LSATs and associated babble

[raven]

Do I want to restore from saved draft, asks LJ. I say yes and get this:

"Linguistic peculiarity of the day: cups of coffee are hot. They radiate heat. Katee Sackhoff and Paul Gross are hot. They radiate hotness. Why is this?"

Er. I don't know either. I haven't been getting much sleep lately.

That's not, amazingly enough, what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the LSAT. And it's a very dull topic of conversation, forgive me, but it is five days away and talking about it is sort of becoming imperative.

Also, for the first time ever, I get to explain something for the benefit of the Brits on the flist and not the Americans, which may or may not be a harbinger of things to come. Anyway. The LSAT is the Law School Admissions Test, and it's designed to help American law schools decide whom they want to admit. As I have discovered over the last few months, law in the States is a post-graduate degree that requires a BA, but is all you need - i.e., none of the British stuff that follows an undergrad in law. You just take the bar exam.

And, well - American law school. Is this something I really want to do? I don't know right now. I find law interesting. I think I'd make a good lawyer. But I'm not ready for the real world yet; I want to be a student, I want to learn, for longer. And it's time for something different. I went to the same school for seven years, I've been in Oxford two years, and it will be three - I've always lived in England, I've always been surrounded by British culture. The thought of moving countries, moving continents, being a cog in a different system - it's a lovely thought, exciting and scary in equal proportions, and that's what I want.

There are disadvantages. One of them is, of course, that in three years from now I'd have to make a very serious decision - do I want to spend my life in Britain or America? (And it would be more important for me than most, because an American law degree entitles you to practise law in America.)

The other disadvantage is, of course, financial. It's a whole huge ginormous amount of money, and I wouldn't be entitled to any type of financial aid. But this is, actually, less of a problem than it could be. My parents can support me - and are, shockingly and reassuringly, keen to support me. (There's the culture I was born into rearing its pretty head.) And more than that, if I then go forth and get the sort of job that most people who graduate top American law schools tend to get, then I can pay them back, without difficulty and with interest, whether they want me to or not.

All in all, there are more pros than cons. And the thought of it - it makes me smile. And that's a pretty decent argument in favour of applying. Whether I decide to go on with this plan, I don't know for sure. But I'm applying.

But that was the question of is this something I want to do. Is this something I can do? And this here's the problem. One of the things I've been saying from the beginning is that with this amount of money, this many thousands of miles, is that I want to only apply to law schools that I really, really want to go to. And because I am the way I am - and probably always will be - this means that I'm applying to law schools that are exceedingly difficult to get into.

Basically, Harvard, Columbia and Yale. I'm not picking a "safe" school, I'm not making this easy. And here's the battle between my head and my ego. Can I do this? I honestly don't know. I don't have a lot of the indicators at my disposal - I don't have a university transcript, god bless Oxford, I don't have a GPA (er - still not sure what a GPA is), I don't even have what the Americans call a high-school diploma. (In America, you graduate high school! This is the source of a pretty bitter dispute between me and my cousin Nupur, more of which at another time. Briefly: she wants a huge family focus on her and big ol' reunion because she's graduating high school in 2008 and she's being a brat. Er. I'm kinda doing something important during the summer of 2008, too. Okay, enough on that.)

Where was I? Yep - I don't know if I can do this. I'm too ordinary. I'm just - me. The highest score I've ever got on an LSAT paper - hopefully, with five more days' practice, it'll become my average score - is 170, which is still quite average. (It was actually my magic marker - if I couldn't hit 170, I told myself, I'm being delusional about my chances.) I don't think it's going to get much better. Basically, the LSAT is Verbal Reasoning for the eleven-plus scaled up by ten years,and appropriately harder. If I may be egotistical a moment, I'm one of the few people to have ever got into Merchants' with a perfect verbal reasoning score, but you see, that's a problem - some of it is non-verbal reasoning, and I kind of sort of really, really suck at that.

And in addition to all of that, I'm likely to be the youngest applicant for each law school I apply to. Is this a good idea? I have no idea.

