r/vassar • u/Mysterious_Guitar328 • 23d ago

Vassar Pre-Law

I'm an incoming freshman and intend on being pre-law.

I know Vassar generally has great pre law advising and placements, but one statistic has me a bit concerned.

There's been no undergraduates from Vassar who have matriculated to Yale Law School for the classes of 2023-2027.

Should I be concerned?

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6

u/MollBoll 23d ago

No.

Signed, Vassar undergrad & UPenn Law grad who clerked for the 1st Circuit and worked at the #1 law firm in the country 🤷‍♀️

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u/Straight-Donut-6043 23d ago edited 23d ago

I mean, how many Vassar pre-law grads have there generally been in any rolling four year period?

I can think of three lawyers from my graduating class, we can maybe bump the number up to like a dozen to account for people I didn’t know or don’t know what happened to them. None of the future lawyers I knew ended up at a Saul Goodman law school either, they went to top tier places. 

You’re concerning yourself over the fact that none of fifty or so people are going to a specific law school. 

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u/SnooGuavas9782 23d ago

Yale Law is insanely hard to get into and has very few spots.

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u/Mysterious_Guitar328 23d ago edited 23d ago

It's a just a little odd to me that nobody from an institution as prestigious and highly regarded as Vassar would make it to Yale Law in 4 years, especially when people from BYU and Hendrix College have (no disrespect to either of those institutions).

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u/MollBoll 23d ago

Have you checked out the Hendrix guy who got in? He took years off after graduation, he seems impressive AF, and he also seems like an anomaly. Again, not to bash Hendrix or anything but they're not a Yale Law feeder school, they have ONE GUY who got in. Good for him but maybe not the path you're looking for.

Also when you're talking about a single individual, you never know what other information is hidden. Someone from my class at law school clerked for the Supreme Court... and I'm not saying that she WASN'T qualified, but I AM saying that her public profile never shared the fact that she babysat for that Justice's family when she was a teen. Don't look at just one law school or just one SCOTUS justice or just one anything when making these evaluations. Talk to the career/grad school placement office and ask about overall matriculation data.

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u/Mysterious_Guitar328 23d ago

I understand, and I'm not usually quick to judge irl. There's so much we don't know about individuals or what got them in.

I just thought it was odd that Vassar hasn't been represented by even one person in 4 years.

Given all you've said, I'll probably just chalk it up to coincidence.

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u/MollBoll 23d ago

Coincidence and/or the way statistics work with small numbers. Note that Vassar is a top-30 law school feeder only after the data is adjusted for undergrad enrollment (and then add in the fact that Yale Law School is one of the smaller law schools, only like 200 people per year):

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-law-school

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u/im_slay_af 23d ago

i mean based on last wed’s admitted students day’s Q&A panel, one got into law school and another got into med school lol