Work Experience/Northwestern Question Forum

[Badgers2012]

I will be applying to law school this fall, the same year that I am finishing up my UG. Including this summer, I will have worked 3 full summers (a little over 9 months in total) in an internship position at a very well-respected Fortune 20 company in a related field to my major (in a top 15 UG Business School). Will this type of "WE" be acceptable to a school like Northwestern who almost requires WE to be accepted? Thanks!

[wojo96]

It can't hurt but you'll still be at disadvantage v. peers (independent of GPA, LSAT). How are three internships commensurate with the 3-4 years of actual banking, consulting, etc. experience that other NU applicants will have?

[cinephile]

It's supposed to be full-time, year-round work experience.

[rinkrat19]

It's supposed to be full-time, year-round work experience.

Self-supporting is implicity required, too. Maybe if OP were putting himself through school on the money he earned during the summers and didn't get financial support from mom and dad, the internships would count more as "real" WE.

NU's looking for grownups, not K-JD kids who haven't lived in the real world yet. It's not so much the prestige of the job as the fact that you've been a functional, productive, self-sufficient, adult member of society before you matriculate. Only a few (2% of last year's entering 1Ls, I think?) had no post-grad WE, and most of them probably had numbers well over NU's medians.

[09042014]

It's supposed to be full-time, year-round work experience.

Self-supporting is implicity required, too. Maybe if OP were putting himself through school on the money he earned during the summers and didn't get financial support from mom and dad, the internships would count more as "real" WE.

NU's looking for grownups, not K-JD kids who haven't lived in the real world yet. It's not so much the prestige of the job as the fact that you've been a functional, productive, self-sufficient, adult member of society before you matriculate. Only a few (2% of last year's entering 1Ls, I think?) had no post-grad WE, and most of them probably had numbers well over NU's medians.

Most are either way over NU medians w/ generous scholarship, or just at CCN level numbers with no scholarship.

Frankly, it's probably not worth an application unless you get a fee-wavier.