But still. I'm gonna try. And this is where I need your help, American denizens of higher education. Most of these things want me to provide a personal statement. What the hell do you write for one of these things? I did a personal statement for UCAS, which I think was a very different sort of thing. I don't know what to write! And Yale want a 250-word essay on a topic of my choice (and the choice itself, they say, can prove illuminating for the admissions committee) and I'm at complete loss. Some of you guys have done this, right? Please to be sending help. Pretty please.

Okay. Enough, really. I should go away and actually do some work for the bloody thing.

And now for something completely different, while I'm here. Over the last few days, foulds and I have been finishing off our (mostly his) OULES script of Virgil's Aeneid done as a musical comedy without the music (paraphrasing PG Wodehouse there, but you know what I mean). Reading it through the other night, I paused on the infamous beginning of the flashback scene, where Aeneas and his Trojans have just arrived in Carthage and are being given dinner by Dido and her court. Tell us the story of the fall of Troy, she says.

Aeneas hesitates, and begins. And into my head, fully-formed, appeared the phrase: "I first arrived in Carthage on the trail of the killers of my father..."

foulds says I can put it in. And, okay, Anchises is dead by this point, but it's not accurate so I'll have to alter it (suggestions of what the phrasing should be are gratefully appreciated). Still. I feel good about it. I want that fact to go down as a matter of record.

Okay. Back to work. Tomorrow I have to get up early, go and yell at the DSA, buy a scientific calculator and go into work to explain why there is a piece of paper in the till that reads "oh god oh god just kill me now." I lead a very exciting life.

Comments

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at the stats for the sorts of schools you're planning to apply to (because I'm not planning to apply to them), but I assure you that 170 is not considered an average score by most standards. It's really rather good.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

I don't know a lot about law school, but I have several cousins who are lawyers here and I've done the American grad school thing. I know liptonrm is doing law school right now, so might have specific answers. (as in, if you want to talk to someone, I might be able to hook you up - I can't remember where my cousins went to school, but I think it was prestigious).

I know, grad school wise, Harvard has a reputation for being a very unpleasant, toxic, suicide-inducing environment. I don't know if their law school is like that, but I would be very careful about going there...

One thing I do know, since I've looked into law school a bit - it really helps to know what kind of law you want to do. The top schools in environmental law are not the same as patent law are not the same as international law, etc. (ie: University of Vermont is possibly the top Environmental Law school in the country (and I have a friend there right now who is loving it) but it isn't top in general).

It's certainly your decision, and something you should think carefully about. (did I miss why you are looking at America rather than England? Would an American degree let you live in England depending what you wanted to do - law degrees let you do a lot more than just be a lawyer?) But I open myself up as a bouncing board.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Oh, *that*'s what all the LSAT comments have been about.

You are mad, you know. I say this as someone who was planning on doing a PGDL and then trying for the Bar.

I wouldn't be entitled to any type of financial aid
Don't rule out the possibility of a Harvard scholarship solely for British female NRIs whose parents are medics in Liverpool and who went to Oxford. Seriously: some of them are scarily specific.

I know someone who got a scholarship for daughters of mixed race couples where the mother was black and the father hispanic and the child was brought up in Detroit (iirc; certainly, the woman lived there when I met her), for example.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Oh, and all I know about US Law School I learnt from Legally Blonde. I have no idea how realistic it is, but her 'essay' was brilliant.

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

Suggested essay topic: heat versus hotness.

Alternatively: Geoffrey.

(Well. It would tell them a lot about you.)

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

While I'm in law school, I'm probably not the best person to ask about law school. I'm going to Northeastern School of Law, which is a little odd because we get written evaluation for our grades, and not letter grades. We also do internships coordinated through the school, and focus of cooperative learning a lot. While it is lot of work, everything I've heard makes me believe that my experience has been much more laid back then I would have gotten at another law school.

I can say that if you managed a 170 on LSAT there *no way* that pretty much any law school wouldn't at least consider your application. Many schools will gladly offer you scholarship money with a score like that. But Harvard, Yale, Columbia - these are a bit a crap shoot, no matter what your LSAT score is. A 170 or above would certainly make you viable candidate at those schools, but the problem is there are so *many* viable candidates that want to get into those schools. I would suggest applying to at least 5 schools, more if you do not want to include a "safety".

