Should I attend law school?

NYULawyer
Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:33:39 +0000

Actually, every Harvard graduate essentially has a guaranteed career for life, and likely a high-paying one at that - by working for an admissions consulting firms that advise applicants on how to get into Harvard (or by starting their own such firm if they’re entrepreneurial). You could easily and blatantly market yourself as somebody who got into Harvard and therefore knows how to help others do the same, for a ‘nominal’ fee. You have no idea how many parents, particularly the nouveau-riche in China, India, Russia, and other burgeoning nations would pay handsomely for ‘insider advice’ about how to slip their children into Harvard.

I therefore wouldn’t be too concerned about the Harvard grads. They have access to a world-renowned luxury college brand that is second to none.



Anything is easier said than done:

[Harvard Graduate from Fresno earns 4.0 GPA (the followup) - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NLI1XDZZPs)



Like I said before, however poor the job market is for those with degrees in - to conform to your example - polisci or bio, the job market for those without degrees at all is even worse.



The question you need to ask yourself is this: how much of net value does a BA in biology or humanities bring to the table, and is it worth the investment.

I would argue that, a BA in humanities from a non-ranked State U does not give anyone any significant employment opportunities, even compared to high school drop outs. Only thing that changed was that those with a BA in a non-marketable major just wasted 4 years of their lives, and 4 years behind in labor force. I know too far many working as bartenders, waiters, bouncers, and the like, despite having a college diploma. (17 million people like that in the U.S.)



If you continue to disagree and continue to assert that the BA in poli-sci and biology ‘doesn’t mean jack’, then ask yourself, why exactly do so many companies continue to enforce a degree requirement from their applicants? However worthless you think a degree may be, the fact remains that companies are nowhere close to abandoning it as a screening tool, and likely never will in our lifetimes. Far from not ‘being worth jack’, that indicates that the BA is extraordinarily valuable if, for nothing else, at least not relegating you to the the ‘degree-less’ applicant file (which is probably a circular file).



Companies enforce that barrier to filter out applicants. It is a mechanism for filtering. However, as specified before, there is a huge over-supply of college graduates and college students relative to jobs, so on individual basis, attending a college “just to survive the HR screening at corporation X,Y,Z” is a horrible idea.



Look, NYULawyer, I actually agree with you that we have an overarching oversupply of college graduates in the country. We indeed have many college graduates being forced to take jobs that do not require a college education. The country probably would benefit by regulating the number of colleges that can confer degrees (and therefore the total number of college graduates produced).

But from the viewpoint of the individual person, all of that is neither here nor there because that’s not something that he can change. The only relevant question to him is whether he should obtain a degree or not. All of the evidence suggests that having a degree - for all of its problems -is still better than not having a degree. As you said yourself, given the oversupply of college graduates, HR departments have the power do demand college degrees from their applicants. You will inevitably lose out on job opportunities if you lack a degree regardless of how IT-savvy and credentialed you may be. The degree can be in Underwater Basket Weaving, but if you don’t have a degree, many companies are simply not going to grant you the interview. Sad but true. Those HR screens may be silly and inefficient, but they’re not going away.



Look. There is no downside of skipping out on college, provided that the best option you have is to attend a directional State U and majoring in poly sci or bio.

You save a ton of money and time. In the meanwhile, you can focus on developing actual skills that are of value to employers. (such as IT skills)

Like mentioned before, many of IT related jobs are rather indifferent to someone’s academic credentials. After all, the very top dogs in IT industry all happen to be college or high school drop outs.

In case you find that you indeed need a BA in poli sci or psychology to gain an entry level job at corporation X,Y,Z (which I doubt), then you can always go back to school. In the U.S., getting into a college is so easy anyone can do it at any time.

Education, here in U.S., is ridiculously expensive. The cost of tuition here is like 10 times more expensive compared to Western Europe or even Canada. Hence, be very cautious about the rate of return on your investment, is my point.



But more importantly, majoring in bio is relatively easy for somebody who will complete the premed requirements anyway. Majoring in finance, accounting, or most subdisciplines of engineering (with the exception of bioengineering and maybe chemical engineering) requires that the student complete the long sequence of premed courses which are extraneous to his major.



Life is all about trade offs. You need to incur certain level of sacrifices to achieve something decent. No one is going to hand you out a job, just because you have a college diploma. Like I said, there are millions of college grads, in excess supply, relative to jobs available. Go into an easy path where everyone else goes into, then you end up hitting the barrier named “rule of supply vs demand”. The point being, you should strive to develop your skill sets that are in demand from the labor force. Good luck getting a decent job with a BA in biology, in case you strike out at med school admissions.



Finance, accounting, and engineering - if they’re even offered at your school at all - are difficult majors.



Ugh, no. Finance and accounting are easy majors. Both are significantly easier than most of science premed courses, both in terms of conceptual rigor and grading.

Heck, finance/ accounting are even easier than Econ.



The pervasive lament of practically every engineer that I know is that they never were able to enjoy their college years while they were still young, and those are precious days of youth that they will never get back. The poli-sci major in contrast probably had a pleasant college experience of which he can forever reminisce.



Like I said, life is all about trade offs. The downside of going through engineering is, as you mention, you need to work harder than others. The upside, is, you actually can get a career-track job after graduation, which can’t be said for thousands of others in humanities/biology/chemistry degrees.



But again, to repeat the question that I stated above, if you continue to assert that many people are better off not attending college at all, then, pray tell, how exactly are they supposed to traverse the HR degree screens that so many companies nowadays erect? Try as I might, I simply can’t see how your strategy solves this problem. Seems to me that the only answer your strategy offers is: “Too bad, you don’t traverse those screens.” At least the guy with the degree, even in Leisure Studies, can traverse those screens.



My point, all along, has been that it is a TERRIBLE idea to attend a college just to have a small % shot at clearing those HR screens at corporations X,Y,Z for the reasons mentioned above.

In U.S., attending a college (and worse, grad school) is just too damn expensive to do it mindlessly. It incurs significant opportunity and financial costs to do so.

I would argue that going to a college makes sense if: 1) You get into a top college (and hence have a shot at a lucrative corporate job after graduation regardless of major), OR 2) You are talented enough in math related subjects and hence can handle the rigors of math/ stats/ engineering courses, 3) You plan to major in finance/ accounting, OR 4) You are talented in networking and can build strong professional network and internships while in college.

If you don’t meet any of the above criteria, I think you are better served skipping out college. Learn some skills that are of value to employers. Worst comes worst, you can always go back to school, if things don’t work out. Mindlessly going to a college (or worse yet, grad school) does not solve any problem for anyone. There are millions, MILLIONS in this country who are stuck in dead-end retail jobs, despite having college diplomas. Those millions, I suspect, might have been better off not going to a college in the first place.