I just majored in English and have yet to decide what do with my degree...

do you have any tips? what were your gpa and lsat?

I had a 3.9/174. My tips would be to read top-law-schools.com forums and find a study plan for the LSAT that works for you. I personally got the PowerScore books for logical reasoning and games, and did a bunch of practice tests I printed off from a torrent. It's by and large a learnable test (though I don't buy that it's as learnable for everybody as TLS claims).

GPA isn't nearly as important as LSAT for most schools. YS do have pretty strict hard GPA cutoffs for non-underrepresented minorities, but I've seen a few people get into H with like a 176/3.6.

I would also advise anybody to take a scholarship any day over paying full price for comparable schools. I see tons of people turn down full-ride offers at Columbia, NYU, Chicago to pay sticker at a HYS. To me, that's nonsense unless you have some incredibly specific goals (say, academia from Y).

Thanks for taking the time to write that up, I really appreciate it.

No problem. Good luck if you decide to do it! Being a (corporate) lawyer's actually kind of boring and shitty, but it does pay well, and the degree has a low opportunity cost for English grads like me who don't have much else going for them. I'd also check out lawschooltransparency.com/ for job outcomes from different schools.

Thanks, yeah, I've decided. I'm a philosophy major and did really well on a cold practice LSAT, and I'm generally unhappy anyway, so I figure I might as well.

Is it possible to get accepted to a law school despite having a degree in CS?

Of course. In fact, it's preferable to have a background in something like CS. You're more employable because you can sit for the patent bar (to do this you need a certain number of hard science courses). Lots of my classmates had degrees in some form of hard sciences and went on to do intellectual property work in some capacity or another.

What's the prestige like having an Ivy degree? How do people usually react?

Also, I am Asian-American. How fucked am I? Currently a junior with a 4.0 at the honors college of my state uni.

I try to avoid the topic as much as possible when I'm talking to people. Reactions depend on the person's background. Most everybody I know at this point have degrees from similar places, and it becomes hard to impress anybody. If it somehow happens to come up in conversation with someone else, they're usually impressed and ask me a few questions about my school and experience.

Like I said earlier, LSAT is the best predictor of admissions. Keep your GPA up, study hard for the LSAT, and you'll have plenty of options. I know that HYP undergrads have semi-hard cutoffs for Asian admits (~20% if I remember correctly). I don't know if law schools do the same thing. They're required to report all their data to the ABA in the form of a 509 report. You can look those reports up over the course of a few years and make your own deductions.

What if my goal is to get into an Ivy for grad school? Just looking for the easiest way to get into one.

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Uh, any Ivy? Any grad school? If you have a 4.0, I'm sure that law school is the easiest way to go. You could also get an MBA, which is less of a pain in the ass, but typically most people work for a few years before going for that.

You should probably narrow down your options and figure out what you're actually interested in doing. Keep in mind that there's a pretty big difference between, say, Yale and UPenn, both in prestige (which seems to be what you're looking for) and difficulty of admission.

Any grad school, any Ivy. I was dealing with gender identity issues and my grades suffered in high school. Now that I pass as a woman, my mental health is infinitely better and I have been doing well academically. That being said, I have no extra curriculars.

If you have a decent undergrad GPA (talkin' like a 3.7 here), Cornell would be your best shot if you want a law school. I don't know enough about other grad programs to be of much help. I think you should consider your "any grad school, any Ivy" plan. You don't want to incur a mountain of debt to have a degree in something you hate.

Oh, my parents are willing to pay for everything, so I don't have to worry about debt. What sort of extra curriculars did you do during undergrad? I'm aiming for HY, UPenn, and Columbia.

And is it really true that GPA is more important than your major?

For law, GPA is absolutely more important than your major. Nobody cares about your major at all in the process. I did literally 0 extracurriculars in undergrad. I did, however, run and own a (slightly off-kilter) store with a partner for like 5 years while I finished my undergrad. This was nothing more than a good conversation topic, because, like majors, law school admissions committees for the most part don't care about extracurriculars unless you did something absolutely amazing. It's 90% GPA and LSAT.

You should still consider considering your goals here even if your parents are paying for it, because that's a minimum of 3 years in the best part of your life that you'll never get back.

Thank you so much for the reply. My older sister went to a HYP uni for undergrad, so I feel like a failure for going to a state uni.

Of course. Best of luck to you! Like I wrote earlier, I also went to a state school for undergrad. I could've gone to a CCN and saved some cash (like I advise people to do), but I got lured in by warm inner glow HYS prestige gives me. So I get that.