A friend went to Maryland (honors) undergrad and then HLS. She is one of the smartest people I know.

Anonymous wrote:It’s because it’s way easier to get a high GPA at one of those colleges, and student gpa is a data point in the US News rankings for law schools, so law schools have an incentive to admit lots of students with high GPA’s.

As an Ivy undergrad, I can tell you from firsthand experience that grade inflation is a real phenomenon even at many of the most well-known schools. Depending on your choice of major, it is actually quite easy to graduate from an Ivy with a high GPA. It was usually the engineering students who get screwed trying to get into law school because their grading curves were formidable.

The HLS grads I know all went to Harvard undergrad. But that was the early 00s. Maybe things have changed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is that?

Not the case at all. Most Harvard and Yale law school alums completed elite undergraduate colleges.

Having looked through my friends' Facebooks (the paper kind) at these schools in the 2000s, I agree that this has been historically true true for Yale. I remember being surprised that SO many of the Yale law people went to HYPS, Amherst, Williams, etc. But Harvard has a bigger class and does have more people from non top ten schools.

Anonymous wrote:I only went to law school because I didn’t think I could get a highly paid job without it.

In contrast my BIL who went to Harvard landed on Wall Street and hasn’t even had to get an MBA. He’s making 7 figures with a BS.

There are people doing the same from many colleges.

Anonymous wrote:I have worked with several recent HLS grads who just are not very smart.

They take a lot of students with political connections and have graduated a suspicious amount of slimeballs who go into government.

I have worked with several recent HLS grads who just are not very smart.

It doesn’t matter where you go to undergrad as long as you get a 4.0, a high lsat, do all the meaningless “intern” jobs you can that fill your resume (better to stuff envelopes for a Senator than have a job in their eyes - one of the ways the rich are privileged in this process), and apply in November.

Anonymous wrote:Why is that?

Then go to a school that's no one's ever heard of. Cause and effect, according to OP. Simple.

Where are you from? I’m from the west and hadn’t heard of most of the small colleges discussed here before moving to DC—I thought Colgate was just toothpaste.

The ones I know went to Amherst, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard college. I think the folks you met might be atypical.

I only went to law school because I didn’t think I could get a highly paid job without it.

In contrast my BIL who went to Harvard landed on Wall Street and hasn’t even had to get an MBA. He’s making 7 figures with a BS.

I know two: one went to U of Chicago and the other went to UCLA

I know two Maryland grads who went to Harvard Law.

My cousin went to Harvard law. She went to UT-Austin undergrad.