<p>Should I go to VA Tech or UVA as an undergrad to have the best chances of getting into a tier 1 law school? Assume I have the same GPA at both schools. VA Tech is ranked #15 in Electrical Engineering, which I am doing. And UVA is ranked #40th or so. Overall, though, UVA is ranked #22 and VA Tech #75.</p>
<p>So, which is best? A better school overall or a better Engineering program?</p>
<p>Hmm, this is a tuff question. How do you plan to reconcile Electrical Engineering with a law degree? If you want to go to a T1 school and will have the same GPA at both schools, I would assume UVA would look more distinguished. I don't know.</p>
<p>Ndbisme, esq.</p>
<p>I want to study Intellectual Property Law specializing in patents. That is why I'm gettin the EE degree.</p>
<p>Hmm, this is realy hard. I think AA could help you out on this one--I think she majored in something similar.</p>
<p>Ndbisme, esq.</p>
<p>My (strong) guess is that the better school matters more. But don't ask me - I'm guessing about what admissions people would think. As a former practicing engineer, I would not rule you out on either UVA or VA Tech - but that's not really important.</p>
<p>If you want the best way to figure out what law school admissions personell would think, don't ask me - ask people who know nothing about engineering - if they would be more impressed with a UVA or a VA Tech EE degree. Their answers are the ones that will most closely mimic what non-engineers (i.e. law school admissions) will think. I'm serious - I'm sure that almost none of the people who look over your application will know anything about engineering, let alone the relative rigor of programmes.</p>
<p>I don't think that you would go wrong at either one, but personally, I would go for UVA. As more people from there go to law school, law schools are more familiar with the strengths (or weaknesses) of their grads. Also, there is some snobbery, in that you might be perceived as unable to do highly literate coursework. UVA would at least help you (more, probably) with getting a more well-rounded education.</p>
<p>If you are thinking of doing patent law, realize that you only need to have a hard sciences or engineering degree. Check out the PTO website - they have the requirements. Ultimately, the engineering GPA will be the worst thing you'll have going for you when you apply to l.s. (VA Tech might be good for that, though - law schools do see your class rank, relative to everyone else who goes to law school from your undergrad - and at UVA, you'll be measured against a bunch of underwater basket weaving grade-grubbers.)</p>
<p>If I may digress, and at the risk of restarting a rather bloody war flame war that I was engaged in full bore not that long ago, you don't need a hard science or engineering degree to be a patent lawyer, or even to argue a case in front of the PTO. Don't get me wrong - it helps. It's certainly the most straightforward way to go about being a patent lawyer, I agree. But you don't absolutely need it. </p>
<p>First of all, most patent lawyers have no need to argue a case in front of the PTO anyway. And second of all, even for those that do, the PTO publishes a long list of various ways that you can be accepted as a viable lawyer who can argue cases in front of it, and having an undergraduate degree in science or engineering is just one of the ways. Another way is to pass the EIT/FE exam, which is certainly not easy, but if you're good enough to pass the Bar exam, and you have some scientific acumen, then you should be good enough to pass the EIT exam if you just keep studying for it and taking it over and over and over again until you finally pass (and besides, if you don't have any scientific acumen, then you probably won't be able to successfully complete an undergraduate science/engineering degree anyway, so the point is moot). </p>
<p>Another way is to simply 'work' as an engineer. Now I know what some of you are thinking - how the heck can somebody work as an engineer without an engineering degree? However, if you think about it, it's really not that amazing in the least. I know one guy who is in law school right now intending to be a patent lawyer. Prior to law school, he worked as a software engineer for various Silicon Valley tech companies, and I can confirm he's a very very good software engineer. Does he have a CS or a EE degree? Nope. His degree is in English. What happened is that he never knew that he liked programming until he was a junior in college, when he got a summer job with a dotcom, but by that time, it was too late for him to switch majors. So he just learned programming on the side as a hobby and used it to pick up extra money as a part-time developer. By the time he graduated, he had racked up a strong body of programming work and hence had many developer/software-engineer offers. In fact, he actually had better software-engineering offers than some EECS graduates, because he actually had strong real-world experience upon graduation. Did that for a couple of years, moving up the ranks, then got interested in patents. </p>
<p>Now I agree that he is an unusual case. But the point is, I think it's hard to argue that this guy was not a true engineer, despite the fact that he does not hold a formal degree in enginering. To be perfectly honest, he's a better software engineering than a lot of guys with EECS degrees. After all, he got better offers than and was later promoted over lots of guys with EECS degrees. {In fact, I once talked to him about this whole law-school admissions obsession with GPA, and he said that he really really lucked out. On the one hand, he studied English, which he himself concedes was a whole lot easier than engineering, and so he had the ridiculously super-high GPA that helped him gain admission to the elite law schools. On the other hand, he has a full-blooded engineering professional background from his job. In other words, he got an engineering background without having to go through the rigors and the harsh grading of a formal engineering curriculum. So basically, he had his cake and he ate it too.}.</p>
