How do law schools look at masters degrees... Forum

[MGH1989]

Is it something they really care about in terms of grades along with your bachelors, or is it more of just a soft factor?

[Columbia Law]

Weakest of the soft factors. Your master's doesn't mean anything.

[gdane]

Weakest of the soft factors. Your master's doesn't mean anything.

Not necessarily true.

Its considered to be a soft factor. It can help, but dont expect it to substitute for a weak undergraduate GPA or weak LSAT score.

Good luck!

[northwood]

if you have a master degree in something related to what you want to practice law in, then it can help. IT wont bump your lsat or undergraduate gpa, but it does help a little bit. Still, it kind of sucks knowing you wasted time and money on a master degree, when you could have spent it on law.

[Norwood]

It's not going to do miracles but it will help u in certain situations... Such mitagating a low gpa... However suceeding in a career is said t have the same effects and doesn't cost u money! Do a masters if u are truly intersted in the field not with the expectation that it's going to get u into law school

[frost]

I have a masters. It mainly served a grade-booster for me since my undergrad GPA was decent but not stellar. In my view, it let law schools know that I was capable of doing really well academically, I just didn't do so in college. Overall though, I agree that it's just another soft and it's not particularly meaningful in terms of law school acceptances. That said, my masters came up in 9 out of 10 of my interviews this fall and definitely helped me get more callbacks than if I had gone straight from college. Of course this depends on what type of masters you choose - mine was practical and I had lots of interesting experiences to talk about. I imagine it'll be different for a history or literature masters, no offense to any history or lit people.