Top Law Schools

Did my undergrad at the University of Arizona. I'm interested in going to UCLA, USC, or Santa Clara for law school. What are my chances?

For the past 3 years I've worked in the oil and gas industry as a designer of static equipment for oil refineries. I hate it, lol.

Thanks everyone for the input!

Just a thought, pretty sure you could go to Northwestern if you wanted.

To be honest, your work experience and major will make almost no difference in your cycle (3.52 electrical engineering here, BS and ScM). If you want to know your chances, I'd start with lawschoolpredictor. It was reasonably accurate for me. Anything "consider" or above you have a shot at.

EDIT: It appears that anything outside of the top 9 schools or so you have a reasonable shot at. I'd apply to a bunch in the T14.

Congrats on the great LSAT score.

I think you have an excellent chance at all of those schools. Although USC/UCLA tend to emphasize GPA a little more than usual, your work experience coupled with that awesome LSAT score might even yield a fat scholarship as well. I think you should focus on writing a sexy personal statement, as well as obtaining a sexy letter of recommendation (LOR) from a sexy scholar that you haven't had sex with.

icydash wrote:To be honest, your work experience and major will make almost no difference in your cycle (3.52 electrical engineering here, BS and ScM). If you want to know your chances, I'd start with lawschoolpredictor. It was reasonably accurate for me. Anything "consider" or above you have a shot at.

I'm somewhat skeptical about this year's law school predictor.. the only way we can somewhat confirm is predictive value is by seeing next year's results. I have a feeling that this year's cycle might be unrepresentative of the rest.

PLATONiC wrote:

icydash wrote:To be honest, your work experience and major will make almost no difference in your cycle (3.52 electrical engineering here, BS and ScM). If you want to know your chances, I'd start with lawschoolpredictor. It was reasonably accurate for me. Anything "consider" or above you have a shot at.

I'm somewhat skeptical about this year's law school predictor.. the only way we can somewhat confirm is predictive value is by seeing next year's results. I have a feeling that this year's cycle might be unrepresentative of the rest.

Do you think it was less or more accurate?

PLATONiC wrote:I think you have an excellent chance at all of those schools. Although USC/UCLA tend to emphasize GPA a little more than usual, your work experience coupled with that awesome LSAT score might even yield a fat scholarship as well. I think you should focus on writing a sexy personal statement, as well as obtaining a sexy letter of recommendation (LOR) from a sexy scholar that you haven't had sex with.

Heh. Yeah. Thanks to the poster who directed me to lawschoolpredictor.com. That site makes me feel better about my subpar GPA.

icydash wrote:

PLATONiC wrote:

icydash wrote:To be honest, your work experience and major will make almost no difference in your cycle (3.52 electrical engineering here, BS and ScM). If you want to know your chances, I'd start with lawschoolpredictor. It was reasonably accurate for me. Anything "consider" or above you have a shot at.

I'm somewhat skeptical about this year's law school predictor.. the only way we can somewhat confirm is predictive value is by seeing next year's results. I have a feeling that this year's cycle might be unrepresentative of the rest.

Do you think it was less or more accurate?

Since I say that it's unrepresentative of future admissions cycles, I'm saying that it might be less accurate. This is an exceptional case, but Cornell experienced a 50% increase in application volume.. other schools, although comparatively less drastic, have nonetheless experienced a sharp increase as well. This might give some reasonable minded people such as myself that schools were probably a little more selective this year that previous years. It might as well be the case for future years as well. I personally like to use hourumd.com than lawschoolpredictor, since I get to see an applicant's profile as well as all the other schools he/she has applied to.

PLATONiC wrote:

icydash wrote:

PLATONiC wrote:

icydash wrote:To be honest, your work experience and major will make almost no difference in your cycle (3.52 electrical engineering here, BS and ScM). If you want to know your chances, I'd start with lawschoolpredictor. It was reasonably accurate for me. Anything "consider" or above you have a shot at.

I'm somewhat skeptical about this year's law school predictor.. the only way we can somewhat confirm is predictive value is by seeing next year's results. I have a feeling that this year's cycle might be unrepresentative of the rest.

Do you think it was less or more accurate?

Since I say that it's unrepresentative of future admissions cycles, I'm saying that it might be less accurate. This is an exceptional case, but Cornell experienced a 50% increase in application volume.. other schools, although comparatively less drastic, have nonetheless experienced a sharp increase as well. This might give some reasonable minded people such as myself that schools were probably a little more selective this year that previous years. It might as well be the case for future years as well. I personally like to use hourumd.com than lawschoolpredictor, since I get to see an applicant's profile as well as all the other schools he/she has applied to.

Didn't know that site existed, cool. And of course, there is always lawschoolnumbers

blewp wrote:Did my undergrad at the University of Arizona. I'm interested in going to UCLA, USC, or Santa Clara for law school. What are my chances?

For the past 3 years I've worked in the oil and gas industry as a designer of static equipment for oil refineries. I hate it, lol.

Thanks everyone for the input!

With those numbers, you'll be very competitive at Michigan, UVA, Penn, and Northwestern and be a long shot at NYU and Chicago. If you're interested in California, the GPA is a bit of a bummer since Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and USC all emphasize GPA. You should still be competitive at USC and UCLA, but you don't have much of a shot at Berkeley.

My suggestion: Plan on applying to 9-12 schools, get your apps in as early as possible, and start working on your personal statement right now.

icydash wrote:

PLATONiC wrote:I personally like to use hourumd.com than lawschoolpredictor, since I get to see an applicant's profile as well as all the other schools he/she has applied to.

Didn't know that site existed, cool. And of course, there is always lawschoolnumbers

Hourumd.com uses the data from LSN. I think hourumd is great, but be careful about putting to much emphasis on older cycles.

I forgot to say, as the above poster mentioned, you have an excellent chance at Michigan. If I were you, I'd ED there, but then again, I wouldn't be able to forgo the massive scholarships that you could potentially receive from the list of schools you presented.