I'm not sure...

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>I go to GWU and I have the option to graduate early and I’m thinking about going to law school. </p>

<p>Should I graduate early and work for a year before applying to law school? Would that help or hurt me later on when I apply and actually go to law school?</p>

<p>Also I have a year of Arabic and I’m not sure if I should continue it. Will that help my application if I have Arabic as language (or any language) all throughout undergrad?</p>

<p>My major is Philosophy and I’m going back and forth between a History or Arabic minor. </p>

<p>The reason I’m doing Arabic is just a safety net in case law school doesn’t work out, but its really time consuming and difficult. </p>

<p>My top choices are GT or GWU and I’ll probably apply to NYU and CU (I doubt I’ll get in but they’re close to home).</p>

2

<p>If you have the stats go for law school directly out of college.</p>

3

<p>If you graduate early, working can only help you. Schools are increasingly concerned about admitting students who are immature and don’t have any work experience. If you graduate early and apply directly, that can hurt you.</p>

<p>Having a basic understanding of Arabic won’t help you at all.</p>

4

<p>Law School admissions isn’t like UG admissions and not at all like MBA admissions. It’s much more about your raw numbers(GPA, LSAT) and less about the rest. Being an underrepresented minority helps(Black, Native American, Puerto Rican, Mexican…that’s about it). Something really awesome would help(Olympic Gold Medal, 3 years fighting AIDS in the Congo, whatever), the rest doesn’t matter as much. Even the college you went to doesn’t matter that much. A 3.9 from Harvard or MIT is better than a 3.9 from Podunk U, but it’s less clear that a 3.7 from Harvard is better than a 3.9 from Podunk U…the graphs don’t really bear that out. </p>

<p>Get your cumulative GPA(across all college level classes, including community college etc). Take the LSAT or at least buy some of the old tests and see what you will probably get.</p>

<p>Go to LawSchoolNumbers.com and look at graphs which plot applicants by their LSAT and GPA. That will give you a good idea of where you’ll get in. If you are well into the green zone you will probably get some financial aid. If you can’t realistically get into a Top14 school, general consensus is probably that you shouldn’t go to law school. If you can get into a top 14 school and can get a free ride to GWU for example as an alternative, that’s reasonable, but you don’t want to go 150k into debt for a school ranked 15+ given how many young lawyers out there are utterly broke nowadays.</p>

5

<p>Unless its HYS(or whatever), working probably wont help you too much.</p>

6

<p>@jona
I agree.I also know that if one is not accepted to a top 15 law school, it`s better for him/her work for a few years and apply to B-schools.</p>

7

<p>@overachiever91</p>

<p>that is a misconception… (if you live in a big legal market, you can beat the odds)</p>

8

<p>Thats your problem, you have to beat the odds… And the one school that really strongly considers work experience is Northwestern. And overachiever, its t14 not t15.</p>

9

<p>-Working for a year is good. Graduating early is bad. They probably cancel out, more or less.</p>

<p>-Neither is very important. Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern will probably care a little bit. The rest of the T14 probably won’t.</p>

<p>-Understanding Arabic doesn’t really help you in admissions. But it can be a major plus afterwards IF you are highly fluent.</p>

10

<p>what do you think is better ?
A law degree, with mediocre grades from Columbia, NYU or Cornell, or #1 in a top 20 uni ?</p>

11

<p>Well number one is going to be better in that hypothetical. But that correlation isn’t really applicable. Usually there is a point with how well it clicks and the talent level is not going to be a big enough drop off for that. It would probably be more like top quarter at columbia vs. number one at BU. Or mediocre at both. And top quarter at columbia is going to get you into most biglaw jobs in the country. Where number one at BU is still going to have to put in a lot of legwork himself to get to the bay area. Also, cornell is not equal to columbia and nyu.</p>