Making Chicago Pre-Law More Transparent

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
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<p>Unalove - haha well it’s good that you at least know that! After I did some research (outside of what advisers said) about the whole law world, I was really turned off. It seems that an alarmingly high number of lawyers are unhappy, and a lot of the work they do (whether it pays well or not) is mind-numbingly boring and tedious. </p>

<p>Having said that, I wish more of my compatriots at Chicago knew even that - so many headed to law school because of its pseudo-intellectual visage, and they had no idea about the tedium and frustration that goes hand in hand with a legal education. </p>

<p>Do you think your peers at Chicago are 1.) more aware of the importance of going to the top school if, despite all advise to the contrary, they still want to go to law school? and 2.) are aware of the drudgery and general unhappiness that mark both a legal education and law work?</p>

<p>For those that are interested, read this law review article:</p>

<p><a href=“http://seoulover.blogs.com/westlaw/files/being_a_happy_lawyer.pdf[/url]”>http://seoulover.blogs.com/westlaw/files/being_a_happy_lawyer.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It’s both depressing and eye-opening. I think ALL Chicago law applicants MUST read this article by Schiltz, and also be forced to read Tucker Max’s (hey, he is a Chicago grad) summation of law school, available here:</p>

<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/should_i_go_to_law_school_the_speech_text.phtml]TuckerMax.com[/url”>http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/should_i_go_to_law_school_the_speech_text.phtml]TuckerMax.com[/url</a>]</p>

<p>These two articles provide pretty much all an aspiring and typical (i.e. not public-service oriented) law student needs to know. </p>

<p>Too many Chicago students had no idea about either facet (the hierarchy and the tedium) of the legal profession.</p>

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<p>Cue,
Not all lawyers are unhappy (or working at firms, for that matter). My H was a Penn (Wharton) UG accounting/decision sciences major, and did NOT go the consulting or Big 8 route. He thought about law school while still in UG, but assumed his grades (either 4.0s or slacker semesters) would never get him there. Worked for five years, redeeming his 3.2 with hard work and promotions, took the LSAT (got a 48, which is now a 180) and decided to give it a shot. However, he was not going to give up a good job and three years of his life unless it was a good school. He went to Penn. Had Chicago taken anyone off the waitlist that year, he would have gone there instead (he was #1 on their waitlist that year – yes, they told him that). Waitlisted at Columbia, accepted at NYU, GW and Georgetown, rejected at Harvard and Northwestern. </p>

<p>There were a fair number of Ivy UGs there, but also a bunch of folks from Ohio State, Purdue, UMD, USAFA, New School, and some other less-well-known schools.</p>

<p>H loved law school. He’d been out long enough to appreciate it, reveled in the workload and intellectual discipline and did extremely well (think the big law school honors, federal appellate clerkship, etc.). He did the private practice thing for a while and is now a happy camper in the federal gov’t, where he gets to wear many hats corresponding to his various talents. Works for an agency that has been rather busy this fall, continuing the regulatory work that has kept at least his field out of hot water.</p>

<p>BTW, we know lots of happy lawyers; they just aren’t at the name firms making the big bucks. BTDT, found another life.</p>

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<p>Counting Down - that’s great, but I think your Husband is in the minority. Of course any profession has happy members, but for some reason, the legal profession seems especially disposed to unhealthy traits. </p>

<p>When I pictured law school, I naively thought that the work may be tedious, but would ultimately be fulfilling. In many areas of the law, lawyers simply do not feel this way. Many studies and articles point to the legal profession as, quite simply, an unfulfilling pursuit. Recently, the NY Times released an article of some interest:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06professions.html?pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06professions.html?pagewanted=print&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Again, I’m not saying that there aren’t some members of the profession who are happy. What I argue is, in doing research, I was surprised by the sheer magnitude of negativity that surrounded the legal profession.</p>

<p>For example, up until recently, friends in finance worked ridiculous hours and had barely any time for anything else. Nevertheless, they never seemed to exhibit the sheer despair that marked the experiences of my friends at law schools and then in private practice.</p>