<p>Let's try to separate the wheat from the chaff and the heat from the useful information. And by the way, before I start, let me say that I am a patent lawyer and have been one for years. </p>
<p>First, the heat. While it's true that it is not absolutely necessary to have a scientific degree in order to become a patent attorney, if you try any other route but a degree you are handicapping yourself severely in the search for a position as a patent attorney. Most employers - whether corprations or law firms - want their attorneys to have a technical degree if they are going to handle patents. </p>
<p>I would NOT recommend the EIT/FE route. Employers of patent attiorneys are not familiar with it and would regard anyone taking that route with suspicion.</p>
<p>So even though these are possible ways to become a patent attorey, I do NOT recommend anyone to deliberately plan to take these routes. Get the degree. Get it from a good engineering school (either university fits that bill). Otherwise, be ready to work for yourself, and to explain your lack of a degree to your clients.</p>
<p>Now, some wheat fron chaff. It is not necessary to attend a tier 1 law school to become a patent attorney. I just saw a list of law students who had been offered a job for next year, and a list of those offered a job next summer. Most of those students did not attend a tier 1 law school; most of those who did attended the best tier 1 law school in this area, University of California, Berkeley. Very often it is advantageous to attend a school that is not a tier 1 school but that is known for its courses in intellectual property. Berkeley is known for that, as well. Many patent attorneys attended a law school while employed in the US Patent & Trademark Office, that is, one of the schools in the DC area.</p>
<p>Yes, getting an engineering degree in any school can add to the difficulties in becoming admitted to a law school, but that's what you will need to become a patent lawyer, so be ready for hard work in order to get good grades.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>While you need a technical degree to sit for the patent bar (see DadofSam's discussion), that doesn't mean you need an engineering one. A physics major will still cream you in grades - but only in that major - and you'll have a ton of liberal arts courses to bring up your GPA.</p>
<p>DadofSam is completely right about most patent attorneys coming out of non-tier 1 law schools. The only problem would be is when you go to a second or third tier school and then decide that you don't want to do patent law - then, you're in for a rougher time if you choose a different area of law.</p>
<p>Alternatively, if you really want the EE degree, do undergrad, intern, and work for several years afterwards. You could even try for a masters. That would soften the effects of your undergrad GPA on law school admissions - just be prepared for a long-term plan. (Besides, working in industry can be massively helpful for legal work - many companies have legal departments that could hire you on as a summer associate.)</p>
<p>Allright, dadofsam, now THAT'S precisely the conclusion that we should have arrived at in that previous thread in which we clashed swords. It's good to see that you're now acknowledging that you do not absolutely need to have a science/eng undergrad degree in order to become a patent lawyer. </p>
<p>It's also good to point out the main tradeoff of the issue. Having a tech undergrad degree will indeed make your path towards becoming a patent lawyer easier and more straightforward once you're in law school. But the key operating phrase in that last sentence is 'once you're in law school'. As I have pointed out numerous times, studying tech will almost certainly mean lower grades for most mortals, which not only means getting admitted into a worse law school than you might have otherwise gotten into, but may also mean not getting into law school at all. About a quarter of all prelaws who apply to law school get rejected from every single law school they apply to. That's right, every single one. Hence a significant danger of majoring in tech for the purposes of becoming a patent lawyer is that you end up not getting into law school at all and so your law career is over before it ever really began. Clearly some of those rejectees could have majored in easy nontech and thereby pulled the higher grades which would have gotten them into law school, and hence they would be better off. Furthermore many of those tech prelaws who do manage to get into law school get into 'attrition shark-tank' law-schools where a significant portion of the entering law school class is forcibly flunked out (contrast that with the tier-1 law schools where basically everybody is going to graduate and nobody flunks out). </p>
<p>The takehome point is that there is a key tradeoff being made here. Once you're in law school, then having studied tech for undergrad will tend to make your path to becoming a patent lawyer more straightforward than if you had not done so. On the other hand, studying tech, because of lower average tech grades, will also tend to reduce your chances of getting into not only a top law school, but any law school. That's the tradeoff you're making. So one might say that a person who didn't study tech as an undergrad and yet still wants to be a patent lawyer might have to put up with uncomfortable questions from clients and from employers. Yeah, maybe. On the other hand, compare that to a guy who did study tech as an undergrad and now has grades that are so poor that he can't get into law school. Which is worse? The first guy at least got to be a lawyer, which is far more than the second guy can say.</p>
