moved post to respond directly to OP.
2 Likes
Yeah, depending on where she ends up, we were already talking about taking a year and working as a paralegal or something else that would lead into law school while giving her brain a chance to rest and recover.
4 Likes
Only about 20% of students are K-JD. It’s important to have a really good resume prior to law school.
Law firm recruiting has also accelerated. Big Law is now interviewing much earlier. My nephew received multiple Big Law offers after his first semester grades were released.
If you’re not interested in Big Law, the resume may not be as important, depending on what type of law you want to practice.
3 Likes
Oops, I hadn’t intended my earlier post to be a response to @niceunparticlarMan. For law school, there is now a $200k aggregate max on federal loans for professional school, including undergraduate federal loans. That could push students/families to private loans (which cannot be discharged through public service and other loan forgiveness programs). So minimizing any loans during undergrad becomes even more important.
Also, law schools prefer applicants with post-grad work experience so taking at least a year between undergrad and law school is recommended.
5 Likes
I’m reading all the replies and taking it all in, so I saw it and thank you. There’s definitely going to be a lot of things to pick up about getting into law school and post JD career that we will have to figure out! But, so far, it seems like we are in a fortunate position with the schools we have available to us for undergrad. I’ve been looking for Facebook groups or other pages where parents of current students discuss things in order to find any big red flags.
If anyone has other personal experiences with these schools or have committed for the upcoming year, I’d also love to hear your perspectives!
1 Like
I can’t stress enough the importance of taking at one year - and preferably two - to get work experience after college and before attending law school. It is helpful for admissions, and it is almost essential for getting a legal job once you’re admitted to law school. As @CFP notes, BigLaw recruiting has been moving earlier and earlier for the past several years, culminating this year in a cycle where interviews for BigLaw jobs occurred during the first semester of the 1L year, and offers were given shortly after first semester grades were released in early second semester. (The timeline is confusing, but these offers are for 2L summer association positions, which later lead to permanent offer for post-grad employment. A 2L summer associate position is basically the only on-ramp to an entry level job in BigLaw.). Students with significant work experience have a huge advantage now in this process as law firms highly highly value post-grad work experience and students who don’t have it are at a pretty big disadvantage. If the student isn’t interested in BigLaw, it’s still really advantageous to have a couple of years of work experience - this experience provides skills, knowledge and maturity that is helpful regardless of the type of employer.
One additional note, as someone here mentioned getting a job as a paralegal after college. That’s fine, but it is totally unnecessary for the post-grad job to be “legal” or related to legal work. In fact, I’d argue that getting something in business, or the arts, or in the public sector - as long as it’s professional experience and not barista or retail work - is equally if not more valuable. Basically, go for any type of professional job after law school and don’t feel constrained to find something related to the law.
9 Likes
Small departments at colleges have their pros and cons. My daughter was a history major from a pretty small department. She really got to know all the professors and is still friendly with them (and works for one or two remotely). A con might be that the department has less funding, especially for specialty classes, but that wasn’t true for her department. The Wyoming constitution requires EVERY students (engineers, nurses, teachers, dancers) to take either Wyoming history or Wyoming government, so the department gets funding for that, which means it can offer full funding for grad students to teach the courses (my daughter’s MS was fully funded), and free the profs to teach the courses they are really interested in.
Also, many courses had course numbers for multiple departments and students could choose if they wanted a course to be counted as a history course or poli sci or religion or art history (in art department), etc. This opened up the course offerings, as in smaller schools or departments often they can only offer a few upper level course per year (a con). Daughter never had a problem getting into any course she wanted or finding interesting courses to take.
So look at how many courses are usually offered in a semester and if there is cross registration with other departments to fulfill requirements (or interests like art history or religious history) before deciding the dept is too small.
2 Likes
Right. D24 is targeting consulting before potentially making her move. My nephew worked at a large company reviewing their prospectus because he wanted to get into corporate governance.
3 Likes
I appreciate the detailed advice and I believe this will help a ton as we continue to navigate the process. As she progresses through school, I’m sure she will narrow down the type of law she’s looking to work in and she can tailor her experience to what is best suited for that.
2 Likes
Just one note on this, in my experience what a lot of people think will be the most interesting areas of law, and what they actually find to be most interesting, are often not the same things. Like, some of the happiest attorneys I know are tax attorneys, because at their level it is actually really intellectually challenging, you get to learn about a lot of new things with each client, and so on. But not a lot of people go into law school dreaming of tax.
