Advice Please!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

I’m currently a HS sophomore, and I’m just beginning to do preliminary college research. My passion is for appellate law, but I definitely have deep interests in other fields as well. So far, Yale sounds like an ideal environment for me, and it’s strong focus on the humanities (based off what I’ve seen, anyhow) would work very well for me as I would almost certainly be a political science major. I am also more of an academic and more of an introvert. I realize that Yale is a reach for anyone, certainly for me, but I was wondering if I might have a chance at possibly, with luck, getting in when I apply in two years, and what it would take to get there. Thank you for helping!

I’m probably giving way too much info here, but I hope it helps! Thanks again!

STATS —

White, Male, attending one of the best Los Angeles public high schools
PSAT-NMSQT: 1440 (Gr10), 1400 (Gr9)
GPA (UW): 4.0
Class Rank (projection): probably top 5%, quite possibly top 1%, class size ~800

COURSELOAD (after 10th grade, just projected) —

Gr9: H Algebra 2, H Chemistry, POD, English 9, PE, Journalism 1, Psychology 1 (Com. Col.), Anthropology 2 (CC)
Gr10: H Math Analysis, AP Biology, AP European History, H English 10, PE, Italian 1
Gr11: AP Calculus AB+BC, AP Physics CEM+CM, APUSH, AP Eng. Lang., AP Music Theory, Italian 2
Gr12: AP Statistics, AP Environmental Science, AP Gov, AP Eng. Lit., AP CSP*, Italian 3 (possibly AP Italian if offered)

Fulfills requirement
*I also might take math and/or political science courses at the local CC

EXTRACURRICULARS —

Long Term Strategic Planning (a school governance committee for long-term planning)
Gr9: Facilities and Operations committee
Gr10-12: Academic Achievement committee

Peer Tutoring
Gr9: Volunteer
Gr10-12: Paid

California YMCA Youth & Government (Model Legislature and Court Program)
Gr9: Delegation Cabinet member, Forum (freshman program area) Court Chief Justice
Gr10: Appellate Court program area, applying for Supreme Court
[Beyond here, it depends on my luck, please bear with me]
Gr11: Possibly running statewide for Chief Justice (if I get into SC this year), otherwise, delegation office
Gr12: CJ if I run/win, otherwise I will likely run for delegation President (there probably wouldn’t be much competition)

Moot Court Team
Gr9: Member, placed 8 of 24 (Argument) and 11 of 24 (Justicing) at the local competition my team hosted
Gr10: Secretary, also organizing local tournament, and probably competing at the Princeton tournament
Gr11: Argumentation officer & Vice-Captain
Gr12: Team Captain

*I know this area is a little thin; how could I fix that given that appellate law is very specific and fairly uncommon?

COLLEGES I’M CONSIDERING —

Yale University
University of Chicago
Stanford University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Brown University
Harvard University
Georgetown University
University of California, Berkeley
American University
Boston College
Duke University
University of California, San Diego
College of William and Mary
University of Virginia
University of Washington, Seattle
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Los Angeles

*This is a fluid list more or less in order of interest

2

First off, without an SAT/ACT score it’s too early to post a chance thread, which you have nicely disguised from the title as a plea for advice (thereby trying to get more posters to read your thread)!

Secondly, as a newbie poster to CC, you should know there’s a whole section for chance threads. If you want to play that game, you should repost there: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/

Here on the Yale forum, what you will get is the standard response from seasoned posters like myself, tailored a bit to your individual situation.

Lastly, all student’s apply to Yale College as Liberal Arts Majors, and do not choose a major, called a concentration, until their sophomore year. So, whatever students select as their “intended major” when they apply to the college has absolutely no bearing on what major they will ultimately graduate with. And no school on your list that I’m aware of offers an undergraduate degree in law. So you need to do a bit more due-diligence in the majors colleges offer.

Yale majors: http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/majors-in-yale-college/

Keep up the good work – and best of luck over the next year and a half!

3

Thank you Gibby, and I realize that I can’t be “chanced”-- and I don’t want to be, either (as you said, I’ve got practically nothing with which to make those sort of determinations; besides, my intent was not to post a “chance” thread described as one asking for advice). Rather, as Yale is one of the two schools I’m most interested but as of now have no chance of getting into, I’m wondering what I can do in order to become competitive. That’s why I’m here. You all have much more experience and knowledge in this area, and if you can provide a few pointers or advice it would be very much appreciated.

