<p>Long practice.</p>
<p>ROTFLASTR! Too bad you aren't on the HLS or like admissions committee. :)</p>
<p>I hear Smith has an excellent law school. </p>
<p>Supposedly, there are schools that do take engineering GPA into account. I've heard Michigan does, for example. And if you want to do patent, demand may be strong enough for patent engineers that it doesn't matter as much where you study. But again, this makes sense only if you're seriously into it -- not if you're not. (You can always probably get work as an engineer either way -- another factor to keep in mind.)</p>
<p>Susan, alas, Smith doesn't have a Law School...brain cramp, I was considering the case of Law School admissions instead of Law Firm recruiting when I chose my examples...but then my examples were chosen to bait precisely two people, both of whom responded. :)</p>
<p>Smith does, however, do very well in placements <em>in</em> to Law School. I'm a bit concerned about D having a Math major as the prospect of law school now seems to be sliding up the probability scale. (For her, I think a Law degree <em>before</em> the Master's in Public Policy makes more sense...she may find she doesn't need the Master's as much on Capitol Hill.)</p>
<p>Aries>>> ROTFLASTR.... Okay...I don't know the ultimate "R"...Rabbit? I always saw it as "C" for Cat.</p>
<p>Fwiw, if D does try for law school, knowing her ambitions, I'm going to urge her to pull out the stops for a Top 10. Hence my concern about the Math major and possible GPA.</p>
<p>Yeah, Dad, I know Smith doesn't have a law school. I thought you were making fun of the one poster's non-sequiter, so I thought I'd play along.</p>
<p>Susan...sorry...my sense of Yuma must have been momentarily disconnected.</p>
<p>Sakky, I would never sacrifice undergrad to the altar of Law School admissions.</p>
<p>Roommate. :) </p>
<p>Susan - if you ever have time, swing through Twinkle's old threads (all 20-some-odd). Honestly - while your rationale is sound, and you probably have heard that some schools will be really forgiving for engineers, in reality, I will say that trying to get into law school with the typical engineering GPA is HELLISH, my 98th percentile LSAT score aside. 14 law schools - 2 acceptances, a lot of waitlists. Unless you've been through that experience, you just would not understand how there is just never enough consideration given for the amount of work that engineering takes and the havoc it wrecks on one's GPA.</p>
<p>AriesA: ah.</p>
<p>Speaking of Twinkle, I should e-mail her a "good luck on finals" message. She sounded absolutely innundated last I heard from her.</p>
<p>TheDad, I'm not saying that you should sacrifice anything for anything. </p>
<p>However, the OP asked what is the best undergrad major to prep for law. I gave the answer. The best undergrad major to prep for law school is and easy major that will get you high grades. I am not telling anybody that they should then automatically choose an easy major. However, what I am saying is that if you don't, then you are not maximizing your chances of getting into law school. Whether that's important to you or not is up to you, but it's important that you at least realize what your tradeoff is. </p>
<p>I would conclude that I know plenty of people who wanted to go to law school, but also decided that they wanted to take tough, challenging coursework as undergrads. They ended up with grades that consigned them to worse law schools than they could have gotten into had they chosen to study something easier, and in some cases, they can't get into law school at all because of their bad grades. I am sure that quite a few of them would love to go back in time and change their major to something easy. Hence, I am sure some of them would have happily sacrificed their undergrad for law school admissions if they had to do it all over again.</p>
<p>Sakky, and I'm saying that a priori sacrificing UG is too high a price. I'm pretty big on delayed gratification when need be. But there's a fine line between that and life-warping obsession. I've known too many lawyers who, having gotten "there," say "Ooops." Keep your eyes on the goal but have a good journey all the same.</p>
<p>TheDad's message is one of wisdom Sakky. In fact, it's the Holy Grail.</p>
<p>Who can disagree with the general principle that one should enjoy one's journey in life? </p>
<p>However, we should keep in mind that one should also enjoy one's destination. My take is that you should do whatever it is you need to do to be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience. Again, while obviously obsession over a goal like law-school admissions is not good, neither is the present state that some people I know are in, where not only did they not get into the caliber of law-school they think they should have gotten into (or in certain cases, not gotten into any law school at all), but even worse are the perennially lingering psychological questions such as "How much better off would I be had I simply chosen an easier major or an easier undergrad school and thereby gotten higher grades?". If you lay it all out there and still don't get into the law-school of your choice, then at least you can say to yourself that you did everything you possibly could to get in and the vicissitudes of fate were not kind to you. But if you don't do everything you can, and you don't get in, then you can potentially be left in a state of psychological torment of continual 'what-if's' . Those kinds of 'what-if's' are devastating. You might spend the rest of your life wondering 'what-if'. </p>
<p>Now I also agree that there is a flip side of the coin - that everybody wants to study challenging and interesting stuff even if it's difficult, and you might spend the rest of your life wondering what it would have been like if you did. The point is that there are no easy answers, and I would couch things in terms of what you think you can handle, psychologically, for the rest of your life. If you take difficult coursework while still harboring dreams of law school, you should know that that coursework has the serious potential of hurting your law-school admissions chances, and if you can live with that, so be it. The important thing is to understand that the tradeoff exists, and you shouldn't fool yourself into believing that it doesn't.</p>
<p>Statistics is a Good major to prepare you for law schools, since you learn a lot about logic. Infact Statistics, Mathematics, and Physics majors have the highest average score on the LSAT. In these majors there is a lot of proofs that you have to learn and mathematics proofs require a great deal of logic.</p>
<p>Dr. Sedrish! So you've heard of "TheDad and the Holy Grail"? Great stuff, even though those Brits ripped it off and tweaked it a little.</p>
<p>Sakky = long winded</p>
<p>We get your point Sakky, take an easy major. If other people disagree, you don't have to keep beating your point into them.</p>
<p>I guess I'm one of those people who wishes that she could go back in time and take the easier major; not necessarily something like underwater basket weaving, but math, physics, or the like, instead of engineering, would have been a better choice. </p>
<p>Same goes for med school.</p>
<p>I agree with the general idea that an elite-law-school hopeful should take an easy major--but what exactly is an "easy" major?</p>
<p>The gist seems to be "anything but engineering"; so far I've satisfied Sakky's first point (go to a school with some grade inflation; i'm heading off to Columbia), but right now I'm trying to decide between the following "easy" majors: English, History, Political Science, and Philosophy. Which is the easiest?</p>
<p>You also don't want to take a major you hate just because it is easy. If you find Mathematics fun take a math based major even though it is harder, because in the end there is no point in living life miserable.</p>
<p>However if you want an easy major that does well on the LSAT look at economics. High LSAT score and easy major. Well easier than your math, engineering, and science majors.</p>
<p>Economics is my prospective major. Looks like I'm making the right choice. :D</p>
<p>Is there any site that gives average LSAT numbers for different undergrad majors?</p>