad, while there are 91 who went to Stanford undergrad (and 23 who went to UVA undergrad)?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php[/url]”>http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php</a></p>
<p>Or that, at Yale Law School, there are no students enrolled who went to GMU undergrad, while there are 40 who went to Stanford undergrad (and 11 who went to UVA undergrad)?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/students.html[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/students.html</a></p>
<p>I am a believer in choosing an undergrad program based on what you think you’ll get out of the program rather than based on admission to graduate school, and it is certainly possible to get into a top quality law, business, medical or other graduate school from a whole range of undergrad institutions. But there is no question that the undergrad institution has a substantial impact on admission to graduate school.</p>
<p>Well, one issue discussed a lot on CC is input/output. Stanford is a school filled with 1500 SAT kids who played varsity sports. For the most part, if any of those students had gone to GMU (still a good school), they would have been at the top of the class. Stanford students also do better on the LSAT. MIT averages a 163 (not sure about Stanford, but probably close) which is about the 90th percentile. A decent school probably has an average of about 150. There just aren’t many 170 LSAT kids coming from GMU; Stanford has a bunch.</p>
<p>LSDAS sends in a report that tells your “class rank” compared to other LSAT takers and the LSAT distribution at your school for the past five years. Imagine two students who each have a 3.5, which is the 75th percentile. Imagine that one of them has a 170 LSAT and the other has a 160 LSAT. The 170 kid went to Stanford; the 160 kid impressed everyone at his state school. Let’s just say that each student scored 10 points above his school’s average.</p>
<p>So if you are comparing two students who are in the top 25% of their classes, one of which has an LSAT 10 points higher and is competing against stronger students… if you let him in, is it really because of the school? Or is it because the LSAT is higher and he did very well relative to very bright students, not well compared to okay students?</p>
<p>Yes, there is an influence. I know people from Harvard and Williams who say that nearly everyone goes to T14 law schools. Then again, those are all talented students who, if they went to other schools, would probably end up at good law schools, too.</p>