Mediocre GPA and admissions into Law School?

Hey jd Law schools don't really place that much importance on the "prestige" of your undergrad. What they focus on is what you did during your four years of college (e.g., your GPA and your extracurriculars), and your LSAT score. The relative prestige of your undergrad doesn't really come into play very much at all.

As proof, check out where the students attending Harvard Law during 2010-2011 came from: http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/j... -- there are very small private schools alongside big state universities, Ivy Leagues, and relatively unknown institutions. Don't worry so much about where you go to college; instead, focus on doing well there. Keep the following in mind so that you can create the most appealing law school applicant profile possible: 1.

Pick a major that will require a lot of reading- and research-intensive classes. This will not only prepare you for law classes (which themselves are incredibly research- and reading-heavy), but it will also demonstrate to schools, when you apply, that you can handle the academic load of law school. 2.

Keep an upward grade trend throughout college. This means that your grades either get stronger as you go through school, or start off strong and remain there for all 4 years of college. Most law schools will want to see GPAs of 3.5 or above (the closer you can get to a 4.0, the better).

If you get a B during your freshman year, it's not a deal-breaker; your focus should be to keep your grades as high as you can get them. 3. Take a challenging class load: Intro classes are okay for freshman and (maybe)sophomore year, but once you get to junior and senior year, your focus should be on upper-level classes and seminars that allow you to really hone in and focus on your specific interests within the major.

And, as always, keep your grades up throughout. 4. Establish rapport with your professors (particularly during your junior and senior years).

You can do this by attending office hours, working for them as a research assistant, and talking to them after class. They will be the ones writing your letters of recommendation, and will only be able to write effective, overwhelmingly positive ones is if they have specific, anecdotal knowledge of you and can favorably compare you to other students in your class. 5.

Work on your extracurriculars. Don't worry about being a part of 30 student groups; instead, focus on 2 or 3. Become a part and get involved during your freshman and sophomore years, and then obtain leadership positions in them during your junior and senior years.

Another useful thing you can do, regardless of your major choice, is to take formal logic courses (which can be found under the Philosophy Department at your college) during your sophomore and junior years; this will help you later as you prepare for the LSAT. For Stanford Law, you'll need a GPA of 3.5+ (the closer to 4.0, as I said above, the better), and a 99th percentile (172+) LSAT score. Focus on getting those numbers where you need them, and where you're attending college won't matter at all.

Good luck! EDIT: Tom has a good point; however, it doesn't mean that a student from West Virginia University *couldn't* get into Stanford Law. If you have the credentials, your chances are just as solid.

Again, good luck!

It has a major effect at the top tier law schools. The Harvard Law link given in another answer does not indicate the number of students who attended each of the schools. Yale Law indicates the number of students that attended each school.

See pages 143-144: http://www.yale.edu/printer/bulletin/pdf... A quarter of the class attended Harvard or Yale; over 37% of the class attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford. Over 50% graduated from the Ivy League, Stanford and Duke. There was one student from the massive California State University System with 23 campuses and around 400,000 students.

One can be sure that plenty of highly qualified students applied. For the 8 Campuses of the University of California System, 16 from Berkeley, 5 from UCLA, 2 from UCSD, 1 from UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz. Contrast that with 37 students from Stanford, which has one fourth the undergraduate enrollment of Berkeley alone.

Stanford Law no longer indicates the number of students from each school but did in the past and the distribution was very similar to Yale Law.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.