I am a senior applying to NYU (why is it so expensive… waaaah). I want to major in history and was wondering if anyone could give me more information on the history major. I want to go to law school after I graduate college, how does NYU help with that? What kind of internships are there for history majors? (I don’t think I’d love working in archives lol) I know these are specific questions but thanks anyway!
You can go to law school after you graduate from any college. I’m positive lots of NYU students go to law school every year. NYU has a [pre-law professional advising program](Prelaw), as do many top colleges. There’s no specific curriculum you have to take to go to law school, but many schools have a recommended set of coursework.
You can intern in anything in history; you don’t have to go to a history-related one. You could do a [legal analyst intern position at a financial services firm](http://www.goldmansachs.com/careers/why-goldman-sachs/our-divisions/legal/positions/interns.html), [a legal internship in the U.S. Office of the Inspector General](https://www.oig.dot.gov/about-oig/volunteer-undergraduate-and-law-student-internship-programs), or an internship with the [Department of State](International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) - Careers). You could do a corporate internship with an investment bank or a management consulting firm; students of all majors do those, although they tend to go to students from target schools (NYU is one). You could intern for a smaller or local company. The possibilities are endless - students from all kinds of majors do all kinds of internships, as long as they have the skills and abilities the internship wants them to have.
I will say, though, that the market for lawyers is terrible right now. Most lawyers don’t make the salary required to repay their six-figure law school debt.
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@juillet what about lawyers from top schools like Harvard Law, Yale Law, etc…?
If you can get into a top 15-20ish law school, then things are different. The market is still overall terrible, but those lawyers do have better chances overall of getting good jobs that allow them to repay their loans.
Yale Law has a 9.6% acceptance rate, with an average GPA of 3.93 and average LSAT of 173. The overwhelmingly majority take at least a year between college and law school to do something. Harvard Law is similar - average GPA of a 3.86, average LSAT of 173, most students took at least 2 years off before law school. The insane competition to get into undergrad is only intensified on the law level.
They do have very good employment outcomes. Still, Yale Law’s website reveals that their median salary is actually $72,000. There’s a big split between the median salary of their private practice lawyers ($160K), their lawyers in business and industry ($137K) and the majority of the class who go into public interest law ($72K and below). That’s somewhat due to the large percentage (31%) of the class that does judicial clerkships; most of those clerks will get a prestigious job after law school, but not all of them will go into private practice.
And getting the job is only half the battle…you can read about BigLaw jobs and their grueling hours elsewhere. (You can also ponder about whether even a $160K salary is enough to repay $200-250K in debt.
Here’s a good exercise for any aspiring lawyer. All of the ABA-accredited law schools are required to post certain information on their websites for prospective students to look at. These are generally alumni outcomes and average salaries, and it’s broken down to a pretty decent level of detail. Most law schools also have class profiles, so you can see the average GPA and LSAT scores of admitted students and also some other information about admissions.