@spayurpets: I like how you start with “I don’t know what a PharmD is” and end with “but I know exactly how food and drug lawyers would take it!” Have you done any research into how employers treat PharmDs? I have. There is no evidence at all that PharmDs are valuable for FDA work.
To anyone aware of law, this should not be surprising: most FCC lawyers do not do communications; most FAA lawyers do not build or fly planes. That is because these people are lawyers. They deal with the law. When they need factual analysis, they hire an expert, because it turns out that a lawyer saying “but that’s the way it works I promise” isn’t evidence.
I took my own advice and looked up lawyers with PharmDs to see where they were. Unsurprisingly, many I found did IP work. In fact, the only PharmDs I found at big firms were in the IP divisions, not the FDA divisions. There were also several specializing in personal injury/medical malpractice work, which I admit did not occur to me.
@Demosthenes49, funny you should mention the FCC, because I am a communications lawyer and have worked in the regulatory, antitrust and IP areas. There’s no doubt that people who have a communications technology background as an engineer or scientist have a huge leg up on the rest of us who don’t. To advocate for regulatory approvals and guide the client through FCC rules and regulations, you have to know how the technology works. I don’t see why this would be any different than what an FDA lawyer does. Understanding the technology behind a drug or its interaction with human biology is key to knowing how to get it through regulatory approvals.
As to the specific PharmD question, would this be a significant advantage for getting into law school or for a career, and I would say yes. Would it be worth the extra six years of education and the cost of that, no.
@2spayurpets The thing is, Rutgers is my in-state public school, so it would rather affordable for me with lower tuition/boarding than most other schools- with merit/need aid on top of that. The Pharmacy school is also fairly reputed.
The only reason I am hesitant to matriculate is because I am not sure if Pharmacy is what I want to do. However, it is much easier to transfer out than transfer in…
It’s not just the cost; it’s the six years of your life. That’s too much time for just a supplemental degree. Have you looked to see if they have a joint J.D./pharma degree at Rutgers? If any state would have such a thing, it would be NJ where all the drug companies are located.
@spayurpets: Engineers or scientists have a leg up in some fields, there’s no disagreement there (I’ve taken pains to stress that IP is a probable option). But that provides no evidence as to whether a PharmD is similarly useful. It is simply not enough to say that the FDA regulates drugs and pharmacists study drugs. If a PharmD were particularly useful when practicing before the FDA, you would expect to see FDA lawyers with PharmDs. In fact, my searching has revealed nothing of the kind.
It is also plainly untrue that a PharmD would help with law school admissions. There is plenty of data available on how law schools admit applicants, and major does not play a part.
@spayurpets What I have gathered on the CC Law School Forum is that any law school outside the T14 is not worth it, unless you want to stay confined in your geographic area.
@demosthenes49 It certainly would help in law school admissions. We’re not talking about a “major,” it’s an extra graduate degree for crying out loud! That’s very different, and law school admissions would clearly take that as a positive.
@yikesyikesyikes It’s important to go to a top school if you want to go into BigLaw for your career, but the whole focus on T12 or T14 or whatever it is today is overblown. Some of the best lawyers out there went to second tier law schools like Rutgers. Sure, you have to graduate near the top of your class to get a clerkship or a top job, but it’s not the end of the world to go to a school outside of T14. My view of the legal field is that within the next 5 years, we’re going to experience a shortage of lawyers, and the legal market will again firm up, and law schools enrollment will start rising. I see it already in my city and in my industry; people are starting to move laterally, which is a good sign. And whereas in the past you might have had the pick of five or six really good lawyers to fill an opening, now you are waiting more and getting fewer resumes. And as I have been arguing here, the demand for specialists with advanced education in particular fields are going to have an advantage in the legal market. It doesn’t guarantee a job, but it’s an edge that legal employers like. (My caveat again: don’t get a pharmD just to improve your chance for law school or a legal career; that would be a foolish waste.)
@spayurpets: Do you have any evidence of this alleged preference for graduate degrees? It’s facially implausible, since it flies in the face of law schools’ financial incentives, and doesn’t match any of the [admissions data](http://lawschoolnumbers.com/) I’ve seen.