I’m asking for advice so I can make my own chances, opportunity, and luck. My parents never went through the application process I will be going through in two years, and so I felt it might help to turn to this forum and this community, where I might be able to glean ideas from an agglomeration of perspectives. So basically, my question boils down to this: What can I do to reach a point where I have a good shot at getting into Yale, especially given my interests? Or, is it too late?

4

Be yourself, please. It’s a shame today to see kids worry about shaping themselves to “fit” a colleges needs. Colleges want individuals with goals and interests of THEIR OWN. If you think you’re going to find someone who can tell you what you’d best pursue other than yourself you should probably do some re-evaluating. You’ve done well situating yourself, and you now have plenty of time to explore and discover what you love. Come two years, you will be asked to write about your passions, take this time now to figure out what they are. I cannot give you any Yale-specific advice, but I don’t think you should be looking for it anyway.

5

Thank you (NotIvyYet) for the response! Yeah, I definitely know what my passion is — appellate law — it’s just that not too many people have heard of it (hopefully admissions officers have!) and as it is lesser known and more of an academic form of law, there aren’t many opportunities at the high school level.

Yale is appealing to me (no pun intended) for a number of reasons, and no small part of that is how it seems to be a place where I can focus on appellate/polisci while still being able to go deeper into other fields I’m interested in but wouldn’t want to make a career out of. I don’t want to contort myself into some other form, squeezing myself into an academic setting where I wouldn’t thrive or belong — that’s part of why Yale (and also UChicago) sounds so good from my perspective, as opposed to other top schools like Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon.

A problem I’m trying to address while I still have time is how to show that appellate law is not just a cursory interest of mine but an actual passion. While I do have deep and abiding interests in many fields, that is the one I think I would be fulfilled by if I made my life around it. I also just started to look into internship opportunities (possibly with an appellate firm or my city councilman), which should bolster my resume.

I realize that I am one of the younger members of this forum, and I think that that gives me an opportunity: Instead of posting a last minute “chance-me” and realizing that my resume is sub-par or doesn’t reflect my interests and passions, I can work to make it so that anyone looking at my academic past can immediately see what I’m interested in, why, and what I’ve done with that focus. And even if I don’t get into Yale, if I’m at least competitive I can probably get into a number of other excellent schools that I would also fit into.

6

If I may: your discussion of “appellate law” strikes me as very very strange. It’s not as if it exists in a vacuum w/o a broad base knowledge of the entirety of academic law. I know young people will say they desire to be a pediatrician or neurosurgeon one day. I met a 16 year old young man who said he wants to be a pediatric spinal surgeon. Okay…

But for a young person to say he/she wishes to specialize in appellate law cases and work seems to me, overly pedantic

7

As another parent I’ll speak up with my two cents. You say that your parents aren’t able to give you advice on the college application process so you came to this forum. So, please listen to the actual parents on here who have a wealth of knowledge. Most of us have reasonably successful kids, so we are able to give advice that is not sugar coated, and may not always be what you want to hear. A couple of folk have mentioned your continuing to talk about your interest in appellate law is a little, let’s say, premature. You have to get through two years of high school, go to college and then, if lucky, law school, before you can even begin to decide what type of law you want to practice. The good thing about going to a school like Yale is that you may change your mind completely about what you are interested in once you start taking classes. You may also completely change your mind about wanting to be a lawyer. My D, who is a junior at Yale, is at that crossroads and after always believing she wanted to be a lawyer, her Yale experience has taken her in a totally different direction and that may no longer be her objective. So my advice is to do you, concentrate on what you like and are passionate about, get good grades, get to know your teachers and counselors (recommendations are key) and enjoy high school. Based on your tentative list, you will probably end up in a great school, but try to live in the moment. High school will be over before you know it. Hopefully your only memories won’t be the great grades you got in history class. Good luck.

8

Man plans, and God laughs.

One of my sisters did appellate law. She didn’t plan it, but her passion for LGBTQ issues put her there. I don’t recall her college major precisely, but I think she double-majored in something like biology and ceramics. She burned out on law, owned a furniture design company for a while, and finally came back to teaching law.

I can guarantee that none of this was planned while she was in high school.

Be yourself, be open, be energetic, and good luck.

