Tough Call

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>I'm in a similar situation to Green7s. When I was 13 I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer (or at least have a J.D.) I would really love to go to a "top ten" (or, if I'm very lucky) "top five" school. I'm looking at three schools that I'm very excited about: Brown, Dartmouth, and Georgetown (School of Foreign Service). I have a few questions. Hopefully some of you can help me resolve some of them.</p>

<p>(1.) I heard from a family friend (who worked in admissions at Columbia Law for a number of years) that it is disadvantageous to major in political science because of the sheer volume of applications from poly sci majors. This came as bad news (I was, until then, certain that I would major in government). It is not the end of the world, however, as I have come to realize that a lot of political science courses deal in the mundane philosophies of Locke, Aristotle, et al. If I went to SFS at Georgetown I would be guaranteed an exciting, non-US Government major that might help my application. This hunch seems naive. First of all, is it only political science that will make an application run-of the-mill, or does this stigma apply to public policy as well? There are surely dozens of other majors that might be just as interesting, useful, and helpful to a law school application. What are some of them? I'm mainly looking into the humanities, but I would prefer to not spend four years in literary criticism.</p>

<p>(2.) These schools will probably all prepare me well for the rigors of law school, but do you think that law schools would find any particular one of them more attractive than the other two? If I went to Georgetown and applied to the law school there, would my chances be substantially lower? (I've heard it used to hurt an application to go to the undergrad school but that the trend no longer holds.)</p>

<p>(3.) Would there be a relative advantage to going to one of these three schools if I thought I would get a higher GPA there?</p>

<p>(4.) I'm very interested in interning for a congressperson or senator. This task would be made infinitely easier if I attended Georgetown. Do law schools generally find that EC attractive?</p>

<p>(5.) Are there any other considerations that would lead you to think that I should prefer a given school?</p>

<p>Obviously these questions will not be the only thing that determines where I go next fall, but I would like them to factor into the final decision.</p>

<p>Thank you for your time, suggestions, and advice.</p>

2

<p>Damn, I thought I could get some advice from here.</p>

3

<p>English/comp lit, philosophy, economics, history, and poli sci/government are very popular majors for law school. Being run of the mill with regard to major isn't that big of a deal. Few people have such interesting majors that it catches the attention of adcoms. </p>

<p>Each school will prepare you intellectually. I'd say go where you will be happiest, but if your goal is really to go to the best law school, go to the place where you will perform best. This might very well be where you are happiest.</p>

<p>I think Brown has the highest grade inflation of the three schools. I think that, if you look at the law school numbers, all three schools do very well, and perhaps Brown and Dartmouth do better than Georgetown in general (I'm not sure how FSF alone works). You can check the undergraduate origins of the classes of each of the top 10 schools to see which did best. I know Harvard law has this available, but I'm not sure which other schools do.</p>

<p><a href="http://gradeinflation.com/brown.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://gradeinflation.com/brown.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://gradeinflation.com/dartmouth.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://gradeinflation.com/dartmouth.html&lt;/a>
I have nothing on Georgetown.</p>

<p>I am not sure if law schools find interning for a politician attractive, but I imagine they do, fairly well, anyway.</p>

4

<p>It worked for Bill Clinton to go to Georgetown, it can probably work for you.</p>