How do you get into a top law school?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
Got to one of these 30 schools
https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-law-school 1 University of California, Berkeley 2 Cornell University 3 Harvard University 4 Yale University 5 University of Michigan 6 University of Pennsylvania 7 University of California, Los Angeles 8 Columbia University 9 Georgetown University 10 University of Chicago 10 Duke University 12 Princeton University 13 University of Virginia 14 New York University 15 Stanford University 16 Northwestern University 17 University of Southern California 18 Washington University in St. Louis 19 University of Florida School of Law 20 Brown University 21 University of Texas at Austin 22 Vanderbilt University 23 University of Maryland, College Park 24 Emory University 24 University of Notre Dame 24 Boston College 70 27 Dartmouth College 27 George Washington University 29 University of California, San Diego 29 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Anonymous
+1 I graduated debt free from a school consistently ranked at the lower end of the T25. I landed a prestigious federal appellate clerkship and got job offers from literally every firm in Biglaw that I applied to. I did very well in law school though. |
Anonymous
It’s not called Boalt Hall anymore smarty pants |
Anonymous
Meh. Statistics can be misleading. Many of these schools have their own law schools and favor their own undergrad applicants. But ok. |
Anonymous
Noted. I appreciate the correction. |
Anonymous
True. During the recession, when the number of applicants dropped, some top law schools reduced their class sizes rather than lower their standards for stats. |
Anonymous
Meh. Many threads have been over and over and over this. Correlation is not causation. "Feeders" are a myth perpetuated by nonlawyers who don't know any better. Go to a T14 and talk to your classmates, whose undergrads will span highly selective privates to many state flagships to regional universities. |
Anonymous
| Close friend of mine at our T5 law school had over a 4.0 at state school for college, so yes it worked out great on the admissions side. But then, my very smart friend got their butt kicked first year, didn't know how to take hard exams because college had been so easy and writing expectations were not high. So be careful what you wish for. |
Anonymous
|
I work in law school admissions at a T50 school. All about the LSAT and GPA for us. You can be from podunk college that many people have never heard of but if you have a 3.9 from there plus a good LSAT, you are always juggling multiple offers.
|
Anonymous
Law schools are largely driven by LSAT and GPA (used by USNWR rankings), so I'd argue undergraduate schools don't make that much difference. If you are going to factor undergraduate schools, the list adjusted for size of student body would probably be much more meaningful if you are looking at increasing individual odds. 1 Yale University 2 Princeton University 3 Amherst College 4 Harvard University 5 University of Chicago 6 Duke University 7 Columbia University 8 Georgetown University 9 Pomona College 10 Yeshiva University 11 Stanford University 12 Claremont McKenna College 13 Swarthmore College 14 Barnard College 15 Dartmouth College 16 University of Pennsylvania 17 Cornell University 18 Northwestern University 19 Williams College 20 Wesleyan University 21 Rice University 22 Washington University in St. Louis 23 Brown University 24 Vanderbilt University 25 Bowdoin College 26 Washington and Lee University 27 Tufts University 28 Brandeis University 29 Colgate University 30 Bryn Mawr College |
Anonymous
I am once again begging people who haven't been through Law School admissions in the last couple of years to familiarize themselves with the current landscape. The top admissions consultant has published this list of 2020 and 2021 admissions stats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Oxg1daKToiMystD7rGrbpnHNO-JXdc2ugQMrR0YR7aQ/edit#gid=0 For Columbia last year, the medians for accepted students were 174 LSAT, 3.84 GPA For Chicago, they were 172 and 3.91 The highest-ranked schools with a median GPA near 3.75 were: Boston U (3.77, median LSAT 169) Notre Dame (3.77, 167) UNC (3.73, 164) There were 15 schools with a 170 median last year; the lowest media GPA among them was 3.8 |
Anonymous
Did you miss the "+"? Yeah, if you slip into the box with exactly a 175 and exactly a 3.75, you might get rejected by either Chicago or Columbia. On a crazy bad day, maybe even both. But with any margin above either line, you're getting into both. |
Anonymous
She should apply widely. She'll get in somewhere good--high GPAs are a dime a dozen, 180s ain't--but there's no way to predict where. (Likewise, somewhere decent outside the T14 will offer her a ride, but good luck predicting where.) |
Anonymous
In law school application land this is called a "splitter". Some schools are know to be "splitter-friendly" and some aren't. A person with that record should probably apply more broadly than someone with a GPA/LSAT in the same range, because it'll be more unpredictable which schools accept them. There are entire other message boards devoted to the minutiae of law school admissions, if that's a thing you're interested in. |
Anonymous
Disagree with this advice. I turned down better schools for a T50 school that offered me a substantial scholarship. I graduated law school debt free. I graduated top 10% and was on the law review board and had many offers from top tier firms. I ended up hating big law and it was easy to leave after 5 years because I had no debt and substantial savings. YMMV. Don't listen to absolutist advice, though. |