<p>I am a junior right now at a tough academic private school. I had a question about course load. Obviously, on some level, law schools will look at the kind of courses you’ve taken in college. And even if they don’t look closely they will notice if there are oddities or particular semesters that had a very easy course load or very light course load or something.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that in particularly, law schools will look to see if there were any drop off’s in course difficulty in the senior year, like if students took very light course loads or a lot of 100 level classes.</p>
<p>I’m wondering how, in light of this, independent study courses are viewed and if that might constitute a a weak course load if too many of these are taken in one semester during the senior year. Next fall I may choose to take multiple independent study courses. And I may not even take enough hours to be a full time student. How would it look if a student took 3 independent study courses in fall of the senior year. Those would total 9 hours and I end up with 10 or 11 if I choose some research-skills classes on top of that. Might this kind of schedule have any negative implications for law school applications.</p>
<p>I guess there are two issues there. There’s the independent study courses then there’s the fact that I may not have a full 12 hours. Neither may be took big of a deal but maybe together it looks like a bit of a cop-out schedule or something. Basically you don’t have classes to attend for independent studies so it’s definitely quite different.</p>