<p>above all else, the major that you’re most passionate about. if that doesn’t matter to you much, then major in communications, education, or one of the liberal arts majors that prospective law schools applicants don’t gravitate towards (by that i mean, avoid government, history, philosophy, etc).</p>
<p>as a side note, chemE is a great major to prepare you for law school (just as any other techinical/science major is). if you do enjoy science, obtaining a high-paying job in IP law (which is the field of law most related to science) doesn’t necessitate that you go to a Top 5 law school. Going to a top 50 law school will get you a decent job in IP law, because in IP law (unlike other fields of law) you can get by just fine without having your law school prestige backing you up in the job search. It will almost double your 65k engineering salary to around 120k. and if you can’t get into law school after getting a horrid gpa from majoring in engr, you can always sit through the patent bar exam without having a JD and still work as a patent agent in a law firm (much like an attorney who chooses to be a patent prosecutor).</p>
<p>@Frenchboy, why shouldn’t prospective law students buy into the “top 14 crap?” While I admit it is crap, every prospective law student should absolutely buy into it because it is an unfortunate reality that the legal market is overflowing with lawyers and the demand for them has decreased significantly. It is unrealistic for a student to graduate law school and automatically expect a 100k salary. That won’t happen for most students, even students in the top 14. Now if you graduate from Harvard or Yale, then you could probably expect a salary like that assuming you get a job offer from a firm on wall street or another top firm. Of course that kind of job and salary aren’t guaranteed to Harvard grads either especially in this economy and you will see that some are also having trouble finding employment. It appears that if you want a decent shot at finding a job, you need to aim for top 14/15 or a local tier 1 school if you plan on living in that city. Now there was an article on yahoo finance recently that says the legal market is picking up and the demand for lawyers is expected to increase a few percent, this still in no way guarantees a job for every lawyer - and graduates from the top 14 are most likely going to be receiving these jobs unless you have connections or something. Even though i’ve always wanted to go to law school, I won’t be attending if I don’t get into top 15. You’ll see a lot of board users at top-law-schools.com feel the same way.</p>
<p>Employment of lawyers expected to grow between 7 percent and 13 percent between 2006 and 2016.</p>
<p>Getting a law degree is definitely a big investment: The average amount borrowed by students at private law schools was $91,506 in 2008, according to the American Bar Association. Many students just assume that going to law school will open up doors, but “there are many, many unemployed lawyers out there,” Harris says.</p>
<p>If you look at page 31, you will see that the total enrollment in the college of geosciences is much much lower than the others. This may have something to do with it. The averages will be hit very hard by outliers. However, this is probably not the only reason, but it has to be part of it.</p>