Admitted to Appalachian but I want to go to Uconn

[livinglegend]

http://www.lmu.edu/about/services/controller/osfs/studentaccounts/fees/2012_2013_Academic_Year/graduate.htm?
MBA & Accounting tuition

MBA $1,184 per unit

J.D. Per credit hour    $1,560.00 http://www.lmu.edu/about/services/controller/osfs/studentaccounts/fees/2012_2013_Academic_Year/Law_School_Tuition_2012_2013.htm?

J.D. is slightly more, but an MBA is not cheap by any means this is the same school mind. A few thousand more for a law license, but you have a specialty opposed to an MBA which anyone can practice not anyone can practice law. It is cheaper to get an MBA yes, but not my much and as my article provides there are plenty of criticisms regarding an MBA.

I am only googling this in between breaks so I can't find the tuition for accounting at LMU, but I am it is a $1,000+ a credit just as a law degree or MBA is. Yea MBA is only two years and people can work while obtaining them, but people can go to law school part time work or work full time years 2 & 3 there is nothing stopping anyone from doing that. 

As for one job paying 28,000 what does that prove? I am sure there are plenty of job postings for licensed lawyers offering a 100,000+ and others that are seeking licensed lawyers to work as unpaid law clerks. Some job posting doesn't prove anything there are crappy and awesome jobs in every industry and one craigslist posting in some random location is not indicative of an entire industry . 

Here is SF Craigslist for lawyers http://sfbay.craigslist.org/lgl/ accountants http://sfbay.craigslist.org/acc/ and business http://sfbay.craigslist.org/bus/ I guarantee you in the three days of postings in these jobs you will find awesome ones, crappy ones, and ok ones. You could do this nationwide and there will be unpaid jobs, low salary jobs, high salary jobs, etc.

Technically an MBA is a lower risk financially it is slightly less money and a two year commitment, but the market for MBA"s is certainly not any better than a lawyer. You are still out thousands of dollars and two years of your life and there is no guarantee. However, if OP wants to be a businessman he should get an MBA if he wants to be a lawyer get a J.D. There is only one way to be a lawyer and that is going to law school.

OP's LSAT is lower than most people in law school, but what does that mean? In court I have never brought up my LSAT score and when I am representing clients in front of a judge, jury, etc the last thing anybody cares about is what I scored on some standardized admissions test years ago it simply doesn't matter. I passed the bar I am a lawyer and whether I or any other licensed lawyer succeeds is up to us the LSAT gets you in the door and after day 1 of law school it means jack. In my school there was one guy who talked about how great of an LSAT score he got and that is all he talked about and he failed out. I was below the median at my school, but I finished in the top 10% of my class it means very little other than getting you in the door.

That is my two cents and you are entitled to yours I encourage anyone that really wants to be a lawyer to go to law school. If OP wants that he should attend Appalachian, but as I think both you and I agree Appalachian is not going to result in having employers knocking down your door, but neither is any other school except maybe Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. However, Harvard, Yale, Stanford also have MBA, Accounting, and other schools and the same logic applies there.

Again I am not trying to paint a rosy picture of law school it is hard, expensive, and time consuming. The system could be changed in some ways and I believe there is a push to take the bar in your 2L and then have a license for 3L to work on developing practical skills, which I am all for. Reforms can be made, but like all systems I am aware of it is far from perfect and many of your points are valid. However, just because law school is not a perfect system does not mean someone should avoid it, because whatever other profession they are seeking to enter into will have it's own problems.

[jack24]

Basically nobody knows whether they want to be a lawyer or not.   It's a huge gamble.

And you are talking about things you apparently know nothing about.  I don't mean to be rude, but an MBA is usually only 60 credits, and about half of those are undergrad level business courses.  For a business graduate like me, an MBA would only be 30 credits at most institutions.   There are also a lot of state schools that offer extremely cheap options.   I know one MBA program at a well respected state school that is only $12,000 if you have a business degree going in.  If you don't, you can take the prerequisites in their undergrad program for $4500 more.   So that means a communications major could have an MBA for $16,500 in total tuition.   The MBA arena is flooded, and I don't think it's a great path for most people, but it is a much lower risk than law school.   This isn't opinion, it's clear fact.   90 credits of law school is going to cost a ton more than 30-60 credits of an MBA.  And I know plenty of people who finish an MBA in two years while working full time at a career-type job.   Law school doesn't provide that. 

