Is this the poster who asked about ESU in the college forum?

Only fools pay $80k+ in tuition only. LOL! 😂

Anonymous wrote:It’s definitely not worth it but in the spirit of full transparency I didn’t graduate from one those T-25 elite schools. However, I’m pretty sure I out earn the vast majority of the graduates of those schools as an entrepreneur including most doctors and lawyers. Started my own successful government IT business and now I have some graduates of those T-25 schools working for me. It’s not where you go to school but what you make of your life after. Life is good.

Anecdotes aren't averages. So, does it make sense for Jeff Bezos to think you are a poor, POS for starting a rinky-dink government contracting business while he went to Princeton and is worth over $100BN?

Folks...for every one of your little anecdotes, there is an anecdote for one of the richest people in the world (Must/Penn, Bezos/Princeton, Griffin/Harvard, etc.) from a Top 25 school...you can't win this game.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the takeaway is if you can't get into a top 20, 30 school. Or more relevant to the topic, can't PAY for that type of school, you're basically screwed out of top grad schools and relegated to the mid-tier or low castes of society? LOL

Viva America!

Not at all. See my posts. I worked a long time in admissions for a (lower) T10 law school. We loved strong GPA’s in good majors from state schools. We wanted socioeconomic diversity.

See the quote below for a group tracking the top feeder schools for law school. Understand the schools they reference are the Top 30 schools...which includes the University of Michigan, UVA, and Berkeley (the only State schools listed).

Again, one way to look at is that 43% of law school students at the Top law schools did not attend the Top 30 undergrads. Another way, is that 57% of all law school students at Top law schools came from only 30 schools... 1% of all 4-year colleges in the United States produced 57% of all law school students.

Also, the #1 feeder to each Top 10 law school was that very same undergraduate institution. I.e., the #1 feeder to UVA law school is UVA, the #1 feeder to Northwestern Law School is Northwestern, etc.

Does institutional selectivity matter?
When applying to law school, yes, it appears that institutional selectivity does in fact play a role. In our sample, of the students who went on to enroll at America’s best JD programs, approximately 57% graduated from colleges categorized as “Most Selective” or “Extremely Selective.” However, 21% of elite law school students in our sample did graduate from schools indicated as less selective or non-selective, suggesting that attendance at a highly selective undergraduate college or university isn’t a prerequisite to earning a top-flight JD. Click here to see how we group colleges by selectivity.

I think this is misleading as it confuses causation with correlation. Law schools are stat-driven because they need to maintain their rankings. They get a disproportionate number of students from selective institutions because those institutions have a disproportionate number of high stat kids. If the high stat kids are applying from other schools, they will definitely be considered.

Take a look at Yale Law School. They used to publish the number of students in the bulletin (see pages 115-117 in the PDF below). Median LSAT for a class is 175. If you look at the ABA statistics on the top 240 undergraduate schools for providing applicants to Law schools, you will see that there are many that do not have a top score reaching 175 in certain years. For instance, The Ohio State University did not have anyone out of 404 applicants in 2017 score over 174. No one reached the median at Yale Law. The schools with higher numbers enrolled at YLS school correspond to those with students with higher LSAT (and GPA) scores.

https://bulletin.yale.edu/sites/default/files/yale-law-school-2018-2019.pdf
https://law.yale.edu/admissions/profiles-statistics
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/May2018CouncilOpenSession/18_may_2015_2017_top_240_feeder_schools_for_aba_applicants.authcheckdam.pdf

It’s definitely not worth it but in the spirit of full transparency I didn’t graduate from one those T-25 elite schools. However, I’m pretty sure I out earn the vast majority of the graduates of those schools as an entrepreneur including most doctors and lawyers. Started my own successful government IT business and now I have some graduates of those T-25 schools working for me. It’s not where you go to school but what you make of your life after. Life is good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not worth it.

--Ivy double grad

Single ivy grad here, from back in the dark ages before tuition started increasing at twice the rate of inflation. I genuinely don’t see how the education is worth the list price anymore, unless you’re swimming in money and can drop $80k a year without noticing it. If you get a pile of aid (not loans!), then great, but otherwise no, not worth it. I’d have done just as well at one of our state schools (SUNY) and maybe even better.

SUNY even for free over an Ivy if accepted to both? Not sure how many would do that…that fomo and perceived prestige factor is tough to overcome