<p>I’m not trying to discourage everyone from applying to law school/grad school. </p>
<p>Instead, I’m trying to get the OP to think more deeply about why grad/law school. Especially when considering his initial and followup posts are reminiscent of the very vague reasons which caused so many classmates, friends, and former lawyer colleagues to go to law school and end up disillusioned lawyers at best or JD graduates who endured long periods of unemployment or underemployment because they didn’t do their due diligence before enrolling. The latter group almost always tend to be those who had little to no work experience to fall back on because they went straight to law school from undergrad. </p>
<p>I am especially concerned because unless the OP’s parents and/or the OP him/herself is independently wealthy, $200k+ of debt is a substantial debtload which needs to be seriously weighed as a factor before deciding whether pursuing this type of professional school is worth the investment. </p>
<p>Reasons why I suggested the OP pursue internships during college and full-time work in the organizations dealing with his/her issues of interest before applying to not only determine whether he/she will like the kind of legal work involved, but also provide relevant work experience which would enhance his/her application for grad/law school and more importantly, candidacy for both legal and especially non-legal work in the types of organizations dealing with the issues he/she is interested in.</p>
<p>OK, I can’t argue with that. Hard to believe, I know. LOL. I do agree that it makes sense to have clear goals, of course. Personally, I feel like knowing your cause (if it is a cause that motivates you, as in this case) is a very good start. Certainly, it wouldn’t hurt to try and get in a position where the OP can see what a lawyer in this area really does on a daily basis.</p>
<p>As far as the cost, many state law schools do have much cheaper rates for in state. If this OP happens to live in such a state, that might also be something to strongly consider.</p>
<p>Well, I am greatly appreciative of each and every post concerning my question. </p>
<p>I am sorry if my posts as the “OP” were vague; however, I believe my questions are examples of my trying to “think more deeply” in regards to this decision. I am aware of said “disillusionment”…very aware. My parents are not rich. I am not rich. My law school experience will definitely depend on scholarships and loans. The posts are vague because I am uncertain of what is best in my pursuits.</p>
<p>But, the bottom line is that I want to be a lawyer. I want to go to law school (no vagueness included). I want to work with immigrants. I want to work in the LGBTQ community. This is my unfettered motivation. I am aware of the debt. I am aware of the 3 years of hell.</p>
<p>I am convinced by previous post that I should not consider a separate grad program before law school. Even going directly from undergrad to law school appears to be a horrendous idea. Thank you for this realization. However, I fear that if I spend too much time between undergrad and law school, I would become too busy, in effect, pushing law school further down the road.</p>
<p>If all else fails, I probably could move to China and teach English as a second language. But, that would be extreme.</p>
<ol>
<li>Try to see if you can plan the rest of your undergrad course schedule so it is light senior year so you can start preparing for the LSATs and try taking it just after you graduate when you’re still at your academic peak. Scores are good for 5 years.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>You want to do as well as you can…preferably acing it with a 170+ so you can maximize your chances of gaining admission to higher ranked law schools and/or getting the most merit aid. Just check the fine print of those scholarships so you don’t end up being a victim of the dubious tricks many lower ranking law schools pulled on my friends. Ask current students and recent graduates who are NOT working for admissions.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Try to max out your undergrad GPA as much as possible while you’re still an undergrad. LSAC only counts college courses in your cumulative GPA taken before you graduate with your first Bachelors.</p></li>
<li><p>Seek out academic and professional mentors in college and in the organizations you intern/work for during and after college. </p></li>
<li><p>Compile list of law schools you want to attend that have strong reputations in the region you intend to work/practice after graduation as well as the programs you want. </p></li>
<li><p>Think about ideas for your personal statements and any addendum essays you may need(i.e. Dip in college grades, arrests, etc). </p></li>
<li><p>Have a financial game plan ready to deal with the debt from undergrad and law/grad school. </p></li>
<li><p>If possible, try picking up one or more foreign languages as that will add marketability…and enhance your effectiveness in immigration law. In fact, this is one of the few areas where I believe it may be worth your while to do a masters program or a combined JD/MA program so long as the focus is on language acquisition and acquiring cultural knowledge. Knew several people who did JD/MAs in East Asian Studies who are now working successfully in legal and non-legal jobs. </p></li>
<li><p>There’s more information at “top law schools” forum.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am sorry, but I am laughing too hard not to comment.
