I am very interested in law and wish to pursue a career in it. I do have several questions about the process though.
Does the undergrad school you go to matter at all?
I applied to a handful of private universities oos but not sure if I should go if it would not matter in the long run if I could go to UTD for undergrad and end up at a t14 law school.
Does your major matter?
I am really interested in business and applied as a business major to most schools (other than the ones that don’t have business). However, I am interested in stem fields so I might switch my major in college and end up with a stem major and a business minor. (Are stem majors given more weight?)
Does it look bad if you were a transfer in undergrad school?
Currently it looks like I am going to go to UTD, but I am seriously considering transferring to a different school like UT Austin or one that is generally ranked higher (and has a better location/fit for me).
How many times can/should you take the LSAT?
Do schools require you to send all scores? Is there a limit on how many you can take? Does it vary by school (specifically t14 schools)?
Are extracurriculars improtant?
Is published research a plus (planning to do lots of research either way)? Internships? Clubs?
Are there and major 'hooks'?
While in undergrad admissions there are hooks such as urm, first gen, or legacy, are there any in law school? Only one applicable to me in undergrad is first gen and don’t think that would count towards law.
Cost?
Graduate school looks really expensive, and I was wondering about how id pay for it. Is there any need based/merit based aid at top schools? Would be taking a couple years off before going to law school be a good idea? If I did take a couple years off wouldn’t I have to pay undergrad debt before going to law school (or is it advisable)?
Sorry for the essay, just really want to know about all of this because it’s really crucial to my future decisions. Thank you
Law school admissions is overwhelmingly (70%) focused on an applicant’s LSAT score. Then 30% focused on one’s GPA if not an underrepresented minority applicant.
Bob’s College of Knowledge is fine for law school admissions. No need for a prestigious undergraduate institution.
Law school Deans focus, in large part, on US News rankings which primarily focuses on LSAT scores & GPAs of matriculated students.
Generally, no more than 2-3 times. But don't take until you are ready. (no taking for a practice run.)
Not really. Just get involved something you are interested in.
URM. First gen might be a tiny plus factor, depending on the app reader. Other things of small value: overcoming adversity.
All but HYS offer significant merit aid, based on GPA+LSAT. (The top 3 offer need-based aid.). For the most merit aid, get your numbers above a law school's 75th percentiles.
btw: I disagree with the poster above that the LSAT is 70%. It is generally more than the GPA, but not that much more – perhaps 55%. Of course, some schools like Boalt weight the GPA more than LSAT.
My daughter just went through the law school application process. She was a splitter, high gpa and not within range LSAT score for top law schools. She was denied at many top ten schools 2 years ago when she applied right out of UG. She then decided to do an internship at an US attorney’s office, got great LORs from attorneys and wrote a much better personal statement. She just got into a top 4 law school and is waiting to hear from the other 3.
Based on my daughter’s experience (and what I have read on some law school forums), I think it takes more than just test scores and GPA to get into law schools. Some of those top law schools do take work experience, ECs, UG school, LORs, personal statement into consideration.
What is interesting is lower ranking schools actually WL D2 when her GPA and test score were above their 75%. I suspect it is for yield protection.
@bluebayou thank you too for answering all the questions, either way I’m going to aim for a 4.0 and be extremely diligent about it (the only reason I would not major in engineering and minor in business instead of majoring in just business), but I’m also happy that tests are taken into consideration more than gpa because generally I’ve done well on tests, including standardized ones (not sure if there is correlation though?). Thank you for the cost info esp… I was really concerned about there being no way to pay for it at all but now it just means I gotta work harder.
@twoinanddone thanks, and I wish I had that kind of book lol, I’m first gen with high need (I think high need more than cancels out first gen but idk)
@oldfort how long did she intern for? I’m seriously considering trying to do it in college for a couple years but not sure if I’ll be able to juggle it with school. I’m a serious splitter for undergrad admissions and it is killing me (super low gpa high act, and gpa comes with very extreme upward trend). Can’t imagine how the anxiety being one for law school would be.
My daughter did internship in the summer at public services, and 2 years after college. She worked around 10 hours a week while in college, which was manageable.
