<p>Does anyone had a reasonable percentage of how many people who go to law school do so right out of undergrad? I'm not sure if it matters, but specifically the percentage for the top 25 or so law schools.</p>
<p>For those who do not, what are some of the better ways that time can be spent? Is a job reflecting career interests necessarily important?</p>
<p>What are the disadvantages and advantages to either situation?</p>
<p>I remember reading from Harvards website that 53% took one year or more off... leaving 47% coming straight from undergrad.</p>
<p>Generally, I've heard that students who've taken time off do a lot better in 1L.</p>
<p>I'd really divide it into three groups: group one: direct from UG; group 2: 1-3 years out, often applied as seniors but deferred for 1-3 years to do something else; those out more than 3 years. </p>
<p>This breakdown is available on most LS websites and it varies a bit by school. Northwestern has the fewest straight out of UG. </p>
<p>How important what you do is depends upon the strength of the other parts of your application. If you have a 4.33 (at a school with A+s) and a 180 LSAT, you could shoot pool for a year and still get in. I'd go so far as to say that's probably true as long as both your GPA and LSAT are above the 75th percentile at the LS where you are applying--as long as you ONLY take 1-2 years.</p>
<p>If you are down between 25/50% then doing something more meaningful for at least two years could help. These need not be directly career related--Peace Corps, Teach for America and other community service type things can definitely enhance your chances. (It's not going to get someone with a 3.3 and a 160 into Harvard, but it helps.)</p>
<p>It also makes sense if you do something linked to the type of law you are interested in. For example, if you are interested in criminal law, it can help to work as a paralegal in a DA's or US Attorney's office. There's a special DOJ program too that is usually a good credential. </p>
<p>Advantages of waiting: if you work, there really is some truth to the fact that people tend to mature a lot in their first job. It's good to have that seasoning before you go out on the job market. Firms like maturity. They also like references from real world jobs. You may be able to save some dough, so you go into less debt in LS. </p>
<p>Disadvantages: if you have loans from UG, you are going to start having to pay them back. That can be tough on a starting salary. It can also be tough to arrange for the loans to be postponed when you go back to school--especially private loans. You may find that if your family doesn't have much money, you get worse financial aid after working for a year or two than you wouild have received had you gone directly on. </p>
<p>Life can get complicated. People fall in love, for example. Of course, that can happen during college too, but it's especially common in the years right after college. Suddenly, you have to take someone else's wishes into account in choosing which law school to attend. (And if you marry, you may really mess up your chances for fin aid!) </p>
<p>LS has a sort of social life to it, particularly a law school where a good percentage of the class lives in university housing the first year. Living in a dorm can make it a lot easier to get to know your classmates and find out about EC activities and classes. People who have been living in real apartments for a couple of years often find it hard to go back to dorm life. A higher percentage of older students "disconnect" from the social life in LS. They just are past the point in their lives where they are willing to live like a student--but that can make them feel isolated. They may do as well academically, but they make fewer friends and enjoy the experience less. </p>
<p>For people who have the numbers, I'm an advocate of apply and defer. Deferral policies differ, but many top law schools let you do almost anything for one year. Backpacking through Asia is perfectly acceptable at many.</p>
<p>YMMV, of course. These are just my personal opinion.</p>
<p>Jonri's response was perfect.</p>
<p>But down to it all, law school is a numbers game with the LSAT as supreme.</p>
<p>If you have the numbers, you can do whatever you want, i.e. bum around for a year. If you work, it can help a little but unless you do something like Peace Corps, it's not going to help much.</p>
<p>The only thing is that if you have a lower GPA taking time off may help distance yourself from your GPA, as long as your LSAT is still high. </p>
<p>Northwestern does not admit straight from UG, or at least very rarely does. In fact I've known people who had the numbers but got a letter asking them to work for a year before attending Northwestern.</p>
<p>In fact, some of my acquaintances have specifically gotten scholarships to NU which would not kick in until they'd gotten some work experience. ("We'll want you, a lot, but not until you're a little more seasoned. But we'll hold you a seat.")</p>
<p>It has been my experience that work experience can significantly improve one's chances for admission to a top law schools if their numbers (GPA and LSAT) are in the ballpark. I do not think that work experience will make up for scores below the 25/75 percentile numbers for a given law school. Remember, most applicants will fall within the range of numbers that gives them a chance at admission. Beyond that, whether one applicant gets in while another is rejected comes down to more subtle analysis of what a particular student brings to the table.</p>
<p>In fact, if you look at the statistics for many of the top law schools (you can find this information on most law school websites), more than half of their entering students have at least one year of full-time, post-graduation from college work experience. In fact, over the past ten years, having an increasing percentage of students with work experience is a significant trend in law school admissions. Some schools (particularly Northwestern) make it a point to accept mainly applicants with work experience.</p>
<p>Sally, Respectfully, I think you are falling into the old causation/correlation trap. The fact that more than half of a class has one year of full time work experience doesn't mean that year is what got those students in. (Moreover, I've never seen the statistics you cite. I HAVE seen the number of years out of college, but I've never seen those broken down between those who worked and those who did something academic, e.g., got a master's degree.) </p>
<p>For example, in recent years, Yale law school, which has about 180-190 students per class, has had as many as 80 of those places filled by students who were admitted, usually as college seniors, and then deferred. At Yale, many of these students were on fellowships. Those would include, but are not limited to the Rhodes, Marshall, Gates, Fullbright, Keasbey,Watson, Rotary, etc. Yale is very liberal with deferrals. One of those who deferred spent a year working as crew on a yacht. It was just a complete break from academics. But he had already been admitted when he did that; it isn't what come him in. A rather famous admit which caused some controversy a few years ago was Ronan Farrow, child of Mia and Woody Allen. He was admitted at age 16. He was also not only allowed, but encouraged to defer for a few years, as Yale felt that he would benefit from more life experience before enrolling. </p>
