<p>I noticed that A LOT of high school seniors said on their program that they wanted to do Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Pharmacy in college. Makes me skeptical, when the MAJORITY of students in the senior class that they want to do Pre-Law or Pre-Med.</p>
<p>Did you stick with Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Pharmacy in college? Are you doing it for the love, money, or mixed?</p>
<p>Do we have to many lawyers in the US?</p>
<p>There are way too many lawyers in the US. We don’t need any more.</p>
<p>I was planning on going to law school as of sophomore year of college, and now that I am a senior I am still sticking with that-- though I am not going directly to law school. I definitely didn’t choose it for the money, I’ll be broke. Not all types of lawyers make a lot of money.</p>
<p>There is an abundance of lawyers at the moment. A lot of people recommend only going to law school if you can get into a particularly good one so that you can be competitive. A lot of crappy schools have been churning out lawyers for a while now.</p>
<p>I can’t find the article at the moment, but I recently read something about many law school grads that are forced to sit in a room and stare at computers for a living. Basically, they look at pictures of evidence, determine if it’s relevant, and click yes or no. All day, every day.</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound like it was worth the debt.</p>
<p>HS seniors generally have no clue what they’re going to end up doing in life. (Most college students don’t either, but we’re slightly less clueless). They’re 16 year old kids who have watched Law & Order or House MD and know little about the real world :/</p>
<p>I don’t have any career plans as of now but I’m a science major and in my intro classes (gen chem, organic chem, bio, calc I and II, etc) there were many pre-med students, but most don’t actually end up in med school (since med schools are very selective and have like 3%-10% acceptance rates generally). So lots of people who initially are pre-med never end up applying or getting accepted. Often intro classes are meant to weed out science majors and premeds since it’s curved so 50% of students get a C and lower. My advisor told me over 100 freshmen declare their major in my field but only 12-16 end up graduating each year! So 80-90% change their minds. </p>
<p>I don’t know about pre-law but I imagine many people change their minds about that too.</p>
<p>^^^I think you’re hinting at this, but I want to add that not everyone changes track because they couldn’t handle it. I did well in all my pre-med courses, but I realized I really didn’t enjoy the classes. So I switched into accounting/comp sci after trying out a few different courses and am very satisfied now. </p>
<p>I think a lot of people change majors, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with grades. People change.</p>
<p>So, no, I didn’t stick with pre-med even though I finished all the requirements besides biochemistry. It’s not for everyone.</p>
<p>I roll my eyes whenever people say they are “pre-med” or “pre-law” because most of the times, they never actually go to law or medical school. I say this not out of disrespect…I was pre-law until I realized that Law and Order: SVU is not a good representation of the law profession. Most lawyers aren’t making a ton of money, and the vast majority of cases never make it to the courtroom. </p>
<p>Kids need to realize that there are other options out there besides being a doctor and a lawyer.</p>
<p>It’s also important to note that pre-med is VERY different from pre-law. Pre-law doesn’t really require any particular courses to take during undergrad. For law school, just do generally well and score a great LSAT. Some majors may increase your ability to do well on the LSAT and/or law school, such as philosophy and economics, but it doesn’t matter. With pre-med, medical schools require various science courses that must be taken as prerequisites. So it’s easy to be “pre-law”, isn’t it? Anybody can get up and declare themselves pre-law. Their only necessary requirement is graduating and taking the LSAT. </p>
<p>I’ve been considering law school, but I’m still not sure. Med school? No way, not my thing. I’d like to expose myself to some technical fields (such as computer science). But really, the titles of “doctor” and “lawyer” scream LUCRATIVE and STABLE to many college students, as well as their parents. So it’s no wonder they’re pursued after. There’s got to be some more stable professions out there though, right? The pathway just isn’t as direct.</p>
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<p>Law isn’t as lucrative as some make it out to be. Only the top 10 or so percent of all lawyers make the big bucks. Now medical school on the other hand…</p>
