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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't speak for medical school but I can for law school.  I am an attorney with two high school seniors.  I asked law school counselors about placement from colleges and they said it doesn't make a difference where you go--it is GPA and LSAT.  Ivy level, Amherst, Williams, etc. do well because they are smart.  See other thread on this.  [/quote]

I’ve heard this before and I’m not saying you’re wrong but it always strikes me as odd. I’ve had kids in five different colleges across the range of (perceived) excellence. The kids in the local not-flagship, uncompetitive enrollment schools do very little work for easy A’s while the ones at the harder schools work their butts off for A’s. It isn’t even close in terms of the amount of work demanded and the quality produced. Just amazes me that law schools think a Swarthmore A is the same as a Salisbury A. Yes, LSAT probably reveals some of that but not necessarily. [/quote]

If two students both get a 3.8 GPA and a 168 on the LSAT, why would the law school care that the first student went to Swarthmore and the second went to Salisbury?

If anything, that the Salisbury student was able to get the same score on the LSAT speaks highly of their natural intelligence and potential, considering they probably come from a poorer background.

Law schools care about LSAT and GPA because it is heavily counted in ranking factors. No other reason at all.

This is why a double major engineering student with a 3.4 will be looked down upon compared to a 3.9 political science major. And the difference in difficulty between the majors is far bigger than between schools.

AKA Virginia Tech engineering is going to be more challenging and time-consuming than a Swarthmore Economics major.

And law schools don't even tend to look at rigor of courses.

Beyond the same LSAT and GPA, they start looking at leadership positions, extracurriculars, geographic diversity, college diversity (for which being from a masters-level public college rather than a top SLAC might help), etc. [/quote]

Because a ham sandwich could get a 3.8 at Salisbury. My kid has a 3.4 and says he “rarely” goes to class and says his HS classes were harder. A 3.8 at Swarthmore is someone who knows how to work hard. [/quote]
A ham sandwich could get a 3.8 but your kid has a 3.4, that really doesn't sound good on your kid or you yourself as a parent.

There's a big difference between a 3.4 and a 3.8. Many, including "top", colleges will give a B+ to a empty paper turned in for an essay. Getting a A's on the other hand tends to require writing intelligent papers, not crap

And again, these schools don't care about "working hard". They care about 1) raw intelligence and 2) organization skills. Raw intelligence is the LSAT. GPA is organization skills.

If a Salisbury kid could get the same score on the LSAT/MCAT as a Swarthmore kid despite going to a school with less resources and academically worse peers, that makes the Salisbury kid look better, not worse. [/quote]

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