<p>Okay, so I'm a fluent/native speaker of Spanish, as well as English. English is my first language, although I've spoken Spanish almost perfectly (basically) since I was a kid. If I wanted to, I could theoretically take a bunch of Spanish classes as an undergrad and easily get a 4.0 in all of them, boosting my GPA up a ton. I could also major in Spanish, despite the fact that I would learn close to nothing from it. Would doing this look like taking the "easy way out" to law schools? Because even if I have a high GPA, I got it from learning nothing. I could pretend that I otherwise don't speak Spanish (my last name is Evans, which doesn't sound Spanish at all), so they won't suspect that I had parents teach it to me or something. Would all 4.0s in Spanish technically look better than say a 3.8 average in biochemistry?</p>
<p>What if you have an awful LSAT and couldn’t get into a top law school? What would be your fallback if law school didn’t pan out or you find that you really not interested in law a few years into college?</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing that out. That’s a good point, but let’s just for all intents and purposes assume that I study really hard for the LSAT and get a decent score on it (around 170). Let’s also assume that I don’t lose interest in law school or decide not to go to it. It seems kind of tacky to major in nothing but a foreign language; most people I’ve seen have a double major to go with it, so that’s what I would be doing too as a Plan B. But let’s just assume that we never have to go to Plan B.</p>
<p>It pans out in two ways, if you do no actual difficult work in college, don’t challenge yourself and only work to get grades by taking easy majors, 1) You will look bad for taking an easy major, and 2) you will fail to develop in certain areas. College is less about imparting specific knowledge these days and more about developing students as intelligent individuals who are able to represent themselves well, research well in whatever field they end up in and who have a mature outlook on the world. If you do nothing hard in college by taking easy majors, you may get into law school, but you will end up in many respects being more or less the high school student you are now. College is about, among other things, emotional development, and if you get into a decent full-time school, that is just as much a goal as anything else. I was always a good student, with decent study habits, I always interviewed well, wrote well, but my senior year of college was a game changer on many levels. When programs and projects you have worked hard on start to come together you start to look at things differently. Sacrifice that at your own peril.</p>
<p>So you would be willing to throw away four years of your life and all of that tuition/room and board/books, etc. money so that you could score a high GPA “studying” topics you already know well? </p>
<p>Sounds to me like you likely have someone else footing the bill for this folly . . .</p>
<p>Okay, how would it be throwing away four years of my life? I’m already a junior as an undergrad. How would someone with a 3.3 as a sociology major look any better than someone with a 3.6 in sociology and Spanish (hypothetically speaking)? Might as well branch out to other majors instead of taking a bunch of useless electives.</p>
<p>kevinatrs, you were the one who said you would learn “would learn close to nothing from” the major you described. So why do it? Why waste an opportunity to study something new and interesting in college? </p>
<p>Maybe my perspective is different. I put myself through school. I paid for every minute of every class and every book. I would never have wasted a single elective on something that held no interest or challenge for me. Some of the most interesting and most valuable classes I ever took in college were the outlandish and off-the-beaten-path electives I took. Some of these classes are the ones that pushed me in directions that changed my life later as I made my way through my travels and my career. </p>
<p>It is just very difficult for me to imagine why anyone would waste a minute of their education just to pad a GPA or take a subject one already knows well. Take the classes you really want to take, study hard and do well in them. In the end, you only have one chance to study as an undergrad and take (typically) a quarter to a third of your classes as electives.</p>
<p>Of course, you can do whatever you want with your (or someone else’s) money and time.</p>
<p>You could always take exercise science.</p>
<p>Because undergrad doesn’t really matter once you get into law school. I’d rather take easy classes that I know I’ll do well in, than hard classes that I might learn a lot from, but won’t necessarily do well in and thus won’t as easily get into the law schools I want to get into. And it’s not like I’ll learn absolutely nothing from Spanish; I could probably write a normal essay in Spanish but I doubt I can perfectly translate a novel. So it’s good for me in two ways. And I won’t take 101 level classes either; I’d be taking higher level literature classes. There’s a big difference. I’m just wondering whether it would look suspicious if they see 3.9s and 4.0s across the board in Spanish classes, and whether that would necessarily be a giveaway that such an applicant is fluent in Spanish.</p>
<p>I would suggest purchasing 2 books:</p>
<p>Anna Ivey - THe Ivey guide to law school admissions
Richard Montauk- How to get in a top law school</p>
<p>The Montauk book the book is approximately 500 pages and gives a very comprehensive overview of the college process and discusses applications, essays, LSATs, majors, etc</p>
<p>Chapter 8 of his book discusses Making the Most of Your Credentials, Montauk states:</p>
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<p>form Montauk’s book:</p>
<p>Section does it Matter what a candidate Major is?</p>
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<p>Let me be honest; you’re wrong and way off track here. Take the advice here and adjust your attitude or don’t bother wasting money on law school.</p>
<p>How am I wrong if I’m basically already done with my first major, and am looking for a second major that I might as well do really well in? Since my grades in my first two years of college could have used some improvement, I might as well show an improvement in grade trend in my junior and senior years. Are you saying it would be better if I do English or political science or philosophy or history and not do as well in those?</p>
<p>You’re a sociology major now? That wasn’t exactly clear, so correct me if I am wrong. You aren’t going to look worse with a second major you do well in, but you won’t necessarily look all that much better. I don’t know what your program is like and the caliber of your work products but you should consider something that is obviously, traditionally and outwardly challenging. . . Poli Sci, Communications etc etc are going to get you nowhere (Call them Level 3 Topics). . . English/Philosophy/History are questionable additions to Soci. too (Call then Level 2 Topics). What you need is something of the Level 1 variety, Math, Economics, Finance/Accounting, Bio, BioChem, Chem, Physics hardcore applied sciences are the best way to say, “Hey, I’m not slacking off,” a combination of wishy washy soft majors isn’t going to benefit you as much, in applications or in life. As a Junior I don’t know if you could fit any of these in…likely not…</p>
