I am a California resident looking for schools that have an undergraduate degree in public policy. My goal is to become an immigration attorney. We are a family of 6 and are low income. Can you please make some recommendations on schools to apply to for my degree and my financial situation? My current gpa is 4.0 unweighted, I have many dual enrollment credits, no AP or IB courses, and no test scores.
I have applied to :
UC Irvine
UC Berkeley
UC San Diego
UCLA
UC Santa Cruz
I plan to apply to:
Stanford
Claremont Mckenna
USC
LMU
Occidental
Pitzer
I know that these are all reaches, so I need some good safety and matches.
It looks as though you’re trying to stay in California, is that correct?
For anyone who’s interested in policy, I frequently think that capitals are an excellent place to be. Whether that’s the nation’s capital (D.C., and with your GPA I definitely think that American & Catholic would be safeties or matches) or a state capital, there are lots of lobbyists, think tanks, etc. that tend to congregate there.
Are you a US citizen ? What’s your EFC because if it’s low yiu might hit a meets need school.
You can prep for law school anywhere and law school is not cheap so best to focus on cost now hence the question.
At U of Arizona you’ll get $35k off the $38k tuition so if you don’t have large need, it could be an option. Given it’s location and focus as a leading Hispanic institution it could work well with your future desires.
I know you say low income but if you could tell us your EFC it could help.
Your LSAT will matter hugely for law school so you definitely want an affordable school.
most schools will have a good public policy / political science program- your goal is to get into a college that you can graduate from debt-free, then work for a year or 2 & apply to the most affordable/lowest debt law school you can.
I couldn’t agree more with @collegemom3717. There are many colleges that would prepare you perfectly well for a great law school. Keep costs down for undergrad since law school is quite expensive.
Given your interests, you may want to take a look at Tulane if you have the stats for schools like Stanford and CMC. It’s one of the exceedingly few places in the US where you can study not only Spanish but also other languages spoken in Mexico and Central America like Nahuatl, the Maya languages, etc. Very useful for immigration law!
Guatemala has a population of fifteen million people, forty per cent of them indigenous, according to the most recent census. In the past year, two hundred and fifty thousand Guatemalan migrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. At least half of them are Mayans, and many speak little or no Spanish. According to the Department of Justice, Mam was the ninth most common language used in immigration courts last year, more common than French. Three Guatemalan Mayan languages made the top twenty-five: Mam, K’iche’, and Q’anjob’al.
Immigration courts across the country have seen a steady rise in speakers of indigenous Guatemalan languages in the last five years, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the court. And they are only the most recent additions to the list, which for several years has routinely included Zapotec, Mixtec, Ixil and Popti, languages from southern Mexico and Central America.
“The lack of interpretation for indigenous people has been a problem for a long time,” said Odilia Romero, a Zapotec interpreter who has been an activist with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations for the last 20 years. “But what we see now is something entirely different: We have entire populations showing up with languages that we have not seen in the United States before.