I would never discourage anyone from applying law school, but I will say have heard about stories from student at other schools in the Boston area about professors who try to make their student's lives hell because they think it is part of the "law school experience". They are students who are nasty to their classmates because they are so competitive. Which is funny because almost *all* lawyers work in teams, so surely such habits are counter productive? You should just be aware all the stories who have heard about law school hell are not a complete myth.

My school doesn't have GPAs and class rank, specifically to deter that kind of vicious competition. I think Yale has also rejected class ranking? But that's about it.

I know almost nothing application process for international students, but I think law schools encourage applicants from overseas. I know that Northeastern, at least, your application would be viewed very favorably, because of you are 1) a woman 2) ethnically Indian and 3) British. Checking all the demographic boxes, diversity, and all that.

Oh! There are different services which convert international student's transcripts to something more American. Different schools prefer different ones. I remember that from my brief time on Northeastern Admission Committee.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 170 is a score well into the top 10 percentile.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I meant to run spellcheck on this. :headdesk:

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Yale has a very different teaching-style compared to most of the other law schools in the country, and you also might want to consider Chicago, Stanford or Georgetown for various programs and reasons as well as the three you've picked. Chicago has an amazing slew of professors, Stanford has one of the better free-speech/technology/corporate programs, and Georgetown has an amazing structure for those who are interested in International Relations and law related to such things.

Also, just because you choose to study law in the US won't make it impossible for you to live in Europe later, as part of the legal department for a US company or a company with a lot of US presence, or with a US law firm that also has offices in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Certain things, like intellectual property and international law, lend themselves to those sorts of transitions more than, say, antitrust or crimlaw do.

Just some stuff to consider - and I'm happy to be a sounding board if you ever need one.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how realistic it is, but her 'essay' was brilliant.

Extremely unrealistic. I mean, I was blonde all the way through law school and never suffered for it, and I managed to get a job with a major Wall Street firm, once out of law school, while wearing a pink boiled wool Tocca suit.

The classroom scenes in the film aren't totally unrealistic, but the revisions for the broadway musical are in a way that imho minimizes Elle's own fortitude.

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what I've done with it, but for my (admittedly undergrad) admissions essay I wrote about discovering punk rock and how that one moment led me to so many places that I never, ever would be at today. My friend Lia, who's traveled very, very, very extensively (her mother goes around to Oprah's charities and makes sure they're not fucking around) wrote about how constantly experiencing other cultures affected her. If you'd like, I could ask around and see if anyone still has a copy of theirs?

A GPA is a grade point average. It is almost ALWAYS on a 4.0 scale. Numerical values are assigned to ABCDF scores (usually A - 4 B - 3 C - 2 D - 1 F - 0, though not every school has Ds). So if I took four classes and got two As, a B, and a C, I would add 4+4+3+2, then divide by four (the total number of classes) for a GPA of 3.2.

GPAs can also be on a 100 point scale. Let's say an A is a grade of 100-90, B 89-80, C 79-70, D 69-60 and F everything below. Most schools, especially Southern schools, will omit Ds and have everything below 70 be failing. So say I got a 90, 91, 85 and 71. Add them up and divide by four for a GPA of 84.2.

(Of course, high school GPAs are often very sticky because you can get bonus points for advanced classes, PE/arts classes sometimes don't count, the difficult of a student's curriculum must be factored in and I'm still a little bitter about missing an honors diploma by .2. Not that that concerns you.)

Also, as a citizen of the state of Georgia I am contractually obligated to mention to you Emory University. The Dali Lama is an associate professor and there's a fucking fabulous Egyptian museum. And anyone calling Emory a safe school deserves to be kicked in the balls, quite frankly.

And, um, OMG.

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

I really hate how after long comments I have to add another comment listing all the information I forgot to include.

Fastweb.com and collegeboard.com are fantastic places to search for scholarships. I assume you'd be able to filter them for grad studentness.

Emory Law URL: http://www.law.emory.edu/
General Emory wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_University
Piddly Emory law wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_University_School_of_Law

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, sweetie. I'd appreciate that - I might well ask to be hooked up in the next couple of days. I'm doing this very much

Harvard has a reputation for being a very unpleasant, toxic, suicide-inducing environment.