Absolutely, but being above a law schools 75ths trumps everything (except at Yale and Stanford). In other words, a 3.9/173 from Regional Podunk College still has an extremely high chance of acceptance at Harvard Law.
OTOH, if an applicant is below one (or both) of a law school’s medians, that applicant needs something else to it into the accept pile.
Splitters always have unpredictable cycles because demand for them turns on the state of the other applicants in the pool already accepted. Having had an internship doesn’t change that.
I should note, just because law schools don’t care about ECs doesn’t mean employers won’t. Remember that you’re only a year into law school when you start interviewing.
What’s going to matter are your grades and LSAT scores. The school, not really. One thing that law schools don’t like are candidates choosing easy majors to pad their grades. You can major in literally anything you want because there’s really no prerequisites like medical school. In fact, they love engineering and accounting degrees because those are typically prerequisites to tax and patent law, but you still need to have really good grades.
One consideration about UT Austin is that their business school is ridiculously selective. Even with high grades, you have a 33% of getting admitted. So if you want to major in business, chances are you’re going to end-up with a sociology degree or be forced to transfer back to UTD. You’re better off sticking with UTD with a strong major.
Cost? You get loans and grants. Private schools cost a lot more, so you’ll have more debt. It’s better to pay resident tuition, which makes UT the best value for the money if you can get in. Attorneys can make a good living, but they don’t make the kind of money that doctors do.
As a practicing attorney, I agree with above posters to do well in undergrad and study hard for LSAT (but know that while law schools consider it heavily, it’s not a predictor of how well you’ll actually do in law school - I did not score well on my LSAT but went to a small highly selective LAC with good grades and graduated in top 10% of my law school class). So don’t get too discouraged is my point.
The ability to reason, think critically and write well are skills needed to do well in law school - so I think it matters less what you major in but rather that you take courses in undergrad that develop those skills. I was a political science/economics major but I went to law school with STEMs, religious majors, etc.
I graduated from law school in '95 and am still paying off my law school loans (went to a private law school and I had to borrow living expenses in addition to tuition; we spread my loan repayments over a 30 year plan to help our debt/income ratio when qualifying for a mortgage right out of law school). But it was a worthy investment.
I attended a brand new no name law school from which i graduated in the early '80’s. It offered me the most money because they saw my potential. I was a Jewish girl who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx (think Sonia Sotomayor) The same game of going to a top school to become a law clerk or get into a white shoe firm existed back then but I don’t think it was as brutal as it is now. I graduated second in my class and became an insurance defense attorney because I wanted to do actual courtroom trial work and criminal law, the only other option, didn’t appeal to me. I enjoy my work still after all these years and can’t imagine having done anything else for a living, except maybe med mal defense because I really enjoy medical issues.
I have made a good living for my family. I have moved from a housing project to a community that appears regularly on lists of wealthy communities. I mention that not to brag but to point out that it is possible to have a satisfying life, financially and socially, as an attorney even if you don’t go to a T-14 school. I have five children, something that was not possible for many women lawyers in my day. I made a choice to be a family person and not a corporate lawyer.
If you want to be a lawyer because you want to be a lawyer, go for it . Don’t go to law school just because you think it’s a quick way to big bucks. It’s hard work.
Law practice in the area of criminal law differs substantially from that in the civil arena.
With the exception of violation of a civil restraining order or civil contempt, civil matters revolve around money issues or issues of legal status (such as divorce proceedings) whereas criminal matters deal with the possibility of imprisonment of the defendant. Additionally, one party in all criminal actions is the government (prosecution).
Your undergraduate school matters if you’re applying to Harvard. Otherwise, no. Undergraduate major doesn’t matter, cost decisions are up to you. The only thing you need to focus on is the LSAT and undergraduate GPA. Everything else is secondary. Law school may say that they approach each application holistically, but it’s mostly false. They primarily care about the rankings on the US News & World Report. You may have stellar credentials, resume and extracurricular activities; but if your LSAT score is crap, nobody will care whether you rescued 20 school children from a burning building.