<p>I feel like this discussion has turned from answering my very simple question to telling me that I can’t overestimate my ability to do well on the lsat, that my safety schools are probably not good, and that my major isn’t going to help. That I will probably do not as well as I want and will, instead, end up having to choose a 3rd tier school and taking on 120000 in debt to go there. Which is basically leading me to understand that all these points are trying to get me to just reconsider law school entirely, which I won’t. I’m going to do this in this order: take a practice, talk to my adviser, study, attempt to do very well on the lsat, choose a school based on who offers scholarships, and go to law school. And whether or not you can analyze that to death and provide me with skewed statistics as to why I probably won’t do well doing that either, I’m not really planning on listening anymore. Because I got my question answered and I’m leaving this forum. You guys can have more side conversation if you want, but I’m going to seek advice from the professionals available to me.</p>
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<p>That’s true of all law schools because 9mo after is the reporting deadline.</p>
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<p>This is the way law schools want you to think it works. This is not the way it actually works. That’s why I recommend you just be explicit in your choices so they can be properly analyzed. Admittedly there’s only so much you can do without an LSAT score, but even that much analysis can get you a long ways.</p>
<p>I should also take time to warn you against pre-law advisers at undergrad institutions. They almost inevitably know nothing or very little.</p>
<p>@bluedevilmike: You’re right to call me out on my strict reading of LSN. There are indeed anomalies that could potentially hide some marginal major discrimination. It’s worth noting that the specific examples you pulled are not major determination because those users listed their majors, but given LSN is a subset of the applicant pool there’s no basis to think major discrimination could not happen overall. However, two specific criticisms of major discrimination remain in play. First, to the extent that there are anomalies they are marginal, meaning major discrimination seems to be, at best, a rough tie breaker, and there are plenty of those already included in the application packet. Second, we are still pushed into the situation of saying “it might happen” but lacking any real evidence that it does. It’s hard to find precisely similarly situated applicants with divergence in major so as to test the theory. Of course, to the extent this is how far we’d need to go to find the major discrimination, it simply reinforces my first criticism.</p>
<p>Incentives:</p>
<p>I agree fully that if USNWR ranking were affected by admitting large numbers of a given major that law schools wouldn’t do it. However, I don’t think we have any basis to think it does. To some extent LSAT score works as a proxy for major, and so to the extent it does there is incentive to major discriminate, but only on the back end. The other metrics simply are not implicated by major. The vast number of legal employers do not care about undergraduate majors, and the other rankings are of faculty (so student majors are irrelevant).</p>
<p>Regarding admissions officers, I don’t think there really is much difficulty. Aside from your anecdote we really don’t seem to have evidence of any such public admissions. Your anecdote could simply be an anomaly. Even if it were not, it may merely suggest admissions officers know to more quickly look at LSAT score when dealing with majors with a history of such low scores. Major as proxy for LSAT, as opposed to the de facto reverse I alluded to above.</p>
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No, it’s not.</p>
<p>Rather, employment nine months after graduation is not inherently “pretty good too.” Employment may mean that people are so desperate for jobs that they will do anything - including folding sweaters at the Gap, because $8 an hour is better than $0 an hour. It may mean working for $30,000 a year (which is, yes, what many first-year associate positions pay in smaller firms), which is pretty much what you could make a year out of college. It may mean working in document review for more money ($40k to $50k a year), in a basement, with in a dead-end job. It could mean working in a place wherein the JD is helpful, but hardly justifies three years of your life and all the money.</p>
<p>Kaitlyn, you seem to think that we are trying to discourage you, and only you, from going to law school. Frankly, I would discourage anyone from going to law school now, unless that person were independently wealthy or has an acceptance to Yale in hand. </p>
<p>But if you want to think that we’re being killjoys, go right ahead and take the LSAT, go to law school, and try to make it as a lawyer. You may have a great life, or you may be one of the nightmare stories. Either way, it’s not my life. </p>
<p>I’m just warning you that the chances of it being a nightmare are a lot higher than you think they are. Sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that the warning isn’t valid isn’t going to magically make your life turn out well.</p>
<p>“Rather, employment nine months after graduation is not inherently “pretty good too.” Employment may mean that people are so desperate for jobs that they will do anything - including folding sweaters at the Gap, because $8 an hour is better than $0 an hour. It may mean working for $30,000 a year (which is, yes, what many first-year associate positions pay in smaller firms), which is pretty much what you could make a year out of college. It may mean working in document review for more money ($40k to $50k a year), in a basement, with in a dead-end job. It could mean working in a place wherein the JD is helpful, but hardly justifies three years of your life and all the money.”</p>
