Top Law Schools

Not another of these threads! OP, here is what I know and can tell you. I studied fashion merchandising and lived my cycle in the public eye almost two years ago. It did make me a hard sell at some schools, even those which should have been safeties. The school that ultimately proved the best fit was the one that welcomed me for who I was. I learned much later that a handful of artistic types had been waitlisted and admitted the first day the waitlist was open, perhaps because we brought color to the class. I had a chip on my shoulder because of it, and that drove me to sacrifice everything I had for my academic performance as a 1L.

OCI had not been in my original plans, but I participated at the urging of my friends. My major came up in every interview, as I predicted it would. Because it was so specialized, it meant I would be a hard sell for a firm not looking specifically to appeal to fashion clients. I couldn't be billed as a generalist in quite the same way as the poli sci kids could, and my work experience underscored this. It turned out to be a blessing after all, however, when I interviewed for in house internships at fashion companies. I felt right at home and they were very happy to have me.

I will say that employers looked favorably upon my friends who had been theater or music majors at strong undergrads. Many have gone on to top firms, and they haven't been looked at as very specialized in the same way. At the end of the day, law is a conservative profession, and the interviewers I met seemed likely to go with what was familiar to them.

Major in what you enjoy and will do well in, but keep in mind the way it could wind up shaping your life many years down the road.

All "admissions" aside, religion and theater will help TONS.(here's why)

You just remember rules and copy&paste the shit like lines out of a play or the bible. Just be good at remembering verbatum and you'll ace the shit.

r6_philly wrote:(I read what you wrote)

heh heh

FiveSermon wrote:

r6_philly wrote:

2L2011 wrote:Perhaps not at harvard, but plenty of other schools do have it.

My point is GPA and LSAT matter MORE than Major or school. Even a 4.0 at university of pheonix(in ANY major) trumps 3.9 from Duke in any other major.

It does not at T6.

And you have proof of this from...?

Maybe Y and S. Maybe H also. But CCN? Basketweaving 4.0.

No one has any proof of anything ... so it's all conjecture. But CCN has a lower GPA 75 than B/P, which doesn't support the idea that they favor any high GPAs.

r6_philly wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:

r6_philly wrote:

2L2011 wrote:Perhaps not at harvard, but plenty of other schools do have it.

My point is GPA and LSAT matter MORE than Major or school. Even a 4.0 at university of pheonix(in ANY major) trumps 3.9 from Duke in any other major.

It does not at T6.

And you have proof of this from...?

Maybe Y and S. Maybe H also. But CCN? Basketweaving 4.0.

No one has any proof of anything ... so it's all conjecture. But CCN has a lower GPA 75 than B/P, which doesn't support the idea that they favor any high GPAs.

CCN from lawschoolnumbers seem to go by medians fairly well. At least in accord with most other T14 schools.

Only real schools where softs and stuff other than numbers seem to mess up spots on LSN seems to be Berkeley/Yale/Stanford. Harvard to a bit in that they seem to favor HYSP undergrads a bit.

FiveSermon wrote:
CCN from lawschoolnumbers seem to go by medians fairly well. At least in accord with most other T14 schools.

Only real schools where softs and stuff other than numbers seem to mess up spots on LSN seems to be Berkeley/Yale/Stanford. Harvard to a bit in that they seem to favor HYSP undergrads a bit.

LSN is good for dates and individual performance analysis. It should never be used to analyze a school as a whole because it fails as a representative sample by many ways.

2L2011 wrote:All "admissions" aside, religion and theater will help TONS.(here's why)

You just remember rules and copy&paste the shit like lines out of a play or the bible. Just be good at remembering verbatum and you'll ace the shit.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, just over a year of doing it first hand.

chritabug wrote:

2L2011 wrote:All "admissions" aside, religion and theater will help TONS.(here's why)

You just remember rules and copy&paste the shit like lines out of a play or the bible. Just be good at remembering verbatum and you'll ace the shit.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

My ridiculously hard triple-major didn't help at all.

2L2011 wrote:Yeah, just over a year of doing it first hand.

chritabug wrote:

2L2011 wrote:All "admissions" aside, religion and theater will help TONS.(here's why)

You just remember rules and copy&paste the shit like lines out of a play or the bible. Just be good at remembering verbatum and you'll ace the shit.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Would you do us all a favor and shut the hell up? All you do is set yourself up as some kind of expert, make sweeping generalizations, and then get pissy when someone asks you to explain.