<p>I would also point out that studying tech in undergrad as a way to get to patent law can be seen as a way of escalating your personal psychological commitment by removing options that you may have had otherwise. For example, if you study tech as an undergrad, like I said, you will probably end up with worse grades and probably get into a worse law school (presuming you get into one at all) than you would have if you hadn't studied tech. Hence, what will probably happen to you psychologically while you're in law school is that you will feel that you have no choice but to now be a patent lawyer because that is the only way you will be able to justify to yourself why you're in a worse law school than you might have been. For example, you might be saying to yourself "If I had studied non-tech, I might have gotten into Yale Law (or some other big-name law school) instead of the law school I'm in now, so I better become a patent lawyer for otherwise I will really feel stupid." So in that sense, from a psychological standpoint, studying tech as a prelude to law school does in fact significantly narrow your options. </p>
<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that everybody should study non-tech. What I am saying is that you should acknowledge the consequences of the choices you are making, and specifically, everybody should understand what happens when you choose a tech major with the hopes of becoming a patent lawyer. </p>
<p>I think it really all boils down to what will let you sleep at night. If you feel that you are willing to study tech as an undergrad in order to get a straightforward shot at becoming a patent lawyer is worth it to you, even if it means getting into a worse law school or possibly not getting into law school at all, then that's what you should do.</p>
<p>In my experience, most patent lawyers I've know have had a technical undergrad and/or grad degree. While it's possible to acquire on-the-job knowledge of technical issues, doing so isn't always easy. While it IS possible to find a job in the computer field without a CompSci or EE degree, finding a position in the civil or chemical engineering fields, or as a chemist or physicist, is a lot less likely.</p>
<p>As with many topics in higher education, it's safe to say there are multiple paths to the same objective. Students often ask, "Is it better to have all As in high school or should I take the advanced classes and maybe get some Bs." The canned elite college answer to this question is, "Take the hard classes and get As." I suppose the ultimate answer to the debate is, "Take a challenging technical undergrad curriculum and earn a sterling GPA."</p>
<p>To keep this thread on-topic, let's leave the "best undergrad major" discussion out of this thread and get back to foster4874's question, which was which college to attend.</p>
<p>Foster: as I said in my post, in my opinion either school would give you a fine engineering education. Ariesathena may be right in saying that UVA may be more familiar with qualifying their students for law school.</p>
<p>However, there are two items in your posts that you might want to re-examine. The first is whether you need to attend a tier 1 law school to succeed as a patent attorney or elsewhere. The second is what you mean by "I want to study Intellectual Property Law specializing in patents" and how it might affect your need to take an undergrad degree in engineering.</p>
<p>As we all know, everyone can't attend (or afford) the top-tier law schools. In fact, many successful attorneys didn't attend a top- tier law school. So see my comments above as to whether this is a goal that you absolutely must strive for. There are many fine law schools, including many that are well regarded in their localities. For example, here in the San Francisco area, UC-Berkeley (Boalt Hall) and Stanford are recognized as the top law schools. However, Hastings, USF, and Santa Clara are also highly regarded. A graduate of any of these with good grades will have good qualifications for most legal positions in this geographical area.</p>
<p>Next, if by "Intellectual Property Law specializing in patents" you mean that you want to prepare and prosecute patent applications, then you definitely do need a degree to succeed, or at least a good solid technical education with enough courses that essentially amount to a degree. Even though you may be able to qualify as a patent atorney without one, it's not simply a matter of having to deal with "uncomfortable questions", as Sakky suggests (and there's no "maybe" about it). Your credentials will not suffice to win a contest for a job over others having the formal education (and in some cases, graduate-level technical degrees). As one who sees many resumes, I can attest to the typical reaction towards someone applying for a spot as a patent attorney who does not have a degree. Your resume will be one of the first, if not the first, to be tossed.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you are thinking not of becoming a patent attorney, but of becoming, say, an academic whose specialty is the economic effects of patents, then you might not need a technical degree at all. Your major might better be economics. However, I should advise you that this category includes a very very small number of people, where competition for an academic post is intense. So that is not a sensible goal to shoot for, by itself.</p>
<p>Finally, a word to Sakky. I was not a participant in the flame war to which you contributed. I never would have made the statement that you refer to, since it is not accurate.</p>
<p>Foster, I don't think that a highly rated engineering program is a huge advantage in law school admissions or even later employment as a patent lawyer. If your primary career objective is law, fine distinctions between undergrad engineering programs won't be a huge deal. MIT vs. distance learning, sure; two well-regarded universities, nope...</p>
<p>Dadofsam, I apologize, I had you confused with somebody else. </p>
