Top Law Schools

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With WE, ED NU; if that fails, ED GULC PT.

Grizz wrote:With WE, ED NU; if that fails, ED GULC PT.

Note: NU ED now comes with an almost full tuition scholly, so if you want NU you should RD (assuming they continue this practice in the next cycle, which is not necessarily the case). Other than that, I agree with Grizz. Also look at WUSTL, UMN, UIUC, and UIB.

crumpetsandtea wrote:

Grizz wrote:With WE, ED NU; if that fails, ED GULC PT.

Note: NU ED now comes with an almost full tuition scholly, so if you want NU you should RD (assuming they continue this practice in the next cycle, which is not necessarily the case). Other than that, I agree with Grizz. Also look at WUSTL, UMN, UIUC, and UIB.

Splitter ED NU is not a thing anymore? Noted.

Grizz wrote:Splitter ED NU is not a thing anymore? Noted.

Yup, for this cycle at least an ED acceptance = $150K scholarship which means they'll be targeting people well above both medians for ED acceptances.

Awesome, this is the kind of point in the right direction I was looking for. Thanks to both of you.

CA schools are pretty much out with a 2.3. See lawschoolnumbers.com

Glad we could help! I see you've made an LSN account (love your name by the way, hahaha). You might also consider applying to UVa ED if you're interested. The chances of getting in are pretty low with a 2.3, but it's worth a shot. UVa and GULC both don't have an ED deadline, so technically you could ED UVA, hear back in 15 days (their max wait time for ED), and then apply to GULC ED if you get rejected from UVA ED.

crumpetsandtea wrote:Glad we could help! I see you've made an LSN account (love your name by the way, hahaha). You might also consider applying to UVa ED if you're interested. The chances of getting in are pretty low with a 2.3, but it's worth a shot. UVa and GULC both don't have an ED deadline, so technically you could ED UVA, hear back in 15 days (their max wait time for ED), and then apply to GULC ED if you get rejected from UVA ED.

That's gold... thanks again. I actually have a relative who works or recently has worked for UVa. Likely that would mean nothing though, I realize.

Re: the name, I always wonder if people think I'm some sort of DJ who "spins rap" or that it's just parsnips backwards. It's the latter, I'm just vegan and it's arbitrary, hah.

Grizz wrote:CA schools are pretty much out with a 2.3. See lawschoolnumbers.com

Even Santa Clara? Or is it really the case that at that point I should just strictly look higher in the rankings?

spinsrap wrote:

Grizz wrote:CA schools are pretty much out with a 2.3. See lawschoolnumbers.com

Even Santa Clara? Or is it really the case that at that point I should just strictly look higher in the rankings?

Yeah... your job prospects from NU or UVA will be dramatically better. If you think you might want to attend UVA, I would consider applying ED there. You are below their reputed GPA floor, but with WE + HYP you might be the rare exception.

I see bloomington Indiana in your future.

Hey, it's not Gary.

Anyone think he should retake if he really studies? Is there a number where a 2.3 is less of a problem? How much of a boost will Princeton give him?

OP: you sound like you have a lot of life experience but you also sound like you are all over the place. Why do you want to go to law school now? If you do apply, I would make sure you sound more together and focused. Right now, the way this is written, you sound like a person who may go for a semester or a year, and then something else will come up, or you will get bored.

And I think you need a better story for why your grades at Princeton were so bad. To be honest, to me what you have written sounds like a laundry list of excuses. It sounds like you weren't ready to grow up, so you intentionally sabotaged yourself at one of the best schools in the country. And, even when you went back you still didn't do a great job. I would address your UG career very simply in an addendum - don't go through the whole story like you did here.

I hope that the time distance from undergrad helps you. Good luck!

sunynp wrote:Anyone think he should retake if he really studies? Is there a number where a 2.3 is less of a problem? How much of a boost will Princeton give him?

OP: you sound like you have a lot of life experience but you also sound like you are all over the place. Why do you want to go to law school now? If you do apply, I would make sure you sound more together and focused. Right now, the way this is written, you sound like a person who may go for a semester or a year, and then something else will come up, or you will get bored.