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<p>The way I see it, I think it has a lot more to do with Chicago kids tending to march to the beat of their own drummer and tending to appreciate the here and the now in the academic experience rather than the, “I’m just going to this school and doing this major so I have the best chance of getting into the law school of my dreams.” Students who view college as a necessary evil to getting a well-paying job are not going to be served well by Chicago and they are not going to come here. </p>

<p>I realize that I’m assuming that “offbeat” kids have “offbeat” career goals, which is an unfair assumption, particularly because I know a bunch of “offbeat” kids with perfectly traditional career goals. However, I’ll go back to a point I made earlier, that I have never felt any sort of mood or pressure to join any kind of career bandwagon. If everybody talked about how they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, and consultants all the time, then I think I’d feel some kind of pressure to have a career goal. But because these conversations don’t really come up (or if they do, everybody has wildly different interests anyway).</p>

<p>It would be interesting to compare law/med/business admissions data with Chicago and schools that are more closely linked to Chicago through personality (i.e. Reed, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Vassar, Wesleyan, Brown, MIT) just to see if my hypothesis about the “offbeat” personality rings true. It would also be interesting to take each “offbeat” school’s more “traditional” counterpart-- Amherst, Williams, Duke, etc. and compare things like:</p>

<p>A. What percentage of students from each of these schools apply to top law schools.
B. How this percentage of the student population relates to the student body as a whole (i.e. do the kids applying to top law schools tend to be stronger on average? weaker on average? representative of the student population?) My impression is that the most of best and the brightest are not interested in law school but rather PhD programs.
C. Some kind of LSAT/GPA comparison to see if across law school admissions boards, the name “Duke” or “MIT” means something particularly exciting that “Oberlin” does not.</p>

<p>I imagine retrieving this sort of data accurately would be impossible, but it’s worth thinking about.</p>

<hr>

<p>Law school doesn’t appeal to me because I feel like I know a lot of lawyers (and former lawyers) and I would not want their jobs. Perhaps if I, like CD’s H, had a distinct idea of what I wanted to do, some related experience in that field, and knew exactly how a law degree would help me do it, then maybe I would consider law. I’ve considered a lot of different kinds of careers, though, and law has just never entered the picture.</p>

<p>FWIW, I do know happy lawyers. They are obsessed with their jobs, but they are happy about their obsession. I’d like to add this article to the lineup of must-reads about law school.</p>

<p>[How</a> to Do What You Love](<a href=“http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html]How”>How to Do What You Love)</p>

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<p>this has been an eye opening thread! Now I understand why my son who is a freshman freaks out if he gets a B in a course. He is somewhat interested in law school so now I understand his anxiety. He probably feels he needs a 3.7 to make it into a “top” law school. Perhaps UChicago is not really the place for him. Its a shame that they don’t release this data and help students decide about their futures.</p>

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<p>drdom - please assure your son not to freak out too much. Also, please read the thread I started on “Maximizing Med School Acceptance Success at Chicago” on this discussion board. A lot of the tips I provide there (outside of what to do about all the science courses, of course) applies for pre-law students as well. </p>

<p>Just like for med school, remember the Chicago golden rule: a 0.1 GPA boost. This means, a 3.6 at Chicago (3.7 anywhere else) puts you on GREAT ground for all but the top 3 or so law schools. Around a 3.75 makes you very competitive for Harvard and Yale. This isn’t insignificant because at Chicago, I really do think a 3.6 GPA in non-science majors is VERY possible. A 3.6 GPA, coupled with about a 169 or so LSAT makes your son competitive at all law schools save for the top 5 or 6. a 3.75 GPA and a 171+ LSAT makes your son competitive ANYWHERE.</p>

<p>Given that your son probably has a 1450+ SAT and great grades from HS, a 3.6/168+ is CERTAINLY attainable. He just needs to work hard and focus HARD on the LSAT when the time comes to prepare for it. Don’t settle for a lower score - he needs to realize just how extremely critical the SPECIFIC LSAT score is for law admissions. The difference between a 166 and a 169 is NIGHT AND DAY. Make sure he’s aware of this. </p>