<p>$30,000 a year is still better than what my prospects are now! Any entry level job in criminology pays around that much, if not a little bit less. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth going for, if you’re going to have a job and a way of paying bills. And since I have a soon-to-be spouse who is going to be working as well in a field that pays a little more than that, we’re still going to be jointly making more than my family did when I was growing up, so I’m sorry if I’m able to appreciate those numbers. I’m sorry if I recognize that making $30,000 a year still makes me one of the world’s wealthiest, if you care to look at what people make around the world as a whole. I’m sorry that I’m not going to be upset if I don’t make $160000 a year to start with. Would that be wonderful? Absolutely! But it’s unreasonable, irrational, and unrealistic to think that that is possible for me to make right out of law school. And I’ll NEVER have ANY chance of making that in a CRIMINAL JUSTICE career. And at this school, which I understand how to analyze data for (we crim majors aren’t incredible deadbeats. We do take plenty of classes on analyzing statistics, you know), the MAJORITY of the graduates work in legal careers that are long-term. The minority (about 20%) are not employed in legal fields, and those who are empoyed in legal fields are typically toward the top end of their class, which I have always been and plan on continuing to be. If there’s something I’m good at, it’s working hard in academics, and that isn’t going to stop in law school. </p>
<p>“I’m just warning you that the chances of it being a nightmare are a lot higher than you think they are. Sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that the warning isn’t valid isn’t going to magically make your life turn out well”</p>
<p>You’re right. I’m just sticking my fingers in my ears. I’m not analyzing data constantly, working my ass off to achieve an LSAT score higher than something mediocre, talking to as many professionals in the field as possible. I’m not understanding that it pays to go to a t14 law school. However, it’s getting me nowhere to be told that I shouldn’t go into debt to go to a t14 and that I shouldn’t pick a safety school. It isn’t helping me to tell me that I probably won’t ace the LSAT and that I’ll probably end up nowhere. What is helping me is working as hard as possible and seeing what happens from that point on. I’m sorry if I’m not going to listen to your mix-matched throwing around of statistics (analyzing at-graduation employment compared to 9 months after… really??) and have that convince me that law school’s a no-go.</p>
<p>Furthermore, being that the median salary for a criminology major right now is roughly $30,000, I think I’ll take a chance with law school. If I end up making that much, then I know that’s where I’m at. If I end up with more, I took a chance for good reason. Either way, my employment stats and my salary is bleak, because that’s the job market we live in. But I’m willing to appreciate making more than my single parent makes in a year (actually, nearly double what my single parent makes) if it means that I at least have a job. </p>
<p>I’m not going to give up on this goal just because it could turn out that I’ll be making more than I make now and more than my parent makes. I’ll at least have given it a go. I’ll at least have worked for something, and while it may not “Magically” make my life turn out well, somehow I feel like I’ll be happy being in the middle class. It’s higher than I am right now. I would be fine living in the middle class. That is a good life for me, and I really don’t understand why you seem to think that making $30,000 a year is somehow the worst possible scenario for a graduate.</p>
<p>Further more, I would love to be a family and juvenile lawyer. But there are other careers in law that interest me. There are careers that join criminal justice and law (Homeland Security?) where simply having a JD brings me up to the level I need to be at to apply for certain jobs. So merely having a JD will help me in those careers. As I have said, I have no interest in big law, and I have no interest in making a 6-figure salary right away, if ever. I only seek to be able to have enough money to raise a family and to be happy. End of story.</p>
<p>Mostly, what I mean by sharing Emory’s statistics is to demonstrate that there’s a very wide gap between what schools report and what the real truth is. Let me stress: Emory obtained ONE job from on-campus interviewing during the fall of 2010. That was DEVASTATING, and that’s already a very good law school. And yet that year they reported 95% employment. That’s staggering.</p>
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<p>Kaitlyn, I think the reason we’re being so pessimistic is because in general, it is a bad idea for most students in your current position to eventually go to law school.</p>
<p>However, we all acknowledge that many things will come into play between now and then, and in particular the LSAT will completely change everything. If you end up actually getting the 175 you have been talking about, you’ll find that we change our tune rather quickly, because it is an extremely high-stakes test.</p>
<p>I get that, bluedevil. I’m not trying to be overly optimistic here. I’m just willing to try. Now, if I work for the LSAT, and no matter what I do, I can’t get higher than a 160, for example, then I will probably cut my losses. Because, let’s be honest, those are pretty average scores, and I don’t want to be a pretty average law student, because then my chances of employment are going to be “pretty average”. However, I am willing to work to get the LSAT score, and I’m going to reevaluate it all once I see what I’m capable of getting. That’s all I am trying to say here. All I am trying to say is that I’m going for a certain score. If I get that score, I will have faith in my abilities to be a lawyer or to at least GET a JD.<br>
If I can’t get anywhere near that score, I will accept that this is not the best route for me and reevaluate my options. But for now, I’m not going to give up completely without even having a score just because I might not end up with a job if I can’t get a certain score. I owe it to myself to at least TRY for the score, don’t I?</p>
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<p>You are not appreciating the numbers properly. It is not a comparison of your potential salary today against your potential salary after law school, it is a comparison of your potential salary today against your potential salary after law school minus debt minus opportunity costs. Even if the two salaries are the same, that makes law school an incredibly bad investment. The law salary has to greatly exceed your current potential (or the risk has to be cut some other way like independent wealth) for it to be a worthwhile investment. At the vast majority of law schools, this equation will not come out in favor of any given person attending. It is almost certainly true of your anonymous school, even including the scholarship.</p>
