Is being a Journalist a good soft for Y and S? Should I go to law school? Forum

[DaHead2Head514]

Basically, I decided to forgo law school after graduating last year to write for a pretty decent-sized publication.

For the sake of anonymity, I won't disclose exactly what I do, but I feel like I have done some good work both in my current job and in previous journalistic internships and have an opportunity to rise through the ranks at my publication.

Though working as a reporter has been a dream of mine for a while, I realize that the lifestyle, while rewarding, is not something that I would want to do long-term. With the blessings I have been afforded, I think that a law degree would be beneficial to my future even if I decide not to become a big-law attorney. Some time in the next 2-6 years or so, I think I will apply to law school again.

So with that being said, is being a journalist at a pretty well respected publication a top soft for schools like Yale and Stanford? Would my work give me any kind of admissions bump?

Additionally, should I even go to law school? I know the standard rhetoric on this site is something along the lines of "don't go to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer", but not only am I somewhat open to the prospect of working for a big firm for a few years, but I will also be receiving full financial support for law school. My parents are strongly for it and will graciously support me through school.

My GPA hovers in the 3.8 range, which would put me below the medians of Y and S. My LSAT of 171 will expire in late 2019, but I can and hopefully will improve on that score if I decide to take this route.

I could also just reapply with my current stats before the 2019 cycle, as I had some decent options coming out of undergrad. Any shot at Harvard with my current stats and softs?

Let me know what you guys think. Thanks in advance for any responses.

[Indifference]

I'd say it wouldn't be any more of a soft than any other employment is. You've got to do quite a bit to impress these adcomms.

I suppose the real question is, why law school? It's not exactly a vacation, even if someone else is footing the bill.

ETA: 3.8 171 is not exactly a shoe in at HYS.

[DaHead2Head514]

@indifference - thanks for the response. I think because of the more secure job prospects coupled with the fact that I have an opportunity to obtain a higher degree I figure - why not take it? I had been planning to go to law school throughout undergrad until I found my love for reporting. i understand that it won't be a walk in the park, but I've had my fair share of experiences that I believe have helped prepare me for law school.

also, i forgot to mention, but i went to a prestigious (non HYPS) undergrad as well. i know it typically doesn't play a large role in admissions, but you don't think the combination of these factors makes me a more interesting candidate?

[fliptrip]

I know you don't want to say too much, but as with most employment, the strength of your journalism soft depends to a great extent on what exactly you have accomplished/were doing. If you were stuck on the petty crime beat for the Akron Beacon-Journal, that's not too impressive. But if you went all Woodward and Bernstein and brought down a borough president working for the NY Times, that's another matter entirely.

Numbers-wise, right now, you're totally in the CCN sweet spot and no chance of YS. If you get to at least 174, you have some chance at YS, but not a good one (amazingly, your 3.8 is too low GPA-wise for them). Why don't you like Harvard? You're looking pretty good there at 3.8/174.

ETA: I see you asked about Harvard. It's a no-go at 171, but if you can nudge it to 173, you have a better than even shot, I'd say.

[ClubberLang]

Working for a journalist as a year doesn't make you particularly interesting or unique. It's not like other people who go to law school are sitting around doing nothing. At best it is good fodder for interviews, but not admissions.

[A. Nony Mouse]

There are lots of journalists going to law school, since the field is struggling so much. Winning a Pulitzer or doing something amazing as a journalist is great, but it doesn't sound like you've done that yet.

And the thing is that HYS have their pick of people who went to prestigious undergrads.

Don't get me wrong, working as a journalist for a reasonable amount of time (not just a couple of years) makes you a better candidate than you would be without that experience. Depending on what you do during that time, it can help you craft a strong coherent application. But just the fact of working isn't going to bump your chances, and barring that Pulitzer, you're going to need to have the numbers to get in.

[DaHead2Head514]

I know you don't want to say too much, but as with most employment, the strength of your journalism soft depends to a great extent on what exactly you have accomplished/were doing. If you were stuck on the petty crime beat for the Akron Beacon-Journal, that's not too impressive. But if you went all Woodward and Bernstein and brought down a borough president working for the NY Times, that's another matter entirely.

Numbers-wise, right now, you're totally in the CCN sweet spot and no chance of YS. If you get to at least 174, you have some chance at YS, but not a good one (amazingly, your 3.8 is too low GPA-wise for them). Why don't you like Harvard? You're looking pretty good there at 3.8/174.

