Questions about pre-law at Duke from a rising senior in HS

Colleges and Universities A-Z Duke University
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hey, so i’m a rising high school senior who’s looking to ED to duke this coming year. i just have a few questions as a student who wants to go to law school in the future (after undergrad).

  • how big is pre-law at duke?
  • are duke students successful in getting into top law schools (think t4 and t14)?
  • what majors would you recommend for a pre-law students? gpa is super, super important for law school, and i need to keep that in mind. i’m drawn to polisci, public policy, and ICS. any thoughts here?
  • is it possible to get a 4.0 at duke (especially in the three majors i listed above)? is there grade inflation?
  • finally, on a more general note, since duke is my #1 choice, i’m heavily leaning towards applying ED. will there be a sizable boost to applying ED? i know that duke has a lot of legacies and athletes, so the 21% ED admissions rate from last year might be a little skewed.

tysm for answering my questions! i rlly appreciate it!

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“pre-law” is not as big a deal in college as you might think. Law schools do not care about your major at all and with one or two exceptions barely notice what college you went to. Indeed, the first cut in applications is typically made on straight numbers: GPA & LSAT.

Further, there is a very strong trend towards students working between undergrad and law. The % of students going straight through is falling year on year (just 18% at Harvard in the last round*). A strong majority (63% for Harvard) have two or more years experience, and that % is increasing steadily.

A 4.0 is tough to get in any college, but Duke has a rep for being pretty mainstream (ie neither grade inflation or deflation).

Your very best bet is to choose a college where you will shine, study subjects that you genuinely find engaging, do internships that let you taste-test different areas of interest and play it out. Autumn of third year is a good time to start evaluating seriously what you to do, and when, after UG.

*I happen to know a 3L HLS students who went straight through- and their objective achievements, starting in HS and continuing through UG, are simply dazzling. If I didn’t know it for fact, I wouldn’t believe that one young person could have achieved so much so young. You might enjoy this list of achievements that the most recent HLS class gave: https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/hls-profile-and-facts/

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Don’t worry at all about “pre-law.” Law schools don’t care about whether you’re pre-law or not, and there’s not a set curriculum that you need to take for law school. For admissions, they will look at your grades and LSAT score . … full stop. For that reason (and also for financial ones), it might be advisable to go to a school that is less jam-packed with amazingly, over the top impressive students so your chances of being a top, straight A, student are higher. For example,for law school admissions, in most cases it’s better to graduate from a USNWR lower ranked school with a 4.0, then a more highly ranked school with a 3.5. Also, from a financial perspective - unless you have unlimited funding available to you for your education - it could also be beneficial to choose a school that will give you merit aid/need based aid, or both, and save as much money as possible during undergrad.

Also, don’t worry about your major. Law schools don’t care - pick your major based on your interests and where you think you can excel. Looking forward, once you’re in law school and interviewing for legal jobs, legal interviewers get very tired of seeing political science majors who think that was what they were “supposed” to major in to be competitive for law school. It’s just as good, if not better, to major in theatre, or linguistics, or Japanese, or classical studies. Of course, if you’re passionate about political science, then major in it of course - but don’t major in it because you think you need to do so for law school. It doesn’t prepare you for law school any better than any other major will.

Finally, as @collegemom3717 said . . . it’s very important to take a few years off between college and law school and get some work experience. It doesn’t have to be in the legal industry, and in fact, I think it’s easier to distinguish yourself once you’re in law school if you gain some experience in a different industry. The point is gaining some professional experience, maturity, judgment, and skills so that you are competing on an even playing field with your classmates in law school (most of whom will have also taken time off after college to work).

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I think the best answer to your question would be to contact the pre-law advisor - they are listed here. They don’t show stats on their website or outcomes (schools students go to) but I assure you they have them and can provide at your request. prelaw@duke.edu

I’m sure Dukies are successful getting into LS - and that’s the same for many schools.

As others said, major in what you want - there are limits though - if you want to be a patent lawyer, you’d want to be STEM - like an engineer. If you want to major in communications, anthropology, math, language - doesn’t matter - get a great GPA and great LSAT, get involved, get work experience after - and save your money. Law School is expensive.

Unless you are super rich, go to Delaware over Duke, for example, if the cost is half and you don’t have another $300K after you graduate. It is not likely for big scholarships in law school. From a financial POV, you have to think about 7 years, not four.

Finally, pre-law is advising. Even my daughter who hates to read and write is now inspired at her school and talking about signing up for advising - but that’s what it is. You will see kids apply to law school that aren’t pre law. And others that are pre-law never take the LSAT or apply to law school.

It’s not a reason to pick a college - fit and affordability are. And when you think you want to go to law school, you need to look at affordability now through that lens.

It may mean that the top rated school is not the right one after all. It alone, is not going to give you the boost. The top LSAT and other factors will. Look at the Harvard and Yale law student page - lots of schools represented from the Boise States to the Harvards and everything in between - it’s not just top schools. In law school, it’s what you’ve done more that where you spent your first four years. Of course, many law students do come from top schools for the same reason they got into top schools to begin with - they are academically superior and thus will likely test better.

Good luck.

Pre-Law Advising | Duke Academic Advising Center

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If you want a high GPA at Duke in any of those majors, it should not be hard to achieve IF you’re genuinely interested in the material and willing to engage with it and your profs and do the work. Iow, it’s not like engineering where there is a right answer and/or it’s graded on a curve. A student can get an A- or A in public policy or poli sci classes simply by doing what the prof is looking for, not by being brilliant. But if you’re not “into” it, that will require exceptional effort and self-discipline, so think about that as you consider your major, especially one in the social sciences or humanities. So yes, if this is what you like, you can probably set yourself up well for law school at Duke.

I would think about what you can afford (if you are paying for law school) and the environment you want. Either can get you to the next step.

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I can only relate my experience from the 80’s. i begged my way into a history honors program, no easy thing given that I was a serious scholarship athlete (but needed to work on my study skills).
I was behind my classmates at the start of the program (five of the ten went to Harvard Law School), but caught up every month and finished with high honors. Went to a top 10 law school, and found that it was relatively easy compared to Duke. I put relatively little time in at law school, and worked while going to law school full time, meaning I finished with no debt (something that could not be done today, unfortunately). I did as well as one could in law school, second in the class, law review editor, best exams in several subjects, and so on. Although one could reason that I did well because I no longer had to manage a year round athletic schedule (certainly a plus), if you could sustain the ego damage of taking whatever the best of Duke could throw at you (and believe me, there was some ego damage) then something like law school was relatively manageable. I might add that I loved history (other major was economics - a plus for Duke because double majoring is not uncommon) and that helped. My honors advisor was just the out of the box ambitious professor I needed - an NC State electrical engineer who picked up a History Phd at Harvard, and he had no qualms about challenging the heck out of me (he also showed an interest in my athletic performances, so there was quite a human side to him as well). Does this relate to today? I think so. Find a field of study you really like, take on the biggest challenge you can find, identify great people to work for or with, and don’t worry about safe spaces and the like, and well, you get out of what you put into it. I am not sure I recommend law school - that is another subject - but I did get into an esteemed agricultural economics Phd program with a fellowship and while it would have been more work than law school I was confident in my preparation.

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Duke undergrads place very well in the T10 business schools. I would suspect its the same at law schools.