<p>Generally, you can major in almost anything. Those who want to attend law school right after college usually apply in the the fall of their senior year or a little later since many law schools take applications into February or even March, but law schools do usually follow a rolling admission process and thus applying earlier in the senior year is better than later. Nevertheless, many who go to law school don’t even apply until after they have been out of law school and working for two or more years, and a number of law schools actually favor those with post-graduate working experience.</p>
<p>Admission to law school depends mainly on college GPA and LSAT score. Most who intend to go to law school right after college take the LSAT in June just after junior year in college or Fall of senior year. The LSAT has nothing to do with the the company that provides the SAT and you should not assume it is similar to the SAT. Also, do not assume it works like college admissions in that the schools use your highest test scores if you take multiple tests. Some law schools do that, but many, including most of your higher ranks will hold a lower LSAT score against you even if you submit an additional test with high scores. Moreover, there is no score choice. Your scores and grades and applications go through the LSAC (LSAC.org). It administers the LSAT and thus gathers all your scores and it requires you to submit all your college grades, including any college courses you took in high school, and provides all your LSAT scores and grades to law schools as part of your application with its calculated GPA.</p>
<p>As a result, you should take any LSAT with the intent to score as high as you possibly can and not with an intent to just try it out to see how you will do the first time. Moreover, for any law school your LSAT score is at least 50% of everything in your admission decision and for majority of law schools it is 60% or more. GPA and test scores combined usually account for 95% or more of the admission decision with everything else like ECs and recommendations falling in the remainder. Also, if you happen to go to grad school after college before applying to law school, the fact that you went to grad school may be considered a plus but your grad school grades are not used to determine admission.</p>
<p>What GPA and LSAT score you need to have to be seriously considered for admission varies significantly among law schools. In the usual case, the higher the law school’s rank the higher GPA and test score that you need to have to be in the middle 50% range and for most, having a GPA that is higher than most applicants accepted will not make up for having an LSAT that is lower than most applicants accepted but a higher LSAT may allow you to squeeze in on a somewhat lower GPA. LSAC.org and several other sites have a probability calculator where you can put in your GPA and LSAT score and get an estimate of your chances for admission to any law schools. </p>
<p>Where you attend law school can be an important career decision. You will hear many mentioning the “Top 14” (google it for law schools and you will find it). Understand that there is truth to the claim that being from the T14 can have an impact not just on employment for that first law job but positions later when you change. The difference between the T14 and say the next ten may not be huge but there is a large gap national employment prospects bewqteen the T14 and any law school ranked below the top 40 which have a more local employment base. </p>
<p>Law school is expensive even for in-state public university law schools. Law schools do provide varying tuition scholarships for top applicants, less so in the upper echelons than lower but otherwise what you will be getting is loans if you do not have the finances and many come out of law school with debt of over $120,000.</p>
<p>Also be aware that lawyer employment out of law school is currently in a depression and has been since the Great Recession of 2008-09. Even some of the T14 have decided to lower their class size partly because graduates were having trouble finding employment. The downturn is also reflected in law school applications which are down about 40% in the last three years (much less so for the T14s but even some of those have had lower numbers of applications). That downturn might make it somewhat easier to get admission to many law schools although not likely to the T14.</p>
<p>Colleges usually have pre-law programs and you should look into the one at your college. Those are not majors but instead just advisory programs that provide advisors who can provide suggestions for courses and applying to law schools. Usually any student in the college can join those programs.</p>