ETA: I see you asked about Harvard. It's a no-go at 171, but if you can nudge it to 173, you have a better than even shot, I'd say.

hah, now if I went Woodstein on a borough president i'd be writing my memoirs right now, not on TLS. let's just say I work at a top 25 published newspaper. so somewhere between the median and third quartile of your data set.

yeah, i was accepted by Columbia and got some money from NYU last year, so I assume that's somewhat of a lock. but i was indeed rejected by Harvard as well. essentially you don't think a 2-4 year stint at a major newspaper would help those chances with my current LSAT?

[Tls2016]

You have no good reason to go to law school. Use your journalism and try hard to find something else that won't waste your time and energy and your parents money. Put those resources to more productive use.

If Columbia or NYU with money aren't good enough for you, and you don't have any career in mind, it sounds like you just want to go to law school to have a degree to put on your wall.

If you want to know if a few years of work experience will up your chances at H, you should ask in the Mike Spivey thread. You could ask about Y and S as well, but your numbers might be too low.

[WinterComing]

I'm also making the jump from journalism to law school. Feel free to PM me for details.

As for your chances, if you've already been rejected by Harvard previously, I don't think reapplying with the same numbers will yield a different result, just because you've added one year of work experience to your resume. If you're dead set on HYS, I'd recommend retaking.

That said, I have found my reporting experience to be a real asset in the law school application process. The majority of my interviews, both with respect to admission and scholarships, have focused almost entirely on how my career as a journalist inspired me to become a lawyer. I'd suggest finding a way to use your experience to create a narrative for yourself as a candidate. Like, maybe you covered a trial that made you realize you'd have a great talent for the law, that sort of thing.

Numbers are far more important than softs, but I think your reporting experience can help you if you use it to your advantage.

[DaHead2Head514]

There are lots of journalists going to law school, since the field is struggling so much. Winning a Pulitzer or doing something amazing as a journalist is great, but it doesn't sound like you've done that yet.

And the thing is that HYS have their pick of people who went to prestigious undergrads.

Don't get me wrong, working as a journalist for a reasonable amount of time (not just a couple of years) makes you a better candidate than you would be without that experience. Depending on what you do during that time, it can help you craft a strong coherent application. But just the fact of working isn't going to bump your chances, and barring that Pulitzer, you're going to need to have the numbers to get in.

appreciate the response. i think you're underestimating just how hard it is to get a Pulitzer. that is the ultimate apex of the profession. there are thousands of world renowned journalists at the tail end of their careers who have not obtained one. hell, it's like an Oscar. it doesn't make or break your career, and the selection process is slightly political.

with that being said, i understand what you mean. I need to have some sort of objective measure that proves that I am capable in my field or whatever. And I have. I've won a few local awards for stories I've written, but none on the Pulitzer scale.

again, I appreciate the response, and please don't take this personally, but I find it hard to believe that i'd need to be at the very top of the very top of my profession in order to get even a slight bump in my admissions for law school.

[DaHead2Head514]

Working for a journalist as a year doesn't make you particularly interesting or unique. It's not like other people who go to law school are sitting around doing nothing. At best it is good fodder for interviews, but not admissions.

hahahahah. if you read closely, i plan on applying in about 2-6 years depending on circumstances. I also never implied that other people were sitting around doing nothing. But regardless, thanks.

[DaHead2Head514]

You have no good reason to go to law school. Use your journalism and try hard to find something else that won't waste your time and energy and your parents money. Put those resources to more productive use.

If Columbia or NYU with money aren't good enough for you, and you don't have any career in mind, it sounds like you just want to go to law school to have a degree to put on your wall.

If you want to know if a few years of work experience will up your chances at H, you should ask in the Mike Spivey thread. You could ask about Y and S as well, but your numbers might be too low.

will do, i'll take that into account, (about Mike Spivey) thanks.

I suppose it is that way to a certain extent. It's not that I want to have a "degree on my wall" but more that it opens up opportunities for my future career. if I have the initiative to get a law degree at a young age, if i have the resources to do so, and if this is what both my family and I want, why not take the opportunity?

i'll pose this question to you then: in my position, what would be a good reason to go to law school? I am thoroughly interested in the law and interested in working in the law, but also would want to keep my options open past simply being a biglaw lifer.

[DaHead2Head514]

I'm also making the jump from journalism to law school. Feel free to PM me for details.

As for your chances, if you've already been rejected by Harvard previously, I don't think reapplying with the same numbers will yield a different result, just because you've added one year of work experience to your resume. If you're dead set on HYS, I'd recommend retaking.

That said, I have found my reporting experience to be a real asset in the law school application process. The majority of my interviews, both with respect to admission and scholarships, have focused almost entirely on how my career as a journalist inspired me to become a lawyer. I'd suggest finding a way to use your experience to create a narrative for yourself as a candidate. Like, maybe you covered a trial that made you realize you'd have a great talent for the law, that sort of thing.

