<p>Hello
I am here hoping for some good advice to calm my nerves. I am currently a senior at a decent Texas university (think SMU,Baylor,Texas A&M,UT) due to graduate in December with a double in Poly Sci and Environmental Studies. It wasn't until last April in my junior year that I was looking at the job market that I noticed law isn't looking so hot right now compared to engineering and health. However the point of changing majors passed due to my scholarships requiring me to graduate within four years and there not being much else I could graduate with on time. So I was pretty much locked into going to law school after graduation. However, now there is five routes.
1.My parents have offered to house me again for me to go to a nearby reputable T2 university for a degree in chemical engineering. Would take me about 3 years. GPA might not be top notch....
2. Get a 40k job. something in env regulations,would probably be a low level tech level
3.Join the military, want to do this for something to place on my resume and veteran status preference for working with the federal government(which I ultimately want to do)
4.Do a graduate degree in something
5. Try for Law school rounds Spring 2014
I have had many internships, have been published in research articles,many offers by professors to write recommendation letters, GPA is a 3.62 with a 3.73 major GPA. Practice LSATS have been a 162. I'm a URM.</p>
<p>My dream school would be UCLA or UT but UW would also be one I would like despite it not being a T14. Was thinking I could go to U of H to cut down on costs.</p>
<p>I have thought a lot about where I am. I have gotten by on scholarships so far. The idea of a 50k a year tuition bill is very frightening and probably not very reachable for me. So I ask you, can you give me your advice? What would you do?</p>
<p>Do not think of law school as a decision for the next three years of your life; think of it as a decision for the rest of your life. As in, if you are taking on debt to go to law school, it will affect the rest of your life and will likely lock you into the legal profession for a long, long time - if you are fortunate enough to get into the legal profession to begin with. </p>
<p>If you aren’t sure, work. If you can get a chem-e degree, and you’re in Texas, go for it. If you want to write patents, get a chem-e degree, then take and pass the patent bar. Alternatively, do what was the norm a generation ago: get a decent job out of college, work your way up, and get more education if it advances the particular career that you want. </p>
<p>Sounds as if you are ambivalent at best about law school, and yes, you’re talking a lot of debt. So why not take a year to look for a job; often working brings things into sharper focus.</p>
<p>Many years ago the Air Force had a program called funded legal educaton program(FLEP). It was only for active duty officers who wanted to go into JAG. If you got into
FLEP(had to apply, was very competitive) and got into law school, the Air Force paid. You may want to check into that-or see if the Navy has a similar program.</p>
<p>I don’t have an opinion on whether you should go to law school since it doesn’t seem to me you’ve made up your mind on whether it is something you want. However, I can say that with a 3.62 and URM status it would be a damn shame to settle for a 164. If you do decide on law school go take a prep course and study hard. Get that up to a 170 and you’ll be looking at a real shot at admission to the T10.</p>
<p>I will not start an affirmative action debate, but will merely ask those who opine about affirmative action in law school admissions to look at the numbers. (I will merely point out that, based upon what I know of the scale of the preferences, having studied them in-depth as part of my work, that the OP has a straight-faced shot at HLS, even without re-taking the LSAT.) </p>
<p>But if you do not know if you want to go to law school, do NOT go. Even to Harvard. You WILL spend the rest of your life practicing law if you go to law school - well, you will if you are lucky; if you aren’t lucky, you’ll often spend the rest of your life wishing that you could, just to get out from under the debt. </p>
<p>Don’t go unless you are sure that you want to spend the rest of your life as a lawyer, you are admitted to a school that is free or will pay your loans if you can’t, and, again, if you want to be a lawyer more than anything else.</p>
<p>Haha Havard? what a sweet dream! No way that can be possible. I wanted to ask that my school shows a 3.62 but what is a LSDAS GPA? would I have to convert my GPA?</p>
<p>In any event, even if the Court issues the broadest conceivable decision in Fisher, academic institutions will simply find a way to cheat. The dominant elements in academia are so firmly committed to race consciousness that they simply don’t care about the law and will find a way to convince themselves that whatever they are doing is legal.</p>
<p>BlueDevilMike beat me to it. The Fisher decision could change the way that public institutions are run, but there aren’t enough elite public law schools to have much of an effect on elite private law schools. (If elite publics could not use affirmative action, then presumably, there would be a relative surplus of talented minorities at private institutions, but I doubt that anything that could bind UVA or UT-Austin would really effect HLS admissions very much.)</p>
<p>Aries raises a good point about second-order effects. I hadn’t thought of that, but I agree it’s going to be small.</p>
<p>Note that Fisher wouldn’t change the UC system, which already claims to be race-blind and would thus not change its operations. Moreover, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests an existing quota system at the University of Michigan (note the dissents in Grutter and Gratz). If private schools work the same way, then an improved talent pool wouldn’t affect the total number of spots anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t know enough to comment on the likelihood of your being admitted to law school.</p>
<p>However:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In my opinion, nobody should go to law school unless they know they want to be a lawyer. It’s too expensive, too much of a time commitment and too stress-inducing unless that is really wht one wants to do.</p></li>
<li><p>For the same reason, in my opinion one should not go to engineering school unless one wants to be an engineer.</p></li>
<li><p>a 40K salary isn’t that bad, and probably about what can be expected with your degree.</p></li>
<li><p>So why not see if you can get a job while you think over what you really want to do.</p></li>
</ol>