I recently transferred over to NYU from a small community college in California for the Spring 2017 semester. During my time at this community college, I was involved in a few extracurricular activities, and I was a leader in each of them, serving as VP and President. However, I did not focus at all on finding internships during my time at the college. School at NYU hasn’t started for the spring semester yet, but I’m really worried that I won’t get enough internships to build my resumé during my short time at NYU. I do intend on taking a year off between undergrad and law school to continue honing my resumé. Anyways, my question is how important are resumés and internships when it comes to getting admission into top, elite law schools. I’ve always wanted to get into Columbia Law School. My GPA is solid as of right now–I have a 3.87 GPA.
Not important. They help with getting hired though.
It’s not necessarily important for getting into Law School. Your resume can help you hone your own interests and that can help you in law school and beyond. There are many facets of law and knowing something about a subject area can help you. If you are interested in health (nutrition, nursing, premed, medical research) that’s a potential direction in law school and a law career. The same goes for engineering or the arts or gender and sexuality advocacy or Italian language. If you find you have an interest area that you’re passionate about, that can help you focus your interests at law school. If you don’t have that, it’s okay too. You can figure out a focus in law school.
How important are letters of recommendations? Do you guys have any advice on building strong relationships with professors so that I can get strong letters of recs? How do you do that if you have different professors for each class and that you tend not to see after one semester is over? Can you get your academic advisor to write a letter of rec for you?
Not important either. Generally not even employers care (I can think of only a few firms that call references).