<p>If your son already knows that GPA is important, and that LSAT is CRITICAL, he is already well ahead of the game. If he can maintain around a 3.5 GPA or so for the first couple years at Chicago (where the learning curve is the steepest), and then really excel for the final couple of years, he really is in great shape.</p>

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<p>Cue7, thank you for all of these great posts. I re-read everything and it has helped me with my decision. Thank you</p>

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<p>S2, who is still in high school, will likely be applying to the University this year. He fell in love with the law after attending a course at Chicago last summer titled American, Law, & Litigation. He said it was by far the best course he has ever taken and it was indeed the most difficult. I asked him why he felt that way, was it service, pursuit of justice, etc.? He said no, it was one of the few professions where one could outright win. Even if it meant simply drafting a better contract, or finding a way for a client to do something they didn’t think was possible. For the first time I had an inkling of what might the profession fun for some folks.</p>

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<p>idad - if your son is a zero sum guy (to win, another must lose) there are few professions better than law and litigation… The personality traits in some of the best litigators I met sometimes rubbed me the wrong way though. If you are competitive, however, its a great way to go.</p>

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<p>Successful lawyers who need the outright win-or-lose are very rare. It’s not a good way to live, either.</p>

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<p>he just changed advisers and I hope he will get better guidance about this. I also thought that perhaps he should take 3 courses during quarters when he has core science and/or math courses to get through. I claculate that one can do this 6 times during one’s career at the college. Other than posts like yours where else can he get some more advice about navigating the core and maintaining a decent GPA?</p>

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<p>JHS - I’m not in law, so obviously you would know much better than I, but my friends that have thrived in litigation tend to be the competitive, zero-sum type of guys. Of course they never get the outright wins, but they seem to like the challenge of always having an adversary there, and needing to prove or argue something. I’d find that lifestyle kind of fatiguing, but that’s just me. </p>

<p>drdom - the best advice I can give you is for your son to talk to upper classmen and his classmates. What are his academic interests? I’d recommend he seek out some upperclassmen who also are majoring in whatever he’s interested in, and talk to them. Moreover, tell your son to USE SHOPPING period wisely. The first week, sit in on a bunch of classes, talk to other students, and get a sense of the professor’s demands. If your son is serious about law school, for better or worse, he always needs to be cognizant about his GPA. </p>

<p>Also, what are your son’s academic strengths? To be blunt, while many of the social sciences and humanities classes are demanding at Chicago, I don’t think the range of grades for many of these disciplines vary as much as in the sciences. Put another way, lots of people in the sciences get Cs or worse, but I’d imagine most grades in humanities courses range from B to A. If your son is a good writer and diligent, poli sci, history, english, etc. are all excellent possible concentrations. Again, it’s important for him to major in something that he loves, bc his work will benefit as a result of this. </p>

<p>Also - yes, it is FINE to take three classes a quarter every once in a while. There is a culture at Chicago to cram as much as possible and overextend yourself all the time to fit in all the classes you want to take. DON’T buy into this philosophy. For law school, they don’t care that you took a hard series of courses every single quarter at Chicago. They care about your GPA and LSAT. When your son anticipates a hard core class coming up and his schedule allows for it, certainly just have him take three classes. He’ll probably be much happier this way too.</p>

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<p>A few other suggestions:</p>

<p>1) Make use of the course evaluations, particularly the questions like:
a) What grade do you expect to receive in this class?
b) How many hours a week did you spend on the class?
c) Was the class fairly graded?</p>

<p>If students feel the professor is a rough grader, they’ll usually say so in the comments.</p>

<p>I really would not advise anybody at Chicago to worry about getting one (or more!) B’s. You’re around a lot of smart people all the time, and your work is not always going to be the most outstanding. For most professors, a B is a good grade!</p>

