Re: Law School Application Time
 

"How do law school admissions weigh GPAs and majors? "

Triple beam, ha, imo.

"Also, is there any benefit to applying with a mathematics or philosphy major over something like sociology? "

Here is how it generally works

Engineering/Hard science>>>>>>>Everything else blurs together. I imagine philosophy is slightly better than sociology but when the admissions people see "not full of math" they put you in the same bucket as the other 8000 kids with humanities and social sciences degrees.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

FlyWf,

Obviously they use a bunch of short bus people in that article, which is one of my problems with it. I mean, some of these diploma factories will take anyone, so obviously if you're at the bottom, you're not getting a job.

Thing is, to a lesser degree, the same thing happens at all schools that aren't in the top 10.

I know people in the top quarter at schools like UCONN and Brooklyn or people in the top 1/3 at schools like GW/BU/BC that aren't getting big firm offers and they aren't speds. They got into very hard to get into schools, they beat on 2/3 of the people in their class. They just didn't nail the top or get on a journal. And they are being shut out.

Granted, not everyone deserves a $160k job right out of school. Most don't, probably including the people that actually get it. The problem is, law schools make it seems like you go there and as long as you graduate the choice is up to you. Look at bottom rank schools like Thomas Jefferson that have fake rankings where they somehow come out on top of Yale/Harvard/Stanford. Now maybe someone who buys that marketing deserves to be screwed, but the problem is that its happening to a lesser degree.

How many people would actually go to Loyola or Suffolk or wherever if they actually got to see a 100% report of individual salaries with honest average salaries, etc.

I think when they saw that only 1/2 the people have jobs at graduation and only 10% of them are making more than $50k, they might think twice about taking out those loans. Remember, its not like most of these bottom schools are giving price breaks. You pay the same for Loyola as you do for Yale.

Thing is, you have 50% of the people thinking they can get what is only ever gonna be available to 10%. This isn't some corporate ladder where if you don't make the cut you still got your job, instead you're 150k in the hole, making $40k a year without benefits and trying to cross intersections in front of expensive cars.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

PS- I am a 2L and just accepted an offer with my top choice firm in the city I want to be in, a firm that currently pays $160k to first years and $3100/wk to summers, all while saving $100k because I took $$$ over higher ranked schools. (Just so you know this isn't coming from someone bitter about the way things worked out)

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
Required reading before going to law school

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html

[/ QUOTE ]

From the article: $100k in law school debt. Wow. Just wow. I feel much better now having only $52k.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Required reading before going to law school

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html

[/ QUOTE ]

From the article: $100k in law school debt. Wow. Just wow. I feel much better now having only $52k.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know people that have $50k from undergrad and they are taking out $50k each of three years for law school for over $200k in loans.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
PS- I am a 2L and just accepted an offer with my top choice firm in the city I want to be in, a firm that currently pays $160k to first years and $3100/wk to summers, all while saving $100k because I took $$$ over higher ranked schools. (Just so you know this isn't coming from someone bitter about the way things worked out)

[/ QUOTE ]

Anyone who pays any attention at all to these law school threads are more than familiar with your stats, Noah... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Required reading before going to law school

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html

[/ QUOTE ]

From the article: $100k in law school debt. Wow. Just wow. I feel much better now having only $52k.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know people that have $50k from undergrad and they are taking out $50k each of three years for law school for over $200k in loans.

[/ QUOTE ]
qft. god how i wish i could have only 50k in law school debt. i will be at around 100k which, as you mentioned, is not too bad compared to many people. and i feel very blessed at this point that, like you, i was able to have a good first year and get a great job. i feel bad for the people that are in more debt than me and are having a tough time finding a job.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

Noah,

You have a job? Wow, awesome.

Where do you go to school?
Where else did you apply?
What higher ranked schools did you get into and choose not to go to?
What is your gpa?
How hard did you work for it?
How much money will you be making next summer?
Hoe much richer than everyone else are you going to be?
How on earth are you so much smarter than everyone else????????????

Re: Law School Application Time
 

RM,

BC
lots of places
Georgetown, Columbia
3.6
not hard for 3 months per semester, very hard for 1.
$3100/wk
not very, lots of debt
good genes


hope that helps!!!!

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noah what did you do your summer after your 1L year? What options besides working for a firm would you recommend. I'm a 1l from Utexas and the career office keeps telling me that I have to get things off on dec 1st.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

recon, I predict a mailbox filled with small envelopes of pain, but you might luckbox a callback or two.

