<p>I am a high school student and I enjoy science particularly biology and cells. I am looking into patent law with emphasize in life sciences and science major seems to be good, however is a science major detrimental to my chances of getting into Law school?</p>
<p>Law school admission depends significantly on having a high college GPA and LSAT score and not choice of college major. A science or engineering college major is not itself a detriment to admission. However, at many colleges getting a high GPA in a science or engineering major can be more difficult than getting a high GPA in many other majors.</p>
<p>Oh the other hand, you can't do patent prosecution without a science degree (or significant coursework, anyway)... so that will really make your life hard.</p>
<p>I'm having the same problem! I want to go into law and am considering IP law. I'm just worried I won't get into law school if I have a low gpa (hope not)!</p>
<p>IP also includes trademarks and copyrights and in some cases art law I guess so you don't need a science degree to do IP law. You do need one to do patent law.</p>
<p>The strongest backgrounds for IP (from what I've read/heard) are currently electrical engineering and computer engineering, and sometimes CS.</p>
<p>zebrastripes, how low of a GPA do you think you might get? Remember that LSAT generally matters a lot more than GPA. An LSAT-heavy splitter will do far, far better in admissions than a GPA-heavy splitter, expecially from a good school.</p>
<p>The other thing is that in patent prosecution, the quality (school reputation, GPA) of your technical degree will be vastly more important for job-hunting than the name brand on your law school.</p>
<p>Dbate: it's nice in a way to know that you're thinking of a career in IP law. However, speaking personally, I don't recommend that high school students spend a lot of time thinking about getting into patent law. </p>
<p>Not that I don't think that students should look into possible future careers. Of course they should. But to get into the patent profession you first have to have a science or engineering degree, and if you are looking past that to getting into law school you may be setting yourself up for four unhappy years in college majoring in a subject that you don't like all that much, in order to get good grades, in order to get into law school, the nature of which you don't really understand yet, in order to become a patent attorney, which involves writing about science but not doing any of it.</p>
<p>And in life sciences, to be competitive you'll need an advanced technical degree.</p>
<p>My advice is to major in science or engineering if you feel you want to become a scientist or engineer. See whether you like the subject, how well you understand it, and how much you would like to spend most of the rest of your life in it in one way or another. Then, maybe in the junior year, start to think about whether you want to go to graduate school, law school, medical school, or first go to work and then think about these.</p>