<p>I disagree with most of that.</p>
<p>It does not really matter what your major is. If you do engineering and get a 2.9, you're going to go through hell trying to get into law school. They don't much care that your 2.9 was in engineering and might have put you in the top 1/4 of your class. OTOH, if you were in liberal arts and got the exact same class rank, which brings in a 3.5, most law schools would look seriously at you. So no, major does not matter, in that schools don't adjust your GPA for it. So long as you take something that isn't a complete joke, no one cares what it is.</p>
<p>As for schools, same goes. As long as your school isn't horrible, you'll probably look decent.</p>
<p>The Penn admissions dean (in Law School Confidential, 2000 edition) said that transfer students are fine. Granted, a student who hops between several schools would look bad, but one transfer might not be held against you. Hanna, on these boards, transferred and was admitteed to HLS. Community college to university = not the best idea. Transfer from MIT to Swathmore because you realized that the techie environment isn't for you = good choice. </p>
<p>No need to take a prep course. Single best thing to do is go through old LSATs. Some people NEED a prep course for the motivation. Yes, law schools average the scores. Some look at the higher of the two, especially if there is an explanation for the lower score (i.e. construction in the room next door, flu, etc). Although there is evidence that students who take the test twice don't do as well in law school, there is no evidence (that I've heard of) that law schools penalize students for taking it twice. </p>
<p>The problem with #4 is that it comes from the perspective of a 22-year-old. "Work experience" for a lot of people that age means retail or a job as a paralegal. Won't do much for you, unless you can make a great essay out of the latter. "Work experience" for me meant engineering - real engineering work - in a lab, writing proposals, going to conferences, presenting my research, etc. IMO, being a nanotechnologist helped me get into law school. For a lot of people who are 30, work experience is much, much more than retail. There are people at my law school who worked in hospitals (legal dep't) or as social workers and want to go into public service. Yeah, that's going to be looked upon differently than a job at the Gap. IMO, most law school applicants just don't have much real work experience. If they take time off, it's at a very non-descript job, and their summer experience probably is meaningless. Some of this might be intertwined with the fact that older applicants are best judged on their work experience, not their college transcripts from 15 years ago.</p>