<p>does anyone know anything about law school admissions and pre-law advising?</p>
<p>The Pre-Law Advising office for BU is in CAS B2 (the basement). They’re very helpful, and you can start meeting with an advisor as early as you want.</p>
<p>As far as law school admissions, you’d do better to check out the law school forum on CC.</p>
<p>If you have any questions about law school admissions, I could probably lead you in the right direction. I’m leaning toward law school at this point and have done lots of research into the admissions process.</p>
<p>Just wondering, what are the most important admission factors that Law school admissions committees look at. I know it is primarily GPA and LSAT scores but in what order, and what else besides those two?</p>
<p>I used to do this but the Supreme Court has mucked with the system so my information is half out of date. </p>
<p>They look at different things depending on where you fall. First cut is grades and scores as adjusted to account for grade levels at school and general perception of how difficult / easy a school is with grades. </p>
<p>Particularly with public universities, the standard is becoming a points system because that’s a Supreme Court accepted way to give a benefit to minorities without running an unconstitutional admissions process. Points might also include where you live (in state, some odd place, etc.) and other factors, like alumni connections. </p>
<p>There’s a line at the bottom and less of a line at the top. You can get out of the bottom if you’re in a preference group - like some minorities, really big donors, etc. but that’s more true at schools that use less of a points system. If you’re above the top line, then your application is reviewed to make sure you’re not a zero in disguise. In other words, they try to filter out the psychopaths with high scores and certain others. (This is a bigger deal in med school admissions, btw, where you’ll find many rejected because the med schools believe they’re not really doctors, but maybe researchers given their quirks.) The middle group is a form of pool and you’re evaluated there by various, fairly standard processes in which they look more deeply at all the stuff you’ve sent in, like references and classes you took.</p>
<p>devilsrule-thanks, i was just wondering how well bu students usually do in the law school process?
and whats your major? i was thinking of history and international relations</p>
<p>yea, i am also planning on attending law school.</p>
<p>You will be happy to know that BU is one of the biggest law-school feeder schools in the country. I believe we are number 9, but don’t quote me on that. We place lots of kids into many different law schools. My major is hospitality administration, and my focus in hospitality is accounting and finance. So, I’m a business person but I only did this so I could get a practical job in case I decided not to go to law school. I’m doing a philosophy minor and have taken many electives in areas such as comparative literature, political science, advanced writing, etc. History or IR would both be good majors if you would like to attend law school.</p>
<p>Any major that requires writing and analysis is good. Law schools don’t care. You can be an English major specializing in 18th century poetry. I would actually recommend poetry because it teaches the kind of close analysis you’ll absolutely need to learn in law school. Business is not much prep for actual law classes; you’ll have to learn how to do very close reading of very small differences. It’s kind of sad, to me, that English departments have shrunk all over the country as kids rush into IR and Econ (and Poli Sci, which was more popular relatively before) in the sense that these “prepare” better. They may, as Devilsrule says, give you options outside of law but they don’t educate you for law as well as reading Alexander Pope.</p>
<p>Many people say that philosophy is the best major for those who want to condition themselves for law school. The reading, critical thinking, writing, and logic involved will all help you. Because I am a major in a business field, I wanted to make sure that I take a minor that stresses these “law school areas” and philosophy covers them very very well. I would highly recommend taking some philosophy courses or considering it as a major.</p>
<p>S’s friend majored in philosophy and will enter Penn law school this fall.</p>
<p>Yes, philosophy and ethics are very good choices. They not only require close reading but also require logical argument. For example, a basic conception in tort laws is proximate cause, which connects to a concept called the scope of duty and to an old common law idea of foreseeability. The classic American case has amazing facts: a man is running to catch a commuter train on Long Island. He’s carrying a package. The conductor holds the door open as the train starts to move and the man leaps up. As he leaps and as the conductor tries to grab his arm, the package falls. When the package hits the ground it goes off - literally. Turns out it was fireworks. A firework crosses the platform, hits a scale and that injures a woman. (It is speculated a bystander frightened by the noise knocked over the scale but the first is the case as stated by Cardozo.) </p>
<p>It’s an amazing set of facts. Should the railroad be liable? What if the package openly said “fireworks”? It’s clear the conductor’s act was the “proximate cause” of the injury; he helped, dislodged the package and kaboom. But did was this chain of events foreseable? In some cases, there is strict liability but in others you have to connect the line of causation to the “scope of duty” and thus to foreseeability.</p>
<p>Hey I have always found interest in these type of debates and logical thinking scenarios. Are these philosophy type courses?</p>
<p>Ethics and philosophy.</p>
