HELP!! ****experts needed.

Graduate School Law School
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<p>okay, so first off.
i am a senior in high school on his path towards law school.
so here are my questions.</p>

<p>1) please give me a list of noteworthy law schools.</p>

<p>2) do these schools care about what ug you go to?</p>

<p>3) my choices for ug is pepperdine or ucsd, (majoring in internation relation and minor in communications), which one will be better for getting into law school?-becuase my parents swear since pepperdine has a law school law schools like harvard and yale would rather choose a student from pepperdine than ucsd....</p>

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<p>In general what is referred to as the T14 is the top tier of law schools, and these are considered to be the elite schools. Within the T14 you while find arguable mini-tiers as well such as the T3 (Yale, Harvard, Stanford) and others. In general though, these are the schools that most students will aim for. There is a big difference between T14 and non-T14. </p>

<p>[Top</a> 2010 Law School Rankings](<a href=“http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html]Top”>Law School Rankings) <- Click to see T14. </p>

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<p>Almost of all your law school application will be LSAT + GPA, with the emphasis on LSAT. Look at the previous link to see what the requirements will be for each school; if you want a good chance at getting into that school, make sure you’re in the middle 50% of both LSAT and GPA. If you’re in bottom 25% for GPA, make sure you’re in top 25% for LSAT (not always vice-versa though; LSAT can make up for GPA, but GPA cannot always make up for LSAT). </p>

<p>It’s debatable, but many will say the only schools who take the time to evaluate your application beyond the scope of just LSAT/GPA in a holistic method are Yale and Stanford, and it is only at these schools that soft factors (UG school being one of them) play larger roles. In general, Stanford and Yale have preferred their students to come from institutions of higher learning. </p>

<p>In most cases though, UG school/reputation is a soft factor, meaning it will only come into play in order to break the tie between two candidates who are close numbers wise. </p>

<p>Work experience can often add to an application though, and as you will say many students will often take time off from UG to work before applying to law school. </p>

<p><a href=“majoring%20in%20internation%20relation%20and%20minor%20in%20communications”>quote</a>

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<p>Major is another soft factor. Read the thread that is stickied on this board regarding major for more information or use the search function, but basically major in something that:
A) You will get a good GPA in.
B) You enjoy.
C) Will be academically stimulating. </p>

<p>Due to (C), many law schools will look down upon majors such as Business, Pre-Law, Theatre, Fashion, and Communications that are not very intellectual and instead are more vocational towards a certain field. Picking one of these majors would count as a negative soft factor towards you. Obviously a major like business will not hurt as much as fashion. </p>

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<p>Whether or not an UG school has a law school as part of the university has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on law school applications. </p>

<p>As far as Yale goes, unless you achieve some spectacular academic achievements (Rhodes Scholar) or completely nail the LSAT (177+) and get a GREAT GPA (3.95), I would personally say that from those schools you have little to no chance at Yale. </p>

<p>Harvard on the other hand is almost completely numbers based and you could go there from any UG school as long as you get a good GPA and kill the LSAT (go back to original link for middle 50% of LSAT/GPA). </p>

<p>In general people will probably flame you for asking questions like these, not because they don’t want to answer them, but because the same questions are asked every two weeks, and it’s not that hard to use the search forum. Basic searches like “major”, “undergraduate”, and “top schools” would have produced threads that yielded all the information I just took the time to type up. I’m in a good mood so I took the time to answer them, but in the future please try and do a little investigating on your own. </p>

<p>My advice for you is to just sit back and read all the threads on here for a few weeks, and you’ll get caught up to speed pretty quickly. After a few weeks if there are flashing questions you continuously have that the search button cannot answer, feel free to post them. </p>

<p>Also, you’re still a senior in high school. Figure out if you want to go to law school first. I know that you’re going to say:
A) you’ve wanted to be a lawyer you’re entire life;
B) you interned with a lawyer as a junior in high school and loved it;
C) your skill set perfectly matches that of a lawyers;
D) some other reason that makes you think you know what you’re talking about.</p>

<p>Taking it from someone whose looked into it longer than you: You don’t know. There’s no possible way you could know. Take some classes in college, see what interests you and what doesn’t. Talk to professors, career counselors, and alumni, and try and get a job working at a law firm as a college student. Most people have no idea what life as a lawyer is actually like, and even smaller are the number of people that can be happy living that lifestyle. There’s no reason for you to know that you’re going to law school before you’ve registered for an undergraduate college. </p>

<p>/endrant</p>

<p>Best of luck to you.</p>

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<p>As for what schools to be aiming for, it all depends on what you want to do. Say you want academia (you want to be a law professor). You should be aiming for Yale and at the worst case, the maybe the untouchable 6 (that’s what I call HYSCCN). If public service is your goal, there are schools even within the T14 that cater more to that. If you’d like to go into biglaw/NLJ250 (high end private practice) almost every school caters to that except for Yale, and the go-to school in this case is Northwestern (placement rate as a proportion of the graduating class was the highest at 56%). Also depends on what kind of law you want to practice. You will likely be tied to the geographical area where you went to law school too, so either go to an untouchable 6 (in which case you can get a job anywhere), go to a school where the local market sucks so the students have a tendency to fan out all over the country (like Michigan-Detroit’s toast) or go near where you want to practice (GULC or UVa for DC, Cornell or Penn for NY, Northwestern for Chicago for ex). You don’t necessarily have to do this because the T14 schools generally place well everywhere but it helps if you do. The schools become much more regional at the #15-#25 level.</p>

<p>Just keep this in mind when you decide what schools to aim for. But this is pretty far away-right now, focus on getting a good GPA and a good LSAT score, and an extracurricular or two.</p>

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<p>NLJ 250 Placement:
CLS: 74.8%, NU 73.5% (essentially a tie)</p>

<p>(NB: The chart looks a little funny: Harvard and Yale rank fairly low. Adding a clerkship correction fixes this. With that correction from the BCG report, we get CLS 83.8%, NU 81.5%. Still essentially a tie.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.law.com/img/nlj/charts/20080414gotoschools.jpg[/url]”>http://www.law.com/img/nlj/charts/20080414gotoschools.jpg&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.bcgsearch.com/pdf/BCG_Law_School_Guide_2009.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bcgsearch.com/pdf/BCG_Law_School_Guide_2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Oh, my mistake. I was working with class of 09 data. Maybe mine’s outdated.</p>

<p>bdm-that makes sense. I think a lot of Yalies self select into clerkships and/or academia.&lt;/p>

<p>I found my chart on Above the Law somewhere, I don’t remember where it is. Let me see if I can find it again.</p>

<p>Lol jk I found it <a href=“http://abovethelaw.com/2010/02/best-law-schools-for-getting-a-biglaw-job/[/url]”>http://abovethelaw.com/2010/02/best-law-schools-for-getting-a-biglaw-job/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Looks like the ATL chart is more updated than the one I posted. Reflects the recent drop in the market. As previously, NU and CLS are basically tied.</p>

<p>As previously, you’d want to apply a clerkship correction to the data. Not sure how things would look afterwards.</p>

<p>Time trends are interesting.</p>

<p>Notice that Yale dropped by 3 percentage points from '07 to '09 (about 7% drop), HLS dropped 14 percentage points (about 25%), and CLS dropped 19 percentage points (also about 25%). Oddly, Stanford went up 2.5 percentage points. Weird.</p>