Numbers are far more important than softs, but I think your reporting experience can help you if you use it to your advantage.

Sent you a PM

[Tls2016]

You have no good reason to go to law school. Use your journalism and try hard to find something else that won't waste your time and energy and your parents money. Put those resources to more productive use.

If Columbia or NYU with money aren't good enough for you, and you don't have any career in mind, it sounds like you just want to go to law school to have a degree to put on your wall.

If you want to know if a few years of work experience will up your chances at H, you should ask in the Mike Spivey thread. You could ask about Y and S as well, but your numbers might be too low.

will do, i'll take that into account, (about Mike Spivey) thanks.

I suppose it is that way to a certain extent. It's not that I want to have a "degree on my wall" but more that it opens up opportunities for my future career. if I have the initiative to get a law degree at a young age, if i have the resources to do so, and if this is what both my family and I want, why not take the opportunity?

i'll pose this question to you then: in my position, what would be a good reason to go to law school? I am thoroughly interested in the law and interested in working in the law, but also would want to keep my options open past simply being a biglaw lifer.

What career exactly do you think a law degree will help you with? My point is that you should put your time and effort into building that career instead of law school. If law is the career you want, why are you waiting 2-6 years? I guess it isn't clear to me what career you mean. Maybe you aren't sure, which is fair.

Very, very few people here expect to be a biglaw lifer. Most people just do the job to repay debt or to get experience for another job and leave biglaw ASAP. Do you want to be an in house lawyer, PI lawyer, what is your end result?

[A. Nony Mouse]

again, I appreciate the response, and please don't take this personally, but I find it hard to believe that i'd need to be at the very top of the very top of my profession in order to get even a slight bump in my admissions for law school.

Why would simply working as a journalist give you more of a bump than anyone else who works rather going straight to law school gets? There are lots and lots of people who are applying to law schools with work experience in very interesting fields. It's not that you're working this job, it's what you do with that.

That said, I have found my reporting experience to be a real asset in the law school application process. The majority of my interviews, both with respect to admission and scholarships, have focused almost entirely on how my career as a journalist inspired me to become a lawyer. I'd suggest finding a way to use your experience to create a narrative for yourself as a candidate. Like, maybe you covered a trial that made you realize you'd have a great talent for the law, that sort of thing.

Numbers are far more important than softs, but I think your reporting experience can help you if you use it to your advantage.

I agree entirely with this, but I don't consider this the same as getting a bump from your job. This is what I meant about crafting a strong, coherent application. If you can put together an application with a clear story about going from journalism to law, and why that makes sense, and what skills you will bring from the one to the next, it can help you. However, that's more about what you can do with the experience you have, than dependent on the experience itself. Of course interviews for admission/scholarships are going to focus on what you did prior to law school, which in this case was journalism; if that had been investment banking, or whitewater rafting, they would have focused on those things instead. You need to make your work experience an asset to your application, rather than assume it's going to carry you somewhere.

[ClubberLang]

Working for a journalist as a year doesn't make you particularly interesting or unique. It's not like other people who go to law school are sitting around doing nothing. At best it is good fodder for interviews, but not admissions.

hahahahah. if you read closely, i plan on applying in about 2-6 years depending on circumstances. I also never implied that other people were sitting around doing nothing. But regardless, thanks.

I see. If you want to be a lawyer, sticking around in journalism for 1-5 more years isn't going to give you enough of a bump to be worth it. If you want to be a journalist, you shouldn't go to law school. FYI, a "bump" for you means someone else is getting dinged. You're definitely competing against others with equivalently worthwhile pursuits.

[WinterComing]

That said, I have found my reporting experience to be a real asset in the law school application process. The majority of my interviews, both with respect to admission and scholarships, have focused almost entirely on how my career as a journalist inspired me to become a lawyer. I'd suggest finding a way to use your experience to create a narrative for yourself as a candidate. Like, maybe you covered a trial that made you realize you'd have a great talent for the law, that sort of thing.

Numbers are far more important than softs, but I think your reporting experience can help you if you use it to your advantage.

I agree entirely with this, but I don't consider this the same as getting a bump from your job. This is what I meant about crafting a strong, coherent application. If you can put together an application with a clear story about going from journalism to law, and why that makes sense, and what skills you will bring from the one to the next, it can help you. However, that's more about what you can do with the experience you have, than dependent on the experience itself. Of course interviews for admission/scholarships are going to focus on what you did prior to law school, which in this case was journalism; if that had been investment banking, or whitewater rafting, they would have focused on those things instead. You need to make your work experience an asset to your application, rather than assume it's going to carry you somewhere.

