Top Law Schools

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First, get an LSAT.

Second, if you score a 172171/170, you are 100% in at those 3 schools/WL at Penn for yield protection.

A 173+ gives you a chance at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.

Sometimes your school name and softs can hurt your cycle but you have done enough that this won't be the case at the schools you mentioned and likely not the case at Harvard but possibly at Stanford and probably at Yale.

Also, your choice of major will possibly give your softs a bump.


But seriously, why law? Go be a nuclear engineer.

sinfiery wrote:
But seriously, why law? Go be a nuclear engineer.

+1

Besides just the practical aspects of this in terms of your life, you are going to need a good answer to this question in your applications. You haven't even pursued it professionally for a year or so. Why work that hard to earn the degree and do nothing with it?

Your LSAT will determine everything. You have a wonderful, unassailable GPA. Your softs are good, but will only offer a minimal assist compared to your LSAT.

School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

.

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

LexLeon wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

pulstar1 wrote:I do intend to apply to Harvard. I neglected to mention it in my top schools list because I thought perhaps the numbers rather than just my school rep and softs could potentially keep me out of there as well. I thought a 3.88 and 174 seemed decent, but not quite impressive for HLS.

The angle I think I'll take on the application essay is to express my interest in (and the importance of) Nuclear Licensing Law. I'll also talk about the multitude of legal issues surrounding nuclear energy that I believe can be addressed by people educated in the field that are also armed with a law degree.

The thought that a 3.88 and 174 isn't good enough for HLS is blatantly false

Honestly, worry about getting a real LSAT. Then worry about other stuff. Keep it up!

Score 171+ on the LSAT

if not, don't go to law school and put that useful degree to good use.


Also, are you URM?

If a 3.87 falls at HLS given median for the year, I'd say the statisticall odds are higher than 67%.

The biggest gap in your app is Why law? Understand that if what you really want is to go to law school.



But seriously, LSAT needs to be conquered first. That is far and away the first obstacle.

ManOfTheMinute wrote: If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I don't know if I agree with this. A lot of the people who overperform their cycle come from highly ranked UGs. A lot of those that underperform come from crappy ones (I don't mean decent state schools, but more like UG versions of Cooley). It's hard to say whether that's reputation or other factors that come paired with undergrad quality, and it probably only makes a tangible difference in extreme cases.

Agreed with everyone else on all the rest. You'll be fine.

beepboopbeep wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote: If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I don't know if I agree with this. A lot of the people who overperform their cycle come from highly ranked UGs. A lot of those that underperform come from crappy ones (I don't mean decent state schools, but more like UG versions of Cooley). It's hard to say whether that's reputation or other factors that come paired with undergrad quality, and it probably only makes a tangible difference in extreme cases.

Agreed with everyone else on all the rest. You'll be fine.

I don't agree with this idea that only HYP matter. I have degrees from an Ivy and MIT and JS herself asked me why I even need another "top-tier" credential, so I'd say the non-HYP on my resume meant something. Did it mean as much as HYP? No way, but it meant more than nothing.

beepboopbeep wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote: If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I don't know if I agree with this. A lot of the people who overperform their cycle come from highly ranked UGs. A lot of those that underperform come from crappy ones (I don't mean decent state schools, but more like UG versions of Cooley). It's hard to say whether that's reputation or other factors that come paired with undergrad quality, and it probably only makes a tangible difference in extreme cases.

Agreed with everyone else on all the rest. You'll be fine.

+1

You have a great GPA from a tough major. Your school will not hold you back, at all.

Get that 172+ and enjoy your clean sweep of CCN on down, and probably H.

Also: don't go to law school. Use that degree.

ManOfTheMinute wrote:

LexLeon wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I actually thought that was true until I applied to Law schools. At least with YSH, I was surprised to find that prestige of UG mattered very much, or at least a few experiences impressed me in that way. The interviewer from HLS suggested pretty strongly in her questioning that my state school weakened my application; she asked questions of the sort (I'm paraphrasing), "coming from x state school aren't you worried that you will struggle to keep up academically at Harvard? How are you going to handle the academically challenging environment at Harvard?" These questions seemed out of place to me because my academic qualifications are very strong--except, perhaps, that I went to a not well known and not prestigious state school. ASWs further confirmed that UG prestige was a factor: every person I met had attended a fairly prestigious public or private school. I'm certain there were others who, like me, attended some average state school but they must have been enough in the minority that I didn't bump into any of them.