So let's recap:  An MBA from a good state school that basically anyone can get in to is $16,500 for tuition, and you can work full time while you do it.   

A JD from Appalachian costs $93,000 in tuition (minus scholarships) plus you can only work 20 hours a week, max, unless you lie.  IF you are really lucky, you can make some good money during the summer.


Now, where we get into opinion is when we contrast the upside to the equation.   We know the costs of the two programs, at least in this example, but what is the upside?  That's really hard to tell.  We don't know where the OP will end up.  His LSAT is below the median, but that's not always indicative of where he will end up.  Still though, everyone thinks they will be in the top third, and 66.7% are wrong.

Appalachian's employment data is found here: http://www.asl.edu/Documents/Career%20Services/ABAEmployment2012.pdf

Of the 91 graduates in 2011, only 34 work in a position where "bar passage is required."  Another 9 work in a "JD advantage position".  Of those 43, only 35 are in Full-time long term positions.  So that leaves 48/91  (52%)  who are either unreported or whose law degree didn't make any positive contribution to their career at the time of reporting and another 8 who are either in short term or part time positions.

Let's examine the data a little further. 26 of the 34 Bar passage required people work for firms with 2-10 attorneys, 1 works for a firm with 11-25, and 1 works for a firm with 51-100.     Those numbers are BRUTAL.  They don't publish their median salaries (scary) but with a distribution like that, the median has got to be below $55,000, and probably way below, and that's not even factoring in the unemployed people.     So the OP, who is far below the median in terms of LSAT score, wants to invest over 100,000 in debt into a career where students at the school have a 48% chance of getting a benefit and at least a 50% chance if they do get a job, they will make less than $55,000.     In summary, OP is a below median LSAT performer, and she wants to go to a school where graduates have an 18% chance to make over $55,000 in a bar-passage required job.

Are you really trying to say that's less risky than an MBA?

Sure, if it's her passion, she should go to law school.  But unless her passion is in family law or personal injury, there's no guarantee her job will be anything near what her passion is.

[jack24]

An interesting table.
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Law-School-Gulag-Table.jpg

[mycousinvinny13]

Just to settle the score:

I am going to law school, like I have said before, I understand my numbers are low but that is not going to stop me from attending an aba law school.

Yea I was admitted to Appalachian as well as New England Law School, New York Law School, and Touro. I was also wait listed at Hofstra (where I attend undergrad) as well as pace law school.

As the OP, I want to make it clear that I am attending law school, I understand the risks involved and beat myself everyday for a low gpa, however, i wrote an addendum explaining personal situations that prevented me from excelling. I just want to make it clear I was not making an excuse or complaining, just stating facts.

As far as the comparison about MBA school, I intern at a law office in NY and work directly under a paralegal who attended law school but realized it was not for him so now he is attending grad school. I have written close to five of his papers and he received A's on all of them. I obviously was extra careful when writing his assignments since, at the time he was writing my letter of recommendation but it just proves that MBA is not as hard as law school and I believe it to be a joke. Again I want to practice law so Jack24 please stop posting about irrelevant facts involving MBA programs.

Like I said previously I created this thread to see if anyone else was in my similar situation and worked hard enough to transfer to a better law school, because at the end of the day it only matters where you get your JD degree and if I have to attend a TTTT or TTT with the hopes of transferring than that's exactly what I am going to do.

Thank you all for your input. I will update this thread when I hear from more schools in my cycle.

[jack24]

Just to settle the score:

I am going to law school, like I have said before, I understand my numbers are low but that is not going to stop me from attending an aba law school.

Yea I was admitted to Appalachian as well as New England Law School, New York Law School, and Touro. I was also wait listed at Hofstra (where I attend undergrad) as well as pace law school.

As the OP, I want to make it clear that I am attending law school, I understand the risks involved and beat myself everyday for a low gpa, however, i wrote an addendum explaining personal situations that prevented me from excelling. I just want to make it clear I was not making an excuse or complaining, just stating facts.

As far as the comparison about MBA school, I intern at a law office in NY and work directly under a paralegal who attended law school but realized it was not for him so now he is attending grad school. I have written close to five of his papers and he received A's on all of them. I obviously was extra careful when writing his assignments since, at the time he was writing my letter of recommendation but it just proves that MBA is not as hard as law school and I believe it to be a joke. Again I want to practice law so Jack24 please stop posting about irrelevant facts involving MBA programs.

