Chance me: Columbia/NYU 3.34 GPA, 178 LSAT, Top 30 undergrad Forum

[caramel222]

Have been working as a software engineer at a major financial institution in NYC for a year now. I was a double major in Computer Science/Engineering and International Relations, with focus in cybersecurity. Reconsidering my entire career, studied for the LSAT and surprised myself. Leaving NYC is non negotiable so if Columbia or NYU don't take me I probably won't pursue this dream and continue coding for the rest of my life lol. I have an interesting story as my family is from a war-torn country in the middle east and i've done a lot of volunteer work with refugees in my native language (arabic).

Do I have a shot at ED for either school? I know my gpa is awful.

[The Lsat Airbender]

ED is a terrible idea generally and especially for you since you can just hint at your tie to NYC to achieve the same thing without kneecapping your ability to get merit aid.

Your chances are both schools are decent but not guaranteed. Why do you want to go to law school though? You never even use the word “lawyer” in the OP

[caramel222]

I'm very tired of CS as a career. I was always much more into humanities and social sciences and was a member of the debate team in hs/college. I want a job that's more qualitative in nature.

[caramel222]

Also, why do I have to explain to you why I want to be a lawyer? This isn't a personal statement, it's a "chance me" thread.

[cavalier1138]

Also, why do I have to explain to you why I want to be a lawyer? This isn't a personal statement, it's a "chance me" thread.

Right. But there are a lot of 0Ls who post about going to law school under an extremely limited set of circumstances (i.e. NYU or Columbia only), are vaguely interested in law school because they were good at debate in high school/college, and don't seem to have any real notion of what they want to do with their JD once they have it. Your posts have raised all those red flags.

You were provided with an answer to your question: You've got decent chances, but not guaranteed (largely because of your GPA. You also should not ED, because it won't increase your chances. But most importantly, even if you were 100% sure to get in at both schools, you should not go to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer.

[The Lsat Airbender]

Also, depending on what kind of law OP wants to practice, Fordham (or even Brooklyn/Cardozo) could be an intriguing option given enough merit aid. I'm not asking "why you want to be a lawyer" as some kind of shit test; it's a huge element of how to approach the admissions process.

[caramel222]

Fair enough. Ideally, I'd like to work as a counsel for a tech company, perhaps within the privacy/cybersecurity space. I find the application of law as it relates to technology to be quite fascinating, so this is the track I'd pursue with a JD. Admittedly, I don't know how one paves this sort of track for him or herself.

[The Lsat Airbender]

Fair enough. Ideally, I'd like to work as a counsel for a tech company, perhaps within the privacy/cybersecurity space. I find the application of law as it relates to technology to be quite fascinating, so this is the track I'd pursue with a JD. Admittedly, I don't know how one paves this sort of track for him or herself.

Yeah, Fordham probably not a great choice for this, but it's realistic from Columbia/NYU - be aware that you might have to pay your dues in a big firm for a few years first.

Best path is probably to apply RD (as soon as apps open in the fall) to Columbia, NYU, and some of their peers (so Chicago, Penn, Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley at the very least). You have decent chances at 1) admission at one of Columbia/NYU and 2) scholarship money at at least one of the t14, which you can hopefully then use to negotiate with Columbia/NYU.

[caramel222]

May I ask why ED isn't advised? At least for undergrad, it seemed like students who applied ED fared much better. I still have much of my college fund being that I paid very little for undergrad. I will also work another year before applying, so I could feasibly pay tuition in full. Or is the opportunity cost too high?

[cavalier1138]

May I ask why ED isn't advised? At least for undergrad, it seemed like students who applied ED fared much better. I still have much of my college fund being that I paid very little for undergrad. I will also work another year before applying, so I could feasibly pay tuition in full. Or is the opportunity cost too high?

Because undergrad admissions are different. Most schools don't appear to favor ED applicants, and the only guarantee it offers most applicants is the guarantee of getting screwed out of scholarship money.

[nixy]

ED doesn't generally give you any significant boost, and it almost certainly forfeits getting good scholarships (unless you're talking about NU or other ED programs that come with guaranteed money, but those are intended to lure in top candidates who might go to higher-ranked schools, not as a reward for people who might be more marginal candidates). If you apply ED and are accepted you're committed to the school, so they don't need to offer scholarships to get you to attend.

You can probably achieve the same "I'm really really committed to attending" effect by writing a good Why X essay (though I'm not sure Columbia/NYU generally seem to care?), without giving up the chance at money.

If you can and don't mind paying sticker, that's one thing, but wouldn't you really rather keep as much of that $300k+ for yourself, if you can?

[QContinuum]

Cosign the above. In addition, check out the ED data at https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/applyi ... not-to-ed/

Major caveat, the ED data at the link above doesn't include merit aid considerations, which are/should be critical. ED generally puts one at a (much) worse position w.r.t. receiving merit aid.

But what the ED data at the link above shows is, even putting aside financial considerations, ED doesn't make sense except to a few specific schools. Columbia and NYU aren't among those schools. In fact, there's an apparent ED "penalty" at NYU, where EDing to NYU appears to reduce one's chances by half. In any case, there's definitely nothing to suggest that EDing to Columbia or NYU would help one's chances at getting in.

And again, this is just looking at chances of being admitted, not looking at chances of getting merit aid, let alone amount of merit aid. Again, the accepted wisdom is that, short of a guaranteed ED scholly, ED applicants receive significantly less merit aid than they would have had they applied regular decision.

[run26.2]

Fair enough. Ideally, I'd like to work as a counsel for a tech company, perhaps within the privacy/cybersecurity space. I find the application of law as it relates to technology to be quite fascinating, so this is the track I'd pursue with a JD. Admittedly, I don't know how one paves this sort of track for him or herself.

If you go in house at a corporation to do something like this, you're probably going to get bored pretty quickly, as "application of law as it relates to technology" is going to be a small minority of what you're doing. I think it is more likely that you'd be doing legal work for a company that was in the relevant technical space. (Though, you might find what you are looking for in a regulatory or policy position at a tech company, or outside firm.) Plus, you will probably have had to work at a firm for a number of years (~5, at a minimum) to get a job like that.

There are other options out there, though, would be to work at a place like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where you could do work that is much more like applying the law in a technological (e.g., privacy or security) context. DOJ also has a small number of jobs that would fit the bill, too. The DOJ jobs, though, would require good grades and likely work at a good firm.

Basically, if you want to do this, you should try to define your goal a bit better. Then seek out some folks that are doing what you want to do and talk to them about how they got there. Last thing I'll say is that many peoples' legal careers wind in different directions. What you think you want may not end up being what you do; and what you plan to do may not be what you end up doing, through no fault of your own or in your planning.