I think that's totally fair.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether adcomms were more impressed by my journalism experience than they would have been had I spent the past few years as a banker or a rafter. I've gotten accepted with big scholarships to a bunch of top schools, but was that because of my numbers, or because of my journalism career, or because I just got lucky? Probably all of the above to some extent. Although it's not a Pulitzer, I did win a national award that some interviewers have seemed impressed by. Then again, one admissions dean told me he'd seen a lot of journalists switching to law for similar reasons to mine, so I have no illusions of being a special snowflake.

I haven't been to law school yet, so I fully realize that I don't know anything, but I expect that my skills will be transferable. Like journalists, law students (and lawyers) have to write clearly and concisely, deal with deadline pressure, etc.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Oh, to be clear, my comments about journalism were only meant to address whether it's going to give a boost in admissions, and not a comment on how anyone would do once in school - the journalists I've known all seem to have done well, and I do think there are a lot of transferable skills. And I'm sure talking about journalism did help you in your interviews. But I think it's much more what you've done as a journalist and how you were able to tie that together in your application, than just that you were a journalist.

(I also didn't mean literally a Pulitzer, as much as some kind of measurable accomplishment the OP can point to.)

Edited to add: all else being equal, sure, working as a journalist is better than waiting tables. But someone who spends that time waiting tables can make a compelling application, and someone who works a much fancier job can tank an application.

[SullivanLSAC]

Basically, I decided to forgo law school after graduating last year to write for a pretty decent-sized publication.

For the sake of anonymity, I won't disclose exactly what I do, but I feel like I have done some good work both in my current job and in previous journalistic internships and have an opportunity to rise through the ranks at my publication.

Though working as a reporter has been a dream of mine for a while, I realize that the lifestyle, while rewarding, is not something that I would want to do long-term. With the blessings I have been afforded, I think that a law degree would be beneficial to my future even if I decide not to become a big-law attorney. Some time in the next 2-6 years or so, I think I will apply to law school again.

So with that being said, is being a journalist at a pretty well respected publication a top soft for schools like Yale and Stanford? Would my work give me any kind of admissions bump?

Additionally, should I even go to law school? I know the standard rhetoric on this site is something along the lines of "don't go to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer", but not only am I somewhat open to the prospect of working for a big firm for a few years, but I will also be receiving full financial support for law school. My parents are strongly for it and will graciously support me through school.

My GPA hovers in the 3.8 range, which would put me below the medians of Y and S. My LSAT of 171 will expire in late 2019, but I can and hopefully will improve on that score if I decide to take this route.

I could also just reapply with my current stats before the 2019 cycle, as I had some decent options coming out of undergrad. Any shot at Harvard with my current stats and softs?

Let me know what you guys think. Thanks in advance for any responses.

I think journalism is a great soft, and not just because it’s journalism as a job, as opposed to being just as an extracurricular activity, meaning you have both a soft as an extracurricular activity (you did, didn’t you?), and a soft as a real world employment experience, which is always helpful at the top schools. But more importantly, because journalism, in this combination, gives you a great opportunity to distinguish yourself in your personal statement as someone who really has a passion for something other than law that can be served by spending three years studying law. Many journalists are lawyers, especially those reporting on legal news, of course, but not many of them went to top law schools like HYS. Debaters can talk about how debate will make them better lawyers, but they haven’t spent a year or two as professionals, and as for returning to the “profession,” well, that’s just being a lawyer; and football players aren’t going to be better football players because they went back to get a law degree! So you’ve got a special package to sell. It would be an extra advantage if you meant it(!), but people “change their minds.” Great soft. They’ll love you.

Your numbers? At HYS? Not so much. Now, I get people in there with those numbers every year, especially if they have a great soft, as you do, but I would take the LSAT again. I think anyone getting a 171 on the first try has the capacity to break into the thin air above 175. If you do, forget your GPA. You’ll pick among the three schools. If you don’t, don’t walk away from them. I just wrote on the thread entitled “Is 3.83 GPA ok for H/S, ” which is nearby in this forum, why something in the 3.8 range is not fatal at the very top schools. I encourage you to read it.

Good luck.

Dan Sullivan

[lemoknope602]

.

[timbs4339]

I'm curious, is there some reason you want to go to Y/S specifically in terms of career prospects, rather than general prestige? It seems like if you just want a biglaw job you could go to CLS or NYU for free.

I don't think working as a journalist at a top 10 national publication or whatever is going to get you a bump in admissions to Y/H/S, any more than working for Goldman or McKinsey or some other prestigious job that your average Ivy grad gets after undergrad. When I think good soft for YHS, I think "Olympic gold medalist" (of which there actually was one in my law school class.)