More so than Oxford? *wry smile* Is such a thing possible?

One thing I do know, since I've looked into law school a bit - it really helps to know what kind of law you want to do

Ah, thank you for this. My main interest right now - probably will change, given my propensity for being interested in everything - is jurisprudence. I think Harvard are good for this, but I probably should check.

(did I miss why you are looking at America rather than England? Would an American degree let you live in England depending what you wanted to do - law degrees let you do a lot more than just be a lawyer?)

A lot of career options here are open to me with just my BA in PPE, so I don't have to worry too much about it, but still, it's worth considering that point.

Thank you for the sounding-board offer! I may well need one.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant the video essay: can't you just imagine Iona floating in a swimming pool, debating 'Days of Our Lives'...?

Not seen the musical, although I have read the book: the film's funner, as it were.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yep. I'm a nutcase. *g*

Don't rule out the possibility of a Harvard scholarship solely for British female NRIs whose parents are medics in Liverpool and who went to Oxford. Seriously: some of them are scarily specific.

Heeeee! Balliol offers one for the daughters of East Kent clergymen, I know. But your example wins hands-down. *g*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heeeee! I love the redemptive power of literature, fictional crazy people and Paul Gross with tousled hair! That is all you need to know about me!

The problem, of course, is that an essay on the Wonder That Is Geoffrey Tennant needs to be much longer than 250 words. :P

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

OK, so I know nothing about US Law School, but I do know a bit about training to be a lawyer in the UK. You probably already know that although an American law degree will qualify you to practice American law, that doesn't mean you couldn't work in the UK - lots of the big international firms have lawyers qualified in all sorts of jurisdictions, though you'd probably have to do a year here to convert.

Also, Belle Lettre (http://lawandletters.blogspot.com/) is a woman doing American law academic research, but has been through lae grad school, and in my opinion has a lot of valuable advice if you search for it - particularly this post (http://lawandletters.blogspot.com/2007/09/are-you-sure-you-want-to-go-to-law.html#links) - mostly about starting grad school but it links to other posts which, if I recall correctly, were pretty helpful. Anyway, you might find it interesting/helpful?

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

She was an utterly gorgeous (how not, with that mix?) accountant I met on a work trip.

Bloody nutters [g]

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how helpful I can be on this subject, as far as specific advice goes, because my experience with American law school can basically be summed up thus: early in college I considered going for approximately six months because I wanted to please my father. Yes.

However, I can tell you that 170 is not really an "average" score at all; it's pretty unimpeachably a very good score. Especially because most Americans taking the LSAT have had some kind of experience with this kind of testing, or have been preparing in one way or another for much of college. You're coming from a position of relative disadvantage and you STILL scored highly. That's wonderful, and you should be proud of that score.

Also, what kind of law are you interested in? My father is a lawyer (general practice, used to focus more in criminal law), and has always been really generous about passing along advice to me to pass along to friends. (I think it's like the second-best thing for him, if he can't pass it along to me for me.) I'd be happy to ask him any questions you might have about what law schools are good for what, what the admissions process is like, etc. He went to law school about forty years ago, but he still has a good sense of how the system works now.

Of course, I'm also happy to answer general questions about American higher education at any hour of the day--seriously, you know how much I love talking about this stuff!--so there's that. I can't tell you how to take the LSATs, but I can always explain GPAs and that kind of thing. :)

Finally, I have to second the votes for UChicago and Georgetown. Great schools with great law programs in great cities. You can't go wrong.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm going to Northeastern School of Law, which is a little odd because we get written evaluation for our grades, and not letter grades.

This is familiar to me, from my experiences at Oxford. Switching to a system where I'm actually assessed may be a shock to my system.

I would suggest applying to at least 5 schools, more if you do not want to include a "safety".

Thank you for this. I need advice like this - from someone who knows what they're talking about! I need to find someone here who does, asap.

I will say have heard about stories from student at other schools in the Boston area about professors who try to make their student's lives hell because they think it is part of the "law school experience".

1) a woman 2) ethnically Indian and 3) British. Checking all the demographic boxes, diversity, and all that.