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<p>CUE7 - I think he is learning that at the U of C at least, he’s not going to be majoring in either science or math. I pretty much talked him out of a career in medicine! He likes philosophy, history and is interested in his Hum classes generally. He just got his bio grade and was ****ed that the way the curve was set up an 87.4 was not a B+ but just a B. So, UNALOVE - its not that he is obsessed with grades per se, he is just becoming aware of how U Chicago may not be the best place for a pre-law person because law schools seem only to care about GPA and LSAT. I know that he does feel the pressure of being around alot of smart people and I hope he will learn to cope with that over the years. He also seems to get closed out of what sound like interesting classes - a universal college problem, I know. I thank you both for your advice and I hope to spend some time with him over break talking about some strategies.</p>

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<p>drdom - unalove has some great suggestions too. When I was at U of C, we didn’t really have a good online course evaluation system set up. By now, this should be much better. Word of mouth is of course helpful too.</p>

<p>With your son, please let him know that the learning curve at Chicago is steep, and one’s performance the first year or two of college can certainly lag behind how one finishes up at Chicago. For the first year or two, he should keep his GPA within sight of what he wants to do, but the best strategy is to get acclimated and not seriously mess up (i.e. get lots of Cs). If he gets some Bs - this is ALWAYS fine. Remember, he should be shooting for around a 3.5-3.6 final GPA. If he can maintain roughly a B+ avg his first 5 or so quarters, and then excel in his concentration for his remaining years at Chicago, he should be in good shape.</p>

<p>Also, I understand your son will want to go to the best possible law school, but he just shouldn’t feel that he always needs to get As and set himself up for Harvard Law. Admissions at Harvard Law is, well, EXTREMELY HARD. He of course should work to maintain good standing for acceptance at a top 10-15 law school (a reasonable goal for any Chicago-caliber student), but he certainly shouldn’t feel that it’s Harvard or bust. Remember, the numbers he will need at the END OF THE LINE is around a 3.6/169. He has a long time to work toward this general goal, and its not unforseeable, even with Bs scattered all over the transcript. Over spring break, just concentrate on making sure he’s relaxed, and remind him how attainable this goal is - provided that he works HARD, meets with professors, etc etc. </p>

<p>Every once in a while, he’ll have a bump in the road where a professor is just obstinate, unhelpful, and gives him a lower grade. Make sure he keeps all this in perspective. Again, overall goal would be around a 3.6. This is CERTAINLY attainable.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>I personally have always felt the best path to an elite law school is to go the best school with the highest grade inflation. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, etc.</p>

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<p>Probably true…</p>

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<p>slipper1234 - if you just view college as the launching pad to a a very good law school, this is very true. If you want to really “feel” your education and be challenged, while also keeping the door to top law schools open, Chicago is a very good choice (along with places such as MIT and Swarthmore).</p>

<p>The problem at Chicago is, not many students know the real deal until it’s too late. They go through college thinking they’ll get this significant grade boost, and then when they look at the pre-law placement sheet, they realize it’s only a 0.1 grade boost. If Chicago students have this information early, they are in much, much better shape. That’s one of my goals with posting on this board!</p>

