<p>I'm new to this thread and looking for some advice.</p>
<p>1) My son is about to start his sophomore year is on track to graduate in 3 years, thanks to about a year's worth of AP credits. What impact, positive or negative, will this have on admission?</p>
<p>2) After taking 5 or 6 practice LSATs he's averaging about 172 and contemplating taking the LSAT this September. He would be applying to law schools Fall 2010. Again would this plan affect admission?</p>
<p>There are many threads on graduating early. The general consensus is that it is a negative for the applicant, as there aren’t as many years of grades for the law school to go by in the application. </p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter when he takes the LSAT, as long as when he plans to apply to schools, his scores are still valid (or not valid if he ends up scoring poorly on the actual test (although hopefully he won’t)).</p>
<p>While law school admissions is in general a more straightforward process than undergrad admissions at top private colleges, not all law schools weigh the same factors in exactly the same way. </p>
<p>If your son is aiming for the public law school in your home state (with the exception of the top public law schools like UMich, Berkeley, and UVa), and he has good grades and does get a 172 on the real LSAT, he’s fine.</p>
<p>If he’s aiming for YHS and other schools in the top 14 and wants to go directly from college, then having only 2 years of grades and (I assume) no full time work experience, and (I assume) weaker ECs and maybe LORs than the people he’s competing against, it will hurt him a bit. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he won’t get into any of them if he has a very high gpa and actually gets that 172. He just won’t do as well as he might have. In that situation, I’d urge him to at least take a year or two off so that he will have 3 years of grades to submit for consideration and get some other things to add to his resume.</p>
<p>He always has the option of taking the LSAT, applying to LS, and then deciding whether he wants to enroll in one of the LSs that admits him or defer and try again.</p>