<p>sorry- just found lernorm comments- and they are leading you in the wrong direction. Subscribe to the Law School forum on College Confidential, you will get some great insight from lawyers, applicants and Law School Admins.</p>
<p>LSAT is largely what decides where you are going to go. It is about a 75/25 split between LSAT/GPA. But of course if you get a perfect LSAT 180- you still will be highly regarded by T14 law schools. On the other hand a 4.0 and a 160 is not going to get you in the top school.</p>
<p>Soft Factors have little effect and are usually just seen as formalities. Extra curricular, Personal Statements, URM, geographical location, all of these are considered but if you do need me the cut for LSAT/GPA they will not even look at these.</p>
<p>Your major does not matter and your school does not matter.</p>
<p>One hot topic is that Ivy leaguers get into the best law schools. This is not because they go to Ivy league schools. The fact is, high school students who tend to score higher on standardized tests and get higher grades go to Ivy league schools, these students then score higher on graduate stnadardized tests-which in turn gets them into tough schools. Yes there is hope. Get a 3.5+ and 165+ on the LSAT. Laws School Admins wont care if you went to Umass Boston or MIT. They will look at your LSAT and gPA</p>
<p>I don’t really care for an argument, which is apparently going on with me in another thread, but I did law school admissions for a top 10 law school.</p>
<p>A few points: </p>
<ol>
<li>Which counts more, LSAT or gpa? Given that gpa’s are all within a very narrow range? When the gpa ranking scale is essentially up to 4+ and the LSAT scale is much broader, then LSAT becomes a more important statistical factor. You don’t need a regression analysis to understand that. Bottom line is that your GPA needs to be at a certain level or your total LSAT / GPA score won’t be there. They were in essence multiplied together using a couple of factors. </li>
<li>We used an adjustment factor that gave an edge to schools perceived as better. That would not matter significantly for a BU but it does make getting in from a no-name school that much harder and it does give an advantage to certain schools. Grade inflation has probably screwed that up a lot in ways that I no longer know about. (If I were doing it, I’d adjust the gpa’s twice, once to norm and the other on a subjective weighting.)</li>
<li>As I said above, it’s partly a “numbers game.” If you’re above a line or below it, then you’re in or out. (The line at state schools was different for in and out of state.) Your extra points for being a minority, for being a legacy (at some schools), etc. could move you into the “pool” in the middle. Most admits came from the pool.</li>
<li>Being in the “pool” meant you were looked at by a committee more closely and some details could move you up or down in the pool ranking. </li>
<li>Arguments are often advanced that the kids from the most prestigious schools score better on the LSAT. There is some truth to that, but not much when you see it in context. That is, there are more kids from Yale who score high as a relative percentage of kids from that school taking the LSAT, but that doesn’t matter to any individual taking the LSAT in any school anywhere. </li>
<li>The best way to get into law school is to do well. Duh. If you take a bunch of classes where you can get A’s, then that will help your gpa and that will help you get into law school. Duh. If getting into the highest ranked law school is your main concern, then you need to make that your top goal and act accordingly. That doesn’t mean you’ll have great legal career or that you’ll even be a decent attorney. It doesn’t mean you’ll make a ton of money because ambition, drive, legal skills matter more in the long run - and, as any lawyer in the world will tell you - what really matters are people skills, the ability to communicate with and sway a client, salesmanship and the ability to take risks.</li>
</ol>
<p>Lergnom, thanks for the helpful info. One quick question. How are grade trends viewed? I had big problems freshman year, particularly financial problems, that led to a very poor academic record over the course of the year. However, I maintained a near-perfect GPA the final 3 years once these financial problems had subsided. However, my GPA only sits at about a 3.5, rather than the 3.85-3.9 I typically say is my representative figure. Many people told me that I should include an addendum with my law school applications, explaining the factors that led to my poor performance freshman year. Would a law school admissions team still judge me as a 3.5 student? Or would they take my huge upward trend into account and essentially regard my freshman year as an anomaly of my record?</p>
<p>I’m sure the school does matter but what is more important is GPA.</p>
<p>When you’re in the pool, they will look at an addendum so explain the financial problems and keep your fingers crossed. And remember that it’s a big country and going to Harvard Law School helps you get a higher paying job at a more prestigious firm out of the gate but then you’re pretty much on your own. The good news is that while your ranking will be affected by your glitch, your ability will prove far more important in the long run. That, btw, is true of undergrad admissions too; research shows that a kid who turns down a more “prestige” school does as well as kids who graduate from that prestige school. As the researcher said, it’s the person not the school.</p>
<p>aznmatrix, we’re not saying different things, just emphasizing them in slightly different ways.</p>
<p>please check out the law forum if you have questions. These answers are very different than the general opinion on that board…check it out if you have the time for another thread!</p>