Hello,
I am a graduating high school senior this year that will be attending Rice or Columbia University in the fall. I plan on studying mechanical engineering. I will be taking Engineering Physics 1 over this coming summer as an initiative to prepare myself for college. I enjoy engineering, and I look forward to combining a technical perspective with my analytical skills. Also, I am both Native American and Hispanic, and I believe this might help me get into graduate school.
After graduating from undergraduate, I think I would like to work a few years and then go to business or law school.
If I am considering patent/IP law or a career in business, how can I start preparing now to be successful?
I have heard that it is good to do things like start studying for LSAT/GRE, seek internships at companies like Boeing and Space X, and start research as early as possible.
I know I am not a Penn MT student (I heard they make up to 250k a year straight out of college), but I think with hard work I can be at the top of my field. How can I best use my time and energy to make myself the best I can be? What are some goals I should make for myself? Would a path to business or law be better, or what should I consider before choosing a specific career path?
I hate to sound cliche but give yourself some time to smell the roses. In other words, give yourself time to process everything. You have two great options and an intense drive. That will give you wonderful opportunities. But give yourself permission to explore and pursue opportunities that you may not see right now. If you are thinking about business or law in the future think of joining some student organizations while in college to see if those are interesting things to you. You have time. Sometimes the path is not linear. And it’s certainly not a lock step process.
I would focus first on choosing your school. If you have visited both then choose the one that speaks to you as a whole person. You can analyze the data but you are not a robot. The school needs to fit you.
You sound like a very competent person. Good luck.
@redgreen243 - I also would not worry even a little bit about law school of business school. If you get good grades in mechanical engineering and work for a couple of years afterward, you should have no trouble getting into a top law or business school. I got my MBA from Michigan and the program was full of engineers from the Big 3 automakers. Law schools also like engineers. If you got a good enough SAT or ACT score to get into Rice and Columbia, you will also do will on the GRE or LSAT, as long as you take it seriously, and study hard before you take the exams.My son is an Aerospace Engineering junior/National Merit scholar at Texas A&M. He spent about two hours looking at the GRE prep book and thought he’d take it once for practice. He got 165 Quantitative/169 Verbal/6 Writing. He now doesn’t plan on taking it again.
My son briefly considered patent law, but now is all in for a PhD in AE.
I agree with the other posters. Don’t start preparing for that graduate path yet - focus on getting good grades in ME. I am graduating an ME program in about a week and there have been dozens of graduate schools recruiting us for patent law. If your school has a law/legal studies minor that may be a good idea to get you some exposure to the field. Other than that don’t worry about GRE/LSAT until junior year - focus on your engineering.
Quite frankly, you don’t need research if your goal is MBA and/or JD. Research is useful if your goal is a PhD.
Uh, really? Where’d you hear that? Law schools are arguably the most hostile of graduate programs to engineers, chiefly because law school adcoms wilfully choose not to know and/or care about the notorious grade deflation that pervades most engineering programs. Sadly, if 2 students with the same LSAT score apply, but one has a 3.5 in engineering and the other has a 3.8 in Leisure Studies, they’ll prefer the latter.
Take leadership positions on campus…think about what you like to do and get involved in that early so you can take leadership later. Think student government association, economics club, Model UN, etc. It doesn’t quite matter WHAT it is so much as you do lead it later. Columbia has a consulting club, so if you are interested in that aspect of business there’s an option there.
Definitely seek out internships. Both of those universities are in large cities so you may even be able to find a part-time internship during the academic year. Columbia deliberately does not have many classes on Fridays so you can seek out that kind of role. But summer internships are key.
For law school, don’t skip the classes that will force you to think analytically and write a lot. Take some social sciences and humanities classes to get practice in those areas. You’ll have to read and write a lot in law school, and some in business school, so develop those communications skills in addition to the hard technical skills.
Don’t start studying for the LSAT or GRE yet. It’s far too early. Wait until junior year. You also don’t need research experience unless you are interested in a research-related career and want a PhD.
It won’t, not really. Affirmative action doesn’t work the same way on the graduate level as it does on the undergrad level. In grad school, it’s more like a nice cherry on top. Sometimes it can help you find funding - there may be special funding earmarked for students from underrepresented groups in many fields, engineering being one of them. If you have your eye on an MBA, check out The Consortium, which is a special program for African American, Latino, and Native American students to potentially get a full tuition scholarship to a select group of MBA programs, such as Berkeley, UCLA, CMU Tepper, Michigan and Virginia (http://cgsm.org/).
But as for admission in and of itself…no, not really.
Oh, I must profoundly disagree: at least for MBA admissions, affirmative action is very much alive and well, and arguably even more prevalent than it is in undergrad admissions (if that’s even possible). I can assure you that words business schools take great pains to achieve admissions goals of ‘diversity’ and ‘balance’ - which essentially means affirmative action - while facing the acute problem that while however few highly qualified URM undergrad applicants may exist, there are even fewer highly qualified URM MBA applicants.
But don’t take my word for it. The J. of Blacks in Higher Education published several articles regarding this topic.