You’re also completely wrong about the focus on the T14 being wrong. It’s just silly to base anything on the fact that good lawyers came out of places like Rutgers. Among the more obvious problems with this line of reasoning, “came” and “will come out” are far from the same thing. Pre-crash lots of things were true that stopped being true post-crash. A look at the job placement of, say, [url=<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/rutgers-camden/2013/%5DRutgers%5B/url”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/rutgers-camden/2013/]Rutgers[/url] shows exactly why we advise so heavily against attending there. It doesn’t matter how good you could be if no one will give you that first job.
The lateral market is hot but not because law is heating up. It’s hot because the crash put such a pinch on hiring that good mid/senior level lawyers are rare. There’s no reason to think that will remain the case in 5 years as today’s juniors/mids age up. I agree that specialized degrees will help with employment, but only if they are the right degrees. An electrical engineer with just a bachelor’s interested in patent work has a bright future. A biologist, even with a PhD, does not necessarily. And those degrees will go a lot further if they’re backed by a T14 JD. The IP folks are willing to dip down into the law school ranks, but they don’t dip that far. Just ask Santa Clara.
@Demosthenes49, you appear to have very little actual experience in T14 law school admissions or working in BigLaw, while I have both, so I don’t know why I need bother debating your abilities to fetch data of dubious value from various websites. I can tell you as someone who has done law firm hiring, in-house legal hiring and law school interviewing that schools, firms, companies all value people who have specialized training that is relevant to the legal practice they want to pursue and that is especially true for advanced degrees. Yale, Harvard, Chicago and Stanford especially have a large number of people that have masters or PhDs or people who pursue other advanced degrees while they are in law school. At my DC law firm, I’d say roughly twenty percent of the lawyers I worked with had more than one advanced degree. Are you honestly going to tell me that Stanford Law would rather take some kid fresh out of Harvard undergrad who has never worked a day in his life or the guy who has a PhD in electrical engineering from UC Irvine? When Merck is hiring a new FDA or patent lawyer, would they take the guy from Columbia who has no experience in any science whatsoever or the guy who has a PharmD and a JD from Rutgers? I can tell you that, all other things being equal, I’d definitely hire the one who has the specialized knowledge and degree in the area that I am hiring in. And for you to say otherwise tells me that you have no real world experience at all in the legal profession.
@spayurpets: I have plenty of experience, I just don’t think it counts for anything. My advice is data-driven, not anecdote-driven. No one person has enough experience to generate a statistically useful sample. There are tens of thousands of JDs printed every year. If you want to know how that population fares, you need broad data about the market. Knowledge about one’s own experience simply isn’t good enough.
The fact that you think LSN/LST are of “dubious value” leads me to think you haven’t been following the past few years of law school admissions very closely. To catch you up, there was a massive push by law schools to take advantage of the essentially limitless student loans (sold by talking about $160,000 salary medians). Then there was backlash from the inevitably dismal employment. Students found out just how massaged law school employment numbers were and an entire suite of blogs popped up (generally called “scam blogs”) protesting this. While this was going on, websites like LSN/LST sprang up to start generating actual admissions and employment data to inform prospective students. They were fairly successful at generating data (and lobbying USNWR to start including employment data in its rankings).
As someone who claims to have done in-house hiring, you should be well aware that companies look for experienced lawyers. There are very few companies hiring entry-level lawyers. Those that do, like HP, are just as focused on law school ranking as any firm. Those hiring in-house experienced lawyers tend to pull from the big firms. And where do the big firms pull from? The top schools, of course, as demonstrated clearly by all the employment data.
As for Stanford, they would take an underwater basketweaving major from No Name U with a 3.9 before they took a Harvard electrical engineer with a 3.8. That’s just good business for them. Research abounds showing that consumers (prospective students) are driven almost entirely by USNWR rankings. USNWR rankings are driven almost entirely (at the student level) by GPA and LSAT scores. That means a 3.9 is more valuable (all else being equal) than a 3.8. USNWR doesn’t rank by major, letters of rec, or undergrad name, and that is why law schools don’t care about those things (note that I do not necessarily approve of this system, it’s just that this is how it works).
