@mom2collegekids has it right. Your test scores are not predicting a top 10 (or 20) law school acceptance.
That aside, I would suggest saving your money and attending Rutgers. It’s a good school and you will need the money for law school, if you stay on that path.
@fcporto427 Law schools want to see that you do extremely well at whatever you set out to do. Another word for that is “passion.” You pursue something because you love it and you love it well enough to practice until you’re good at it–maybe the best at it. This is not unique to law schools, but the top law schools want to see this. If you can do this, plus have a unique POV on the world, one will snatch you up. Many people attending top law schools have built an area of expertise before applying. Not everyone, but many people. Several people start directly out of undergrad, but I would guestimate that most do not. You could for example work and become an expert in such different things as (choose one) electrical engineering, or in sports issues (why is the NBA a non-profit organization or how does a baseball player get traded from a legal POV and why is this) , in business (what does it mean to merge a corporation with another?), in hospice care issues (by working in a hospice or in a hospice-policy organization), in intellectual property and music sharing online–how is it different in the US or in Mexico or in Asia and do borders matter?, in immigrant issues, in policing in low-income vs high-income areas, in language issues in the French courts – anything! The expertise develops just by working and because you are interested. This is one reason having little debt is really important because: entry-level job (where you begin to develop your expertise) = less pay. Almost any area of interest can be combined with law. Law is a big umbrella that covers various interests.
As an undergrad you can try out these areas by doing internships. The internships help you develop a track reord of interest for future employers and they help you network to find your first and subsequent jobs.
Because of something called “stereotype threat”, do not listen to the other very well-intended people who suggested that your ACT is predictive of your LSAT. Stereotype threat usually means stereotypes about a social group, but the underlying idea is that if you believe something about yourself, that belief affects your test scores. If you believe that you can do well, and you’re the type to do well at X test, then your scores go up. Your ACT will be predictive of your LSAT only if you prepare in the same way as you did your ACT, and you don’t grow and change over time. The other commenters are not necessarily incorrect, but they are probably really meaning “on average” ACT is predictive of LSAT.
But you are not average. You are an individual. You post on this forum, which tells me that you want to be great and you are willing to find mentors to help you become great. Because of this, I feel that you can be a person who beats that average, but it will take work, steady work. You will need to sit down and practice, really actually practice, that test over and over until you master the test. This is how people who beat the tests do it: Set aside several weeks, like over a summer, and just practice and practice that test. Do full tests every single night and correct them (by understanding what you did wrong each time.) You know that you’ve mastered the test when you see the patterns OF THE TEST ITSELF. You will start seeing the logic of the questions, the patterns of how the questions are placed in the test, and see the types of questions that are offered and their variations. You do not need to get every question right. In fact, you will start seeing types of questions that you are more and less confident doing, and will understand how best to handle them. They will no longer be intimidating. When you can do this, then you know that you are mastering the test. It is possible for you to do this. You are young. You have all the time in the world as people don’t tend to start grad school until later. There is no deadline. Your mind is still forming, and you need to know that mastering nearly anything is part talent, sure, but mainly persistence. Think of the LSAT as your friend that’s going to tell Admissions that they have a solid reason to accept you. Love your LSAT and it will love you.
So doing really well in your undergrad degree (A average but if you should get a B or two, try not to let that get you down); find an interest area that you feel you want to develop into an expertise (working at virtually anything after college will do this, everything from paralegal work to topics mentioned above, and about a million others); and then practice the LSAT until you can teach it.
@fcporto427 This link, hopefully the moderators will allow me to post it, shows the colleges attended by the 2013 entering class of Harvard. As you can see, Rutgers is on there. As is Penn State.
If the link doesn’t work, I found this at “Surprise: Where Harvard Law Students Got Their Undergrad Degree” through google. It’s part of the website (all one word) the college solution dot com
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/surprise-where-harvard-law-students-got-their-undergrad-degrees/
@Dustyfeathers thank you so much for your kind well written response, seriously it was great it gave me momentum to achieve my lifelong goals.I think Rutgers might be my destination for undergrad, and i know there i will be involved in a variety of different things for my growth and expertise to follow me throughout my college career and make my resume for law schools be noticeable among thousands. While taking up as many different internships in different categories so i can have a wide range of expertise in my future.
For the LSAT, i don’t want to believe that ill be just another saying that my ACT will most likely influence my LSAT score, unlike the ACT( i was more focused on the SAT which i did do better in) i will start studying earlier, early as in now, I’m taking your advice and i will make the LSAT apart of me for the next four years of my life, i will master it and i will achieve a good school to get me into a top 10 law school.
Thank you for the link, knowing that there are Rutgers students who were able to go to Harvard Law makes me feel more confident that i’ll follow in similar footsteps.