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recon, I didn't find my summer job until April. I worked at a small in-house type firm that did weird things and had ties to Enron and weird religious groups. But I made $20/hr which is like double any previous job!

If you want to work at a big firm then mass mail to every firm that hires 1Ls starting Dec. 1

or you could take the workstudy 4k or whatever it is and do public interest stuff and get a second job. that sounds fun!

1L firms won't know/don't care about your grades, just past work experience and/or science background.

no clue what texas is like for getting jobs.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
Civil Procedure was the most boring class I've ever taken.

Civil Procedure is the only class that practicing litigators have told me is useful.

This frightens me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am nearly finished the first half of Civ Pro, and I, and everyone else in the class love it. Mostly because the teacher is awesome.

I could see how it could be boring, but with a great teacher, that class is my favorite.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Civil Procedure was the most boring class I've ever taken.

Civil Procedure is the only class that practicing litigators have told me is useful.

This frightens me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am nearly finished the first half of Civ Pro, and I, and everyone else in the class love it. Mostly because the teacher is awesome.

I could see how it could be boring, but with a great teacher, that class is my favorite.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah interviewing with people that graduated from my school was really awkward because they'd say who'd you have for 1L profs and when I said X for Civ Pro, they were like "oh, you had X for civ pro?" and half the time it was because they absolutely loved him and half the time because they couldn't stand him, so i just sat there with a deer in the headlights look til they gave me a hint.

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[ QUOTE ]

If you want to work at a big firm then mass mail to every firm that hires 1Ls starting Dec. 1


[/ QUOTE ]

The big firms in Portland (including firms with a national presence) only hire 1Ls who qualify as "diversity fellows," i.e., minorities. Pretty darn good deal, actually, as they seem to hire back for the second summer and then permanently.

I had a really attenuated "in" with a federal district judge, and he hired me on as a summer extern after my first year. Best job ever. I really don't know how much my "in" helped me, or if it was simply because I asked. Grades might be a factor, though. I didn't receive a response until after I let him know about my first semester gpa.

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Affirmative action in law schools is ridiculous, especially at the top schools. A classmate of mine at Princeton got in at Harvard with a 158. I know a number of white/asian kids with 170+ LSATs who were rejected.

I'm all about a leg up for disadvantaged kids, but that kind of gap is ridiculous and it guarantees poor performance relative to classmates.

Nobody wants to admit it, but the # of african american students cracking 170 on the LSAT is in the single digits annually. De facto quotas mean they have to dig pretty deep.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

RM,

I will say that at my school there is not a single URM on the main law review of almost 60 students. law review members are chosen either based on their (anonymous) grades or on their (anonymous) writing competition.

I'll give the standard anti-racist disclaimer that I had a lot of very intelligent minority students in my classes, but there is a lot of evidence out there that since minority students are getting into schools that their numbers alone would not get them into, they are having a tougher time of it. I guess it doesn't really matter though, because firms seem to also have lots of diversity programs and diversity scholarships, etc. so I don't really know when, if ever it catches up.

There was a study that tried to link poor minority performance on the CA bar review to AA in law school admittance, but I read that it received a lot of criticism, so not sure how valid of a study it was.


Definitely a bit discouraging to punch your numbers into lawschoolnumbers.com and see "Wow, ok, 80 people got rejected with my numbers at Harvard, but 20 got accepted, i got a shot!" then you realize you didn't check off the "exclude URM" button and that number goes down to "75 rejected, 0 accepted."

kinda depressing when your from a poor background where your family didn't all graduate high school let alone go to college, and then you see minority students whose parents are CEOs getting the AA boost. guess those are the breaks.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

A few more thoughts:

1. Everyone who applied to law school with a pulse knows about the huge URM advantage. It's impossible to then ignore that information after you enroll. In this respect, I think AA actually exacerbates racism. This is particularly true given the reality (documented in the book The Bell Curve and elsewhere) that a rich URM gets a massive bump while a poor white/asian kid is actually penalized. This is contrary to every possible explanation for AA and inconsistent with basic notions of fairness.

2. This references the study you mentioned: http://www.cir-usa.org/articles/158.html

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]

kinda depressing when your from a poor background where your family didn't all graduate high school let alone go to college, and then you see minority students whose parents are CEOs getting the AA boost. guess those are the breaks.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what makes me laugh about the Big Law diversity fellowships: all of the students I know that got them were close to the top of the class, and probably would have gotten a Big Law job anyway, just a year later. It's a win-win for the firms.

When I was a 2L, one firm in town hired five summers, and I believe four of the five were Asian women.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

http://images.salon.com/comics/boll/...boll/story.gif

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Damn, that duck has got one sweet deal.