Really? You think he should want to score high? More seriously, this makes people think if you don’t get a 170+ you cannot get into top law schools. That is just not the case. 170 is 98th percentile, not many get that. Georgetown in #10 and 170 is its 75th percentile. That is, 75 percent of the students going there have less than a 170.</p>
<p>Scoring a 170+ is fantastic, of course. But one doesn’t have to score that high to still get great offers.</p>
<p>I apologize for offering my opinion.; would it be of more value if in the future, I offered some anecdotes. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>btw: my “wondering” was really meant to be a question: I really am curious about the value of a dual MA-JD in the private legal sector, such as big law which handles international transactions, (and outside of government, where more degrees are rewarded regardless of whether they are required to do the job).</p>
<p>OK, fair enough on the wondering. I guess my only comment on that would be that not all pursuits have to be related to a monetary or job-related bottom line. My S, for example, was originally trying to decide between law school and grad school in Russian Studies, and now he knows he can do both, simply because he really wants to do both. Yes, I think it will be valuable to be able to go to employers of any stripe armed with a deeper background in Russian culture as well as stronger language skills (along with the JD, of course). Having employed numerous people in my career, stronger education specifically in the area for which you are being hired is always a plus. So is having a niche that is still large enough to be potentially lucrative.</p>
<p>As far as the other issue, I apologize if I offended you. I was trying hard not to, actually. What I guess I was trying to say, and did so rather inarticulately apparently, is I think it would be more meaningful if we knew why your opinion was what it was. If it is just gut feel, well OK. Of course you have that right. I was just wondering if you had more of a basis for it.</p>
<p>Well they have a huge incentive to lie to you.</p>
<p>I myself am extremely skeptical about the “law school as preparation for a non-legal career” meme. It may have had some validity 10 or 20 years ago, but today law school is too expensive and law graduates too numerous.</p>
<p>Anyway, here is a suggestion: Instead of calling schools and asking them about their graduates’ placements, do an experiment yourself. Make up a resume with an invented person who went to the schools you are thinking of attending. Give your person average grades. Then send the resume to some of these human rights organizations and see how many e-mails your person gets. </p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything unethical about this since you won’t actually interview or take the job. It’s just to directly measure the job prospects for the degree. </p>
<p>I feel pretty confident in predicting that you will get very little interest.</p>
<p>Here’s another experiment: Put up a job listing on the internet which tracks the sort of position you want. Say that a JD would be a plus. See what kind of response you get. I predict you will be deluged with applications from people with excellent credentials who are willing to work for peanuts.</p>
<p>These people will be your competition when it comes time for you to actually apply for jobs. Also keep in mind that many of these competitors will be people who (1) are very physically attractive; or (2) are very well connected.</p>
<p>Well, I had the actual conversations and know the details they gave. You are welcome to your completely uninformed (on this matter of my conversations) opinion.</p>
<p>Georgetown is number 14, has only about 1/3 biglaw placement, and has a median of 170. Generally, speaking you need to be in a top 14 to go to what people consider a great school and gives you a good chance at making law school worth it, monetarily anyways. Generally, unless you are an URM, 168 is about as low as you can go to get a t14 admittance without a 4.0 and you are still pushing it. So yes, the average person with a good but not great gpa will need a 170 to get what most people consider a great offer.</p>
<p>Going to a lower ranked school may be ok for some people with specific goals, but for 95% of people, it’s not.</p>
<p>There are other ranking systems than USNWR. The point isn’t #10 or #14, I think we can all agree G’town is an excellent law school. I did see some older stats for their LSAT. Their current 25-75% is 168-172, and the median is indeed 170. So half the class had below a 170, and 25% below a 168. It does indeed take high scores to get into a top law school, I am just saying that to say you have to get 170+ is overstating it a bit. Certainly the lower the GPA the better the LSAT has to be, no question.</p>
<p>I think Columbia’s median is a 172 this year. To get into Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and possibly NYU, a 170+ is almost necessary regardless of GPA.</p>
