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LSAT Etc
susan
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'K, couple quick questions for Forum-Goers in the legal field:
-Is one month enough time to study for the LSAT? Specifically, if I were to sign up for the December 5th LSAT and start studying for it now, how screwed would I be?
-On the subject of screwed: My Undergrad GPA was 3.69 Cumulative with a degree in Law, Societies and Justice, though I'll be the first to admit how generously padded that was by my minor in Modern Dance. My post-college life has been three solid years of frustration, though I have some interesting resume segments, including acting as a Legislative race's Campaign Manager (we lost), interning on a Congressional Race, (we lost), volunteering for a local Senate Race (we lost), and running for City Council personally (I'm going to lose in 5 days). I've also been on the board for several Relay for Life events and have what I'd consider above-average writing skills. I went to the University of Washington, and would like to study at UW Law as well, though I'll be open to wherever takes me. Thoughts on chances of admittance?
-Financing Law School... *cough*. I'm a single 25-year-old male, currently laid off. I'm very strongly considering joining the Army Reserves, both to take advantage of the GI Bill and because my father, both grandfathers, etc have all served. Any experience on how the GI Bill gets along with Law School?
-Is one month enough time to study for the LSAT? Specifically, if I were to sign up for the December 5th LSAT and start studying for it now, how screwed would I be?
-On the subject of screwed: My Undergrad GPA was 3.69 Cumulative with a degree in Law, Societies and Justice, though I'll be the first to admit how generously padded that was by my minor in Modern Dance. My post-college life has been three solid years of frustration, though I have some interesting resume segments, including acting as a Legislative race's Campaign Manager (we lost), interning on a Congressional Race, (we lost), volunteering for a local Senate Race (we lost), and running for City Council personally (I'm going to lose in 5 days). I've also been on the board for several Relay for Life events and have what I'd consider above-average writing skills. I went to the University of Washington, and would like to study at UW Law as well, though I'll be open to wherever takes me. Thoughts on chances of admittance?
-Financing Law School... *cough*. I'm a single 25-year-old male, currently laid off. I'm very strongly considering joining the Army Reserves, both to take advantage of the GI Bill and because my father, both grandfathers, etc have all served. Any experience on how the GI Bill gets along with Law School?
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2011 PAX Warmachine/Hordes Champion
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Well, I didn't "study" so much for the LSAT. In any case, studying is really the wrong term--I call it practicing. There is literally no knowledge required for the LSAT, it's all logic and reading comprehension. Take a practice test cold, and see how you do. Unless you totally bomb you should be fine.
In order to qualify for 100% of the G.I. Bill and the Yellow Ribbon Program you first have to serve on active duty for three years, so take that for what it's worth. Otherwise just save as much money as you can and then pay for it with loans. Check out the various loan forgiveness programs that are out there, including the federal service one. Even if you pay for law school 100% with loans you'll likely not have a problem paying them off.
The worst that will happen is you can shell out the money to write it again in February (and I don't know about the U.S., but February was still good to be considered for admissions for the next fall - but you might want to check that).
If you're a good test-taker, you should be able to make December 5th, no problem. Just practice the shit out of it.
Actually, isn't it up to the school how they treat multiple tests? When I took it back in 2005 LSAC would report all scores to schools, and the admissions office of the school decided how they treated multiple test scores (conventional wisdom was that it didn't look great to have something like 5 scores being reported, showing little to no improvement).
Try to do at least five full exams before you go in for the real thing, and take them as if you were sitting the real test--timed, no scratch paper, watch on the desk in front of you.
The practice of law is certainly no guarantee of money, nor in today's job market the promise of a job or successful career.
In regards to the averaging, it depends upon the school. Most schools are, in fact, taking the highest score.
Go to the forums here. it is a wealth of information about law school admissions.
I am also a law school hopeful and I have conducted quite a bit of research about law school admissions and the LSATS. The most important thing to realize about law school admissions is that it is heavily numbers focused. 90% of your application is your GPA and your LSAT.
Your GPA is pretty good, just make sure that when you report it to LSAC it stays that way. LSAC takes every college class you have ever taken and uses it to calculate your GPA. Any community college classes you make have taken, or retakes you have on your transcript will all be counted towards your LSAC GPA which may lower it. I don't know if this applies to you but it never hurts to check with LSAC.
With that out of the way the good news is that your major/minor don't really matter too much. Your minor in underwater basketweaving/modern dance doesn't really stand against you so long as you got good grades.
The LSAT is very important you want to get the highest score possible to guarantee the best acceptances/scholarship you can get. Doing amazingly well is the best way to lower the cost of law school. Make sure you take a practice test under real testing conditions and score yourself. If you score lower than a 165 I would seriously reconsider taking the december test. A february or june test date would give you a lot of time to prepare and smooth over any weaknesses.
With a 3.69 cumulative GPA you could get into some great schools with the right LSAC. Go to this website http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com to get a better understanding of what scores you need to get into which schools.
I only offer marginally useful advice, but anyways....back when I was debating between a PhD and JD and practiced for the LSAT I found the logic games section disproportionately more "practice-able" than the other sections; that is, it's easier to learn how to improve that score relative to the other sections. Since time's an issue, that might be something to consider. Oh, and if they still do it get actual old exams (they usually collect them in several books); avoid Kaplan or Princeton Review books.
I'm assuming UW is the flagship public law school in the state? In that case keep in mind that applications are probably up this year due to the economy, so everyone's advice about the score being important is even more of an issue. Same thing happened with some friends around 2001-2002 when applying for law school. There may or may not be less financial aid available given that UW's budget got hacked to shreds this past year.