Like I said previously I created this thread to see if anyone else was in my similar situation and worked hard enough to transfer to a better law school, because at the end of the day it only matters where you get your JD degree and if I have to attend a TTTT or TTT with the hopes of transferring than that's exactly what I am going to do.

Thank you all for your input. I will update this thread when I hear from more schools in my cycle.

Okay, so you don't like side discussions on your threads.  Noted.
I've said in all of my comments that you can do whatever you want.  My comments are for those who are still undecided.   My comments about MBAs were intended to explain how an MBA is a poor comparison to law school because the risk of law school is substantially more than an MBA.  Law School defender Livinglegend seems to think that because it's rough all over, going to law school is no more risky than other popular endeavors.  I think that is wrong, and I hope others who read the thread will find the information on their own.

As for you, good luck.   When I applied for law school in 2007, I really wanted to get into a top 50 school in my region.  I was rejected, and I attended a T2 a few states away.   My stats (3.3/160) were slightly under the median at both schools.   After getting in the top 25% I found a decent clerkship and made law review, so I struggled with my decision over whether to transfer to the school in my home region.  After several conversations with their admissions committee, I decided the transfer was unlikely.  That particular school received over 100 transfer applications per year and only reserved 4-6 spots.  They told me they looked closely at my LSAT and UGPA in addition to my Law School rank.   My understanding from talking to several admissions counselors is that transferring is a bit of a crap shoot, so it's generally unwise to go to a particular law school on the condition that you will transfer.   If transferring would just be a benefit, but you'd be happy to graduate from the school you go for 1L, then fine.   My irrelevant comments may not be relevant to you, but I believe anyone with your numbers is simply rolling the dice. 

The data shows that LSAT scores correlate fairly well to 1L grades, so I went to law school knowing that the average student at my school was probably smarter than me and/or worked harder than me, so I knew I needed to strategize.    I made smart friends and got their great outlines, I found out what teachers were looking for on their exams, and I did quite well (but not THAT well). 

I just don't think it's ever a sure thing.  Maybe the smartest of the smart can dominate every class (A guy got a 4.0 my 1L year), but there is some luck involved for most people.   I mean, look at Appalachian.  They have a forced 2.5 curve and anybody lower than 2.0 after their first semester is dismissed.  That's BRUTAL.  With such a narrow gap between the attrition threshhold and the median, it's like that the vast majority of 1Ls (probably 75%) are within a couple tenths of each other.   At my school, 81% were within .2 of the median.  In other words, 81% of students had between a 2.8 and a 3.2.    With 4 classes, one grade could be the difference betwen the bottom third and the top third, easy.   If you look at score distributions for law school classes, there are usually a lot of people clumped together, so a 20-30 points on a 500 point exam could be the difference between the top third and the bottom third.     It's crazy, but one out of every two students is in the bottom half of the class, and transferring out of the bottom half of Appalachian is a tough road to hoe.

[livinglegend]

MycousinVinny one thing to understand is that Jack, myself, and Anti are three anonymous internet posters on the internet who you have never met and know nothing about you.  Furthermore, I know I have never set foot on the Appalachian Law school Campus or even the State of Virginia and I imagine the same is true for Jack and Anti. Feel free to listen to us, but review Michael Scott's statement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZBg7qLzU8 makes me laugh every time, but it is so true we could say anything we want without repercussion. When making a life altering decision such as whether to attend law school and move to a small town in Virginia and pay likely 100,000 you should contact people with direct experience from the school. Here is a list of lawyers from Appalachian http://www.superlawyers.com/lawschool/Appalachian-School-of-Law/fad60298-84c4-102c-aca4-000e0c6dcf76.html?l_uuid=e29bdaf9-2fbc-4369-b4b1-65e53af754d0 e-mail them see what they say, because they know far more than anyone posting anonymously on the internet who has not set foot on the campus.


With that said I think Jack's make some great points above. You can bust your ass and be the smartest guy in the class, but your computer could crash during exams, your Mom could get cancer the week before finals, etc, etc. Even without those extreme and unlikely scenarios you need to be in the top 10-20% to transfer and there is an 80% chance that won't happen. I guarantee you everyone at Appalachian will have a "reason' for their LSAT score or GPA and once they are in law school they will capitalize and be in the top 10%, but 100% of people think that. 90% will be wrong and even if you overcome the 90% odds of being in the top 10% many schools may have a policy like the one Jack encountered, some may only care about law school GPA, the list goes on and on, but I would be a substantial amount of money that if you attend Appalachian you will not transfer.