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Wow, I didn't know being an urm got so much advantage. All this time I thought I didn't stand a chance of getting into a top tier law school, but apparently I might be a shoo-in. Guess being black was finally good for something.

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[ QUOTE ]
Wow, I didn't know being an urm got so much advantage. All this time I thought I didn't stand a chance of getting into a top tier law school, but apparently I might be a shoo-in. Guess being black was finally good for something.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://kipin.net/images/tpt/kobe2.gif

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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lol nice. too bad I'm almost a foot shorter than him.

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As an URM, I didn't find that I got any advantage. Didn't get accepted to any school where I was a little under the average when it came to the numbers

162 LSAT 3.71 gpa
GW waitlisted then rejected me.
BC rejected me.
Ended up at UF, where I am about at the 75% mark for both numbers.

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That's extremely odd. What is your URM? Do you have a murder conviction or something? According to LSN you should have been golden.

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Cuban-American. Perhaps they were worried that I'll steal all of their women with my Latin flavor?

To be fair though...at least here in UF, Cubans are way OVER-represented if anything. I do not remember if I had to fill in my ethnicity as Hispanic OR Cuban-America. It probably would have made a difference.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

100% of the Hispanics at FSU are Cuban. There are also like 5 black people in the entire 1L class, and one asian. You can see how minorities get a massive boost, very few of them apparently want to be lawyers.

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[ QUOTE ]
To be fair though...at least here in UF, Cubans are way OVER-represented if anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

This must be new. In my first year, I think there may have been 2 Cubans in my section (out of about 110 people). Currently in the LLM program, I do not believe there are any.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

Perhaps you didn't ask around enough?

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What does URM stand for? I went to law school, and I've never heard this term (although I can infer its meaning from the posts in this thread). Something like under-represented minority?

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps you didn't ask around enough?

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wtf???

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
What does URM stand for? I went to law school, and I've never heard this term (although I can infer its meaning from the posts in this thread). Something like under-represented minority?

[/ QUOTE ]

yes

Re: Law School Application Time
 

Well now I'm leaning mostly towards taking a year off after I graduate. What would you guys recommend doing with this year to give my 'soft' factors the biggest boost? Travel and experience other cultures? Get some more work experience? If its WE, would any job be good, or should it be one more closely tied to the legal profession? I currently work as a bartender, love the job, and the money is better than most other things I could do.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

is a 2.6/177 about the same as a 3.6/165 or whatever the op has?

its what im sporting and altho i got fee waivers from some good schools i figured my chances were pretty slim so i was thinking of blowing off the applications since im not so sure about going to law school anyway. but if i got a chance i might actually write a real PS.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

[ QUOTE ]
is a 2.6/177 about the same as a 3.6/165 or whatever the op has?

its what im sporting and altho i got fee waivers from some good schools i figured my chances were pretty slim so i was thinking of blowing off the applications since im not so sure about going to law school anyway. but if i got a chance i might actually write a real PS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone on LSN got into Northwestern last year with 2.63/177. The other person in your range got into Columbia, but they had significant post-UG experience (starting a Fortune 500).

Re: Law School Application Time
 

1. fee waivers don't mean anything. top schools give them out to everyone so that they get tons of apps and their % accepted stats look better as a result.

2. 2.6 gpa is pretty bad, and when they see the 177, they are going to assume you are a lazy smart kid. lazy people don't make good lawyers. unless you had like a 2.0 your first two years and then 3.7 your last two or something, its not gonna be an easy road for you at top schools.

if you're not sure about law school anyway then don't go. there are a lot of people dead set on law school that end up hating it. the % of those that came to law school unsure and end up hating it is much higher.

go out and get some work experience in a legal setting and then decide what you want to do. maybe take some classes to bring your GPA up if you can. you aren't going to be pulling scholarships, so decide for sure this is what you want before you drop $150k on law school.

Re: Law School Application Time
 

Only skimmed the thread, so this might have been mentioned, but anyway.

I for one didn't send the same letter to all school.

I had like a 4-5 paragraph letter, and the second to last one was different for each school I applied to. Basically, I briefly researched each school and found something they seem proud of (i.e. a int'l exchange program, an emphasis on a particular area of law or geographical considerations) that I could somehow tie into my background/UG transcript and I talked about that. Also, if there were any names I could drop, i.e. a faculty member whose work I did research on or something, then I did that too.

Its a little extra work, but it makes them feel like you are actually interested in going to their school as opposed to just any law school that will have you, and I was told prior to applying by a few people that they like that.