Please I need help!! I want to major in Poli Sci/ English and go to law school afterwards. I absolutely loved Bucknell but they were the only ones that did not give me money. Dickinson and UVM would basically be the same price. When I visited Dickinson and after talking to some current students it sounded like the social life and campus activities were pretty poor. I know academics are important, but having nothing to do in a super small town scares me. I liked UVM, but it is a little far and I don’t want to sacrifice academics, as I know Bucknell and Dickinson are better. To me Bucknell seems like the perfect combination of the two and have almost a 100% acceptance rate for law school after, but I’m just scared because of how much it costs. My parents would cover most of it, but I feel guilty putting that on them. Need some opinions!
If it were me I’d eliminate Bucknell withlaw school in your future. If Dickinson doesn’t feel right to you I’d go with UVA. UVA is an outstanding school - I don’t think you’d be 'sacrificing academics" (or anything else) there.
OP is looking at UVM, not UVA.
Thank you! I wish I got into UVA haha. That would be a no brainer.
So you clearly have rose-colored Bucknell glasses on, and you want to go there- but you can’t really afford it without debt, yes? And you would have to add law school debt on top of that.
So, most of your pro-Bucknell arguments don’t really hold up:
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“super small town”- Carlisle (Dickinson) is 3x the size of Lewisburg (Bucknell). Social life is in the eye of the beholder, but based on the Bucknell & Dickinson students that I know (including the head of the pan-hellenic council at Bucknell), they are not wildly different socially.
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law school- there is nothing magic about Bucknell’s law school numbers- if you can get into law school from Bucknell you can do it from Dickinson or UV-M. Also, Dickinson has a 6 year program which combines your BA + JD , saving you a year: Pre-Law Curriculum | Dickinson College.
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I don’t know why you think that the academics at Bucknell and Dickinson are better than at UV-M, but you are mistaken. There is more than enough academic challenge for you at UV-M.
As a side note: if Carlisle starts to feel small, study abroad is huge at Dickinson. They work hard to make sure that it stays within your existing costs, and that it works with your major requirements. I know a recent grad who managed to get to Argentina, Spain and DC (she is graduating from UPenn Law next month), and another who spent a full year in Australia (where she has now gone back to do grad school).
Apologies…
The employment outcomes for this particular law school can be found at Job statistics at Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson Law | Law School Transparency , and median pay of graduates who borrowed is listed at Graduate salaries for Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson Law | Law School Transparency . It looks like the median LSAT and college GPA were recently 160 and 3.39 respectively, according to Admissions statistics at Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson Law | Law School Transparency (meeting the most recent medians is listed as criteria for continuing on to law school in the program referred to above). Similar information for other law schools can also be found there.
Thank you so much for giving your opinion. I definitely think I worded this poorly. I think UVM is a great school, but since Bucknell and Dickson are smaller there is more specialized attention available. Also I went to Dickinson’s admitted students days and have talked to people I know who go there, and Bucknell offers a lot more on campus activities than Dickinson does. Thank you for the help!
Forget Bucknell - if it is that much more expensive, stop talking about it.
I’d love to stay at the Ritz Carlton - but I can only afford the Marriott. So i don’t even think of the Ritz.