Oh, and Pro Tip: Everyone on TLS who has gone through 1L has done 'a year of it first hand.' Yet not all these people are pompous douchebags.

and yet they still ask about the lsat and admissions..........

sundance95 wrote:

2L2011 wrote:Yeah, just over a year of doing it first hand.

chritabug wrote:

2L2011 wrote:All "admissions" aside, religion and theater will help TONS.(here's why)

You just remember rules and copy&paste the shit like lines out of a play or the bible. Just be good at remembering verbatum and you'll ace the shit.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Would you do us all a favor and shut the hell up? All you do is set yourself up as some kind of expert, make sweeping generalizations, and then get pissy when someone asks you to explain.

Oh, and Pro Tip: Everyone on TLS who has gone through 1L has done 'a year of it first hand.' Yet not all these people are pompous douchebags.

2L2011 wrote:and yet they still ask about the lsat and admissions..........

Wut? RC fail? Read my post again, carefully this time, paying special note to the relative clause, 'who has gone through 1L,' and try again.

sundance95 wrote:

2L2011 wrote:and yet they still ask about the lsat and admissions..........

Wut? RC fail? Read my post again, carefully this time, paying special note to the relative clause, 'who has gone through 1L,' and try again.

Don't take a troll seriously. Either play with it, or leave it alone. I am playing with it, others leave it alone.

fine(granted) but newsflash, if you don't think so then just read these posts here as proof otherwise

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=147914

sundance95 wrote:

2L2011 wrote:and yet they still ask about the lsat and admissions..........

Wut? RC fail? Read my post again, carefully this time, paying special note to the relative clause, 'who has gone through 1L,' and try again.

VTOrange19 wrote:I have been looking around the TLS Stats and have become quite perplexed. Some of the people attending law school have studied the following things in their undergraduate careers (these are all from the Top 50 or so):

- Theatre
- Worship Ministry
- Visual Arts
- Japanese (or any foreign language)
- Dance Performance

Before I continue, I must confess I did not look up every requisite course for a degree in said fields and that I am biased for having a major that includes reading and writing (History). These sound absolutely ridiculous. So, how do law schools view majors? Would a 3.8 in Dance Performance be viewed better than a 3.5 in History? Would an AdCom choose the 4.0 Theater major over the 3.6 Political Science student? If a 4.0 is simply a 4.0, I wish I would've known to major in Cooking or Elementary Education with a concentration in Fingerpainting.

I disagree with your assumption that your history major is so much harder than these other majors.

If you had planned to go to law school from the beginning, you would have either a) tried harder in your chosen major to have a good GPA, or b) picked an easier major.

I personally agree with what someone said earlier about real sciences > all other majors. I do not believe finance should be ranked above other majors, because I was a finance major, and I felt it was equal to my roommate's history major classes. Of course some majors are harder than others, but it varies from school to school. This being the case, it would be a huge pain the ass for every addcom to actually have to research every candidate's individual school to determine which majors were harder there. Of course they could include the GPA range, medians, means, etc. for that major at that school, and that actually may be in the LSAC report. Still, when a school is reporting its GPAs to the USNWR, a 3.5 in history is a 3.5, and a 4.0 in fingerpainting is a 4.0.

As pointed out by others, certain majors will help when it comes time to find a job, I would imagine.

Your major matters to the extent that it can be strong soft for you...if that makes any sense. It won't outweigh a horrendous GPA or compensate for a low LSAT...but it might give you a slight boost in admissions.

Person A: 170, 3.6 (History)
Person B: 170, 3.6 (Physics)

In this outrageous/probably-not-reflective-of-actual-admission-procedures, only one person goes in, they'll choose the Physics major.

Off topic, but I'm curious to know-- do people consider math a science?

i majored in philosophy and history and while that didn't do shit for me applying for law school it sure did help me study for the lsat (philosophy specifically). a lot of the LG and LR was more of a refresher for me. so i guess a major matters as well in how it prepares you for law school, etc.. somewhere is a chart of which majors do statistically better on the lsat, all i can remember is econ being the #1 and poli sci being pretty far down

r6_philly wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:
CCN from lawschoolnumbers seem to go by medians fairly well. At least in accord with most other T14 schools.

Only real schools where softs and stuff other than numbers seem to mess up spots on LSN seems to be Berkeley/Yale/Stanford. Harvard to a bit in that they seem to favor HYSP undergrads a bit.

LSN is good for dates and individual performance analysis. It should never be used to analyze a school as a whole because it fails as a representative sample by many ways.

