Various questions regarding admission into T14 Law Schools

Graduate School Law School
1

Hello,

I am currently a sophomore with junior credits (68 hrs) at Wayne State College (a small state school in northeastern Nebraska). I am double majoring in Political Science and Business Admin/Economics and minoring in Pre-Law. I am from Lincoln, NE, home of UNL, and after senior year I was enrolled and ready to go to UNL but for various reasons I decided to go to Wayne State College.

Fast forward to present day and I am seriously considering transferring back to UNL to finish my undergraduate education leading up to law school. I believe that UNL’s location will be much more beneficial in terms of internship and work opportunities, as well as UNL being a more accredited school than Wayne. I currently have a 3.767 GPA, and I have one withdrawal on my transcript. I had 23 credit hours from AP classes in high school. I have a few questions about what I need to do moving forward applying to a few T14’s senior year.

  1. Does a W on a transcript have any impact whatsoever on your admissions into a T14?
  2. Will T14 law schools have a problem with the fact that I transferred schools after my sophomore year?
  3. Because I’m from Lincoln, my family has various connections with some well-known law firms in town. When should I start an internship? Also, what do T14 law schools prefer in terms of paid vs unpaid legal work/internships?
  4. Other than maintaining a top GPA, working hard to score a 170+ on the LSAT junior year, and interning where and when I can, is there any other sort of activities/types of clubs that will not only boost my resume but will also help me in law school in the future?

Thanks in advance!

2

LSAC transcript summarization policies: https://www.lsac.org/applying-law-school/jd-application-process/cas/requesting/transcript-summarization

Of course, how a human admission reader sees a W may not be knowable from the outside.

3

All law schools really care about are your LSAT score, undergraduate GPA & whether or not you are an URM.

4

The switch from Wayne State to the University of Nebraska will probably not appreciably improve your law school admissions chances. Read up on how LSAC recalculates your GPA. Not sure how a “Withdraw” impacts your calculated GPA. Your GPA as things stand right now should be good enough for T14 schools when accompanied with a suitably strong LSAT score