What are my odds of getting into Harvard Law?

change your last name to Bush or Kennedy and you are "in".

Well... I meant other than the obvious.

Unfortunately, neither Bush nor Kennedy go well with my first name.

everybody has the grades so you have to have something else; like 'varsity x-c team' or other things you did. it helps to have important people write letters for you, too.

ONLY NERDS GO TO HARVARD Law

simple. just call the school, ask to speak to an admissions counselor and ask how much the place of undergraduate studies factors into their admission process. from what I experienced, most admission offices will be honest when they tell of their whole application review process. usually, law schools know what schools it is harder to attain higher GPAs, that would be the biggest factor. If the school you would transfer to has a higher status as far as a great education (and therefore harder to get a higher GPA) then it might matter, otherwise, a 3.9 is a 3.9....but all things said, you have to rock that LSAT.

Brass Tax wrote:

... is the place I do my undergrad going to have a huge weight in whether or not I get into some of my top choice law schools?

It probably would be better to transfer to Madison. If you think you are Harvard Law material, you shouldn't have to worry about whether you would get a 3.9 at Madison versus at Whitewater or Stevens Point or wherever you are right now. Compared to other schools in the Wisconsin university system, Madison would have much more weight with the admissions committee at a place like Harvard. I would guess that a decent number of applicants from the main campus of a good state university are accepted, but not too many from the smaller campuses within the same system, unless it is the California system.

A friend of mine started at Harvard Law this year and got into every place he applied, he spend his undergrad at Wake Forest and a school in Georgia (I think GT), so you don't HAVE TO go to a prestigious undergrad. His grades were good, but not a 4.0. Probably helped that he scored 180 on his LSAT.

I was a student at Harvard Law School (HLS) in the 1980s, and can tell you generally how it worked back then. The HLS admissions office kept statistics on all undergraduate institutions from which students had been admitted over the years, including subsequent law school grades of students admitted from each undergraduate institution. Based on those statistics, undergraduate GPAs of applicants were adjusted to account for differences due to, for example, grade inflation or academic standards at various schools. For undergraduate institutions for which HLS had very little information, LSAT scores and other factors were likely to be given greater weight (and, presumably, there would be less flexibility in admitting students whose undergraduate records deviated substantially from 4.0).

A plurality of my law school classmates were undergraduates at Harvard, and a rather high percentage were undergraduates at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, but as I look through my first year class, I see others who graduated from Transylvania (!!), Millsaps, U.C. at San Diego, Glenville State, Lawrence, Wabash, Harpur, U.C. at Santa Cruz, Presbyterian, Augustana, Southern Illinois, La Roche, South Carolina College, and U. of Texas at San Antonio. I had at least two or three classmates from U. Wisc. at Madison, but I doubt that coming from the Madison campus gave them any huge advantage in the admissions process. (In fact, I remember one of them telling me that, if he had gotten a single "B" during his years at Madison, he wouldn't have been admitted to HLS.)

Regardless of whether you're at the Madison campus or elsewhere, you're probably going to need an undergraduate GPA in the range of about 3.9-4.0. I would expect your LSAT score to be somewhat more important if you're at one of the smaller campuses.

Personally, I would think that transferring to another campus at this point would do more harm than good -- at least, insofar as law school admissions is concerned. If you're a strong candidate for HLS, then you should be developing a good reputation among the faculty and others at your current campus. Transferring to Madison might just make you into another unknown undergraduate at a big campus. If you're happy at your current school, and you're getting a good education, then I don't see much upside to transferring.

Aim higher: Yale Law.

It's all BS. We all gonna die, anyway. I keep wondering why, if they were serious, al-Qaeda didn't commit dirty bomb attacks on big-bucks US colleges.

Maybe this War On Terror is all BS?

Hey so I'm actually at Wake Forest undergrad right now and am interested in Harvard law. Is there anyway you could put me in your contact with this friend of yours from Wake who went to Harvard law? Thanks in advance

Are you an underrepresented minority? If so, your chances are excellent.

just fyi, on Martindale (and maybe other, similar online databases of law firms and lawyers), you could probably find a bunch of alums from Wake who went to Harvard.

When I was on my way to Wake Law, that's how I found some people who went there from my undergrad school. One of them sent me a bunch of outlines.

I'm no lawyer, but here's what you do. Stay at your current university. Get basically all A's. You really need to crush the LSAT, so start preparing now. It's probably worth paying for a formal test prep class.

Establish first-name basis relationships with multiple faculty members. It doesn't matter which department they're in. Eventually, they have to think you're a star. Dig in to your class work, then go to office hours and ask (interesting) questions. Ask to learn more, maybe through additional reading. The trick is doing this without looking like suck-up. Ask professors about how to get a great summer internship. Ask if you can write a senior thesis.

ShaqDiesel wrote:

Are you an underrepresented minority? If so, your chances are excellent.

Or a rich white guy? Can your parents write a check to add a wing to the library? Any politicians in your family?