Now with that said does that mean you cannot have a career as a lawyer? No plenty of people succeed from every ABA law school, but if you attend Appalachian some doors will be closed. You are not going to be hired as a Supreme Court Law Clerk or by Cravath. You can find a job as a City Attorney, in Family Law, as D.A., personal injury, maybe some business formation etc, but some doors will be closed. I am assuming you know that, but perhaps you don't I do remember at my law school numerous 1L's were baffled that the U.N. was not interviewing on campus for people draft treaties, firms that pay 160,000+ to first year associaties were not kicking the door for career services down, etc.

If you attend Applachian you will likely graduate in the middle of the class. I imagine at the end of your first year you will work for as an intern for some government office, perhaps extern for a judge, or work for a small firm lawyer. In your first year these will likely be unpaid internships and then for your second year again you will probably intern somewhere during the school year, but since it is in Grundy, Virginia there might literally be nothing around so perhaps not. Your 2L Summer maybe you can make $15-20 an hour and that is if your lucky. Your 3L again I don't know the economic climate of Grundy, Virginia so perhaps no opportunities exist there during the school year. Then you will take the bar exam and there is probably a 40% chance you will fail first time around based on the school's numbers. There is a 60% chance you will pass and if you pass you will probably spend 2-3 months looking for a job maybe more maybe less and your first job out of law school will range between 40-60k. After a year or two of experience the numbers will move up to 60-70k assuming you succeed in your first few years. Then after a few years you may get a lot of clients, a reputation, etc and you may succeed or people may think your no good.

So there is no way to say how it will turn out I would say the assessment of the law school experience is accurate, but once your out in the real world assuming you pass the bar you can succeed as a lawyer from Appalachian, but there will be some doors will be closed to you, but many of these same doors will be closed if you transfer to the 83rd best school as well or Appalachian.

Conclusion:

In your above post you said you want to be a lawyer and that is good there is only one way to become one and that is by going to law school. It is a large time and financial commitment with no guarantee of success and coming from Appalachian will make success difficult, but it can still be done.  If you are ready for the challenge and truly want to be a lawyer then go to Appalachian, but if you think law school is your Golden Ticket to success it is far from it.

You know better than anyone else what you truly want and whether you attend law school is a life altering decision so contact people with direct experience from the school and remember take everything you read from anonymous internet posters with a major grain of salt. Whether you attend law school or not there will be obstacles, but if this is what you really want I encourage you to go for it. Good luck whatever you decide.

[mycousinvinny13]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZBg7qLzU8

Cannot stop laughing at Michael Scott.

Just toured the campus and definitely NOT attending. If anyone else has been admitted please read this:

Appalachain's School of Law community was inviting but the area is depressing. Even though they offered me a nice scholarship, the input from many bloggers on this thread, research on the school itself, and the actual visit has lead me to not attend.

Grundy looks like a place from a horror film. There is absolutely nothing to do around here and employers do not make the trip to Appalachian for OCI's. I also took into account the probability that if I am not able to transfer I know would not be happy here for an additional two years.

Grundy is not for me, withdrawing on Monday so hopefully my schoalrship pakcage goes to someone else who actually attends.

Thanks everyone for your input.

[mycousinvinny13]

IMPORTANT: There is no cell service in Grundy unless you have Verizon.

[livinglegend]

Glad to hear you actually visited the campus and made a decision based on real facts. More importantly glad you liked the Michael Scott Video. I imagine Grundy is a unique place to say the least and certainly not for everyone. From your prior posts I gather your from NY and going from there to Grundy would be a major change and if your not up for it do not attend law school there.

I hope that visit showed you the importance of location and how important you personally feel about the school is. Even if it were a top 50 school according to U.S. News I imagine with your personal preferences you would not want to live in a town that small without cell phone service. There are plenty of people out there who would love to study law in an isolated environment like that so hopefully someone who wants to attend Appalachian gets your scholarship money.

If you still want to attend law school I think you are much better off taking the LSAT and trying to get into a school that fits your situation better and not attending school in a town you perceived to be a horror flick hoping you end up in the top 10% of the class. Good luck whatever career path you pursue.