<p>I can potentially graduate in 3 years, or I can work another half year or full year in an attempt to further increase my GPA (although there is, of course, no guarantee that it will increase). What would you recommend? Does graduating a year early look outstanding to employers / law schools, versus a possible slightly higher GPA?</p>
<p>If anything, graduating early is frowned upon. Combining that factor with a lower GPA, I promise you law schools will look less favorably on a three-year candidate.</p>
<p>How do you know this though? e.g. do you have proof in the form of official statements from adcomms?</p>
<p>Btw, I should have specified that I'm not only talking about law, but also non-law related careers. E.g. economics (major)</p>
<p>No direct evidence, just observation over time.</p>
<p>I agree with Mike,</p>
<p>Plenty of people can graduate in 3 years, especially with a lot of credit they brought in through HS. It has been my assumption that colleges would rather you graduate with 2 degrees in 4 years than 1 degree in 3. My advice would be to stay another year, but it's not my decision.</p>
<p>LSAT, GPA. Why is this so hard to understand?</p>
<p>You can always work towards a cause you're really passionate for (outside of your passion for law), and then apply. The reason (from what I understand) that graduating early may not always be the best idea relates to hiring after law school. "<a href="http://www.law.nyu.edu/depts/admissions/faq/jd.html#q22">http://www.law.nyu.edu/depts/admissions/faq/jd.html#q22</a>"
"For the Fall 2007 entering class, approximately 62% of the students had taken at least one year off prior to entering law school. Approximately 7% of the students had been out of college for five years or more. The average age of the students in last year’s entering class was 24. "
That three year age difference, although seemingly small, can give some employers a reason to pause when considering you for employment. It's not a huge factor, but taking a year off can give you an even better idea of what to do with the next couple of years of your life.</p>
<p>
LSAT, GPA. Why is this so hard to understand?
</p>
<p>Yes ... I realize LSAT and GPA are the two most important factors, but "soft factors" are called "soft factors" for a reason: although they are "soft", they still "factor" into the equation. Occasionally, soft factors may even override LSAT and GPA scores that are below the median for a law school, like that author that was accepted to Yale with a 150 LSAT or whatever it was.</p>
<p>There is certainly such a thing as a soft factor. If graduating in three years matters at all, it is a negative soft factor, not a positive one. (Again, just from carefully watching cycles and paying attention.)</p>
<p>"LSAT, GPA. Why is this so hard to understand?"</p>
<p>LSAT+GPA+Undergraduate school</p>
<p>I mean, undergraduate school, personal statement, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, work experience, personal history, family background... these all matter some. (Race matters a lot.) The equation is not 100% numbers based. That's all well known.</p>
<p>Do they matter a lot? No. Much less than they do in any other admissions context (undergrad, MD or MBA or PhD programs). But they certainly exist.</p>
<p>"LSAT+GPA+Undergraduate school"</p>
<p>Wrong. Or if it does matter, it would only give the edge if two students had identical stats/apps. </p>
<p>Here are some schools represented in Yale Law School's 2007 incoming class. Now tell me: If UGrad rank mattered, do you really think the most selective law school in the country would let in people from...</p>
<p>University of Texas - Dallas
University of North Texas
Minnesota State University - Mankato
California State University - Long Beach
Biola University
Arizona State University
State University of New York - Buffalo</p>
<p>Yale</a> Law School | Entering Class Profile</p>
<hr>
<p>You get the idea. And don't give me the "HYP kid gets the edge because there are more HYP kids at top law schools" deal. There are more HYP kids there because HYP kids are the smartest in the country, and if they can fall into the GPA range for Yale Law from those schools, they can easily get a 170+ on the LSAT.</p>
<p>From what I've seen, a "top" school can help you compensate for a low GPA (between 25th and 50th) if you also have an excellent LSAT score (above 75th). I've hypothesized that it might go the other way as well, but that's just speculation and I've never actually seen it work that way.</p>
<p>bluedevilmike, what's your definition of top school? HYP? HYPMC? Ivies + MSC + top LACs? Top 25?</p>
<p>I would be very happy if it were one of the latter two.</p>
<p>I don't really know what the limits are.</p>
<p>I feel pretty confident about my "feeling" -- and that's all this is, is personal experience -- that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Swarthmore, and Amherst will get more-than-usual leeway on GPA if the LSAT is very high.</p>
<p>Beyond that, I'm not sure. Penn, Stanford, Duke?* MIT/CalTech? Claremonts? Williams? No idea. From what I've seen, there are no public schools that get the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>(*I've definitely seen that these three get some leeway in medical school admissions. Penn may have the most in the country, in fact.)</p>
<p>It matters where you got your degree. Take a look at this page if you doubt it. It gives the # of students from each undergraduate college attending Yale Law. </p>
<p>Law</a> School Students</p>
<p>You CAN get into Yale Law from any college. It is, however, easier to get in from certain schools. Those with degrees from less august institutions who get in usually have something special going for them. In some cases, they have advanced degrees from other institutions. (For example, I googled a few names on the list of YLS grads on the same page. I found Chad Flanders, graduate of Hillsdale College. He does, however, have a Ph.D. in philosophy from UChicago.) Some were Marshall, Fullbright, Rhodes, Rotary, Gates, Truman, etc. scholars. Others had military service or other experience in the work force that relates to the kind of law they want to practice. Some may be underrepresented minorities. Some may be first-generation Americans. The student from Cal-State Long Beach is both:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Alfredo Torrijos, B.A. in Business Administration
Torrijos, 23, is the first in his family to graduate from college, and it hasn't been easy. He works 30 to 40 hours a week while attending college full time. But his dedication has paid off. He scored in the 97th percentile in his Law School Admission Test, and has been asked by Yale Law School to apply to their program.
