Psychology major for prospective law school student

ariesathena
Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:24:11 +0000

Just something to mention: GPA and LSAT are of paramount importance in law school admissions. Schools will consider them differnently - some like to see the high LSAT, others are more GPA focused. Then, they consider other things, in no particular order:
*major
*school
*graduate work
*work experience
*essay
*recommendations

I really don’t think that law school admissions are anything like undergrad. I don’t think that they’ll say, “oh, she’s a psych major, let’s take her above the poli sci major” or “she’s a psych major, let’s take the philosophy major instead.” My guess is that most majors are lumped together - psych is a good major, not killer hard but not a joke. It’ll be considered the same way things like English or French or history would be.

I really believe that, unless you are talking either extreme in difficulty (like engin. being overly hard or communications being quite easy), your major won’t matter. Really, it won’t. The most important thing about it is how much you like it. If you enjoy the material in psych more than in poli sci, you’ll do better in it. You’ll be able to get better recommendations from professors, probably be more willing to do a thesis - all of which will look great on your application to law school.

Just my take - but, as a 1L, I’ve met people who majored in almost everything, from the most common poli sci, to others like math, English, theatre, a bunch of other engineers, journalism, history, foreign languages.

I completely agree with concernedDad - being able to write coherently is incredibly important. I would advise you to take technical writing courses if they are offered. Some people might disagree, but I think that, while research papers in the humanities are good, technical writing is much more like legal writing. It is sharp, clear, highly structured, and is designed to communicate information concisely. I’ve done both long seminar papers and technical writing (reports and proposals for my company as well as a technical writing course undergrad), and found the technical writing to be much better training for law school.

Psych might have a similar structure if you do something like neuro psych research and then report on it. Check into that - because if you can learn to write in a clear, non-flowery style, you’ll be better off in law school.