How much does undergrad prestige matter?

Michael Ma

Sorry if this has already been addressed. Does anyone know how much law school admissions weight an applicants undergrad prestige? I'm graduating from a state school thats ranked outside of the top 100. How much would that adversely affect my chances? My GPA is in the 75 percentile for all the schools I'm looking at, and I am waiting on my September LSAT.

gioaragon95

Your school's prestige isn't seriously taken into account.You can look at great schools like Yale which displays the schools that have been admitted this year. There are a handful of state schools there and I am sure they are still great schools.

What they do look at and analyze is your GPA and also your school's mean GPA. They look at the latter to determine whether grade inflation is present at your school or not. You can find these stats through your school's website.

Michael Ma

@gioaragon95 said:
Your school's prestige isn't seriously taken into account.You can look at great schools like Yale which displays the schools that have been admitted this year. There are a handful of state schools there and I am sure they are still great schools.

What they do look at and analyze is your GPA and also your school's mean GPA. They look at the latter to determine whether grade inflation is present at your school or not. You can find these stats through your school's website.

Thanks for the info!

Cant Get Right

Going to a prestigious school can actually hurt you if they don't inflate your grades like everyone else. I know Princeton and several others are known to deflate grades. A 4.0 from X State University will still count as a 4.0, and a 2.0 from Princeton will still count as a 2.0. It's all about the rankings and the rankings are all about the numbers.

That said, they are very aware of which schools deflate grades. Half of every incoming class will be below the median GPA, so a deflated GPA from MIT or something will be understood within its context and likely be competitive for one of those splitter spots.

Paul Caint

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Half of every incoming class will be below the median GPA

Haha it's so easy to forget that. I always think about needing to be above the median GPA for a school, when in reality half the people they take are below

TexAgAaron

So I am going to jump in here. I know LSAC has a school report they have on each institution which includes GPA and LSAT averages. Is there a way to obtain these numbers?

I tried looking up mean GPA's but I got a ton different numbers; I wasn't sure which one was the most reliable.

poohbear

@akeegs92 said:
So I am going to jump in here. I know LSAC has a school report they have on each institution which includes GPA and LSAT averages. Is there a way to obtain these numbers?

I tried looking up mean GPA's but I got a ton different numbers; I wasn't sure which one was the most reliable.

I had the same issue but I found that you can actually see this via your LSAC account! Go: Apply -> Credentials -> Transcripts -> "Academic Summary Report" (on the right hand side). I may or may not be wrong but I think? this is the report that adcoms get to see

There's a row in that report that says "GPA College Mean" which shows you "the average GPA for law school candidates who graduated at any time period from the institution and who registered for the Credential Assembly Service during the most recent three years you attended the school. There must be a minimum of 50 candidates in the LSAC database to produce this calculation."
^this is taken directly from the key to that Academic Summary report: https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/prelaw/keytotheonlineacademicsummaryreport.pdf

I also have a take from the LSAT so I'm not sure if they only produce this report after you have LSAT and transcript on record. But hopefully this helps!

TexAgAaron

Thanks @poohbear I unfortunately haven't made my LSAC account yet haha. But at least now I can access that at some point. Extremely curious about these numbers.

TheMikey

school prestige doesn't matter.

just focus on the LSAT since you seem to have a good GPA and you will get good outcomes!

Rigid Designator

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LindsMitch

I sure hope prestige doesn't matter...I went to a super small religiously-affiliated liberal arts school. It is ranked regionally for top schools in the area, but certainly wouldn't qualify as prestigious. Several of my classmates have gone on to pretty good schools though and have told me it never came up in their apps and seems pretty unimportant.