I took a course on the LSAT, and while it was expensive ($800ish for 2 weekends) I think it helped calm my nerves about it and forced me to prepare. Too often I was procrastinating on preparation but when I spent that much money and was sat in a room and told to do questions I did them.
Overall I'm not sure how much it really helped me, but I did reasonably as far as I'm concerned. Practice is the key, if you buy a book buy one that uses real LSAT questions, so you can start to learn the patterns. Other than that buy a bunch of the old LSATs (they sell them for $10 each on the LSAC website, or in books of 10.)
Tip: Get two timers, one to go off in 30 mins, one to go off in 35. That way you have your 5 minute warning to rush if you're near the end. The idea is to simulate the real conditions as best as you can.
Part of my loans come due in November (Stafford) and I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. We are all $150,000+ in debt, with no job and no prospects. One of my friends (the lucky one) recently got a temporary contract gig to do doc review. This is pretty much the most boring job in the world, reading through thousands of pages of documents to determine relevance to litigation. She is considered the lucky one because she may get a few months of actual employment and income despite having a job that would in a normal economy hurt your job prospects on a resume.
As for the GI bill, a friend of mine from school is an Air Force vet, and from what he told me it doesn't pay for much. He said it helped him and his wife pay the bills around the house while he was in school, but wouldn't really cover tuition.
Noted and understood. I'm meeting with the Army Recruiter Nov 4th (whereupon they'll decide if I even can join, considering my medical history (f*** cancer)) and the UW Admittance and Financial Office November 5th (which will be good info no matter where I land). I'll figure out a way to pay for this and (hopefully) do some good at the same time.
Oh I have no illusions about this; I was born poor, I'll probably die poor. It'll just be nice to be able to write my own contracts and inevitably provide my own council when I get arrested.
I'm not sure you realize how much I'm going to be playing with this thing now. Also, now, definitive proof: UW>Seattle U>Gonzaga. Suck it, Spokane!
If you're in Seattle, you probably didn't 8-) . I won't say which city I'm running in, as an air of Internet anonymity lets me curse more and write sexist jokes, but honestly you could probably figure it out if you're in the region.
Yep! Did you?
2011 PAX Warmachine/Hordes Champion
Keep in mind you won't get your results until about 3 weeks later (it says the exact date online) and that at the end of an LSAT you usually don't have much idea how well you did except on the logic games section. As you do practice tests you will see that you can feel horrible about one and it turn out well or feel great about one and it turn out poorly.
This statement gets the trifecta for truthiness.
I started law school in August this year. I've never been more stressed out and tired in my life. Law school is not undergrad; you have to do your reading every night. You have to be prepared for class. You have to know your shit because you only get one test in each class to prove yourself. I coasted through undergrad, got good grades, and bullshitted through papers because that's what undergrad is about. Law school is an entirely different beast and you're going to be in for a shock if you think otherwise.
I had a huge soapbox rant thing typed out but I thought it sounded too pessimistic and accusatory. Instead, I'm just going to say that learning to be an attorney isn't about getting $Texas-sized paychecks. Yes, that used to be a nice benefit of being an attorney, but that shouldn't be your only reason for wanting to be a lawyer. Your priority needs to be finding truth and making sure people get the justice they deserve. You should really think long and hard about if you can be committed to those two ideals - if you aren't, maybe law school isn't for you.
Edit:
I prepared for a month for the LSAT and I didn't do all that great on the test. I wish I had given it at least 3 months of preparation; of course, I'm notoriously bad at "fill in the bubble" tests, so I'm not sure if more preparation time would have helped.
I would really caution against you going to law school if you're going to have any appreciable amount of debt from it, because there are no jobs to be had. Firms aren't hiring summers and are engaging in mass layoffs. This is flooding the market with overqualified midlevel associates hungry for anything - political, nonprofit, another firm, whatever. They're not hiring summer associates, so the typical gunners-with-high grades are getting pushed into other opportunities - turning every summer job with hiring potential for federal or state government into a brutal contest. We have about 50-100 too many law schools in the country. The cumulative effect is that it will be extraordinarily difficult to get a job, much less one you like.
The ABA more or less green-lit outsourcing, so by the time the economy has picked up, many entry-level lawyer tasks will be performed by the indians. So it'll be yet another sector with a jobless recovery.
If you care about politics, I would stick with that. You can do more social good and have a job with more responsibility and autonomy. You don't need a law degree to do politics in the slightest.
I practiced for the LSATs for about three months prior to the test, taking at least one full practice test a week until the real thing. I also scored in the top 1% and leveraged that spectacular score into 2 free years of law school, so take that as you will. At the minimum, take a full practice test (the reading comprehension AND the logic questions AND the essay portion) and concentrate on where you weak.
You GPA isn't bad, and you have a plethora of interesting activities on your resume, so I wouldn't be too worried.
I don't know about how the GI Bill works with Law Schools, but to let you in on a little secret...
Unless you're not concerned about be deployed, joining the reserves might not be a good idea.
As for being committed to Law School, the previous posts are dead-on in saying you need to have your head screwed on tight before law school or you'll be flailing by the time finals roll around. As Evil_Reaver pointed out, you need to do the required reading and then some, or else you fall behind fast. additionally, Law Schools are a pressure-cooker environment, complete with panic-stricken students, cutthroat competition and the best/worse grade grubbers you can find. Think wisely before venturing in.