And don't forget queer! *g* It would be nice to see it working in my favour for once.

Well, I'm not sure about whether it really compares, but similar things happen at Oxford - or at least, they happened to me. Which isn't to say I'd want to head into more years of that, but it's at least a familiar thing.

Thanks for taking the time to tell me stuff! No doubt I shall come back and ask more questions fairly shortly.

[icepixie]

I can give you no advice that hasn't been given before. Just know that I'm your partner in pain as far as writing the personal statement goes. Mine's for English, but, eh. It's all kind of similar.

If you google "personal statement" (or "statement of purpose") and "grad school," many, many pages of advice will come up. I assume you could replace "grad school" with "law school" and probably get even more advice.

[ra-sar.livejournal.com]

Having been in two American law schools, as someone coming out of a non-american pre-university education, I feel like I have to throw my two cents in. So, several points:

170? An awesome score. That won't disqualify you from anywhere.

re: being young in law school. How young? On the one hand, I'm usually one of the youngest in my class since I went straight through to law school from college and it's almost never an issue. My friends at school range from people younger than me up to people in their forties, divorced, and with kids approaching my age. The *only* time I have ever seen age matter at law school is when this one girl at my last school didn't turn 21 until almost the end of the first year, and was not able to attend many functions because alcohol was being served. (Lawyers and law students, at least here in the states, are alcoholics. no joke.) But that is a rare case, and if I recall correctly, not an issue you would have, correct?

$$ - Compared to the amount of the tuition, not a lot of us nationals get sufficient funding anyway, so don't let that be a main deterrent. Unless we become corporate sellouts, it's all about paying off those loans for the rest of your life. :-)

Personal statement: Law schools like boring but analytically tight writing. Like, "1. I want to attend your school/I am awesome for reasons a, b, and c. 2. Reason a explained. 3. Reason b explained. Reason c. explained d. I want to attend your school/I am awesome for reasons a, b, and c." I am not kidding. I got fancy and creative the first time I applied to schools and I really believe, after having gone through a legal writing course, that it hurt my chances, at least with the more traditional schools, like the ones you've mentioned. Regardless of how you structure it, though definitely start and end with your conclusion. Lawyers love that shit.

Wanting to do law school: I did law school for the reason you mentioned: I want to be a lawyer or at least work in law, and I wasn't ready for the real world, so school seemed like a good option. And mostly, it has been. I enjoy law school (even the one I transfered from), despite its *psychotic* culture, and I like what I'm studying. One thing I didn't count on, however, is how quickly and insistently it pushes you toward the real world. It's quite common to have your post-graduation job nailed down the summer before starting your second, of three years. It's intense. If you're looking for school for the sake of school, it's not necessarily the best forum for that unless you are really resistant to the pressure put on you from the legal world.

US degree vs. British or Other degree: I had to decide between studying in Canada and studying in the US. Ultimately, I decided on the US because, for better or worse, it's much easier to parley an american degree in *anything* into an opportunity elsewhere than it is a non-american degree into an opportunity in the US. So unless I was prepared to rule out the US for a while, it had to be in the states.

Anyhow, if you ever have any more questions about American law schools/school system or the application process, definitely let me know and I'd love to help.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to help!

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Oh, also: if applying to law school is anything like applying to an undergraduate program, I would suggest applying to more than three schools. And also considering widening your pool. I think the fact that some schools get labeled "safeties" and some "reaches" is a little misleading, because--well, it oversimplifies. Yale is a great school and a big name, for example, but it might not be the best school for the type of law you want to do. Or you might not like the location. Or the social scene might be really unappealing. Applying to schools that aren't as well known can kind of be a blow to the ego--dude, I know! I go to a school that people mistake for an African country!--but the name doesn't necessarily reflect on the merit, you know?

Of course, this is coming from a dyed-in-the-wool liberal-arts student with a prejudice against name universities. And there are no liberal-arts law schools. I'm just sayin'. :)

[chiasmata]

Sweetie pie (she says, trying not to sound patronising and probably failing miserably), you are far from ordinary. Good luck! Goodluckgoodluckgoodluck! *grin*