Top Law Schools

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What do you want to do?

The problem is not just the tuition, but that what school you go to can open, or close, doors to future options. The legal market is so over saturated, that if you miss the boat on what you want to do the first time, you very likely will not get another shot.

Softs aren't going to do much. Law school admissions is pretty much a numbers game. If you are on the cusp, softs can push you over, but they aren't game changers.

Your softs sound fairly average. Most people have volunteer hours and internships or better yet, real life WE. The multilingual is nice but like the above poster mentioned, it will mostly come down to your LSAT/GPA. With that LSAT, WASHU is possible but no given and BC seems about the same. Fordham however you very well could get in to. Figure out exactly what you want to do and where you want to do it. If Fordham seems like a good fit for those answers, I think you can get in. If BC or WASHU seem more likely to get you there, you may want to retake in June or October and try again next cycle. Good luck.

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Retake. With a 3.6x you could be looking at NYU, Penn and down, with a LSAT over 170. The schools that you have mentioned do not have good enough employment stats to pay sticker (which you will do with these numbers).

screwtapeletters wrote:TooOld4This & Let's get it

Thanks for the replies.

I should mention that I was in a foreign military for a while.

I have "real" WE but it was a contractor position that lasted for just a few months.

I ultimately want to end up working as an attorney for big city law departments.


What's your reasoning behind my shot at Fordham? I'm below their 25th percentile LSAT...

My reasoning is that if you've been following law school trends, applications are way down the last couple years. Keep in mind that the 25% you are going by is from last year. With apps declining so much, schools the ranking of Fordham are seeing their medians go down a point of two as a result. Last I saw, Fordham's dip in applications was much heavier than BC or WASHU (who has actually seen an increase in apps). Of the three, Fordham is generally the easiest to get in to. Also you have a very solid GPA which can mitigate some of the problem with your LSAT score. I should say I am not an expert, this is just my opinion. Who knows, maybe you get rejected at FU and accepted at BC and WASHU. This is just my educated guess. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

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Sorry to hear that man. Have you written a LOCI to WASHU? They seem to really help. I'm leaning towards WASHU myself. Heard from BC or Fordham?

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Why would you turn down an optional interview?

Do you come from a wealthy family back home or in the states who will support you throughout graduate school? otherwise, I would seriously reconsider your choice. By "big city law departments" I'm assuming you are referring to the Attorney General's or District Attorney's offices in LA, SF, NYC, Chicago, DC, ect. These are competitive positions that also happen to not be very well paid. Few schools outside of the T14 have a halfway decent LRAP. You could target a particular market where you have actual ties and attend a TT/TTT there for free, but you'd have to be very tippy top of your class to get a competitive government gig from those schools.

If you intended to say "big law," as in large private firm work, then you're up shits creek with any of the options you listed, and you need to sit out another year and retake when you are able to so you can hit Cornell or Northwestern.

Good luck!

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screwtapeletters wrote:

LET'S GET IT wrote:Sorry to hear that man. Have you written a LOCI to WASHU? They seem to really help. I'm leaning towards WASHU myself. Heard from BC or Fordham?

Haven't heard from neither of the schools. Went complete early~mid-January. So I'm guessing it'll take them some time.

I wonder if it was the optional interview that I didn't do that might have impacted their decision (aside from the relatively low numbers)

Did you get into WashU? If so, congrats.

And what are your thoughts on GW?

Well maybe you will still get into one of them. You are in a great position not having to worry about the cost of attending. It probably didn't help skipping the interview. Almost everyone who interviews gets accepted from what I've seen.

Thank you! Yes I was able to get accepted to WASHU and a couple other really good schools. Still weighing options but leaning that way.

Don't know much of anything about GW so I can't be of much help there. Good luck with whatever route you choose.

screwtapeletters wrote: Thx for the reply.

I don't mean to sound arrogant but yes, I am from a wealthy family and my father is willing to fully finance the education costs. I am from a big family with many brothers and sisters and he is putting the family business pressure only on my oldest brother.

No worries. You're very fortunate. In this case, targeting T20 is the way to go unless you want to save your family $$.

screwtapeletters wrote: I understand that it's really hard to get those positions but because I have many ties to govt officials both in mainland China and Taiwan (as I had worked in such places and also have family ties), I was thinking I might be able to spin that off when I try to land those gigs in the US. And I do understand that it will be difficult to be a top student at those schools but I am going to try my best and see what happens. I didnt do too well on the LSAT but I think that's because I am a bad standardized test taker and my GPA would have been far better had it not been for the crazy freshman year full of parties. Oh and I should mention that I have a greencard and am in ttying to get a citizenship soon.

A practicing attorney can jump in here if I'm mistaken, but foreign gov't clout has no bearing on local state or municipal hiring the states. I would avoid bringing that up in interviews - it will make you seem out of touch.

