Worst UG majors for Law School?

sybbie719
Tue, 08 Jan 2008 06:48:15 +0000

I would suggest purchasing 2 books:

Anna Ivey - THe Ivey guide to law school admissions
Richard Montauk- How to get in a top law school

The Montauk book the book is approximately 500 pages and gives a very comprehensive overview of the college process and discusses applications, essays, LSATs, majors, etc.

Chapter 8 of his book discusses Making the Most of Your Credentials, Montauk states:





Your specific major matters less than the type of major you choose. What matters is that you choose a serious major. Schools are leery of pre-professional subjects such as business, and those that reward performance talents such as acting. There are some majors that admissions counselors cringe at seeing; communications, criminology and pre-law (even though theoretically pre-law is not a major)
Any subject that requires serious analytical work and dedication attract at least a reasonable % of the best and brightest will meet with approval.

The ideal undergraduate record would thus include all of the following:

Top quality school

Demanding course load (no path of least resistance) advanced work in a second unrelated (to your major) filed is particularly helpful

Top grades throughout (with few courses taken pass/fail) but especially in junior & senior years

Courses requiring substantial reading, strong writing ability good research skills and analytical prowess

Courses developing useful substantial knowledge for your future legal field.

When posed with the question: What factors do you consider when evaluating an undergraduate record admissions officers at various law schools state :

What ever the major, there should be variety including some clearly demanding analytical courses. There is not set preparation for law school, but some majors may be of less value than others (for ex. Pre-law) I examine the undergraduate transcript very closely. I look at what the applicant has done both in and outside of their major- Faye Deal, Stanford

What we are looking for is both breadth and depth. We favor applicants who come to us from broad liberal arts education. They learn about human vision from the arts, how the world works from math and the sciences and the human condition from philosophy and history. We don’t want academic dilettantes however; we want applicants to have taken the most analytically rigorous courses in their field- Jim Mulligan, Columbia

Not all UGPAs are created =. Swat and William and Mary, for instance have refrained from inflating grades; their averages are between 2.8 & 2.9. At the other end of the spectrum, Stanford and Yeshiva have mean GPAs over 3.4- Mulligan, Columbia

The GPA number is just a starting point. Our first concern is how rigorous the course load has been. We look at academic letters of recommendation, which are particularly helpful if they address the difficulty of the course load ex: the grading policies of professors from whom the applicant took multiple courses. Other factors we c examine is whether there were substantial barriers to performance such as the need to work many hours per week- USC

I know what the strongest and weakest programs are at some 50 to 60 schools. At some smaller commonly seen schools (and programs) it can be helpful for the student to provide detailed information. –GWU

We see a # of pre-med students who did poorly as pre-meds but then did well in their next field. The key for them is to make sure they get out of pre-med early so they can fully demonstrate their talents.- UCLA