<p>I think pre law is kind of silly since you don’t need it to get into law school. I plan on going to law school but if I go pre law there are some extra requirements, and you get an extra adviser. Honestly, I didn’t think it was worth the extra paperwork to go pre law. I plan on doing the navy jag corp program so if I get into that I get some extra money to pay for school, and have employment with full benefits for 4 years. Then I have 4 years of international/criminal/military law to put on a resume, or I can stay in the navy. I think as long as you have an idea as to what you want to practice you’re fine. And as long as you do well in school. I hear from people who graduated law school that it’s tough to get a job if you’re not in the top 10/15%, but I think it depends on the city, and where you graduate from. I mean I don’t think anyone should be getting into a career just because of the money. I don’t think the “myth” of a big salary is the reason so many people want to go to law school, so I don’t think potential salaries matter to a lot of people. A lot of people are passionate about law, and it’s a great way to get into politics. I think good lawyers get good salaries, for the most part. I also think most people who want to go to law school in hs still want to in college, unless they have taken a pre law class and hated it. A lot of the pre law kids at my school always wanted to go to law school, same with the pre med people (ton of those here). Luckily I’ve always been into constitutional law, took two classes freshmen and soph year, loved it and know what I want to get into. Yeah, people change their minds, but all people in all majors do. I don’t think pre law kids change their mind any more than engineers or math majors. If anything, at my school, people in the hard sciences are much more likely to change majors than pre law/social science kids. I don’t think hs are more indecisive than a lot of college kids. Or rather, people who are indecisive in hs may just be indecisive in general, it may not be an age thing. It doesn’t bother me that people declare “pre” or talk about grad school all the time and then change their mind. Things change, you may take a class and find your true passion.</p>
<p>It is interesting if you want to study something like med or law in the caribbean you really have to make up your mind fairly early …because here in the caribbean, you apply and go straight to med school and law school right after high school. Granted we do have 1 more year of high school(we also model our system after the british o and a levels) and our med school is more than four years.</p>
<p>^ Yeah in most countries people go directly to professional schools right out of HS. And the reason Med school is only 4 years here is because students take 2 years of intro science courses in undergrad</p>
<p>@justtotalk: Yeah that’s kind of what I was trying to get at…lots of kids lean toward those professions because of something silly like they’re favorite TV show is House or whatever. College is a time to explore lots of options so it’s common to change major and career plans. And of course lots of people simply have poor grades or don’t do well on the MCAT or LSAT.</p>
<p>how about pharmacy school you guys?</p>
<p>I am curious about pharmacy too, I’ll be a freshman in the fall and that is plan career path. Of course though I know there is a chance I may change my mind.</p>
<p>One of the guys in my accounting class last semester was previous a pre-pharm student. We were actually in the same o-chem class the semester before but we’d never met. </p>
<p>He said he didn’t want to deal with anymore biochem and all the pharm.d requirements. Primarily, though, it sounded like he just did really poorly in o-chem.</p>
<p>I’m in HS going for pre-pharmacy. If it doesn’t work out I’ll delcare as Biology/Biotechnology and go into research…or med school. It’s just the recession now, meaning people want a stable career. We all know doctor-guaranteed somewhere.</p>
<p>Honestly, I probably wouldn’t recommend a definite pre-law track to freshmen, and actually, I don’t think it’s good for a freshman to come in declaring a major right away unless it’s something specialized like engineering or nursing, or something like that. So many people change their minds about their major that it may set them back in terms of graduating on time.</p>
<p>I, personally, have done this also. I started college as a psych major, planning on going to grad school and get my Ph.D/Psy.D. I’ve since changed my mind, and now I’m a Political Science major with a concentration in legal studies, and obviously I’m going to go to law school, now that I know what lawyers actually do.</p>
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<p>What do lawyers actually do?</p>
<p>There are too many lawyers.</p>
<p>There are around 50000 billion news articles about the Law market. Too many law grads. Too many unpaid internships. Too many law schools aritificially raising GPA’s to increase their grad’s competitiveness on the market…</p>
<p>Jason, wouldn’t stronger GPAs increase said students’ competitiveness in the labor market? Most HR departments would be hard pressed to turn up their nose at a 4.0. Hell, I’ve seen companies create positions on the fly when suddenly inundated with high-GPA resumes, in order to capitalize on the opportunity to hire such Talent.</p>