<p>You should take a look at what a foreign language major requires…</p>
<p>(hint: it’s a lot more than memorizing conjugations. After mid-level language courses, you typically move into the upper division courses which are foreign lit. How are your writing skills?)</p>
<p>Yes, I am a junior, not a freshman. My school’s sociology department requires 50 sociology credits (out of 180), of which I have already completed 40. So I’m kind of at a dead end here. I figure I might as well pick a second major (because a double major doesn’t hurt), preferably one that I can complete quickly so I don’t delay my graduation, and also preferably one that I know I can do well in. Stuff like math, bio, chem, and physics are exactly what I know I WON’T do well in. It’s not that I don’t like them; I just can’t do well on tests in those subjects, and I would be harming my GPA majoring in them.</p>
<p>My school’s Spanish major requires 55 credits, which I’m pretty sure I can complete on time, especially if I skip the lower-level courses by scoring high enough on the placement tests. I know that the upper-level classes are mostly literature classes and not just learning the language anymore, but I think that would be interesting since I’ve barely used Spanish at all since high school, and almost not at all since college. I just want to know whether getting 4.0s in these Spanish classes would amount to much. I keep hearing over and over again that law school admissions don’t care what your major is; however, the responses I’m getting in this topic seem to conflict with that idea.</p>
<p>I am rather appalled by some of the responses in this thread. First off, this is a board geared toward law school admissions, not general life lessons. Some of you may hold OP in contempt for taking a second major merely to bolster his GPA rather than learn, but that is beside the point. An applicant’s LSAC GPA is the second most important factor in admissions, and OP would be remiss if he didn’t try to raise his. </p>
<p>As for the book citations, I find it rather disturbing that the author you quoted chose to regurgitate the nonsense spewed by law school admissions officers. Admission to law school is a very numbers-driven process, but these officers know that their reputation (or at least that of their schools) would suffer if they candidly admitted this. So, when asked for comments on the process, they make all kinds of noises about how much extracurriculars, personal statements, and undergraduate majors factor into their decisions (or at least they do in all the interviews I’ve read to date). In reality, however, the numbers you receive are FAR more important than how you got them, in large part because law school rankings do not factor the difficulty of your major but only the raw GPA number itself. </p>
<p>So my advice to the OP is this: if you are confident that you can do well in Spanish classes, and if acquiring new knowledge at the expense of your GPA sounds unappealing, then by all means pursue a Spanish major. I doubt that Sociology is looked down upon as a major, but it wouldn’t hurt you to have a double major, and it is imperative that you get a solid GPA if you want to gain admittance to a solid T-14 school.</p>
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<p>First, what is your definition of a “solid GPA”?</p>
<p>While it is ideal to graduate with as high of a GPA as possible, not having a stellar high GPA of a 3.8+ or even a 3.5+ does not necessarily mean one is shut out of the T-14…unless we’re mainly talking about YHS…and even that’s not always true…though it is for the most part.</p>
<p>As for the rest of the T-14, I’ve known many college classmates who have been admitted with GPAs far south of 3.4. Heck, I even knew one non-URM college classmate who managed to gain admission to a lower T-14 with barely a 3.0, failing one class, and getting a few Cs in others…and she applied practically right out of undergrad. </p>
<p>Maxing out the GPA is only one part of the numbers driven process. The LSAT is another. In fact, several T-14…especially those in the lower T-14 seem to be much more willing to admit students with sub-3.4 GPAs if their LSATs are high(170+) than students with high GPAs and mediocre LSAT scores if the experience of my college classmates and past admissions stats were anything to go on.</p>
<p>My two cents:</p>
<p>First of all, you sure do you have a lot of assumptions that aren’t necessarily givens. You may think I’m a bad person for saying this but someone who has a 3.3 doing sociology at the University of Washington shouldn’t bank on getting a 170 so easily. The reason I point this out is you really have to consider what type of law school you would be willing to go to, and if you are aiming for a T14 a 3.5/166 probably won’t get you there. </p>
<p>Second, I wouldn’t so quickly assume you’d be getting a 4.0 in your Spanish classes. I had friends who majored in Spanish as a double major expecting to get a GPA boost only to find that their Spanish classes were more difficult than their Math or Economics classes. Like one of the previous posters said, it’s not all about conjugations and speaking the language–the intensity of the work and time requirement are not something to be overlooked and taken for granted. I know you will probably assume that since you are a native speaker they will be a breeze for you, but I would highly advise you at least take one upper level seminar before making that claim. </p>
<p>Finally, my own advice would be to take whatever you think will help you enjoy your undergraduate years most. If you really don’t think you’re going to get anything enjoyable out of a class, then don’t take it.</p>
<p>@ cobrat</p>
<p>It isn’t necessary for me to define what a “solid GPA” constitutes, but if you aspire to a T-14 law school, then a 3.7-4.0 would be most helpful.</p>
<p>I’m not going to bicker with you about the importance of a strong GPA. Far too much petty bickering takes place on this site; I’ve seen many good threads dissolve into silly little fights about small issues. But I will reiterate that GPA is an important part of one’s application, and although the LSAT is even more important, OP should still take measures to improve his GPA, including (possibly) a second major in Spanish. </p>
<p>But I do agree with kaiden that OP must think carefully about whether upper level Spanish classes will truly bolster his GPA. There’s a decent chance that being able to produce good translations of class material will be insufficient; OP may also have to know nuanced grammar as well. At the very least, he should accept kaiden’s advice and take at least one upper level Spanish course before formally declaring a second major. Better safe than sorry.</p>