It is the best that we have. While it may not be perfect almost nothing is. If you have some other evidence that backs up your theory then please feel free to enlighten me. But if it's your hunch/anecdotal evidence vs lawschoolnumbers as a whole, I'll take LSN everytime.

FiveSermon wrote:
It is the best that we have. While it may not be perfect almost nothing is. If you have some other evidence that backs up your theory then please feel free to enlighten me. But if it's your hunch/anecdotal evidence vs lawschoolnumbers as a whole, I'll take LSN everytime.

Take or retake stats.

If you have ever seen a political (or any poll) where people are asked to call in, please let me know. The science says if you use flawed data, it is always worse than using no data.

r6_philly wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:
It is the best that we have. While it may not be perfect almost nothing is. If you have some other evidence that backs up your theory then please feel free to enlighten me. But if it's your hunch/anecdotal evidence vs lawschoolnumbers as a whole, I'll take LSN everytime.

Take or retake stats.

If you have ever seen a political (or any poll) where people are asked to call in, please let me know. The science says if you use flawed data, it is always worse than using no data.

Always worse than using no data? Then why does anyone use lawschoolnumbers at all?

Is that really how you intend to address my objection? "My hunch is better because lawschoolnumbers is worse than using no data since it is flawed because it is a self selecting sample. It may indeed be accurate and be the best predictor we have but compared to my unflawed hunches and general musing it is obviously inferior hurr durr"

FiveSermon wrote:
Always worse than using no data? Then why does anyone use lawschoolnumbers at all?

Is that really how you intend to address my objection? "My hunch is better because lawschoolnumbers is worse than using no data since it is flawed because it is a self selecting sample. It may indeed be accurate and be the best predictor we have but compared to my unflawed hunches and general musing it is obviously inferior hurr durr"

If you missed what I wrote before - you use it for dates, scholarship and such. You can even use it as a flawed individual predictor sure. But what you can't use it is to make assumption on the WHOLE population. The sample that is LSN is only representative of the population that is LSN. You do not use it as a sample of the whole LSAC population. The purpose of LSN would be what they call "for entertainment purposes only/not scientific" (even read the small prints on web polls?).

My hunch is based off of real published numbers - I read the published median/75s and they were lower than B/P and some below. It's a hunch, and I am selling it as such. You also have a hunch, but it is technically "baseless" because you are not considering the whole applicant population (by only looking at LSN which doesn't represent all applicants at all).

So your statements should be qualified as: For people who self-selected into LSN, it seems that CCN is in line with the other people's median ...

So just to prove a point, here is the published medians in question (for all applicants):

Columbia 3.72 / 172................(0, 0)
NYU 3.71 / 172......................(-.01, +1)
Chicago 3.78 / 171.................(+.02, 0)
Stanford 3.88 / 170................(0, 0)
Penn 3.85 / 170.....................(+.03, 0)
UVA 3.85 / 170......................(0, 0)
Duke 3.80 / 170.....................(+.04, +1)

See how LSN isn't worth crap to predict the whole pool?

I am serious, you must not have taken stats. I think the 1st or 2nd chapter usually talks about not using non-random samples and how bad data can mess things up.

HOLY SHIT you mean every school's numbers change from year to year??

HOLY SHIT you mean that those numbers are likely to change even more this year because of the change in the total number of applicants???

HOLY SHIT you mean LSN isn't 100% perfectly representative of every single person that goes to every single one of those schools listed??

HOLY SHIT you mean the cycle's not over therefore those numbers are likely to change???



mind ----> BLOWN

r6_philly wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:
Always worse than using no data? Then why does anyone use lawschoolnumbers at all?

Is that really how you intend to address my objection? "My hunch is better because lawschoolnumbers is worse than using no data since it is flawed because it is a self selecting sample. It may indeed be accurate and be the best predictor we have but compared to my unflawed hunches and general musing it is obviously inferior hurr durr"

If you missed what I wrote before - you use it for dates, scholarship and such. You can even use it as a flawed individual predictor sure. But what you can't use it is to make assumption on the WHOLE population. The sample that is LSN is only representative of the population that is LSN. You do not use it as a sample of the whole LSAC population. The purpose of LSN would be what they call "for entertainment purposes only/not scientific" (even read the small prints on web polls?).

My hunch is based off of real published numbers - I read the published median/75s and they were lower than B/P and some below. It's a hunch, and I am selling it as such. You also have a hunch, but it is technically "baseless" because you are not considering the whole applicant population (by only looking at LSN which doesn't represent all applicants at all).

