Law school admissions w/ online undergrad

Has anyone applied to law school with an online undergrad degree or know someone who has? I would be interested in the accpetance of a distance learning degree for admission. I imagine that top tier schools would probably instantly dismiss one while others might entertain the idea.

 

By "online" I assume you mean a cyber institution, as there are some very good well-known state and private schools that offer online bachelor's degrees. I can't imagine that any law school admit committee would care one whit whether your bachelor's from, say, Temple or Washington State or Louisiana State (each of which offers distance bachelor's) was distance or on site. I doubt that the question would even arise.

So assuming that your question is about whether you could make it into law school with a Capella or Walden or UoP pedigree, I can at least say that my law school class included three students with undergrad degrees from UoP. My law school is not top-ranked, but they are considered top-tier (they were ranked 30th the year I graduated, have now slid into the 40s--surely because I left! : )

So the answer is: yes, it's possible. The question though is, how well can you score on the LSAT? That, along with your GPA, will determine your chances.

Best of luck and blessings!

 

Another poster asked this same question a couple of months ago. Here's the link to the thread:

law school after distance undergrad


...and here are a couple of links that I included in that thread. They are from folks who got their undergrad degrees from distance institutions (both thomas edison actually) and then went on to law school:

TESC to George Mason Law

TESC to Brooklyn Law


There are others too of course, just hop on google and look for them. Apparently if your grades and LSAT score are what they are looking for they will logically consider you if you are from a regionally accred. school, which is good for me because I will probably at least attempt to go that route after I finish up at TESC.

 

Well I went ahead and emailed Florida State University's law admission department and asked about their policy with reguards to online degrees. Here is their response.
"In order to be accepted to the College of Law you must hold a baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited college or university prior to commencing law study. It does not matter if you received the degree by taking all or mostly online courses."

So good news for those who want to take the JD route and don't want to be stuck with the prospect of going to a 4 tier university.

 

A friend of mine went from a nationally accredited (ACICS) undergraduate program to a top ten law school. Many of his undergraduate courses were completed online.

This is definitely good news for NA and online students. However, the key for my friend was his ability to score extremely high on the LSAT.

Bottom line: The LSAT is extremely important. If you can afford it, take a Princeton Review or Kaplan prep-course. I wish that I was able to afford one.

 

Just curious.....how much are they?

 

In 2002, when I was applying to law school, the prices ranged from $1,000 to well over $2,000 for private classes. This is money that I just didn't have at the time. I was able to review an old Arco book given to me by my sister-in-law, but that really only helped me become familiar with the exam format.

I heard that prep-courses are now available online for a slighlty reduced cost. However, I don't know how effective the online version is because I haven't spoken with anyone who has taken it that way. The traditional Kaplan course seems to get very good reviews from other law students.

 

In my personal opinion, the best way to study for the LSAT is to take as many practice exams as you can, if you check around, you should be able to find someone who has copies of old released exams that they'll loan or sell you.

The exam is basically full of logic (if biddles are like baddles but not like buddles and buddles are like wuddles but not like fuddles, are baddles like fuddles or wuddles?) and those little brain teasers that you see from time to time--that is, unless they've changed it dramatically since I took it in the early 90s.

The biggest issue with the LSAT is time management, it's so time intensive. I personally thought it was an easy test, but I had spent about 6 weeks practicing on those old exams, lots of repetition. I didn't take a prep course.

By the way, the LSAT is a poor to mediocre indicator of law school success, it's just a hoop jumping exercise and a way or ruling out some to make the job of admit committees easier.