I appreciate that you would hire the specialized student. Frankly, I don’t disagree with you. But that is not the world we’re living in. In this world, law school admissions is driven almost entirely by GPA/LSAT (and URM where appropriate). Legal hiring is driven almost entirely by law school ranking. That is why students are advised to go to a T14 (or sometimes a state school) or to not go at all.
OP: First, it would be a mistake to start the Rutgers PharmD and not finish. While some-maybe all-of the credits would transfer for other college degrees, starting but not finishing will not help at all with law school admissions. You may also want to check out the Rutgers LS website; they’ve got a ton of joint degrees, but JD/PharmD isn’t one.
Second, a JD allows you to practice law, a PharmD allows you to practice pharmacy as a pharmacist. These are two really, really different professions. As best you can, you’ll need to assess your interest in either/both. The fact that you haven’t even started the PharmD program but are thinking of transferring out before completing the program indicates to me that you are not very interested in becoming a pharmacist. It would not be a good idea to start this program with the plan of not finishing. As I read the description, the whole point is to train the students to become practicing pharmacists, and if that isn’t what you want it probably isn’t for you.
As noted above, LS can always come later. Just keep in mind cost; even in-state at Rutgers, LS is over 20K/year tuition alone.
@demosthenes49 My issue with you is that you have taken it upon yourself to promote your view that law schools admit students SOLELY on GPA and LSAT and you choose to present that as evidence-based and undeniable. It is, in fact, a very controversial position, is not proven at all, and should not be bandied about to prospective law students as gospel. In fact, every T14 admissions officer would deny that that is their process of admissions and it is a position that is contrary to all the written description of these schools’ admissions process, so a student would be foolish to follow your “advice.”
And now, you seem to extrapolate your unsupported, dubious GPA/LSAT theory over to legal jobs and careers, and conclude that if all the schools care about is GPA and LSAT then that must be the way it is in the job market; and specialized knowledge and advanced degrees should be dismissed as useless fluff. That’s asinine. And more importantly, its really unfair to dole out your silly opinions to students as expert advice. Your posts should come with a warning label.
As a NJ resident, I do see where the OP is coming from regarding the Rutgers PharmD program. It is definitely very well regarded instate and very selective to be admitted to. If you think you might want to become a pharmacist, it probably would make sense to start out in the program and see how you like it. I haven’t looked up the curriculum, but I have to assume that the first year is probably a bunch of general science, math, and distribution requirements, and probably not many “pharmacy” classes. So, if you start in the PharmD program and decide to transfer out after the first year, you probably haven’t hurt your prospects for graduating on time with another major, since almost all of your first year classes would end up satisfying general graduation requirements.
If you start out in PharmD and don’t like it and don’t plan to become a pharmacist, don’t stay in the program because of some idea that it will be helpful to you in the future for law school.
I’m not a lawyer or a pharmacist, but an engineer who has had a lot of interaction with patent lawyers. In this context, pharmacy + law seems somewhat similar to engineer + law, and the advice I’m giving you is similar to the advice I give to engineering majors.
@spayurpets: I present the view that law schools care solely about GPA and LSAT because that is what the data reflects. If the data said law schools only care about letters of rec, I’d be advising students to secure them. I don’t personally care what law schools want. I care about putting students in the best possible position to cheaply secure employment. My view is hardly irregular or missing evidence. Spend some time on TLS for a veritable deluge of other people saying the same thing, backed by all available data.
You’re right that every T14 admissions officer would deny this. I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be persuasive. T14 admissions officers have a vested financial interest in as many people applying to their schools as possible (admissions are not free and schools are ranked for selectivity). Couple that with the available admission data showing clear acceptance bands across GPA and LSAT and you’ll get the real picture. Another way to see it is to ask to whom law schools give merit money. Hint: it’s not to the people with great softs. Plus, since when did lawyers accept “but they said so!” as good evidence?
In addition to the financial interests, law schools also want to recruit for diversity. That is quite tricky under federal law so law schools have to say they view race as merely “part” of the application, regardless of whether it’s actually true.