So your statements should be qualified as: For people who self-selected into LSN, it seems that CCN is in line with the other people's median ...

So just to prove a point, here is the published medians in question (for all applicants):

Columbia 3.72 / 172................(0, 0)
NYU 3.71 / 172......................(-.01, +1)
Chicago 3.78 / 171.................(+.02, 0)
Stanford 3.88 / 170................(0, 0)
Penn 3.85 / 170.....................(+.03, 0)
UVA 3.85 / 170......................(0, 0)
Duke 3.80 / 170.....................(+.04, +1)

See how LSN isn't worth crap to predict the whole pool?

I am serious, you must not have taken stats. I think the 1st or 2nd chapter usually talks about not using non-random samples and how bad data can mess things up.

Even if I qualify it with that statement, I stand by the statement that people who self select into LSN do not have any significant difference that would affect the outcome of applications than people who do NOT self select into it.

I do know the difference between random/non random samples. But obviously you do not understand anything. What you cited is that medians changed. And?

Applications rose what? 20%? 50% at some schools. The economy and rising applicant numbers explained those differences What exactly is your point? You attempt to avoid the point by citing irrelevant stats.

I think you should take stats. All you do every single post is post the exact same argument. "It's not a random sample. All non random samples are inherently flawed. Thus LSN is inherently flawed. Thus LSN is less accurate than my assertion based on a few articles I read here and there and some conclusion I came to that has as it's support just about nothing. But just about nothing that is better than non random a lot."

Instead of bringing up the same exact point and then adding a wall of non cogent points, maybe you should take stats again and realize that half the points you brought up can be explained by other factors and don't support your argument at all.

r6_philly wrote:

FiveSermon wrote:
Always worse than using no data? Then why does anyone use lawschoolnumbers at all?

Is that really how you intend to address my objection? "My hunch is better because lawschoolnumbers is worse than using no data since it is flawed because it is a self selecting sample. It may indeed be accurate and be the best predictor we have but compared to my unflawed hunches and general musing it is obviously inferior hurr durr"

If you missed what I wrote before - you use it for dates, scholarship and such. You can even use it as a flawed individual predictor sure. But what you can't use it is to make assumption on the WHOLE population. The sample that is LSN is only representative of the population that is LSN. You do not use it as a sample of the whole LSAC population. The purpose of LSN would be what they call "for entertainment purposes only/not scientific" (even read the small prints on web polls?).

My hunch is based off of real published numbers - I read the published median/75s and they were lower than B/P and some below. It's a hunch, and I am selling it as such. You also have a hunch, but it is technically "baseless" because you are not considering the whole applicant population (by only looking at LSN which doesn't represent all applicants at all).

So your statements should be qualified as: For people who self-selected into LSN, it seems that CCN is in line with the other people's median ...

So just to prove a point, here is the published medians in question (for all applicants):

Columbia 3.72 / 172................(0, 0)
NYU 3.71 / 172......................(-.01, +1)
Chicago 3.78 / 171.................(+.02, 0)
Stanford 3.88 / 170................(0, 0)
Penn 3.85 / 170.....................(+.03, 0)
UVA 3.85 / 170......................(0, 0)
Duke 3.80 / 170.....................(+.04, +1)

See how LSN isn't worth crap to predict the whole pool?

I am serious, you must not have taken stats. I think the 1st or 2nd chapter usually talks about not using non-random samples and how bad data can mess things up.

I'm confused, are you comparing the law schools' published medians versus LSNs medians? If so, the law school medians would be reflective of those who are attending while LSN's would be of those merely accepted and not those who matriculated. Also, while the data is different, have you actually demonstrated a difference of statistical significance?

Non-random samples are bad, I agree, but the normalization and form of self-selection through LSN should lead to a positive bias rather than a negative one IMO.

Once you land in a school's quartile you're major may start to matter. Harder sciences coupled with good grades in writing are best. While it may not matter so much when you are applying to ls, it may matter when you get out. If you want to do patent law in the biotech industry, semiconductor industry, etc. you will be better served with a degree in a relevant hard science. Not to mention it's very difficult to take the patent bar if you are not a hard science major, it's not impossible, it's just a lot easier.

Moreover, lets not kid ourselves, hard science majors, math majors, quantitative finance majors and the like tend to think of humanities degrees as easy (up for debate whether or not that's true). But hear is a question I have yet to find an answer: would a lawyer who studied hard sciences be more apt to NOT hire a lawyer who studied liberal arts/humanities?