And I think you need a better story for why your grades at Princeton were so bad. To be honest, to me what you have written sounds like a laundry list of excuses. It sounds like you weren't ready to grow up, so you intentionally sabotaged yourself at one of the best schools in the country. And, even when you went back you still didn't do a great job. I would address your UG career very simply in an addendum - don't go through the whole story like you did here.

I hope that the time distance from undergrad helps you. Good luck!

Hey, thanks for the reply! I provided the "whole story" detail here just to err on the side of not having a bunch of qualifying answers that I needed to address in response to people willing to advise. I certainly don't want to sound like I'm giving excuses, but for better or worse (better at the time, worse now that I'm going to go back to school) I simply traded more time at Princeton, which I very much valued, for a huge GPA hit.

I was trying to avoid taking up a bunch of space here with my softs, or the "no really, I do want to go to LS", but I will be going and I will be one of the stronger performers at school (especially since this GPA will knock me into less competitive places - I'm not trying to sound over-confident, just trying to give a candid account of things. Potential and motivation is not an issue, but that's going to be difficult to 100% convince someone of until I'm back in school.) My references and WE will show that I'm very consistent, driven, and capable. I've also held a number of strong jobs since, and been promoted within a year of each hire/promotion. I realize I've got to work in a strong PS and addendum to overcome the concerns that you voice, but that's why I'm gathering some help here. If it would help to take a year program in a related field to show that I can get A's, I'm certainly up for it, but it seems like a very roundabout way to get where I really want to be.

I've thought about not mentioning the withdrawal at all, but I'm pretty sure that my withdrawal technically counts as something like academic probation that I'm told to address on applications.

Again, this is really helpful, b/c it's important that I DON'T sound like I'm giving a laundry list of excuses, but rather that this appear as an explanation of a choice that I made in order to study at a top school for another 6 months.

Thanks again!

Retaking is worthless. NU is your best shot at something worthwhile. UVA/GULC are huge longshots but are worth taking. No CA school worth going to would accept you. Outside of that you should aim for schools that tend to give splitters money such as WUSTL/UIUC/IUB/etc. All in all, apply very broadly since a 2.3 is going to sink you at most places and will make your cycle insanely hard to predict (Princeton might bump you a bit). I'd actually hazard that you might not actually get accepted to any law school worth going to for a reasonable price. If that happens I'd honestly consider doing something else.

Stuck around campus, wrote my papers and finished my classwork, but made sure that all my teachers failed me and didn't turn in my thesis. Took 7 classes worth of Fs, but was happily "forced" to return for another semester.

Yikes! I admire your determination.

bk187 wrote:Retaking is worthless. NU is your best shot at something worthwhile. UVA/GULC are huge longshots but are worth taking. No CA school worth going to would accept you. Outside of that you should aim for schools that tend to give splitters money such as WUSTL/UIUC/IUB/etc. All in all, apply very broadly since a 2.3 is going to sink you at most places and will make your cycle insanely hard to predict (Princeton might bump you a bit). I'd actually hazard that you might not actually get accepted to any law school worth going to for a reasonable price. If that happens I'd honestly consider doing something else.

Hmm... thanks, that's helpful. I'm definitely going to law school, so it may be the case that I have to retool, improve my case, and wait for next cycle. It really wouldn't matter if I retook and got a >177 or something?

Also, I'm new to this forum, but are T2 schools really that unacceptable? There's no such thing as working your ass off at a 50th or 60th ranked school to get a fulfilling job? I understand that I'm not going to be having firms throw money at me when I near graduation, but that's not the motivation here. It's entering a field that I'm far more suited to than the one I'm currently in and providing useful services in said field to people who could use them.

Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

Anyhow, amazing and helpful, cheers!

Dude - totally epic. Failing your last semester... just so you can hang around.

NU is the answer. Corsair got in there with similar numbers. Your work experience and age will be key. Best of luck to you, brochacho.

sky7 wrote:Dude - totally epic. Failing your last semester... just so you can hang around.

NU is the answer. Corsair got in there with similar numbers. Your work experience and age will be key. Best of luck to you, brochacho.

Hah! Well... if by "hang around" you mean with the faculty there and that library, then yes. I lived about a two mile walk from campus for my final semester when I went back. The majority of the Princeton Undergrad student body and their collective personality was certainly NOT worth hanging around.

