<p>Thank you, Hanna, for that info rmation.</p>
<p>I will stop being so obtuse: most federal judges have very fancy academic credentials themselves, and some do the “hire people like me” routine. That may translate into a slight preference for people with the same undergrad - “Judge Smith went to Harvard, then Yale Law, and you went to Harvard, then UMich - he might be more inclined to hire you”. (Please note the prolific qualifiers throughout - I’m talking about marginal advantages.)</p>
<p>Also, let’s throw some numbers to Harvard UG and “not-Harvard” for law school. Yale, Stanford, and Harvard Law collectively enroll about eight or nine hundred 1Ls every year, but more than 900 HYS undergrads enroll in law school. Ergo, even if HYS Law only accepted its own undergrads (eschewing everyone from Princeton and MIT down to Salem State), many HYS undergrads would have to find a different place to go to law school.</p>