<p>The post above isn’t letting me edit: All of the T-14s have a median LSAT of 169 or higher, except Berkeley, which has a 167 median, and Cornell, which has a 168 median. The 25ths are also relevant. I think the T-14 have 25ths of 168+, excluding Berkeley, Cornell, UVA (which tends to solely accept splitters as a way of gaming the rankings), and possibly Duke (not sure about this one). So it’s not really that far fetched to say that you need a 170 to get into a T-14, although I guess 168 is more accurate if OP has a high GPA.</p>
<p>Sure, and my completely uninformed opinion, which is based on many years of painful experience, is that Reagan had it pretty much right when he said “trust but verify.”</p>
<p>Right, like they are going to give me the names of these people and completely violate their privacy. You can be as cynical as you want, no problem. You have the pleasure of being right about half the time.</p>
Who said otherwise? Of course the very top schools require the best scores. That wasn’t even being discussed.</p>
<p>
Splitters? Gaming the rankings? Please. Prove this, if you don’t mind. And yes, it is far-fetched to say you need a 170 to get into a T-14, since a fairly healthy percentage obviously don’t have that. I can go into a more detailed explanation of statistics if need be. Of course the lower your GPA, the better you LSAT likely needs to be, absent hooks, incredible recs, something else.</p>
<p>You can easily investigate in other ways. For example, by going down to the campus, talking to students who are going through recruiting, and seeing what they have to say about themselves or their recently graduated friends.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would say it’s more like 95%. Actually 99% if you include all the e-mails I get from African Princes who want me to help move money out of Nigeria.</p>
<p>I don’t know how out of touch you are with the entire process, but starting 2 cycles ago UVA started accepting pretty much only splitters, mainly via ED. This is why its 25th LSAT is a 166, which is lower than any other T-14’s, except Berkeley’s.</p>
<p>Check LSN for a sample of applicants and top-law-schools.com for more information if you don’t believe me. It’s pretty much common knowledge that UVA is doing this as a way of reducing its acceptance rate to game the rankings. It also removed a deadline for its ED, meaning that people who get rejected elsewhere RD or ED for that matter can ED to UVA in the spring. This is also a way of reducing its acceptance rate.</p>
<p>cpeace- just an idea- Have you thought of getting a year or two work experience in your field of interest and then pursue law school? Having real world work experience may help you formulate what you really want to do with your advanced degrees (be it law or a masters)-- will give you contact with professionals working in the field and may help you make wiser career decisions. </p>
<p>my d made the decision to work 2 years for a labor union before she started law school. It was the wisest move she made. I think the work experience helped her focus on what she wants to do with her law degree, gave her alot of contact with people in the field and she just got alot of experience in labor negotiations, working with attorneys (both union and management side), reading contracts etc. etc. Just alot of stuff that helped prepare her for law school and a career in the legal profession.
so I’m just throwing it out as an idea to pursue. </p>
<p>I’m not going to “give facts” about what it takes for a T-14 acceptance. The only thing I will add (and this is all anecdotal) and as a mom watching admission trends from TLS-LSN- etc. and having a kid who scored a 167 LSAT (and trust me I followed similar statistical applicants to my kid on LSN)-- I noticed a real uptick with gpa’s needed for a T-14 acceptance for kids who got 167/168 LSAT’s.<br>
so you may still be able to get a T-14 acceptance with a 167/168- but it helps if your gpa is 3.7+. </p>
<p>To add to what Nolocon said–I did take notice of UVA’s onorthodox approach to ED last year. They re-opened the ED cycle in January or February. I guess it was a way to get those applicants who were already rejected from their top choices to apply to UVA ED late in the cycle. This approach would help UVA control their acceptance rate.
Also didn’t Duke offer an “ED like” acceptance to some of last years candidates for this coming cycle? That too would affect acceptance rates and also ranking.
so yeah- I agree- some of the schools seem to be gaming the ranking system a bit more than others. </p>
<p>there is a website that gives raw admission numbers (internet legal research??) that will soon update their info for the 2010 admission cycle. It will be interesting what it shows. But my gut tells me there was a bit of an increase in GPA needed for T-14 admission last cycle especially for those in the 167-169 LSAT range. My gut also tells me at least a 171/172 LSAT is needed for most T-6 schools.</p>