Thanks!

spinsrap wrote: Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

What do you mean you want to do "animal law"

spinsrap wrote:Hmm... thanks, that's helpful. I'm definitely going to law school, so it may be the case that I have to retool, improve my case, and wait for next cycle. It really wouldn't matter if I retook and got a >177 or something?

Also, I'm new to this forum, but are T2 schools really that unacceptable? There's no such thing as working your ass off at a 50th or 60th ranked school to get a fulfilling job? I understand that I'm not going to be having firms throw money at me when I near graduation, but that's not the motivation here. It's entering a field that I'm far more suited to than the one I'm currently in and providing useful services in said field to people who could use them.

Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

Anyhow, amazing and helpful, cheers!

1. A better LSAT isn't going to help. You're already above median LSAT everywhere. Furthermore, you are significantly above median at any school that is likely to accept you. It's your GPA that is sinking you. Simply put, your LSAT is already excellent and improving it adds almost nothing to your app. The only thing you need to shore up is your GPA, but that is impossible. So basically you are left to hoping that your LSAT and softs can overcome your GPA. Can they? Maybe, maybe not.

2. Look at http://www.lawschooltransparency.com and go to "Data Clearinghouse" and then "Job Characteristics" and look at what percentage of grads at a school get full time, bar passage-required jobs (this is 2009 data, but it is likely not any better than how things are now or for the near future). At a place like L&C, it is 63%. That's not bad for a T2 school but still, that means that 1/3 of their grads can't find full time jobs as lawyers within 9 months of graduation. Look at Santa Clara, it's really bleak there. They have something like only 25% of their grads actually getting full time lawyer jobs. Even at the better T1 schools like WUSTL/BU/BC/GW/etc, they only managed 80% of their grads getting full time jobs as lawyers. Things really are bleak out there. (Note: the NorCal schools, like Santa Clara, significantly underperform similarly ranked schools, whereas the SoCal, like Loyola, make it so that you only have a 1/3 chance of keeping your scholarship, which is why I say that the crappy CA schools are really bad.)

3. Specialty programs are mainly meaningless. You might want to do animal law, which is all fine and dandy, but how many jobs exist in that field? I would hazard that it is quite few. So it doesn't matter that a school has the best animal/environmental/international law program this side of Mars when those sorts of jobs are very rare and often in high demand from people who are graduating from much more prestigious law schools.

As a side note, I will admit that you would likely have a leg up in the job search over most of your peers since you went to Princeton. However things really are bad and going to those lower ranked schools is generally a bad idea.

spinsrap wrote:

bk187 wrote:Retaking is worthless. NU is your best shot at something worthwhile. UVA/GULC are huge longshots but are worth taking. No CA school worth going to would accept you. Outside of that you should aim for schools that tend to give splitters money such as WUSTL/UIUC/IUB/etc. All in all, apply very broadly since a 2.3 is going to sink you at most places and will make your cycle insanely hard to predict (Princeton might bump you a bit). I'd actually hazard that you might not actually get accepted to any law school worth going to for a reasonable price. If that happens I'd honestly consider doing something else.

Hmm... thanks, that's helpful. I'm definitely going to law school, so it may be the case that I have to retool, improve my case, and wait for next cycle. It really wouldn't matter if I retook and got a >177 or something?

Also, I'm new to this forum, but are T2 schools really that unacceptable? There's no such thing as working your ass off at a 50th or 60th ranked school to get a fulfilling job? I understand that I'm not going to be having firms throw money at me when I near graduation, but that's not the motivation here. It's entering a field that I'm far more suited to than the one I'm currently in and providing useful services in said field to people who could use them.

Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

Anyhow, amazing and helpful, cheers!

Lewis & Clark is a good school, with good programs. (Although "specialty" programs are largely useless in terms of getting jobs.) The problem is that they basically ONLY place in Portland, and the Portland legal market is tiny. L&C grads are competing with Oregon and Willamette grads, plus a non-zero number of locals who went to higher-ranked schools elsewhere and are bringing their JDs from Michigan/NYU/Georgetown home.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 grads of the three Oregon law schools combined get NALP firm jobs in Portland each year.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 5#p4944091

<= is from Portland, will be attending Northwestern

Grizz wrote:

spinsrap wrote: Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

What do you mean you want to do "animal law"

I sense this might be sarcastic, but can't tell, so here goes: Animal Law is something that's been virtually ignored, but deals with animal welfare, anti-cruelty laws, & c. It's considered an "emerging" field and is basically like environmental law was a few decades back. We here in the U.S. are WAY behind many other countries (many in Europe) in terms of our laws dealing with non-human animals and their standing for moral consideration.