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<p>Not really. With a proper LSAT score you could have that job yours to lose on entering school. The LSAT matters that much.</p>
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<p>These numbers are almost certainly false. If you name the school I can show you why.</p>
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<p>Welcome to the first reality of law school: you are not special. You are used to being the best? Guess what, so are all your peers. You’re willing to work hard? Guess what, so are all your peers. Everyone goes into law school thinking they will be in the top 10%. 9/10 won’t be.</p>
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<p>You do. I think this is an entirely reasonable approach, and we (or at least, I) will keep our (my) fingers crossed for you.</p>
<p>Actually, Demo, the numbers are a bit harsher than that. the OP should be comparing herself at the same point in time, i.e. at age 26 with four years of work experience and the remnants of undergrad debt, or age 26 with the law school debt. </p>
<p>I do not know if Kaitlyn is doing this, but I get the impression that a lot of people want to go to law school to skip over the ugly entry-level stuff. Rather than spend three or four years in an office, working their way up, they would rather spend that time in law school in hopes of short-cutting to the higher-level job. It is understandable, but not necessarily economically sensible.</p>
<p>Kaitlyn: yes, I know that people making thirty grand a year live an incredibly wealthy life compared to almost everyone in the world. But someone making $30k a year with undergraduate debt, law school debt, law school living expenses debt, and bar study debt is going to be (a) broke compared to the rest of America, (b) broke in absolute terms, and (c) more broke than she would have been if she started making $30k without all of the law school related debt.</p>
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Yes. But once you get that score, you also owe it to yourself to understand what you are getting yourself into, how the schools are blatantly lying about employment prospects, and what your other options are. </p>
<p>One of the interesting things to happen as law school applications have cratered is to see who is not applying. I saw one study that basically showed that the top scorers are the people who aren’t applying in as great numbers, even though they are the ones who theoretically have the most and best options.</p>
<p>“You do. I think this is an entirely reasonable approach, and we (or at least, I) will keep our (my) fingers crossed for you.”
"Yes. But once you get that score, you also owe it to yourself to understand what you are getting yourself into, how the schools are blatantly lying about employment prospects, and what your other options are. "</p>
<p>And trust me, I will make sure not to get myself into a situation that screws me over completely. I’m not going to go to law school with a completely mediocre score. I’m only willing to go if I have a high enough score to earn myself some scholarship money. I am in a few different honor societies that offer scholarships for students looking into graduate schooling, and I know I can probably get some money from them as well. If I get a high enough score to get a scholarship, then I want to go. For example, if I somehow get a 175 and I then go ahead and apply to the four law schools close to my fiance’s university, and I get accepted, and one or two offer at least somewhat CLOSE to full tuition, I don’t see the problem in going. As long as the debt I rack up is not excrutiatingly high, I will be happy. And if I can’t get a legal job right after graduation of law school, I still have my criminology degree to use to get a job as a probation officer, a homeland security secretary (entry level way of working up to ICE {JD gets me just a few levels up}), or a police officer. But if I can, it’d be amazing to do that with less debt. And if I magically can get into, say, Yale with a scholarship to cover most of the cost, I’d go. But I’m not going to go if they dont’ offer anything but a bill. I’m not that stupid. I refuse to rack up that much debt after spending four years building a really great credit history. And anothe thing… I’m not trying to bypass entry level jobs. I just want the jobs in the legal field. I would LOVE to be an attorney. I know that it’s something that is a good idea for me, if the world was perfect. You can’ tjust work your way up with a criminal justice degree. You need a JD. But I don’t mind entry level work. I am willing to work for what I want in life… And I will be careful to make sure I’m not racking up tons of debt doing it. Most of my schooling, so far, has been covered by a huge scholarship. I don’t owe that much to begin with. I will figure out how to pay it off, and I will do my best not to make that number huge.</p>
<p>I know I can’t prove any of this to you, but that really doesn’t matter to me. I know me. I get that I’m not special. I get that I’ll likely fail the LSAT, get into mediocre schools, and if I choose to go, I’ll be stuck paying a huge bill that I can’t afford. I get it. But I’m willing to try to have it another way. If I can’t have it that way, I’ll be an intelligent person and opt out and choose a new path in life. But I’d like to at least try before I just say, “Oh, well, I’ll never have a chance.”</p>
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<p>Actually I think this is the one scenario where you should rack up that amount of debt. But you know, bridges, cross, etc. :)</p>
<p>So you’re saying if I get an amazing LSAT score and Yale accepts me it’d be worth it to wrack up 150k? Unbelievablem stated just a few posts back that I shouldn’t be willing to wrack up the debt because the legal market is declining. Some of you think it’s worth it to spend 150k for Yale and some of you think that it would make me stupid. At this point, I’m not even sure what to do.
