Does a 3.0 from Dartmouth have any more pull than a 3.0 from a state school?

Any boost here or am I still looking at sticking with the 25/75 percentiles of each school? Also, what are the best splitter schools that take LSAT over GPA?

No boost. Sometimes it can help if you're applying to the law school the same place you did undergrad, but obviously that wouldn't work here.

It seems like the Midwestern schools are friendlier to splitters.

Go to Career Services at Dartmouth and check out the binders for every application cycle. It lists the GPA and LSAT of Dartmouth applicants to law schools and where they got in and where they got rejected. It's a good measure of what you should expect.

What you'll find is that schools are definitely more accepting of lower GPAs from Dartmouth than the average school, unlike what the poster above just said.

Find in the binder where Dartmouth students got in with a GPA like yours.

That can't be accurate. There is no boost.

What's your major?

Sarcasm?

I thought the same thing (that there was no boost) but it did definitively seem like there was a boost when I looked at results from the past 5 years vs what lawschoolpredictor and other sites show for the average school.

Any boost is probably soft, like all things being equal, let's take the Dartmouth kid. But, they are not taking 3.0 dartmouth over 3.3 State U. Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent.

No man, they're going to take the Dartmouth grad because graduating from Dartmouth signifies that someone had a good high school GPA and didn't bomb the SAT, both of which are very important factors that people definitely still care about after college admissions.

The LSAT is the equalizer.

totally forgot about this.

Some, maybe most or all, Ivy League undergraduate schools maintain GPA/LSAT records of graduates accepted to various law schools. I know, for example, that Yale does or, at least, did. Some law schools seem to have close working relationships with particular undergraduate schools. Advisors at Dartmouth should be the best resource for this information.

I've checked those out before, but never thought to compare it to other stats. Thanks!




Major is Goverment + English with a Chinese minor. Yeah I know, a shit GPA at two humanities majors and a humanities minor, I can rule out a lot of schools already.

Your posts seems to be failing to grasp the only relevant point, so I will try to tell you.

1. Schools want a high rank in USNWR.
Higher rank= more prestige = better students = more money = higher rank = more prestige...

2. Better GPA = Higher Rank.

3. Therefore, schools do not care (other than as a *very* soft factor) Whether you went to shit state U or elite private $chool. Likewise, they do not care if you majored in drama or molecular nano-technology.

All that matters is the GPA #. The fact that you majored in a humanities will put at little to no disadvantage, just as the fact that you went to dartmouth will put you at little to no advantage. Major and Undergrad school does not effect rankings, and rankings are everything (see #1). All that matters is your GPA. ( and of course your lsat, something else that helps determine rank. In fact, Lsat matters more than GPA, but here you seemed to be wondering about gpa/undegrad/major).

TITRC

This also explains why engineering majors with 3.7s are treated worse by adcoms than sociology majors with 3.8s.

Oh dear god.

Why do people go to fancy undergrads anyway.
I always feel bad for the kids on this board who did undergrad at HYP and are now even at T20s or whatever, while there are plenty of kids at H who went to TTTTTTTT undergrads.

Come back when you have a 3.0 from a real Ivy.

The 3.0 from a real ivy is better than a 3.92 from a shitty state university from the mountain region.

Just get the data from career services. Something's going on, because the data do look different from what LSP would predict.

I just looked at the data from my school (HYP) and you're right, it is different. But i suspect this only happens at the very best schools for the very best students applying to the very best law schools.

For example, YLS or HLS might be ok with taking a kid from HYP with a hard major even if it hurts their GPA averages a little --they're so high up that it doesn't really matter.

At my school the MEAN (i know, not median) GPA is 3.80 for HLS and 3.82 for YLS--I think the medians are higher (yes i know I'm comparing mean to median but I don't have access to the median from my school).

For a Dartmouth grad applying to a non HYS--probably doesn't matter.

I think going to a good undergrad is a minor boost at the edges, particularly if you're a soft splitter. Soft splitter, for me, meaning that your LSAT is above the 75th, and your GPA below the 25th, but not very far below the 25th.
Example: If a law school tends to have a 3.7 GPA floor, but you've got a LSAT above the 75th and your GPA is 3.65, then it might help.

If you are talking about getting into law schools, assuming the lsats are the same, any school would take a 3.92 from a shitty school over a 3.0 from a "real ivy." 3.0 = Hurts school's gpa. 3.9= helps schools gpa. It's that simple.

To go into i-banking and consulting or even some top science/engineering jobs, or to go to grad school in fields where UG prestige does matter.

Completely speculating but I would think that 3.0 might actually be viewed differently than 3.0 from a state school because both are below everyone's 25th percentile for GPA. Which kid they take at this point will have no effect on their USNWR ranking so a kid from Dartmouth with that GPA might have a better chance than someone from a state school ceteris paribus. So if you had two splitters with 170+ LSATs I'd think the Darmouth kid would have the better chance.

However if you're dealing with GPA's that will define their important numbers (25th, median, 75th) I would think school does not matter at all.

Probably not, considering that 3.0 might be close to median at a good state school while a 3.0 at Dartmouth, thanks to unspeakable grade inflation, might be like bottom 10%.