Pursuing a U of C education often means taking on a mind-boggling reading load, rising to lofty writing standards, and actively advocating complex ideas in class discussion. Although this academic rigor serves us well in many ways, it can be a liability when students apply to law school. But by introducing preparatory measures with precedents at the U of C and peer institutions, the College can substantially improve its students’ odds of getting accepted into top law schools.
First, the College could collaborate with the Law School to create a program analogous to the Business School’s Booth Scholars program, which enables fourth-years to apply for admission to the M.B.A. program. The core ideas of that initiative could also be applied to pre-law students. The University of Michigan and Georgetown already have scholar programs which allow their students to apply to their law schools on the basis of undergraduate performance alone, without taking the LSAT. Instituting a similar program at Chicago would improve the options available to undergraduates who have excelled here, but might not fare as well on standardized tests.
Second, a better pre-law program would surely include an LSAT prep course similar to the MCAT course currently offered by the Biological Sciences department. Even if the course were only offered on a pass/fail basis, it would save pre-law students time and money. Prep courses offered by companies can cost more than $1000 and require multiple trips downtown each week. The opportunity to take a University-run course would make getting ready for the highly-important LSAT much easier for Chicago students.
Lastly, because of the way students’ GPAs are recalculated when applying to law school, the College should modify its grading scale to include A-pluses. All law school applicants are required to submit their materials to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), an organization that compiles and submits their applications wherever they want to apply. Before sending out students’ applications, the LSAC recalculates their GPAs on a standardized scale which weights each A-plus as a 4.33. As a result, students from schools where A-pluses are available have an advantage when applying to top law schools, which place such an overwhelming emphasis on GPAs that few hundredths of a point can make the difference between an acceptance and the wait list. The University could adopt a policy similar to Princeton’s, which gives A-pluses but weights them the very same as A’s in university-calculated GPAs. This would be a minor change to Chicago’s grading policy, but it would allow students who performed exceptionally in a few courses to benefit when applying to law school.
Whatever the LSAT and GPA numbers that show up on their applications, graduates of the College are eminently prepared to succeed when they move on to law school. By creating a scholars program, providing an LSAT prep course, and allowing A-pluses, the College could more fully ensure that law school admissions committees don’t overlook that.
— The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Viewpoints Editors.
Hmm is someone on the maroon editorial staff applying to law school? Suck it up. The UofC is supposed to be hard.
Clearly, the editors know nothing about the law school admissions process. All law schools really care about is the LSAT. Get a 180 and even a 3.3 won’t stop you from getting into Harvard. To the extent GPA counts, LSAC’s recalculations also include adjustments depending on the undergraduate school you attended. And even if LSAC doesn’t do the readjusting, law school admissions committees do, because they understand that not all undergraduate institutions are equal.
Also, if you’re unwilling or financially unable to afford a $1,000 course, how are you going to pay for (and later pay off) the 6-figure debt you’re likely to accrue from law school?
This is all beside the point because anyone applying to law schools these days is an idiot. The job market for private sector firm employment has shrunk significantly and the hiring market is saturated with resumes of unemployed recent graduates and experienced attorneys who were recently laid off. The old logic was that as long as you get into a T14 (top 14 law schools according to USNews) you were “safe” in terms of nearly guaranteed employment upon graduation. These days, not even T3 is safe.
^This comment is comically misinformed, and the diatribe about the woes of the legal market is–at best–irrelevant. The point of the article is that our school should put our students on level ground when applying to law school, not arguing that everyone should go to law school.
Additionally…
“Law school admissions committees [readjust GPA's depending on the undergraduate school of attendance].”
This is simply not true. Five minutes of research will reconfirm this. Law Schools submit the GPAs of incoming classes to US News, which determines a ranking based, in part, on the numbers of incoming students. Schools want higher rankings, so they accept students w/better numbers. They don’t get extra points for bringing in a U of C kid, so for all intents and purposes U of C= UIC.
“a 180 and even a 3.3 won’t stop you from getting into Harvard”
Actually, it will. The top four scores (outside of being nearly impossible to get), 177-180, are functionally identical, all within the test’s 99.8%-99.9% range. That is, getting a score of 177 is essentially the exact same as getting a 180. Below, I’ve included the cycles of 4 students with 177′s with GPA’s of 3.52-3.64. None of them got in. In fact, the lowest GPA a 177 had and still got in was a 3.71. So, clearly, the LSAT is not “all law schools really care about”.
lawschoolnumbers.com/amidea/jd
lawschoolnumbers.com/jmschmitten/jd
lawschoolnumbers.com/wjnahill/jd
lawschoolnumbers.com/stansbury/jd
So, it looks like you’re pretty much wrong on every point you made. But, I guess you’re the expert, “Alum Law Student”.
I strongly suggest one or two years of work between college and law school, especially work at a law firm as a legal assistant.