<p>My own, admittedly anecdotal evidence is that to be any real help in LS admissions, a "regular" job--as opposed to something like community service or something unusually interesting--has to be at least 3 years in duration to boost your odds. While my sample is small, I know of a fair number of students who got into CCN,but not YHS, worked for a couple of years, reapplied, and still got into CCN, but not YHS. One student I know was WL at Yale and Stanford, admitted to Harvard. Spent two years doing something really interesting. Applied about a year and a half into that two years. Got admitted to HLS again, got WL at Stanford, and rejected at Yale. Same gpa, same LSAT,same letters of rec, presumably slightly tougher pool. Work experience did nothing. </p>
<p>I'm kind of a broken record about this, because I've seen many kids with high LSATs and good but not great GPAs take a few years off to work, with the idea that some work experience would help and would distance them from the gpa a bit. I've only seen it work once--when the person in question ended up being an "embedded" journalist in Iraq.</p>
<p>I think it's a good idea to take some time off between college and law school. I just don't think students should think that it's going to make a significant difference to their chances UNLESS they are willing to work for a minimum of 3 years, and preferably 5, before applying.</p>
<p>With all due respect, I never suggested that work experience is what got any student into law school. I do suggest that if your numbers are within the range of scores that would normally give you a shot at admission at a given law school (which puts an applicant into a huge pool of applicants, some of whom will be admitted and some of whom will be rejected), then having work experience is one factor that may, in fact, influence one's chances at admission -- whether the rationale that admissions professionals consider is that a student is older and, perhaps "wiser", or because of that work experience I cannot say. </p>
<p>If, as I believe, work experience is only one of many factors that may influence a law school admission decision, it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish any significant causal connection, and thus, I have not stated that there is such a relationship. The fact remains, however, that over 50% of the entering classes at many of the top law schools have taken years off after undergrad to do something -- and not all of them received graduate degrees in the process. </p>
<p>I took a quick look at the Harvard Law website and found the following:</p>
<p>Of this year's entering 1L class, 46% were out of college for 1-4 years, 7% were out of college for 5 or more years and 10% hold advanced degrees. So, at least 43% that took time off after undergrad did not receive advanced degrees during that time. </p>
<p>My anecdotal experience interviewing students at HLS for many years tells me that a significant number of students there have actually worked in a wide variety of fields for one or more years before entering law school -- in fact, it always seemed like much more than 50% had such work experience (though there may be some self-selecting bias in that I was interviewing for NYC BIGLAW at the time). My anecdotal experience interviewing at Columbia, NYU, Penn, Virginia and Stanford was similar. Of note, anecdotally, of course, in the on campus interviewing process, many of the students with work experience do find that many BIGLAW firms give significant weight to their work experience when making hiring decisions.</p>
<p>In most cases, the most significant factor in getting a job after law school is class rank. If you can find some job that will enhance your ability to perform well in law school, then by all means work before going to law school. If you can't find such a job, then it is irrelevant whether you work first or go to law school directly out of college.</p>
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In most cases, the most significant factor in getting a job after law school is class rank.
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<p>I suppose that that is theoretically true, though many of the top law schools do not rank their students, at least not in time for on campus interviewing at the beginning of second year. I particularly remember waiting on line for graduation at my law school where a sheet was handed out to students listing who was to graduate cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude. Until that very moment, not a one of us had any idea where we stood in the class relative to our classmates. </p>
<p>A student's 1L grades are extremely important, but they are hardly the entire story, particularly if a student is seeking a position at a big law firm (certainly in NYC, at least). Law students at top law schools who have backgrounds in investment banking, private equity, consulting, accounting, investment management and similar fields do particularly well in the interviewing process and are in high demand. Other work experience is looked upon very positively as well. These working experiences have been cited repeatedly when evaluating interviewees for call back interviews and later, offers of employment, in the hiring committee meetings in which I've participated. In my experience, good grades have always been merely a prerequisite for consideration, while other factors, such as work experience (and, of course, the interview itself) that make or break a law student's candidacy for a callback or a summer associate position.</p>
<p>Class rank and GPA can mean more for a lateral move than for that first job - because of the reasons Sally mentions. I have worked with associates from the top firms in New York who struggled to make a lateral move to another "biglaw" firm because of poor transcripts. Many firms do not tolerate Cs on a transcript well - no matter the school. Many law school students think that doing well first year and getting that great summer job leading to that great first job is all they need to do. That's fine if you never leave that firm - a rarity - so don't slack off after first year. Order of the Coif keeps going and going and going...</p>
<p>i want to go straight out of undergrad but only because i dont know what else to do lol!</p>
<p>and maybe the economy will be repaired by the time i'm out of law school</p>
<p>Unfortunately, in my experience, attorneys who go to law school simply because they don't know what else to do are often the unhappiest and most dissatisfied attorneys. </p>
<p>I strongly recommend that you read the many threads on this board about the debt burden from law school and what it is like to practice law. You should note the difficulties that graduates of lower tier law schools often face, the huge burden that massive law school loans place on many law school graduates and the difficult working environment faced by those who do manage to obtain high paying positions in big law firms. If you are passionate enough about going to law school in light of the realities that you may face, then apply away! Otherwise, you may want to reconsider your decision.</p>
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Unfortunately, in my experience, attorneys who go to law school simply because they don't know what else to do are often the unhappiest and most dissatisfied attorneys.
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Agreed! I suggest people don't go to law school unless they really want to be lawyers.</p>