9

You can “fix” your future application by broadening your interests. As others have said, your interest in appellate law is not going to move your application forward at Yale (and at the other college on your list) as it’s overly specific for a teenager – and most undergraduate colleges do not offer a degree in law or appellate law (other than schools such as John Jay College for Criminal Justice: http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/majors). Every college on your list is going to wonder “What the heck do we do with a kid like @dragonfury29.” That’s not a plus factor for you! If you can’t broaden your interests, or have no desire to do so, you should consider applying to John Jay like-colleges instead! See: http://www.thebestschools.org/rankings/25-best-bachelor-legal-studies-degree-programs/ (Please do notice that not one college on this list has a prestigious name like those on your list. There’s a reason for that. The best institutions of higher learning do not believe that it’s appropriate to educate a student in something as specific as law for an undergraduate degree.)

10

On another note, when I was in high school in the dark ages (1975-78), I was really into criminal justice. This was way before this was a “thing” and even before DNA was anything but a long word in my biology book. When I was looking for a university, I looked for schools that had a criminal justice degree. They, like the ones listed by @gibby, were not schools that I was aspiring to attend. When I got into Yale, which did not and does not have a criminal justice degree, I did not want to go but wanted to go to another school which did have such a degree. Luckily my mom stepped in and told me that I was going to Yale or else (that’s they way parents were back then, not a lot of coddling going on). I went to Yale, got a BA in psychology and then went on to get a MA in Criminal Justice. I have had a 35 year career in criminal justice, corrections and human services. So, again, the path you start on now is not a straight one. Do you, the best “you” that you can be and that will come through in your applications.

11

Thanks for all the responses — I never expected to get nearly this many, let alone ones that are so informative and thoughtful! By just focusing on appellate, I probably am limiting myself with a sort of tunnel vision. So, should I maybe broaden it to just more law/politics in general? Apparently my city councilman’s office is just a few minutes away, so maybe I could intern there. And even though my area of concentration may change, from what I understand it’s better to delve deeper into one field than just scratch the surface in many others when applying to colleges (of course, that might be totally mistaken).

Personally, I’ve always struggled with focusing myself because I love a number of subjects. However, last year when I discovered appellate law, I found something that I could foresee myself doing professionally, and a field that also appears to pay well too. When I am in college, I plan on studying in a lot of fields other than, say, political science. From what I understand, Yale is extremely strong in political science, but also pretty much everything else, and so I would have that sort of opportunity.

As far as parents go, I just want to clarify. My parents did not go through the admissions process to the extent that I will be, and certainly not recently. That’s why your input, especially from parents of students having just been through that process, is so valuable to me.

12

No college expects/wants a HS student to be a specialist; that’s what grad school is for. On the flip side, you are correct in that you don’s want to come across as “jack-of-all-trades…” That’s why there is a middle ground. Nothing wrong with exploring some different options.

13

I would suggest broadening it to political science and maybe one or two other non-academic, non-law, non poli-sci, non-tutoring, non-volunteering EC’s (think speech & debate, drama, music, art, robotics, computer science, athletics etc). While you may be interested in going into law, and can certainly say so in an interview – focusing on your law interest for undergraduate admissions will not help you move your application forward at liberal arts schools, nor will it help you select courses once you’ve been admitted to a liberal arts college. You can only choose from the basket of options a college offers as a major. So, I would also suggest you spend some time googling the colleges on your list to see what majors those schools offer. Best of luck to you!

14

I’m a little amused that a HS student could have a “passion” for appellate law. I write this as a party to a civil suit which is in its eighth year, including three in the appellate phase. Truthfully, it’s dry, boring stuff.

15

@dragonfury29 I like a lot about your tone in your writing. It appears to me that you care a lot about your learning, and you are a careful person and are willing to listen. Just remember that this is an internet forum, we do not really know you that well. You are going to get a lot of different opinions: many of them are very informative, while some statements may be too strong. So please use your independent/critical thinking. If you have a good reason for passion toward appellate or whatever, keep it. Most kids at your age have no clue about what they want to do and will be exploring their path in many years down the road. I did not really find my path until I was 30. But I will not doubt that you may have already found your path at your tender age. Of course, it is also quite likely that you will find something else more interesting down the road. But this should not prevent you from planning your path today.

I think you will do very well. Good luck, be yourself, do something interesting possibly outside your HS (no or few of your peers will do), make yourself special, and enjoy your life.