<p>However, I stand by what I've said - it's obviously the best of all worlds to get a technical degree and still do well enough in it to get into a top-tier law school that runs a strong IP program (i.e. Berkeley, Stanford, etc.). </p>
<p>However, for most people, there is the distinct tradeoff between studying a technical program, which tends to be difficult, and the quality/prestige of the law school you will get into, or even whether you will be able to get into law school at all. I think of one guy I know who holds an EECS degree from Berkeley - but barely made it, for his GPA was basically around a 2.0. He used to have dreams of going to law school because he had also at one point entertained the idea of being a patent lawyer, but those dreams are basically dashed. If he had studied something easier (i.e. something non-technical), his grades would have been higher and he probably would be in law school right now. I again contrast that person with the other guy I spoke of whose degree is in English, but picked up computer programming skills on the side, then worked as a developer for a few years, and is now in an elite law school (especially as regards to IP), with the aim of becoming a patent lawyer. Which one is better off? Sure, maybe the second guy might have his resume thrown away by some firms because he doesn't have a formal technical undergrad degree (although he can demonstrate his years of formal engineering work experience, and the fact that he is taking IP law coursework at a premier law school for IP should, I think, greatly compensate). But hey, at least he's going to have his law degree, and from an elite law school. That's far more than the first guy can ever say.</p>
<p>The point is that I want to emphasize is that there is a distinct tradeoff to be made. Study something technical and your credentials towards becoming a patent lawyer are strengthened. On the other hand, study something technical, and you probably won't get into as strong of a law school as you would have otherwise, or perhaps not get into law school at all. Is that trade worth it? Each person has to figure that out for him/herself. I suspect that ariesathena might have something to say about this.</p>
<p>Sigh. Am I that predictable? ;)</p>
<p>I think that, for engineers, getting into law school at all is quite the hurdle. Step 1 is getting in the door. Step 2 is sitting for the patent bar. Step 3 is not having your resume tossed when you apply for patent law jobs. Problem is, you have to prep for Step 3 before Step 1... but Step 1 is the rate-limiting step. </p>
<p>I checked the requirements for sitting for the patent bar:
<a href="http://www.patentbarstudy.com/qualifications.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.patentbarstudy.com/qualifications.html</a></p>
<p>Given that you can qualify as a chemical engineer (rough anywhere you go, any way you slice it) or a bio major - there are some easier ways to do it. If I, as a college freshman, wanted to be a patent lawyer, maybe working for biotech companies, I would be a bio major at a school, probably one without a strong pre-med programme (as the bio tends to be harder with that). Maybe biochem would work as well - but you don't need to do hard-core engineering to sit for the patent bar. DadofSam would know better, but I suspect that having a bio degree wouldn't be a cause for immediately junking the resume.</p>
<p>Moderation! Moderation! Take the harder-than-sociology science major, but don't kill yourself with engineering. Work as a researcher over the summer, take plently of liberal arts courses to help your writing skills and your GPA, and you'll have at least a decent GPA, the ability to sit for the patent bar, and your resume won't be laughed at by patent firms.</p>
<p>Heh heh, looks like you could major in "textile technology" (whatever the hell that is). That's what John Edwards majored in for undergrad, he even graduated with honors in textile technology. True, he didn't become a patent lawyer, but still...</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_edwards%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_edwards</a></p>
<p>Sakky: you could major in textile technology if that major gave you the required number of science/engineering credits for the patent bar.</p>
<p>Ariesathena: don't sound so dismayed. If you want to become a patent attorney, a bachelor's degreee in chemical engineering probably would help more than a bachelor's degree in biology. Why? Because there are far more of the latter than the former. </p>
<p>First of all, law firms and corporations hire patent attorneys according to their needs in particular technical fields. One corporation or firm may need EEs, another not. </p>
<p>Secondly, a bachelor's degree in most engineering subjects provides enough knowledge to handle patent applications in numerous related technologies. I don't want to knock biology, but assuming that there are usually enough positions in patent law for those interested in entering that field, most people aiming at working in biotechnology will have at least a master's degree. Some will have a Ph.D., some will even have post-doc or industrial experience. That doesn't mean that the holder of a bachelor's degree in biology can't become a patent attorney, but it does make one a bit less competitive.</p>
<p>Nowadays chemical engineering backgrounds are coming back into favor. That's because of (a) the advances in nanotechnology, some aspects of whch are related to Ch.E., and (b) the fact that many biotech companies are now shifting emphasis from discovery research to production.</p>
<p>Even mechanical engineering degrees are seeing a comeback to some degree, due to the increasing work in medical devices, as well as advances in semiconductor manufacturing.</p>
<p>Happy New Year, all.</p>
<p>Happy New Year as well! :) </p>
<p>Very glad to hear that chem-es are in demand in patent, esp. for nanotech (which is what I did for a few years). </p>
<p>The dismay is mostly related to admissions, which still brings back some memories... ugh.</p>
<p>Happy 2005 to all!</p>