With applications down 15 percent last year, now is the perfect time to apply to law school. The competition is still fiercely aggressive, so there’s still no time for slacking off. Here are the top five most important factors in determining your success as an applicant.
1) Pick a major you love. Yes, Mathematics, Philosophy, Economics and Physics majors score highest on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), but you shouldn’t pick a major you don’t love. If you’ve gone to school for four years without obsessing about your studies, then your lack of enthusiasm will show. It will show to those who write your letters of recommendation and to the admissions officers who read your statement of purpose. Your GPA will likely be lower than it would otherwise be. The only way for you to stand out is for you to truly enjoy what you’re reading outside of class.
2) Study for the LSAT – the right way. The LSAT is not like the SAT – it’s the most important factor in law school admissions, not just one among many. Given the variety of colleges and difficulties of majors, the LSAT offers the only standardized playing field for all applicants to test themselves with. Those who have scored in the top percentiles frequently cite studying for at least three months, taking at least 40 practice tests and stimulating the test day environment. And with only one attempt allowed in most cases, you’d better enter the testing room prepared.
3) Raise your GPA. It’s important to maintain a consistently high GPA throughout your college career for yourself and for your law schools. After all, they’d like to brag about high GPAs, too – it’s part of what raises their prestige. Unfortunately, students who took a while to adjust to college may forever be troubled by a low first-year GPA. However, admissions officers do appreciate recoveries from low overall averages. High GPAs are important because they measure an applicant’s success at doing one thing – being assigned various tasks and successfully completing those tasks. A high GPA shows that you can organize information presented to you, balance the rest of your life and produce high-quality essays and return practice sets with ease. Such a skill is undoubtedly useful not just in law school, but in the legal world as well.
4) Perfect the “soft factors.” “Soft factors” are any factors besides your GPA and LSAT score – leadership ability, work experience, diversity and the like. These factors, though by no means the determinants of your admission, may catch the eyes of an admissions officer and save your file from the garbage bin. Consider emphasizing your political activism, sports team captainship or dedication to a job, because anything you can do to stand out won’t hurt.
5) Take some time off. Applicants often doubt whether they should take time off. Consider doing so to gain work experience, take a legal studies internship, travel and think hard about what you’d like to do with your life. If you truly want to be a lawyer, then your time off is not wasted because school is always there. It’s great if you find yourself hiking the Appalachian and can’t wait to start writing applications – that’s how you know law school is for you. The opposite isn’t true, for if you graduate from the University of Virginia with several thousand dollars of debt and doubts in your mind, it might be too late, and you probably should have thought about your future beforehand.
If you complete these five tasks, then you’ll likely be prepared for a life of the law. With application submission rates down, now is the best time to crack down on the books, take some time off to pursue your passions and consider whether law is right for you in the first place. Make sure to consider, of course, the reasons why the number of applications is so low – law school debt is piling high, graduates from even the top schools are out of jobs and the law degree is no longer a job safety net. If you ultimately decide to take the risk, these five tips may pay off in the end.
Brandon Sides is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].
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Juris Debtis • Mar 9, 2014 at 10:22 pm
You would be extremely foolish to go to law school period. Spend some time Googling law school debt, salaries, and unemployment. Look at the website Law School Transparency. Learn how to decipher the employment numbers (hint: lawyers working for firms with less than 25 lawyers are probably making poverty-level wages once you factor in their huge debts). Law schools are businesses and they want your tuition money. They’re also very misleading about the number of jobs available and the salaries that are commonly attained by law schools.
You should only go to law school if you get a FULL scholarship. If you lose your scholarship, drop out immediately. There’s no “mid-law” or “boutiques” for law grads. Those are lies the admins and career offices will tell you. They just want your money. Be very careful about attending law school. It doesn’t work out most grads and even for those who score a coveted BigLaw job, most hate it and are miserable.
You really just shouldn’t go to law school. It’s designed to sucker in and take advantage of young, bright, slightly insecure college grads who think they have something to prove. You’d be better off proving yourself in your current job or finding out what you really love and proving yourself there.
BJD • Feb 28, 2014 at 10:52 am
“Those who have scored in the top percentiles frequently cite studying for at least three months, taking at least 40 practice tests and stimulating the test day environment. And with only one attempt allowed in most cases, you’d better enter the testing room prepared.”
Good advice generally, but only Yale, Harvard, and Stanford average LSAT scores. There is almost no downside except for a small fee in taking the test two or three times, if you get a 140 140 165, your 165 is all the schools will care about. The average retaker gets 2-3 points on a retake, so if you have to work at Walmart for a year while you retake do it. Even a few points could lead to tens of thousands in scholarship money.
Although this article talks about soft factors, it’s all about the numbers and law schools are starving for them because any college student with a brain is running the other way. Don’t settle for just getting in. Only go if you get a big scholarship and graduate with small debt.
Practicing Lawyer • Feb 26, 2014 at 10:49 am
Students considering law school: be warned!
1. Law school has become extremely expensive. Tuition is more than $30K at most schools, and students need to take out high interest loans to attend. Most graduates today have $100K – $200K in debt!
2. The lawyer job market is glutted. Last year, 45,000 graduates competed for 25,000 lawyer jobs. The other 20,000 graduates are out of luck, and in debt up to their eyeballs.
3. Most law jobs do not pay well enough for graduates to pay off their loans in a reasonable period of time. Unless you are attending Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Columbia, attending law school is a high risk, dangerous decision.