Of course, there may be other explanations for why so many YSH admits come from more prestigious schools--maybe they all have higher LSATs, better ECs, etc--, but I'm certainly, now, more skeptical of the idea parroted here that UG GPA is all that matters.

Ling520 wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:

LexLeon wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I actually thought that was true until I applied to Law schools. At least with YSH, I was surprised to find that prestige of UG mattered very much, or at least a few experiences impressed me in that way. The interviewer from HLS suggested pretty strongly in her questioning that my state school weakened my application; she asked questions of the sort (I'm paraphrasing), "coming from x state school aren't you worried that you will struggle to keep up academically at Harvard? How are you going to handle the academically challenging environment at Harvard?" These questions seemed out of place to me because my academic qualifications are very strong--except, perhaps, that I went to a not well known and not prestigious state school. ASWs further confirmed that UG prestige was a factor: every person I met had attended a fairly prestigious public or private school. I'm certain there were others who, like me, attended some average state school but they must have been enough in the minority that I didn't bump into any of them.

Of course, there may be other explanations for why so many YSH admits come from more prestigious schools--maybe they all have higher LSATs, better ECs, etc--, but I'm certainly, now, more skeptical of the idea parroted here that UG GPA is all that matters.

Your skepticism is well-warranted.

ManOfTheMinute wrote:

LexLeon wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

If you're saying that H, Y, and P are the only schools that can boost an application because of their reputations--and that's obviously false as well--you're also saying that no other school has a reputation good enough to boost an application.

So you've undermined your own claim.

For, according to you, coming from a school that is not H, Y, or P must also have a meaning: it means that an application should not be boosted as it would have been had it been from any of those three schools.

Ling520 wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:

LexLeon wrote:

ManOfTheMinute wrote:School rep is meaningless, especially given your major. Your tops schools should be HYS, what gives? The lack of softs will hurt you at YS, but you still have a chance, but H doesn't really seem to care if you can keep pulling these LSAT numbers

But it's true, your H interview will ask you why law and not nucE, and your app should have made it abundantly clear anyway...

The statement

"School rep is meaningless"

is obviously false.

If you didn't go to HYP, school rep is meaningless. Happy?

I actually thought that was true until I applied to Law schools. At least with YSH, I was surprised to find that prestige of UG mattered very much, or at least a few experiences impressed me in that way. The interviewer from HLS suggested pretty strongly in her questioning that my state school weakened my application; she asked questions of the sort (I'm paraphrasing), "coming from x state school aren't you worried that you will struggle to keep up academically at Harvard? How are you going to handle the academically challenging environment at Harvard?" These questions seemed out of place to me because my academic qualifications are very strong--except, perhaps, that I went to a not well known and not prestigious state school. ASWs further confirmed that UG prestige was a factor: every person I met had attended a fairly prestigious public or private school. I'm certain there were others who, like me, attended some average state school but they must have been enough in the minority that I didn't bump into any of them.

Of course, there may be other explanations for why so many YSH admits come from more prestigious schools--maybe they all have higher LSATs, better ECs, etc--, but I'm certainly, now, more skeptical of the idea parroted here that UG GPA is all that matters.

Did you end up getting in to hys?

Re: Worried About Softs and School Rep.

Get hard maybe that will help your schools rep

-no homo

Ling520 wrote:

Clearlynotstefan wrote:

Ling520 wrote: I actually thought that was true until I applied to Law schools. At least with YSH, I was surprised to find that prestige of UG mattered very much, or at least a few experiences impressed me in that way. The interviewer from HLS suggested pretty strongly in her questioning that my state school weakened my application; she asked questions of the sort (I'm paraphrasing), "coming from x state school aren't you worried that you will struggle to keep up academically at Harvard? How are you going to handle the academically challenging environment at Harvard?" These questions seemed out of place to me because my academic qualifications are very strong--except, perhaps, that I went to a not well known and not prestigious state school. ASWs further confirmed that UG prestige was a factor: every person I met had attended a fairly prestigious public or private school. I'm certain there were others who, like me, attended some average state school but they must have been enough in the minority that I didn't bump into any of them.

Of course, there may be other explanations for why so many YSH admits come from more prestigious schools--maybe they all have higher LSATs, better ECs, etc--, but I'm certainly, now, more skeptical of the idea parroted here that UG GPA is all that matters.

Did you end up getting in to hys?

2/3 (one waitlist) but on the strength of my softs, almost entirely.

So the fact that you were disadvantaged at HYS admissions by your less than prestigious undergrad is supported by you being questioned about it, and subsequently admitted to two of the three?