Hey everyone,
I am currently attending UCI and will be graduating next year summer of 2016. I will be applying to law school this year in the fall and wanted to know my chances to UCLA or USC with a 3.45 GPA and a 170 Lsat. Some background would be, 2 really good letters of recommendation from 10 year professors as well as experience working at a law firm. I have a few volunteer activities I have performed in the past, as well as recently being admitted to the honors program for my senior year here at UCI.
If my GPA is too low to get admitted, I can delay the application a year and do it once I graduate as I will have a 3.75, but I’m trying not to waste time.
-Thanks
Waste the time. It is utterly insane to apply with a 3.45 instead of a 3.75. In fact, waste even more time and go work a bit. Legal employers like work experience. No one cares about letters of rec.
a 3.75/170 can do much better than UCLA/USC, or attend either with a big scholarship.
A year later will mean the equivalent of tax free income (merit aid). It’s the easiest money you’ll ever make in your life.
Is 170 actual score or estimated? I’m surprised you can raise your GPA to 3.75 from 3.45 in one year, is it possible?
I have the same question–is that even mathematically possible? That said, at 170, I would consider Boalt.
Hey guys, thank you all for the quick responses. Its not so much the fact that I’m looking for more aid or an even better school like the top 14 because I am pretty content with the 91% employment rate of UCLA. The 170 is the actual score, and yes I can raise my GPA to a 3.75 with 4 classes each quarter for 3 quarters. The reason I am confident is because I had some personal problems throughout my first quarter. (Had a 3.9 my first quarter, and 3.3 and 3.4 the next two.) On top of that the classes left to be taken are more for the units, meaning I can pick essentially any class.
My question now is would it be ok to just apply twice? Once this year and if I don’t get admitted to try again the next?
@only1withpower: UCLA does not have a 91% employment rate, it has a [url=<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/ucla/2014/%5D70%%5B/url”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/ucla/2014/]70%[/url] employment rate. Of those, only about half are jobs that make enough to pay back what UCLA charges. Either way it’s just stupid to borrow more than you need to. The merit aid difference between 3.45 and 3.75 is tremendous.
You can apply twice to schools but there isn’t any good reason to do so. I do not understand why you are in such a rush. Legal employers prefer work experience which you are sacrificing for no real reason you’ve explained. Slow down, get your GPA up, get a year or two of work experience to show off to employers, figure out what kind of job you want, then come back here and we can strategize law schools. Charging headlong is a good way to end up badly.
Not wise, you will lose out merit money. Who knows you could even get in with higher rank school. One of my daughter’s ex roommate graduated from Berkeley undergraduate and UCLA law school and last time I’ve heard he did something with the airport paying $20 an hour, not an internship with law firm. If that’s what you call employment then yes it’s included in the 91 %. However, another one of her roommates went to Columbia law and actually got a summer internship in downtown law firm in LA. So I’m guessing it must ranks higher than UCLA or USC.
the question I have is why 'SC/UCLA? If it is just bcos you were born and raised in SoCal and want to practice in
SoCal, i can understand. But what you don’t get is that while Berkeley and UCLA undergrads may be peers, Boalt and UCLA Law are not. (Boat has a national reputation.)
Your chance at getting Big Law in SoCal is better from every higher ranked school, save for perhaps Georgetown & Cornell, but the latter may be more self-selection than anything else.
@only1withpower, I think that you’re making a mistake by going to USC or UCLA when you could get into a much better school by taking a year off, or by foregoing getting a merit scholarship at USC or UCLA.
You’re overpaying for something or settling for a less valuable degree that will stick with you, from job to job, for the rest of your career. Once you’re past a few years out of school, the only school-related item that matters at all is the school name on your resume–not grades or anything else–and so it’s a good idea to have the best name possible, particularly when the best name that you could get is significantly better than the one that you seem to want to settle for.
Not wise at all.