The good news is once law school starts, there are different things that you can do to get a better idea what will actually work for you. Of course classes, but also clinics, summer positions, and so on. And you might make changes as a young lawyer too.
I’m raising this in part just because while a pre-JD job might help you gain some insights on what practices areas you might want to consider, I would agree it is definitely not necessary. So as with ECs, my suggestion would be for her to really focus on doing something she actually wants to do, not because she sees it as a good credential for law school or a specific practice area, but for the experience itself.
And who knows, maybe she will decide she doesn’t actually need law school after all. That’s a good result too, to realize that you can actually start a career at that point.
7 Likes
Congrats on the great options. If you appeal at Kenyon and they happen to come in at close to the other options, is your D prepared to accept without a visit? That might be risky. Can you visit if it’s really still in the running? If not, probably best to eliminate to avoid loans as others have explained.
As for small departments, sometimes if a faculty member goes on sabbatical, a course your D may want to take may be unavailable. Fortunately it’s likely not going to be an issue of required or sequential courses as a Hx major. Just more likely inconvenient in terms of lower or upper level courses.
1 Like
All great schools, so congrats. That said, a U.S. history-inclined student being offered a competitive package by Gettysburg should probably look hard at that school since that program is pretty widely esteemed and there are a number of options associated with the Eisenhower Institute ( The Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College ) worth exploring. That said, there are a lot of fraternities and, according to a friend who is an alumnus, ghosts. So you have to get along with those.
2 Likes
To address concerns re small history departments: my daughter’s experience at Kenyon as a history major was outstanding. There were always plenty courses to choose from, and they had a Visiting Professor for a year or two who offered more unique topic courses (maybe to replace someone on sabbatical). My daughter got a “summer scholar” position after her junior year that involved a hefty stipend and a research project with a history professor, which helped her formulate her own senior thesis project.
This being said, if one is interested in a particular region/period of history, it’s true that not every small college has specialists in each area, so one needs to study the departmental webpage closely.
2 Likes
This is an excellent post on so many levels.
Particularly that many college students discover that they don’t need or want to go to law school! So I would take law school out of the equation entirely for now…. the decision in front of you is undergrad, not “how do I position myself for a career I may not be interested in a few years from now”.
3 Likes
I feel like this should be required viewing for anyone talking in pre-law terms. Whoever wrote this really knew the subject:
The actual truth is for the right person, a legal career can be an excellent choice. But people who go into it basically just because it seems like an easy, lucrative, and socially prestigious path for someone good at school are very often making a mistake.
8 Likes
This cannot be overstated. ^^
I appreciate the multiple posts with information on how and when to decide about going to law school or even if they need to or should go to law school. I guess when that time comes, we’ll handle that then.
Right now, we are just sorting through which of the choices we have available before us makes the most sense for her to start her college journey. And I’m thankful for the information people have shared about the 4 colleges in question and I’d love to hear more input about those colleges. Right now, respectfully, her choice of major and the idea of going to law school afterwards isn’t up for debate.
Thanks again!
1 Like
This is hilarious and spot-on. I went to law school (natural progression from a degree in philosophy) & then became disenchanted with the drudgery, the demanding hours, and the general unhappiness of the profession, so I quit and stayed home to raise and homeschool my kids. Some people thrive in the profession, but some don’t. I think working 2-5 years elsewhere after college and trying to get an inside view of the work is extremely helpful in deciding whether to pursue a law degree!
To that end, for a kid pondering law school, I’d prioritize a college that is the best fit with zero debt, because I think when you’re somewhere that fits well you’ll excel and thrive, which leads to opportunities, and zero debt means more options for the future. The OP’s daughter has some fabulous choices, and that’s the framework I’d use in this case!
5 Likes
Yes, the actual point to all this isn’t to deter her current plans, but just to underscore that her choice should be about where she thinks is the best bet for her to thrive as an individual. If she does well academically, and if she finds an activity or two that she enjoys putting a lot of energy into, and if she is doing well socially, physically, and emotionally, then that will all work out well for law school, if that remains her plan.
6 Likes
I don’t think you can go wrong, and this is likely a situation where she can go with her gut and feel confident that it’s a good decision.
5 Likes