PreLaw

Undergraduate College Education intended to prepare for Law School. (Or, more accurately, to prepare for admission into Law School.)

Key admission factor: LSAT (Standardized Test) score.

You want to go to one of the better schools you were accepted to, one where you think you can maintain a high GPA in a serious major. Reputation of the school does not matter as much as you might think, because law schools care more about how high your GPA is than where it came from... Yes, it is definitely better to have a great GPA at a really great school, but if you are really committed to going to the best law school you can get into, it is more important to make sure you are at a school were you can maintain a really high GPA (3.8+). So, for example, a 3.9 from University of Iowa is going to tend to open more law schools doors than a 3.4 from University Of Chicago... For that reason, future law students might want to avoid undergrad schools like Reed College or University Of Chicago, where it is very difficult to get a high GPA, unless you think you can do well there. While law schools understand that these are great programs and are really hard, they are stuck because they need to be conscious of their USNWR college ranking, which means they have to admit a lot of high GPA students... That said, don’t think that you should just take a 4.0 at some online school such as De Vry. Generally, you want to attend somewhere that shows up on US News’ ranking of the best colleges.

Which College Major?

In 2001, the five most common majors of students entering law school were Political Science, history, English, psychology, and criminal justice.[2] The five majors with the highest acceptance rates were physics, philosophy, biology, chemistry, and government service. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-law

Avoid: The hard evidence out there is that pre-law and criminal justice majors do worse on the LSAT and have worse outcomes when applying to law school.

You want a serious subject that interests you and where you think you can obtain a high GPA. Now what do I mean by a serious subject? I mean one that is challenging and is well-regarded as an area of academic inquiry. This could be anything from English (my major) to Engineering to Philosophy... (Just as an aside: take a logic course in your school’s philosophy department, as it gives you a priceless head start on your LSAT study.) (See table of LSAT scores by major. Avoid the bottom half!)

Classics! http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2014/4/the-best-prospective-law-students-read-homer


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