Hardly a thorough explication, but is that helpful?

Again, y'all are awesome, thanks for posting.

bk187 wrote:

spinsrap wrote:Hmm... thanks, that's helpful. I'm definitely going to law school, so it may be the case that I have to retool, improve my case, and wait for next cycle. It really wouldn't matter if I retook and got a >177 or something?

Also, I'm new to this forum, but are T2 schools really that unacceptable? There's no such thing as working your ass off at a 50th or 60th ranked school to get a fulfilling job? I understand that I'm not going to be having firms throw money at me when I near graduation, but that's not the motivation here. It's entering a field that I'm far more suited to than the one I'm currently in and providing useful services in said field to people who could use them.

Lewis and Clark, for example, has a killer Animal Law program (I realize most posters here could care less about the program, and that's fine). When I heard the dean speak a few years back, he was glowing about a huge donation they had just received specifically for AL. Is it really the case that at a place like L&C, it's just "not top tier". I find that hard to believe/stomach... hah.

Anyhow, amazing and helpful, cheers!

1. A better LSAT isn't going to help. You're already above median LSAT everywhere. Furthermore, you are significantly above median at any school that is likely to accept you. It's your GPA that is sinking you. Simply put, your LSAT is already excellent and improving it adds almost nothing to your app. The only thing you need to shore up is your GPA, but that is impossible. So basically you are left to hoping that your LSAT and softs can overcome your GPA. Can they? Maybe, maybe not.

2. Look at http://www.lawschooltransparency.com and go to "Data Clearinghouse" and then "Job Characteristics" and look at what percentage of grads at a school get full time, bar passage-required jobs (this is 2009 data, but it is likely not any better than how things are now or for the near future). At a place like L&C, it is 63%. That's not bad for a T2 school but still, that means that 1/3 of their grads can't find full time jobs as lawyers within 9 months of graduation. Look at Santa Clara, it's really bleak there. They have something like only 25% of their grads actually getting full time lawyer jobs. Even at the better T1 schools like WUSTL/BU/BC/GW/etc, they only managed 80% of their grads getting full time jobs as lawyers. Things really are bleak out there. (Note: the NorCal schools, like Santa Clara, significantly underperform similarly ranked schools, whereas the SoCal, like Loyola, make it so that you only have a 1/3 chance of keeping your scholarship, which is why I say that the crappy CA schools are really bad.)

3. Specialty programs are mainly meaningless. You might want to do animal law, which is all fine and dandy, but how many jobs exist in that field? I would hazard that it is quite few. So it doesn't matter that a school has the best animal/environmental/international law program this side of Mars when those sorts of jobs are very rare and often in high demand from people who are graduating from much more prestigious law schools.

As a side note, I will admit that you would likely have a leg up in the job search over most of your peers since you went to Princeton. However things really are bad and going to those lower ranked schools is generally a bad idea.

Brilliant, you should be paid for this. Really, so helpful.

I'm alright with getting myself into a place where it doesn't essentially guarantee me employment. I realize any shot at that was out the window with my undergrad academic shenanigans. I'm fully willing to work my ass off and just do what I can to force my way into that 63 or so percent, just want to make sure it's more like 63 and less like 3.

Best!

spinsrap wrote: I sense this might be sarcastic, but can't tell, so here goes: Animal Law is something that's been virtually ignored, but deals with animal welfare, anti-cruelty laws, & c. It's considered an "emerging" field and is basically like environmental law was a few decades back. We here in the U.S. are WAY behind many other countries (many in Europe) in terms of our laws dealing with non-human animals and their standing for moral consideration.

Basically almost no one does this. The best way to obtain a career in this field isn't a specialty program, it's to go to a prestigious school and get some previous work experience in the field.