To your last point, being a "bad standardized test taker" is just about the worst excuse for doing poorly on the LSAT (although a 160 isn't that bad, it's not in the range of the schools you're targeting), because law school is a series of single pseudo-standardized tests that determine your entire grade in each 1L course. If you are a bad test taker before law school, chances are, you will get bad grades in law school. If you go to a school like GWU or WUSTL, most of your peers will be pretty damn good test takers, and since everything you do will be scored on a curve, that's not a recipe for success. It would be better if your reason for not meeting your expectations on the LSAT was for lack of proper study, since that can be corrected.

screwtapeletters wrote: But then again, my question was "what is my chance at GWU?"

In the past, you would have no chance, but this cycle has been more forgiving. I'd say you have about a 20% chance, maybe up to 50% of getting on the WL and riding it out to the summer. The best school you have a reasonable shot at is Notre Dame.

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screwtapeletters wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:

screwtapeletters wrote: Thx for the reply.

I don't mean to sound arrogant but yes, I am from a wealthy family and my father is willing to fully finance the education costs. I am from a big family with many brothers and sisters and he is putting the family business pressure only on my oldest brother.

No worries. You're very fortunate. In this case, targeting T20 is the way to go unless you want to save your family $$.

screwtapeletters wrote: I understand that it's really hard to get those positions but because I have many ties to govt officials both in mainland China and Taiwan (as I had worked in such places and also have family ties), I was thinking I might be able to spin that off when I try to land those gigs in the US. And I do understand that it will be difficult to be a top student at those schools but I am going to try my best and see what happens. I didnt do too well on the LSAT but I think that's because I am a bad standardized test taker and my GPA would have been far better had it not been for the crazy freshman year full of parties. Oh and I should mention that I have a greencard and am in ttying to get a citizenship soon.

A practicing attorney can jump in here if I'm mistaken, but foreign gov't clout has no bearing on local state or municipal hiring the states. I would avoid bringing that up in interviews - it will make you seem out of touch.

To your last point, being a "bad standardized test taker" is just about the worst excuse for doing poorly on the LSAT (although a 160 isn't that bad, it's not in the range of the schools you're targeting), because law school is a series of single pseudo-standardized tests that determine your entire grade in each 1L course. If you are a bad test taker before law school, chances are, you will get bad grades in law school. If you go to a school like GWU or WUSTL, most of your peers will be pretty damn good test takers, and since everything you do will be scored on a curve, that's not a recipe for success. It would be better if your reason for not meeting your expectations on the LSAT was for lack of proper study, since that can be corrected.

screwtapeletters wrote: But then again, my question was "what is my chance at GWU?"

In the past, you would have no chance, but this cycle has been more forgiving. I'd say you have about a 20% chance, maybe up to 50% of getting on the WL and riding it out to the summer. The best school you have a reasonable shot at is Notre Dame.

I feel like I don't do well on standardized exams because of the "one time pressure" involved in such exams. I fare much better when I know that an exam is not the end of my world. For example, I had always scored in the 2300s range in the SAT prep tests but ended up with high-2100s on the actual one. On the LSAT I was PT-ing at high160s-low170s consistently before the last actual one I had taken but the nerves just ate me up. I get stomach-aches, dizziness and other anxiety symptoms whenever I take there kind of exams. For God's sake I even scored in the low-110s on the TOEFL (out of 120) though I had lived in the states for over 15 years. Something just gets me in such exams, but school exams are much, much better.

I had taken some pre-law classes during undergrad, and though I know this is not comparable to actual law school classes, I didn't have too much difficulty in having one final exam being the only grade for the entire semester. Maybe it's the ambiance I'm used to that let's me relax and solely focus on the test materials...

Anyway, this excuse became a lot longer than I had intended, but thank you very much for your insight. It really helped. Hopefully this forgiving cycle will condone my relatively low score...

Honestly, it will be no less stressful in law school. Knowing you are competing against some very smart people on very difficult tests that can determine whether or not you are rich or homeless... I'd imagine that is more pressure than a test you get to take 3 times and study for at your leisure. Retake the LSAT if you can stomach waiting that long. My LSAT isn't much better (163), but it was enough to get me into WashU and Notre Dame, plus some pretty good scholarships elsewhere.

You should have taken the interview first time around. Send them a letter of continued interest, and mention in there that if they feel like granting you a second chance at an interview, you'd be happy to comply.

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screwtapeletters wrote:mylsn.info / lawschoolnumbers.com - checked it numerous times...

just wondering what my softs would do.. (internships, volunteering, honors, multilingual, etc etc...).

high-3.6x from a top-15 private institution. 160 is my third take, so no retake is available for me.

Really hoping for Fordham/BC/WashU. Sticker is fine.

Any thoughts since the applications are continuing to slide down?

That's certainly a nice position to be in.