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<p>I think there are a few issues that partially explain UChicago’s relatively low rate of alumni attending T14 law schools.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Geography – Nearly all T14 law schools schools are on the East Coast or California. So are many of the undergraduate institutions that feed into them at very high rates. Despite their national scope, even highly selective schools (law and undergraduate) end up having somewhat regional flavors. One-third of the incoming class at HLS is from New England or the Mid-Atlantic region, and only 18% comes from the Great Lakes or Mid-West. UChicago’s undergraduate population is, compared to most Ivy-League schools, substantially more Mid-Western. Illinois is by far the most represented state, and there are relatively more students from other Midwestern states, especially Wisconsin and Indiana than at most Eastern LACs or Ivy League universities. For someone from Illinois or Wisconsin who plans to practice law in his or her home state, it makes a lot of sense to attend the state law school. Many midwestern state law schools are quite well-regarded, and if you look at the law schools represented by the top firms in these states (including Chicago), you will see quite a few University of [insert state]. Casually flipping through biographies of top firms in Chicago when I was applying to law school, I was struck by how many associates and even partners at the top firms went to the University of Illinois law school (there are still plenty from T14 schools, too, but I was surprised at the healthy representation of the local state schools). So for a midwesterner, the decision to attend a top-top tier law school is a bit of a different decision than for someone from the East Coast. The cost is a huge factor, as is the not-inconsequential consideration of moving across the country. If someone plans to stay in the midwest for their career, it’s not clear that the benefits of a T14 school outweigh the costs. And in some ways, it might be a handicap (making personal connections is a huge part of any profession, and if most of the top lawyers in an area went to the local state university, it isn’t necessarily a huge advantage to have attended Harvard/Yale/Stanford/Columbia/NYU). One piece of advice I received from a UChicago Law student when I was applying to law school was that unless Big Law was my goal, if I knew where I wanted to live after law school, I would be well-served to find the best law school in that area that wouldn’t charge me very much.</p></li>
<li><p>GPA – While the average GPA at UChicago is somewhere around 3.35, it does differ from many other top schools in the distribution at the very top. Getting a B+ isn’t too hard in many classes. Getting an A- is also usually quite doable, but getting a full A is often quite a challenge. Only about 8% of the student body earns 3.8 or above, and 3.9+ is almost unheard-of, which is quite different than at some notoriously grade-inflated schools. Law schools admissions officials try to consider this, but when they get a bushel of 3.9+ applications from certain schools, a lot of those people will get in, even if the officials know that they grades are slightly inflated compared to grades from some other schools.</p></li>
<li><p>I think the culture at UChicago is noticeably less focused on a specific plan for after college. I think it’s probably a good thing that the University is trying to change that a bit, but I also think it’s somewhat reflective of the type of student the school attracts. It is true that you need to pay attention to your GPA if you want to go to a top-top tier law school, and it’s true that GPA is really de-emphasized among students at UChicago. My experience was that students who really did want to go to a top-top law school knew that LSAT and GPA mattered and quietly took care of business. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>[For some context, I’m an '08 graduate of UChicago. I applied to law school last year, with a decent GPA (but not a single quarter with straight-As) and a solid LSAT. I was accepted to NYU, Columbia, Michigan (with some $$), Chicago, and Stanford; wait-listed at Yale and Harvard. While this is entirely anecdotal, most acquaintances I have who really wanted a top-top tier law school experience were able to go somewhere that fit that goal (2 Yale, 2 Harvard, 3 Stanford, 1 NYU, 3 Chicago) and many others who were not academic standouts got in to law schools that are plenty good enough for their own goals. I only know of one student who was severely dissappointed with the process. The general sense I got was that if you wanted to go to a good law school, avoided destroying your GPA and did well on the LSAT, you were in good shape. {The general sentiment toward medical school admission was quite different – UChicago seems to struggle more in this area}]</p>

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<p>Maroon8 - great, informative post. I enjoyed hearing your thoughts as a recent Chicago grad. Also, its good to see that, in the eight year gap since I graduated, Chicago seems to be a bit more on the ball in terms of law admissions.</p>

<p>One quick question, however - do you really think law school admissions is more “coast” biased? I think the west coast and mid west have about the same amount of top law schools. Out west, there’s Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and USC in the top 25. For the midwest, you have Chicago, Northwestern, Michigan, Wash U and UMinn in the top 25. With geography seen as roughly equal, how come you don’t see an overly strong Chicago contingent at Northwestern and Michigan? With these being two of the strongest schools in the midwest, I’d think you’d get a high number of U of C midwest-centered alums flocking to these schools. I don’t think the numbers at either NU or UM are that high, however. Why do you think that is? </p>

<p>For example, Penn sends nearly 20 kids a year to NYU, Columbia, and Georgetown (three strong east coast schools). I would imagine Chicago, adjusted for numbers and size, would send at least around 8 a year to NU and UM. I don’t think this is the case, though. </p>

<p>Finally, when I was at Chicago, law school was a VERY popular option for students, because it combined the pseudo-intellectualism that Chicago students love with a practical bent that would appeal to the parents and those encouraging Chicago students to do something applicable. I was surprised to note that each year, about 400 Chicago students/alums apply to law school. Any idea if the numbers are similar for your class? If they are, I sure hope your cohort was more savvy and prepared for the process than my graduating class.</p>