As for legal jobs, who said they have anything to do with LSAT or undergrad GPAs? For that question I cited to employment data post graduation, not admissions data from before attendance. It so happens, not surprisingly, that the schools employing the most people are also the pickiest when it comes to admissions. Since they track so closely, GPA/LSAT are an indirect metric of likelihood of employment. Law school name, and especially 1L grades, still matter the most for employment purposes, but you only get to the right school if you start with the right numbers.
You make the same mistake that you accuse so many others of making, confusing correlation with causation. The simple fact is that you only have data on GPA and LSATs, and even if there is a very strong correlation on these known factors, how do you know anything about any of the other factors? You don’t know what the recommendations said, you don’t know ECs the applicant had or what undergrad institution was, or what major or degree the applicant had. If you have NO DATA for any of these factors, how can you possibly say that the GPA and the LSAT were the only factors for admission, or 95%, or whatever number you pull out of your a$$. Besides, for the application pool of these top schools, you’re talking about hundred if not thousands of people with 3.9 averages and 173 on their LSAT. Are you telling me that it’s not going to matter to the Adcom that one went to Pitt and the other went to Stanford? Or that one was an analyst at Goldman Sachs for two years and the other was a barista at Starbucks. At this level of law school, so many of the applicants’ numbers look identical, so the admissions decisions predominantly comes down to what you call the soft factors.
And everyone should stop this stupid use of the term T14. It’s totally meaningless and shows how results-driven your supposedly data-driven thinking is. The fact is that the term used to be “Top10” than morphed into T12 and now T14. How can you adherents of this pseudo-scientific approach to law school admissions not see how stupid it looks to your position for your to have a data set that grows and morphs to fit your preconceived conclusions?
It’s pretty clear that the top schools like to brag about both the astonishing GPA/LSAT numbers and the non-numeric backgrounds of their accepted students:
What does it all mean? Beats me; the softs could be window dressing for the fact that people who get into schools like these are pretty amazing beyond the numbers because that’s who they are. But the softs could mean a lot-why else would the schools note them?
But I don’t sit on any of the admissions committees, and they haven’t returned my calls, so can’t offer any further clarity.
@crankyoldman, I agree with you–it is unclear, but @demosthenes49 and his band of law school deniers go out there and disparage adcoms as conflicted by financial incentives and propogate their view that GPA and LSATs are the only thing that matter at the top law schools. Since the data are unclear, I think the wise thing for prospective law students to do is to take the law school’s own description of their admissions criteria at face value and try to maximize their opportunity with all those factors in mind, not just LSAT and GPA.
Claims that where you went to undergrad does not matter at all.
I would certainly consider a B.S. in engineering from Columbia to be much more challenging than a B.A. in basketweaving from No-Name U. Law school admissions committees aren’t dumb, and surely they know what kind of degree and what kind of school on a resume shows brains, and what does not.
When I was in law school, a study came out showing that success in job placement was tied first to law school grades and second to prestige of undergrad school. A law school wants is grads to get good jobs, and having a bunch of law school grads who went to MIT or Stanford for undergrad will help in the job market- and surely law school admissions committees know that and take it into consideration.
Claims that LSAT scores and grades are all that matters
If that’s the case, then everyone above a certain LSAT/grade threshold required by a law school would get into the law school, and everyone below the threshold wouldn’t (subject to exceptions for certain groups). That’s not the case, however. Perhaps most of what gets you into a law school consists of your grades and LSAT scores, but other factors certainly are considered, however modest their impact may be. Again, law schools want grads who will do well and give back to the school, and someone with an amazing background, showing the ability to succeed in life, surely gets some credit for that.
When I was applying to law schools, I was told by some Yale alumni to be sure to have an interesting “story”, and I also recall seeing an interview with Joyce Curll, stating that she accepted Barack Obama because of his “story”. Most of my law school classmates (except the ones with perfect LSAT scores) had some type of “story”, from being an amazing undergraduate student to spending years living in a car, to being a courageous vet from the Afghanistan conflict, etc.
I also have never heard of the “T14” except on this board.