This might sound a little bit on the ridiculous/useless side on the spectrum of questions, but I drove myself crazy with college admissions and unrealistic expectations and I'm hoping to get a feel for law school and what I should expect going in. I just finished my first freshman semester at Wash U, class of 2014. I'm a mechanical engineer and I don't plan on double majoring or minoring in anything. My goal was to play the numbers game and play it hard, which is what I did in high school (unfortunately, college admissions was less kind to numbers than I would have liked =/). This semester I came out with a 3.92 UGPA and a 4.08 LSAC GPA. I don't really see myself with a whole lot of soft factors helping my application, if anything I might join one or two clubs, but nothing substantial at all. What should I expect over the next few years? Does law school really only care about numbers? Does coming from Wash U with an engineering degree help? If I can keep an LSAC GPA of 3.9+, maybe 4.0+, and get an LSAT into the mid 170s, what should I be looking at? I know those are huge assumptions, but I'd like to know what my targets are. In a perfect world, I could make it into Stanford with those stats, but then again, in my perfect world I'd be at Stanford for undergrad right now.
So bottom line, if we fast forwarded 2 years and these are my stats:
Wash U mechanical engineer
LSAC GPA of mid to high 3.9x
LSAT of mid 17x
little to no extracurriculars
What should I expect / What would I need to do to make Stanford-level schools happy?
A Game Plan Forum
- Knock
- Posts: 5151
- Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:09 pm
Re: A Game Plan
For now, don't worry about anything but keeping your GPA as high as humanely possible. SLS does like engineers, especially if you can keep a high GPA. LSAT scores are hard to predict, but if you have a 3.9x engineering and a mid 17x, you have excellent chances at H, and good chances at S. However, S is known for being a "black box" in admissions, and there is no such thing as lock there. If you really want S, you should probably get some extracurriculars -- they like well-rounded applicants.yoft wrote:This might sound a little bit on the ridiculous/useless side on the spectrum of questions, but I drove myself crazy with college admissions and unrealistic expectations and I'm hoping to get a feel for law school and what I should expect going in. I just finished my first freshman semester at Wash U, class of 2014. I'm a mechanical engineer and I don't plan on double majoring or minoring in anything. My goal was to play the numbers game and play it hard, which is what I did in high school (unfortunately, college admissions was less kind to numbers than I would have liked =/). This semester I came out with a 3.92 UGPA and a 4.08 LSAC GPA. I don't really see myself with a whole lot of soft factors helping my application, if anything I might join one or two clubs, but nothing substantial at all. What should I expect over the next few years? Does law school really only care about numbers? Does coming from Wash U with an engineering degree help? If I can keep an LSAC GPA of 3.9+, maybe 4.0+, and get an LSAT into the mid 170s, what should I be looking at? I know those are huge assumptions, but I'd like to know what my targets are. In a perfect world, I could make it into Stanford with those stats, but then again, in my perfect world I'd be at Stanford for undergrad right now.
So bottom line, if we fast forwarded 2 years and these are my stats:
Wash U mechanical engineer
LSAC GPA of mid to high 3.9x
LSAT of mid 17x
little to no extracurriculars
What should I expect / What would I need to do to make Stanford-level schools happy?
Prepare to take your LSAT in the June after/during your Junior year. Good luck, and feel free to shoot me a pm or ask any more questions.
Re: A Game Plan
Knock is the go to guy on this forum for everything Stanford. Listen to what he says; he knows his shit.
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- Posts: 8
- Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:06 am
Re: A Game Plan
Thank you so much for your response and interest, I really appreciate it! It's great to know that Stanford places more weight on extracurriculars than some of its competitors, I'll definitely keep that in mind!
- Knock
- Posts: 5151
- Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:09 pm
Re: A Game Plan
Its not as great as it might appear, as a lot of the best softs are work experience related (the majority of the class has at least one year post grad work experience), so you will be at a disadvantage coming straight out if undergrad.yoft wrote:Thank you so much for your response and interest, I really appreciate it! It's great to know that Stanford places more weight on extracurriculars than some of its competitors, I'll definitely keep that in mind!
- kkklick
- Posts: 1012
- Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 8:33 pm
Re: A Game Plan
Lot of unknowns at this point. Just keep your GPA high and start familiarizing yourself with the LSAT but wait until about 6 months prior to the administration you would like to write before you fully begin preparing.
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