Law school admissions fears?

Question

I'm a junior in college, working towards my bachelor's in Business Administration - Corporate Communication. My undergrad GPA is 3.85, and I haven't taken the LSAT but plan to in the next year and possibly score in the 140-150 range (maybe higher). I've also taken a diverse and challenging range of undergrad courses. However, I'm concerned about admission to law school due to the fact that I have no extracurricular activites due to the fact that I've worked full-time throughout my college career, paying my own tuition and expenses. Do extracurricular activities really factor in that much into the admissions process?

Also, I'm concerned about the course load in law school. Obviously, the work is rigorous - but I've had undergrad law courses and passed with A's. Should I expect the same results (with considerably more effort, of course) in a law school class?

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Law school is very much a numbers game. Most schools will calculate an index based on your GPA and LSAT (with LSAT getting more weight). Those with high indexes will be admitted unless something glaring is wrong; those with numbers too low will usually be rejected unless there is something spectacularly right. Things such as extracurriculars and course selection will typically only come into play for those who have borderline numbers, and even then will be looked at along with letters of recommendation, essays. In short, it is unlikely to play a significant role in admissions decisions.

To be blunt, I would be far more concerned about your prospective LSAT score. If your guesses are correct, you will have a lot of difficulty getting into any good law schools. You may end up at a low-ranked school which drops many students each year and has poor employment prospects. If you are going that route, adjust your expectations about how well getting a law degree will serve your needs.

As to academic rigoresness, that very much depends where you go. At the best law schools, you will have a very hard time getting As, but if you spend a lot of time studying you should be able to get Bs, B+s, and perhaps even A-s. On the other hand, you have to turn in an unrelated Haiku to get a C, and Fs are unheard of. This is not to say that the workload isn't great, but how much work you need to actually put in will depend on just how much you want to excel; many do minimum work and skate by with low Bs.

It is a very different picture at lower-ranked schools where perhaps 1/3 of the class will fail out each year. You will have to constantly do every drop of work just to stay alive, and might have to adjust to getting Cs quite often. If you get a 150, this is your likely future.

Answer 2

Extracurricular activities are not looked at in law school admissions in the same way as they were when you applied to college. It might help you if you had done something which exposed you to an area in which the need for a good legal system was apparent, but no one will care how athletic you were, or how much time you spent singing in the choir. I can't imagine how you could anticipate a certain score on the LSAT, unless you had taken it before. That just isn't very realistic.

On your other question, unfortunately there is usually absolutely no correlation between undergraduate "law" courses and law school classes, so no, you should not expect any similarity, either in format or in results. Law school is just a whole lot more work. Furthermore, at least at my law school, all grading was done on a real curve, so you had to actually do better than others in your classes, no matter how well they may have done, in order to get a high grade. Everyone in law school was at or near the top of their classes in college, and many were very aggressively competitive (the top 10% of people the first year got scholarships the second, so anyone who wasn't independently wealthy fought like crazy to beat everyone else out).

I don't mean to be negative, because overall, I really enjoyed law school, but don't assume that your undergraduate experience will prepare you for what is to come.

Answer 3

I would not worry about the lack of extracurricular activities on your law school application--the fact that you supported yourself and worked your way through college will make up for that on your college application.

Law School is rigorous--the algorithm is about 200 per pages per day (of course it varies but that's about the load most of the time). You generally have study groups for each class, as there is too much information for one person to outline and study on one's own. It is important to get into the right study groups with other hard workers! The first year are a lot of classes you might rarely use again, depending on what field you go into. Second and third years start to be more interesting.

If you have good study skills, can read and comprehend a lot of information, and have good logic ability, you will probably be successful in law school. Good luck!

Answer 4

Just do stress out in interviews that you were so absorbed in polishing your grades, and that is where your focus and main goal is and be open to the fact of activities if be given the chance due to hectic schedule.... goodluck! You werent like slacking off!!!