16

@prof2dad Thank you! I realize that I may not be able to express who I am on an internet forum, but that’s part of the beauty in this — most people here, be it on my thread or anyone else’s, will not have “the answer.” Rather, I think that the opinions on this forum present a spectrum, and as I have two years yet to go in HS, I have yet to know where I fall on that spectrum. This variety of ideas, of perspectives, is what gives me the opportunity to (over the next few years) make sure that I am qualified to an extent where I can meet the expectations of most of those inevitably varied points of view.

In response to a lot of posters here (thank you all!), appellate law is not necessarily going to be the field I decide to go into. And yet, oral argument and playing the justice before those performing it is fulfilling, to me, in a rare way. I love how it is academic, how it’s sort of the study of the Constitution as a living, changing entity. No two interpretations are the same, and the “right” one can only be determined — via thoroughly imperfect means — by a panel of eight or nine justices, based on the quality of arguments presented before them. While appellate law and argument is in many respects academic, it also captures a fundamental aspect of humanity: It’s flawed. To @sherpa , you say it’s “dry, boring stuff.” I can see how it may appear that way. But however weird it is, however strange and non-traditional, last year when I was putting over a dozen hours (I didn’t have any school work to speak of last year) into briefing case law I didn’t have to brief just so I could craft an argument of quality, I didn’t find boredom. The tedium did not deter me.

In all honesty though, given that you know far more than I about Yale, do you think that’s a setting where I might belong?

17

yes, you might. I think what everyone is trying to say is that it’s early days.

18

“And yet, oral argument and playing the justice before those performing it is fulfilling, to me, in a rare way. I love how it is academic, how it’s sort of the study of the Constitution as a living, changing entity.”

I agree that constitutional law is fascinating. And I agree that oral argument can be fulfilling, and exciting.

But for the most part appellate law isn’t constitutional law and, at least from my limited experience, there is very little oral argument in appellate work. In the case I mentioned above, we had eight days in front of the trial judge and 20 minutes in front of the court of appeals.

19

“Yale sounds like an ideal environment for me.” But the question will be, will Yale think you’re an ideal candidate for them to accept. I’ve gotten a wee bit lost in the talk about forms of law practice, for a kid in his soph year of hs.

If you think you may major in poli sci, get some involvement beyond the hs govt and moot clubs. If you were a junior, earlier this year, I would have said, get involved with the elections or your local/state reps. Top colleges don’t accept you because you define a future career. They want the drives, vision and other attributes that work for them. It’s “show, not just tell.” And they like stretch, not just in academics, but how you think outside the hs box.

You have miles to go. Think about how to step beyond.

20

This has been an interesting thread to follow, so I will jump in here with my first post (only just discovered CC with DS applying to colleges this year). I am of the same (older) vintage as a number of the other posters here and am a graduate of Yale and subsequently Berkeley Law School.

I applaud OP’s enthusiasm for a very specific interest. You certainly have focused a lot of your EC time and energy in this area, which is admirable. Now a bit of reality to put some of this in context. As some of the other posters have suggested, “appellate law” is drier than you think. A case goes to an appeals court (state or federal) because the losing party believes the trial court did not apply the law correctly. Often the focus is on the trial process (e.g. evidentiary rulings, jury instructions) and sometimes the interpretation or application of statutes, regulations or common/case law. Cases involving true issues of constitutional law may make the headlines, but they are rare. Moot court and mock court programs (especially for high school students) necessarily will predominantly choose topics of contemporary public interest to keep student interest high. Real life will unlikely be so interesting.

That being said, law school is pretty much 3 years of the type of appellate training that you seem to be passionate about. At top tier law schools, it’s really the study of the history, philosophy and politics of law. What the law is is not nearly as important as the why’s of the law. That is why the Socratic method is so heavily used at the top law schools. That is also why graduates of top law schools have to cram harder for bar exams than graduates of lesser schools who probably had a better education on what the actual laws are that will be covered in the exam.

Now this takes us back to Yale, or any selective college or university. Critical thinking is at the heart of any liberal arts education, no matter the profession or vocation you eventually choose. These colleges want students who exhibit curiosity and open minds, who will examine and dissect their own beliefs and opinions and those of others. The best appellate lawyers can argue their opponent’s side as well as their own. Having an interest in appellate law (or do you really mean constitutional law) and pursuing this line deeply in your EC’s can be a good way to distinguish yourself with the AO, a hook for the story about you. Please remember though, Yale is not looking for future appellate lawyers. It is looking for students that will enhance the learning experience of their fellow students, and even the faculty. How your EC’s support that is what is important, not what your EC’s are.