Once again thanks for your kind response and for giving me momentum to achieve my lifelong dream of being a Lawyer!
Er…no. I do agree that law school is only worth it if you go to a school in the top 25 or so these days, but there’s far less of a correlation between college entrance exams and the LSAT than people think. There aren’t many studies that have looked at this, and none of them use the ACT. But A little hunting on the Internet found some that used the SAT: one study found the correlation to be about 0.33, which is pretty small. Another used a regression analysis and found that only 36% of the variance in LSAT scores is predicted by SAT scores. What that means is that the vast majority of your LSAT scores are predicted by something besides the scores you got on a single test you took four years ago.
And it should! A test for law school entrance that basically reflected exactly what you knew as a high school senior would be a very bad test. They don’t even test the same things, so it makes sense that they should not be very highly correlated.
That said, I don’t think it’s worth paying all that extra money to go to Penn State when you could go to Rutgers - which is an excellent university. You can go to a great law school from there, or have a great career in another field.
@juillet That makes a lot of sense. The SAT and the LSAT are very different exams.
@fcporto427 Yes going to a top law school is one key, imho, but not the only factor. Law seems to offer two levels of income, and people tend to fall into one or the other. One group earns about 60-70K per year to start, and can build from there. The other earns six figures to start and up to millions a year over time. Crossing between them takes building networking contacts and skills–and being debt free helps.
Public interest and government (working for an organization that advocates for something (like ACLU, NRDC, NARAL, Legal Assistance Foundation advocating for children; Greenpeace, Prisoner’s Legal Service, working for a district attorney’s office, becoming a judge, running for office) and graduates from lower tier firms doing corporate stuff are usually in the first category. You can propel yourself into the other category by going to a top school and graduating with great grades or you can be in the top 5-10% of your class in a lower-tier school and network your way in.
Once at a top tier school, you will still need to distinguish yourself. The good news, and what many people don’t often say, is that top law schools don’t always have a full grading system. No one gets below a B in some schools, or a “pass” in others. That doesn’t mean people don’t work hard. They are chosen for those schools partly because their track record shows (grades and work experience) that they are self-motivated, self-starters. Did they innovate something in their past? Are they breaking new ground? Do they perform well no matter what’s put before them? Grades are not what drives them. You will get a passing grade guaranteed. However, you will also need to perform well compared to your peers in order to compete for the best jobs.
While looking at law schools, you should also look into debt forgiveness programs for going into public interest law or government work. At many schools entering students say that they want to do public interest work, but most of them get socked with huge tuition and change to corporate work just to pay off the debt. All work is fine, as long as you enjoy it! Corporate work can be extremely profitable, but the hours can be grueling (24/7/365). It’s also amazing for skills building. Knowing how to run deals and to do that level of litigation is eye opening and great for skills. And a big name firm is great for the resume, should you want to step into, say, government work or academia. And networking from there is very helpful. At firms, you can also do pro bono work that’s PI oriented (defending someone on death row, for example, for free on the side of your big corporate job; big firms allow people time to do this). If you goal was to originally do public interest, you want a loan-forgiveness program that works with your (usually) lower pay check. Public Interest work can build into very lucrative, distinguished careers. Also, alumni contacts help win those great jobs–in PI or in corporate or in government. The “best” firms seek students at the “best” schools or the tippy-top rank of lower tier schools. Having alumni contacts in the orgs where you want to work, is very helpful. Again, that doesn’t mean you can’t do the same from a lower tier school, but it’s that much harder and the tuition price is often nearly the same. Another thought is that if you’re interested in, say, local politics, going to a great local school with alumni contacts in the area you want to be in, is not a bad move. Just try to think strategically, if you can.
Possible tactics for handling debt are to find the schools with great loan forgiveness (a small percentage of your income over 10 years is often what you pay back) OR a person can get a corporate job, live small for about 2 years and pay off all of the loans immediately (you can get the loan companies to refigure your interest payments each month so that you are paying down the PRINCIPAL and not just the interest–they often load the lead payments as all interest and no principal so that you pay for years and do not even touch your principal). Once your loans are paid off, you have freedom to pursue the many different law careers available. If you love your corporate job, great. If you decide to switch and you’re not saddled with debt and a huge mortgage, you have the freedom to do so.
If all of this seems complicated, it’s really not. All you have to think about right now is: great undergrad grades, internships to discover areas of interest and land your first job (networking all the while), and LSAT practice until you can teach the test.
Later think about PI or corporate work . . . or a combination . . . and how your Areas of Interest might play into that. Do not worry. You only need to see a few feet down the path to make your way through. You’re on the right track already just by thinking about this now. In fact, you’re way ahead of the game.