Law School Discussion

You might want to wait on your spring semester grades. Of course, you could submit the transfer app to the cheaper school and make a decision later depending on what your spring grades are.

Public perception notwithstanding, the job opportunities from a mid tier 2 school versus a lower tier 2/tier 3 school are not that different. With median grades, you won't qualify for on-campus interviews at either school, generally.

If you stay at the median at your school, the chances of making the big bucks right after graduation are probably nonexistent. Government honors programs generally don't hire median students at tier 2 schools. Even mid-size firms in your area probably only want to talk to students in the top 25% of the class or better.

Go to career services and ask for the OCI list from last year with grade/class ranking cutoffs if you don't believe me. You can do the same thing at the cheaper school.

If you stay at the median, you are probably going to have to network your tail off for a job. Many of your classmates in a similar position or worse probably won't get jobs until after they pass the bar.

Meet with your profs to go over exams, figure out what went wrong, and try to do better this semester regardless of what you end up doing.

Lastly, I don't think you should stick it out just because you like the school if money is an issue. If your grades don't improve, you might be better off going to the cheaper school if they will take you.

Good Luck.

I wouldn't make any assumptions about how well you'll do in law school, especially while working full-time, on the basis of your LSAT score.

What is your LSAT score and LSAC gpa?

If your numbers are solid, you should be able to get into a better school. If I were you, I would stick with the engineering career and work on relocating your job to an area where you have more options for part-time law school. Then I would reapply and try to get a scholarship, maybe even retaking the LSAT if you think you can score higher the second time.

LSAT scores are officially valid for 5 years, but some schools will not accept scores older than 3 years. Even if you don't want to retake, you have some time to explore other options and reapply later.

Good luck.

What is your average practice LSAT score? subtract 2-6 points from that to get a better idea of what your real LSAT score will be. I am assuming you took the practice tests under strict timed conditions as per the instructions in the booklet.

As you may know, California is a highly desirable place to go to school, so the most competitive schools there can pick and choose from a pool of *highly* qualified applicants to choose from.

Getting a full ride at a respectable California school will be tough, even some of the lower ranked ones have median LSAT scores in the low 160s. You would probably need to be way over the median and 75% in order to receive a full ride.

Another thing you should be aware of is that California has one of the toughest bar exams in the U.S. The first time passage rate is 63%. If you are interested in a specific school, take a look at their bar passage rate for the last couple of years.

If you are really serious about attending an American law school, I highly recommend you look beyond California. There are many places in the U.S. that will be fine places to live, have great law schools, and will be less competitive to get into and receive merit aid money at.

You may or may not get some preference for being an international student.

check out these websites:

http://officialguide.lsac.org/docs/cgi-bin/home.asp

http://www.lawschoolnumbers.com

http://www.chiashu.com

I have some questions for current JM students. Please send me a personal message if you have time to answer some questions.

Thanks.