Torrijos' parents, who came from Mexico, have always stressed the importance of education. His father, a truck driver, refused to let his son get a truck driving license, insisting that education come first. Instead, Torrijos works 8-12 hours a week as his father's mechanic and bookkeeper. </p>
<p>The Granada Hills resident also works 24-26 hours week at Litton Industries, helping design the company's new accounting package. The job started as an internship but, when the senior accountant on the project quit, Torrijos was offered the job of overseeing the package's implementation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The something other may just be a different point of view. For example, Biola is a "Christian" college. (See post #12). It took about 10 seconds on google to id the grad who goes to Yale Law. He is Tim Heggem. He was apparently home-schooled until college. He was a <em>star</em> in the forensics league for home-schoolers. He continued to debate at Biola, participating in NPDA (the National Parliamentary Debate Association) and doing well in it. He spent a year at Oxford following graduation. (I don't know if he won a major fellowship to attend.)</p>
<p>So, based on google, I assume this is a devout Evangelical Christian who is an excellent speaker/debater.He probably had a high LSAT too. I'd admit that student because he would bring a perspective quite different than that of most Yale Law students. </p>
<p>Note that Yale Law had NO Biola students enrolled in 2005-06.</p>
<p>Well, Yale is so spectacularly selective that it's perhaps not instructive for any school outside of itself. Even those with perfect numbers will need something extra to push them over the top, and undergrad name can be (part of) a "something."</p>
<p>Harvard Law, for example, might be more representative of "top few schools." That is a school that is GPA/LSAT dominated, and school branding fades into the background a little bit. I still insist it matters in cases where the GPA would otherwise be troublesome, but accept that it's not that big a deal otherwise.</p>
<p>BDM, I'm not trying to say that it is the be all and end all--it isn't. I'm just trying to balance the post which just lists the names of colleges attended by this year's Yale 1Ls to "prove" that the name of the college you attend makes NO difference. Look at the % of Yale Law students who did their UGs at Yale or Harvard.</p>
<p>jonri: You're certainly right that the list is not a "proof," since those people could certainly have simply had enough to overwhelm the factors against them. (It's like pointing out a 169 at Harvard and arguing that LSAT doesn't matter at all.)</p>
<p>My point -- and I should have directed this comment at MW rather than at you -- was that Yale's probably not a particularly instructive example. Indeed, I suspect undergrad name matters more at Yale than it would anywhere else.</p>
<p>jonri: You missed the point of my post. Correlation =/= causation. Simply by seing a trend that YLS and HLS tends to hire from top schools doesn't mean they use it as an admissions factor. I really believe it is only a factor in the case BDM listed. </p>
<p>Look, you have kids at those institutions who have been over-achieving since kindergarten. These are the TOP undergraduate students in this country and beyond. The fact that they got into these schools means they have amazing smarts AND talent. They probably didn't start slacking off in college, so this would most likely carry over to LS admissions. The kids who are able to achieve a GPA that would suffice for Yale Law at an Ivy Undergrad (say, 3.7 or higher) are certainly able to get 170+. Not to mention the amazing ECs they are probably doing. Most kids at your average do not have the same abilities, which is why only one or two students from Bialo College get in to HYS every decade.</p>