Does your undergraduate school attended matter for law school admissions or is it all about your GPA and LSAT?

Answer 1

Essentially you have asked two questions. First you ask whether the undergraduate school that you attend matters for law school admissions. The short answer is yes. The degree to which it matters, however, depends upon a great number of factors (e.g. relative prestige of the potential aw school, relative prestige of the undergraduate institution). All else being equal, a 3.0 at Harvard will get you into more law schools than will a 3.0 at Arizona State University. This question requires a case-by-case answer. Sorry.

The second question is whether admissions is all about GPA and LSAT? This question doesn't have a definite answer either, but is more answerable than the first. When your test score and GPA information are relayed to potential law schools, most of them plug the numbers into a formula that results in your being assigned a particular score (which of course will be used to rank your application based on probability of admission without consideration of soft factors). Each school will use a formula that weights GPA and LSAT score to a different degree (relative to each other). For example, school A might multiply your GPA by a factor of 10, but only multiply your LSAT score by a multiple of 5, while school B might multiply your GPA by a factor of 5, but multiply your LSAT score by a factor of 10. There is a list somewhere on line that gives approximations of these, but I can't remember where it is. In any case, if you haven't done so, proceed to http://officialguide.lsac.org/UGPASearch/Search3.aspx?SidString= and plug in your current numbers.

Some additional info that I received from a visit at UNC CH helps answer your question. I actually asked the same question while I was there and the dean's answer was pretty much: "We do not look that much into where you went to undergrad at. People have many different reasons for attending the schools they did. For instance some people just may not have been able to afford a different school, they may have needed to stay near by their home town for family problems, or their specific degree was better suited for them at their undergrad school." So if that view is taken at Unc school of law I'm pretty sure it is standardized.

The two main factors in your application are your GPA and LSAT. Your GPA is mainly an indicator of how well you did compared to your fellow students at your school and the lsat is a general "how well did you do compared to other prospective law students on a standardized level." Meaning the lsat conforms all of the applicants to the same scale rather than just comparing how well you did at your school since a student from Harvard who gets a 3.0 is probably more intelligent than a student from ECU who got a 3.5. Does that make sense? Or another example which the Dean also referred to was an applicant from Westpoint was applying and he had a GPA of 2.6. His initial reaction was that the student was an idiot but he checked into the average GPAs of the other students and found that the student was actually alot higher than his fellow students. So it all depends on the school you plan on attending but I would say that if you keep your GPA above a 3.4 and an LSAT above 158, you will have a good shot at getting into any state school unless its a top 20 school such as UC Berkley.

The other factors are the personal statement, academic resume, and addendum. The way I understand it is the personal statement and academic resumes are pretty much tie breakers and the addendum is just a complation of reasons your grades or lsat scores are low and/or your criminal background explanation. The way my LSAT prep book put it is when the schools get the apps, they divide them into three piles once the GPA and LSAT scores are reviewed. The three stacks are definatly getting in, may get in, and definatly not getting in. If there is any room after the first stack, they go through the second stack looking for the best applicants based on their scores and variable qualifications.

A website that you can go to and put your LSAT and GPA in and get a list of schools that meet your qualifications is:

http://www.studentdoc.com/lsat-scores.HTML

I hope this info helps and exuse any grammatical errors ;-)

Answer 2

A little. If you go to a school that is harder to get into, that will affect the admission committee's impression of you. However, some of the better schools are known for only giving high grades, so you will be less able to impress them with your GPA. If your undergraduate is well represented in the law school, that could actually work against you. For example, Harvard Law does not want to fill its ranks with Harvard graduates, so only so many will be admitted. You will be competing with very impressive candidates for the spots unofficially allocated to your undergrad. This is not a problem if your school is well regarded but underrepresented, say, applying from Williams or Washington in St. Louis to Stanford.

I got into Harvard Law from a third tier undergrad. I originally theorized that it helped my chances, since it would increase the diversity of the schools represented there. Some of my classmates disagreed and thought I was let in despite going to a low ranked undergrad. We never did figure it out; admissions is a black box and students can only theorize about why we got in and our friends didn't. What affect your undergrad has is something admission committees do not release.