I’m about 6x more confused than I was when I asked a basic question.
Two days ago, I just wanted to know if I could possibly get accepted to Yale and go.
Now, I’m about two seconds from calling it quits before I finish this practice LSAT. I’m about to start the 3rd section. And I’m about to just drop the pencil. Because, as far as I’m concerned, nobody agrees on anything, and I’m nowhere near as excited about this process as I was three weeks ago.</p>
<p>Haha we can have that discussion/decision some other time. It’s possible that UM and I just disagree. For now, let’s focus on getting you a practice LSAT score, and then a real one.</p>
<p>I do apologize, by the way, if I seem frustrated and ignorant. You have to understand here that I’m trying my best. I’m trying my best to figure everything out, to understand what you’re telling me, and to try to do this the best way possible. And I’m trying to maintain hope, because this is what’s important to me. So if I’m frustrating any of you, which I sense I might be, I want to say I’m sorry. I just simply want to figure this out and in the most effective way possible. I don’t have a ton of guidance in this area. I am a first-gen college student, and so I’m going into this partially blind. Though I understand how to look at statistics and though I’m typically considered to be very bright, I’m still learning. I’m really not trying to be rude here. I hope you understand that.</p>
<p>Law school admissions is complicated; legal employment is complicated; student debt afterwards is complicated. So it’s best to focus on how those things affect you, rather than trying to understand them all as a whole all at once. And you can tell that there are disagreements even amongst folks who know the sector very well.</p>
<p>And so we start by focusing on the things we do know. We know that many, many doors will open to you – probably even Columbia and NYU – if you score very well on the LSAT. We know that those are schools worth going to, and that they even have some scholarship funding available.</p>
<p>We know that there are many OTHER schools, lower ranked than Columbia’s #4, which are worth going to with scholarship support. We don’t know whether the one you have in mind is one of those, but several definitely exist.</p>
<p>So block all the rest of this out. Focus on what we do know, for now. And focus on getting the next piece of information we’ll need to start filling in the rest of the blanks.</p>
<p>Kaitlyn, there is no sure answer to your question. There are Yale law school grads that are not making enough money to make it economically a sound investment on a numbers basis to have spent the time and money there… Heck, you can go there, do well and decide you hate, hate, hate what needs to be done to make the bucks and eschew law altogether. I know at least a dozen non practicing attorneys from top 13 law schools. My close friend’s DD who is in a great position to get a partnership offer at her firm is wondering whether she wants it. She just had a baby and the stress and hours are killers, plus she hates the work she has been having to do and the prospect of continuing this way is making her sick. </p>
<p>What you get when you get an amazing LSAT score, and if Yale or another top school accepts you and you graduate, is a better chance at getting back that $150K you spent on that law degree. The operative word here is “CHANCE”. The chances are far greater in getting a high paying job, and partnership track at a prestigious law firm when you go to certain schools than others. The chances of getting such opportunities at a white shoe law firm on Wall Street with the big bucks are much, much smaller coming from, say, AnyStateU Law School than Yale. Not going to any law school brings it down to zero. But even among the top law schools,things like your class rank, whether you make Law Review, your internships, your clerkships, your connections and how you present in person are going have a big impact on your employment prospects, not to mention what the market is going be like when you graduate. The young woman I mentioned above was given a great offer while doing her clerkship but then the law firm, a top one, put her and all other new hires on hold for 6 months during a hiring freeze. So she hand NO job prospects when her clerkship ended, and was very nervous about how long her hiatus would last. </p>
<p>So no one can agree, because there is no GUARANTEE for anything. No guarantee that the amazing LSAT score will get you into Yale, that you will do well there when go there, whether there you will find any job, whether you will like the job, can do well at the job or if the market will pay what you are hoping it does on the job. All chances. But, if you want a chance for those brass rings that pretty much are exclusive to those who graduate from such law schools, you gotta get in line for your try.
