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Hey everyone,

I ended up at below median at one of the T-25 midwest schools. I studied my ass off, but as we all know hours in the library don't have a strong correlation with grades. Wasn't very happy here to begin with and even before I got my grades I was contemplating dropping out. I only have a small scholarship so I'm thinking my best option would be to drop out, cut my losses, and start my pre-reqs to be a physical therapist (something I believe I'll be happier doing). What do you guys think? Should I give it another shot and make a decision after finishing spring? Withdrawing now makes me feel like a quitter, and hey maybe I'll end up liking spring semester much more. Thanks for your help.

trumanshow20 wrote:Hey everyone,

I ended up at below median at one of the T-25 midwest schools. I studied my ass off, but as we all know hours in the library don't have a strong correlation with grades. Wasn't very happy here to begin with and even before I got my grades I was contemplating dropping out. I only have a small scholarship so I'm thinking my best option would be to drop out, cut my losses, and start my pre-reqs to be a physical therapist (something I believe I'll be happier doing). What do you guys think? Should I give it another shot and make a decision after finishing spring? Withdrawing now makes me feel like a quitter, and hey maybe I'll end up liking spring semester much more. Thanks for your help.

If the only reason you're staying is a sense of commitment, then you've committed the sunk cost fallacy. Don't.

The above is true, but IMO you should give it one more semester.

Withdrawing now may make you feel like a quitter, but working to pay off a ~25k bill you paid to prevent yourself from feeling like a quitter will make you feel like a dumbass. I don't mean that to be harsh, I'm speaking from very similar experience and I wish I had embraced the reality of that much earlier. I personally saw nothing in your post that would indicate to me that your chances of turning around your feelings about law/lawschool and/or your performance in law school are significant enough to be worth a multi-thousand dollar and six month gamble. Sure, your feelings "might" change over the course of the next semester, but think of what "might" happen if you took that ~20k and blew it on a sick six month world travelling experience instead (just an example of the opportunity cost you're incurring if you continue forward). I think the rational choice in your situation is obvious, and while I know it's really hard to stir yourself from the default mode of complacency and "wait and see", not doing so in this situation will cost you.

Sorry to hear about your law school experience so far, by the way. Experimentation is a big part of life, and if you do it right you'll have plenty of hits and misses. You'll probably go on to be quite happy and mostly forget that you ever spent a saturday night in a law library.

InGoodFaith wrote:The above is true, but IMO you should give it one more semester.

If you're reasonably close to median and your scholarship is relatively substantial, then yeah, not much harm in giving it another semester. However, you already said that you didn't even like law school (not sure whether in general, or your school specifically), so if you do want to improve your grades, that attitude is probably going to have to change a little.

ETA: "you/you're" in reference to OP.

Drop out.

.

OP, you're throwing around some vague terminology: "below median," "not very happy," "small scholarship."

If you're just below median, "meh" about law school, and your scholly is ~15K/year, give it more time. If you're bottom quartile, hate law school, and your scholly is ~5K/year, drop out.

Drop out. You played the game and lost. Same thing happened to me and I dropped out. Everything turned out fine - turns out competition out of law school is a bit easier.