<p>Top10LawSchool1L, if you are attending any of the schools you username suggests, then you are in a great position. I'm going to agree with cereal on this one, unless a clerkship is what you are trying to attain.</p>
<p>Dear crnchycereal,
You draw this surreal assumption that having a meaningful college experience has to ultimately lead to enjoyment and personal gratification. For many students who are unable to afford the full cost of their undergraduate education, they sometimes accept binding-scholarships that are often extremely strenuous but lighten their financial cost a lot.</p>
<p>For me I got roughly $50,000 off my undergraduate education as long as I signed on as an extremely specified science major. Currently I find my major very informative and wouldn't major in anything else. Except I put in extreme hours. I work two jobs which take up around 30 hours a week and I volunteer with my sorority which takes up any spare time I have remaining. The rest of time is spent juggling advanced courses which build upon Organic Chemistry, Genetics, and Calculus II.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure I'm sick but I can't afford to slack off. Especially since my GPA is pretty low (3.35) and I absolutely must get 4.0s this semester. I love both my jobs. One of them is a computer job and the other involves coding/analyzing BLAST machine nucleotide sequences on Hazelnut's genome structure with a professor. I also wouldn't trade soup kitchen work for the world. </p>
<p>Is it strenuous? Yes. Is it the best experience I've had? Yes. Am I seeing rainbows and butterflies flying out in the sky? No. Could I do this for more than four years? No. </p>
<p>The present is important. But we must always keep in mind what could happen in the future. Why would a homeless person look favorably at his undergraduate years if he can't even get a job?</p>
<p>It's fun. But there are times when you pack away those butterflies and start chugging in the numbers. Some of us don't have the time to go out and party on a Friday night. Instead we stay home and memorize another biochemical pathway so we can hopefully have a future ahead of us.</p>
<p>In reply to post #42, please don't misinterpret my posts to mean that I think every person's college experience should be one of complete freedom from financial worries, 24/7 debauched revelry, or fanciful adventures in soft, impractical majors. I fully recognize that college is stressful, more so for students under financial pressure. I also recognize that students may sometimes be forced to make choices they would rather not have to for the sake of a scholarship or a future career. My post was simply pointing out the relative silliness of whining over one's undergraduate experience because an "easier" one might have meant the difference between HYS or a lower-ranked but still T10 law school.</p>
<p>Duly noted. Apologies on my part for being over-defensive.</p>
<p>I didn't read all the posts, so I apologize if some of this was already stated:</p>
<p>Law school admissions departments look first to the GPA/LSAT formula. They plug in the numbers and assign applicants a rank based on the number generated by their unique formula, which usually weighs LSAT somewhat heavier than GPA.</p>
<p>Whether they take into account the difficulty of a college major is doubtful. Law schools are filled with PoliSci, History, and English majors. It's doubtful they would give someone an edge for having majored in chemical engineering. That said, engineering and science undergrads will end up with a HUGE advantage after graduation because of their high marketability as IP lawyers. A graduate from University of Arkansas Law School with a chemical engineering undergrad degree may have an easier time finding a top tier law firm job over a University of Texas grad with similar grades who majored in History as an undergrad. So the advantage for engineering and science students comes later, after graduation.</p>
<p>Law schools, however, usually do take strength of undergraduate school into account. They will generally not consider a 3.7 at Harvard to be the equivalent of a 3.7 at Washington State University (giving a shout-out to my college!), as they shouldn't.</p>