You want a clerkship with the Supreme Court, for example, the chances of getting one are just about zilch without top grades from a top law school. So going to Yale will put you in the running for such a position, but the statistics show that only a few even from Yale will get such an opportunity. </p>
<p>If you are one of those who do well in law school and really have the interest in law, even going to a local law school can get you a law career. Around here, most of the attorneys are not from HPY or top 13, Not at all. They are from the local law schools whose names no one who hasn’t been in this area will even recognize. But for the types of local cases that they cover, I doubt any top 13 attorney will get a toehold in some of these jobs. There is a buddy system here too, and there are firms made up nearly totally of those from such law schools. Those attorneys look at the personality and styles and wit of the person, the toughness of the person when they hire for their firms. I know many more non top13 law school grads than those from such schools ,and many make a very nice living, own their own firms. Like my own brother. He’s a millionaire several times over with his own firm and there isn’t a top 13 law school grad attorney practicing there. With his type of law, you need to know the local lay of the land, and know it well and so the locals are much more useful to him. He wants a hungry, knowledgeable attorney when he hires, often times someone who has worked in a field related to his as an administrator or even field position and goes to law school, sometimes on a part time night school basis to get that JD. </p>
<p>Had I gone to law school which was once on my list, I had prospects of employment waiting for me as I had worked for 6 years in a niche field and knew it upside,downside and sideways already. Attorneys from the top law firms would call our company for advice as we dealt with the nitty gritty every day administration of a specialty field.</p>
<p>So if you want the chance to go to Yale or ANY law school for that matter, you want that amazing LSAT score. Then you can decide where you want to spend your $150k as to where you will get the most return, not just monetarily but in terms of being able to live with the job. When I tell you that I know people who are terribly sick, in pain and depressed about their jobs they hate so much, I am not kidding. I mean major upset. Major miserable. And if they locked themselves into a standard of living that only that job can meet in terms of pay, it means some hard decisions to back out. </p>
<p>But absolutely not, that amazing LSAT score, Yale acceptance, top grades at Yale, passing the Bar and getting a Yale degree are not going to guarantee you the best return for that $150K it just gives you the path towards a bunch of chances that have to pan out. Pick other paths, and you have other opportunities that may be exclusive to those who do those things.</p>
<p>Kaitlyn: I’m sorry if I was overly harsh or thought that I was asking you to prove something to me. My goal is to throw things at you so that you are prepared for what is coming, for you to think about, not for you to prove to me that you’ve thought about. You don’t have anything to prove to any of us. </p>
<p>I would prefer to over-warn someone rather than blithely assuming that she knows everything that needs to be known.</p>
<p>Many of us on these boards personally know people who went to not-great law schools (like third tier schools), paid for it with loans and no scholarships, and are living tough lives. I know people who went to outstanding law schools and still have regrets. We don’t want anyone to be in that situation, let alone you.</p>
<p>I understand. And I appreciate that you’re taking your time to help me understand everything. I’m trying to get it all down. It’s so scary, being that I’m literally one year from graduation. I have to figure it all out. There’s pressure and people asking my plans, and nobody who can give me good advice. Which is why I appreciate your advice. I’m almost done with this practice. I have one section left. I’m not doing amazingly well, honestly, but that is partially because I’m visiting my family today and there’s lots going on including the news (apparently our city has a lot of tragedies today), a bunch of animals, and kids. So I’m doing my best for where I’m at. I think I could do at least a LITTLE better if it was perfectly silent, I was a little bit more able to focus, and people didn’t keep popping their head over my worksheet going, “What’s that? Why are you doing that? How are you doing? Can you go to law school? When will you know??” </p>
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I may retake a different practice once I’m back in my quiet little dorm room to get a more accurate answer. For now this is the best I have.</p>
<p>Also, I would be happy to share with someone the four law schools that are closest to me if I can do so via private message. If someone does want to analyze them or at least look into them, I’d be more than happy to share. I don’t feel comfortable posting them publicly, however.</p>