AA Male Questions Forum

[BDChairman]

I am an AA male in my third year at a top 20 public school in the south. I currently have a 3.43 GPA, but I am doing well this semester, and I'm taking a couple summer classes so my gpa when I apply in the fall should be anywhere from 3.45-3.50. I am taking the lsat in October, and plan to take the TestMasters course to prepare. I've always been fairly successful with standardized tests (e.g. made a 1390 on the sat 740v), and plan to work really hard to score as high as possible on the exam.

As far as career considerations go, my home market is Atlanta, and I'm pretty sure I would like to work in Corporate Law (M&A, Securities, Private Equity) in either Atlanta or NYC upon graduation. I have an older fraternity brother who graduated from my institution and now works for a large national firm doing this type of work he attended Duke for Law school and is a partner now.

I have decent soft factors. I completed an internship with a wealth management group, worked close to 40 hours per week between two part time jobs, I'm a member of my University's honor's program, I volunteer at the boys and girls club, and i've won a couple academic honors, and I'm part of a cultural honor society.
My preliminary school list looks like this:

Super Reaches:
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Columbia
NYU
Chicago

Reaches:
Penn
Virginia
Duke
Cornell

Matches:
Emory
Vanderbilt
UGA
UNC

Safety:
Georgia State
Howard

My question is what lsat score do you believe I need to be reasonably competitive at these schools? I'm confident based on a couple practice tests that I've taken that I should score in the high 160's to low 170's.
Thanks in advance.

[dkt4]

if you score a 170+, none of your 'super reaches' are even reaches. anything above a 165 will make you competitive at a lot of those schools, 170+ will get you into to most of them i would think.

just do your best on the LSAT and you'll be fine

[BruceWayne]

Get anything in the 160s and you'll be fine.

If your preferences are as you say (Atlanta and NYC) your school preferences should look something like this.

1.HYS
2. Columbia, NYU, UVA
3. Duke

[BDChairman]

I appreciate the advice. So is Penn not a good option for the NYC market? I was drawn to the school because of it's interdisciplinary focus, and the flexibility to take some courses at Wharton.

[dkt4]

good for NYC, probably less so ATL? although it would be a reasonable choice regardless.

[BDChairman]

Thanks again yall so my lsac school list looks like this right now:

Harvard
Yale
Stanford

Columbia
NYU
UChicago

UVA
UPenn

Duke
Cornell

[dkt4]

maybe throw one or two presumptive safeties in there and you're good. some people believe in blanketing potential schools to maximize scholarship chances and subsequently leverage. i wouldn't necessarily advocate that, but if you get fee waivers its not too bad.