My baby cousin just finished high school she is a straight a student and now she has his heart set on attending Columbia Law School. She wants to attend a B&M school to earn her 120 credit undergrad. She dose not want to take any CLEP exams or online courses. Instead she wants to earn all her credits traditionally in class room and she wants want to complete all her 120 credits in 3 years. She says she plans on doing that by attending summer school. Is that possible to do and if so what advice should I give her? I never attended a B&M school so I wouldn't know. Bo
It's very possible by taking summer courses and an extra courseload during the school year. Many schools with Continuing Education programs offer weekend & night courses, and courses during the Christmas vacation. It's a lot of work, but many people have done it in 3 years or less. Just out of curiousity, why does she not want to take any CLEP exams or other time savers?
Bo, I took the extra courseload and did the summer thing and completed mine in three years. It is very important to coordinate closely with the academic advisor and to schedule the extra load so that less difficult classes can be grouped together to make life easier. I did not use CLEP. Keep in mind that not using some alternative means of credit means that GPA will be computed based upon grades received. Sometimes my extra course load resulted in me having to decide which courses were going to be less than stellar in the grade department. Grade point is really important for grad school. In retrospect I should have explored CLEP and other means to lighten my course load and keep my GPA up. Twenty years of hindsight.
Can be done My daughter could have easily finished in 3.5 years w/o any extra effort other than a short summer study which was a must anyway in her career field and some AP from high school. She elected not to for the practical fact that none of the grad schools she was interested in had spring semester admissions. Many schools offer early summer admissions (prior to freshman year) and if you take only 2 classes over each summer you can obtain 24 sh. in 3 years. You can overload here and there for the other 6. However, remind your cousin that women now make up 60% of admissions to law schools in America and that is expected to grow. She could very well find herself in the discriminated against majority when she applies and could be setting herself up for heartbreak if she is so narrowly focused. It is ok to dream, but always have a fall back. In the USA, the best grades and test scores do not always open the doors to the elite schools.
I did my B&M BA in 3 and a third calendar years without CLEP or challenge. It wasn't even very hard; summer sessions and the like. If I'd CLEPped out of, say, 15 semester hours, I'd easily have finished in 3. A straight "A" H.S. student in the college prep track is foolish NOT to CLEP out of as much as possible. Much lower division work is a repeat of H.S. senior work. It is especially helpful if the student completed three years of a single foreign language in H.S. plus, ideally, math through trig and analytic geometry. Saves money. Saves time.
Thanks for all you're input guy. Columbia is here number one choice, but she said that she will also apply to NYU, Fordham, CUNY and SUNY. I'm not really 100% sure why she dose not want to take CLEP or online courses. Bo
I don’t think most elite law schools will look favorably on rushing through a bachelor’s degree. I think your niece would be better advised to take the normal four years (actually normal these days is more like 4 ½ to 5 years) and take advantage of extra curricular activities such as student government, student newspapers and the like. An internship in Washington with her Congressperson and evidence of community service would help. Answering phones at the ACLU or its conservative counterparts would also look good. This, combined with outstanding grades and LSAT scores might give her a chance. Of course, if you’re a member of the Bush or Kennedy families don’t worry about it.
David Boyd is right to remind us that admission to any ABA law school is competitive and admission to a national school like Columbia is going to be VERY competitive. GPA and LSAT scores don't tell the whole story. On the other hand, a Columbia degree will cost aound $100,000 for tuition alone. She shouldn't fail to consider STATE schools as well...
As someone who finished his B&M bachelors degree in 2 years and is now applying to law schools, including Columbia, I think I can answer your questions. 1) Yes it is possible to finish a B&M 120 credit degree in 3 years or less (as I said, I finished my Cornell in 2 years -- all courses, no AP/CLEP/DANTES/whatever). However, finishing early will not help her for law school admissions. Law school admissions is based 95% on LSAT score, undergraduate GPA, and (unfortunately) race: extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, personal statement, etc. mean very little. 2) Your cousin is smart for not using AP/CLEP/DANTES/etc. credits: those would hurt her in law school admissions (at least for competitive schools). One of the factors used in evaluating a student is how rigorous the courseload is: although you won't get any bonus points for having a heavy courseload, you WILL hurt yourself by having an "easy" courseload, and using CLEP credits is a good way to hurt yourself, especially since most colleges don't assign them a letter grade. In the admissions process, a college senior applying to Columbia with 90 letter graded credits will be looked upon much more favorably than a college senior applying to Columbia with 60 letter graded credits and 30 ungraded AP/CLEP/whatever credits. 3) There's nothing wrong with taking online classes, especially if most of her classes are from a B&M school. 4) Undergraduate prestige does play a role in the process (ie. a Harvard graduate with a 3.9/165 looks a lot better than a Cal State graduate with a 3.9/165). Although I wouldn't recommend her transferring to a high priced "name" school if she's attending a low ranked state school, she should be aware that it'll make her LSAT score that much more important, since a high LSAT score would show to Columbia that her GPA was the result of hard work and not the result of going to an "easy" state school. If she's attending a well known well ranked school you can disregard this point. BTW, has she done any real research on law schools? Although Columbia, NYU, and Fordham are solid choices, why is she even considering CUNY or SUNY at this point? While the median starting salary for Columbia, NYU, and Fordham is $125,000 and all three place VERY well in New York City, CUNY and SUNY placement is abysmal: the median CUNY starting salary is only $40,000 and the bar pass rate is only around 50%. If she's a contender for Columbia, NYU, and Fordham then applying to CUNY and SUNY would be a waste of money. Here are some law school admissions websites that can give you more detailed information: http://discuss.princetonreview.com/forums/index.cfm?cfapp=6 http://www.nontradlaw.com http://www.lawschoolinsider.com However, if she's just a freshman the best (and only) advice you can give her is to get as high a GPA as she can possibly get, and as much as I hate to say this it means that she should stay away from "hard" classes (ie. engineering/science stuff that usually grades on a rigid curve). The applicant with a 3.8 GPA who took liberal arts fluff and majored in sociology is going to be viewed much better than the applicant with a 3.5 GPA who took organic chemistry freshman year and majored in electrical engineering. Good luck, I hope this was helpful.
How well do New York Law School, Cardozo Law School, Hofstra Law School, Rutgers Law School, Seton Hall Law School (the last two are in New Jersey), St Johns University Law School and Pace University Law School rank in terms of average starting salaries? Thank you.
ILRG is the best site for median salary information as well as other law school employment/admissions statistics: http://www.ilrg.com/rankings.html One of the problems with median salary is that public sector salaries are often substantially lower than private sector salaries in law. IMO the best way to see how good a school is in terms of employment is to look at *both* median private sector starting salaries and median starting salaries in general (this gives an idea of whether students can easily get high paying private sector jobs or if a lot of them are forced into lower paying public interest jobs because only the top 5% or top 10% are able to get the high paying private jobs). You can find that at these links: http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/median.php/1/desc/MSPrivate http://www.ilrg.com/schools/salary/ Note that the link for median salaries in general only lists the top 50. The median private sector salaries for the schools you listed: Cardozo: $110,000 New York Law School: $95,000 Hofstra: $75,000 Rutgers (Newark): $101,089 Seton Hall: $81,000 St Johns: $75,000 Pace: $52,000 Unfortunately ILRG only lists the median salariesin general for the top 50, and of those schools only Rutgers (Newark) is in the top 50 USNEWS rankings (median salary in general is $62,000). However, the link is worth going to anyway because it shows that a high USNEWS ranking does not necessary translate into a higher starting salary.
