Does your undergrad college matter when applying to law school?

Question

My high school GPA isnt that great, and the best school I will be able to get into are UIC and DePaul University(I live in illinois). If I want to go to a very prestigious law school, say Harvard or Yale, would that go against me or are these schools good enough?

my high school gpa isnt that great because I made some stupid choices my first 2 years but I am doing good now.

Answer 1

Yes, your undergraduate college matters (some schools add or subtract admissions points depending upon where you went to school), but the schools you mention are certainly strong enough to get you into law school. Although obviously not even all graduates of Harvard or Yale can get into Harvard or Yale law schools, if you do exceptionally well in college, you would not be precluded from getting in just because you went to DePaul or UIC.

Answer 2

It does matter and it will go against you. However, your GPA and LSAT score are the most critical. If you want to go to Harvard Law or Yale Law, you have to realize that everyone they accept will have top grades and test scores. So, you have to set yourself apart from the crowd.

When you arrive, you'll find a very diverse group of students from all sorts of schools. Yes, you'll see UIC and DePaul possibly represented. Going to a school like that won't prevent you from going to a top law school. However, you're almost certainly going to be the only one from your school there, whereas more prestigious undergrads will have sent multiple students in.

So, kick butt at whatever school you go to and hope for the best. You'll always have a shot as long as you can show them you're special.

Answer 3

The undergrad school a person attends is not nearly as important as one's GPA and LSAT scores. When I was in law school at one of the current top 10 schools we had students are almost every school in the country - Harvard and Yale were well represented, as were community colleges that had sent students on to their local state schools and mid-level private universities. You'll be fine as long as you have an excellent GPA and LSAT, and hopefully some volunteer work or extracurriculars as well.

To see what all the different schools are looking for, check out LSAC.org

Answer 4

If you are going to Law School at Harvard, or Yale, or University of Chicago, or Northwestern, you pretty much have to have straight A's in college and be in the 90%+ on the LSAT. Good luck.

As an answer to your question, law schools look for diversity just as much as the average undergraduate school. Going to DePaul or UIC won't win you any bonus points, but they won't hurt you either. But unless you have straight A's and a perfect GPA the Ivy Leagues probably won't be interested in you.

If you want to practice in Illinois, prepare to go to school in Illinois. The law schools in Illinois are solid, and for the most part will be much cheaper than going to a stuffy private Ivy League school. There is nothing wrong with going to Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Loyola, DePaul, John Marshall, or IIT-Kent. And if you go to Northern or Southern, you will graduate about 1/3 as much in debt as if you went to one of the private schools.

Illinois my senior year ('89-'90) decided that it would not take any Illinois grads right out of undergrad for the fall of '90 - it wanted to diversity the law school student body. They wait listed me and about 20 of my friends who had GPA's and LSAT's at or above the average admissions level. We, as a graduation gift, were dropped off of the waiting list the week after graduation. SIU had a major jump that year in first year law averages because most of us went to SIU instead.