给准备走LLM转JD路同学建议

washulawUID: 3502447

目前美国JD申请人数下降厉害，很多学校要把排名稳住，需要LSAT分数这个数据（这个数据在US NEWS ranking重量很大）。所以14-20间的学校，有比较多直接读JD机会，主要就是需要你的LSAT高。如果要避开考LSAT，然后通过一些LLM，免LSAT转JD项目途径，有一些信息表明，这样情况很多同学后面都是JD成绩一般，工作也是找的不如意。可能这是self-selection问题，已经通过这个conscious choice，把大家提前分出高低了。不选择考LSAT，然后靠走所谓捷径的转JD人，可能是个综合比较弱群体，排除特殊个例。

这2年美国申请JD是最容易2年，建议认真复习LSAT，直接考个不错成绩，然后搞个T14-20 offer机会多。只要LSAT高点，大家都有奖，这个可以省下一大笔钱。

上面这些建议针对目前申请不到T14，但是想先读LLM，然后转JD人。要直接读T14考前人，方法还不一样，需要些soft东西。

PatNUID: 3418079

先来美国呆几年吧

washulawUID: 3502447

PatN 发表于 2014-2-23 16:02
先来美国呆几年吧

没看懂？能否指导一下。

PatNUID: 3418079

图样图森破

PatNUID: 3418079

洗洗睡了

washulawUID: 3502447

PatN 发表于 2014-2-23 16:09
洗洗睡了

哈哈哈，有意思。

PatNUID: 3418079

你冷静点撒，表刚来就四处树敌。

washulawUID: 3502447

PatN 发表于 2014-2-23 16:02
先来美国呆几年吧

小北本来是早年全奖在密西根读的JD，他写了个非常好的读法学院的blog，他当年给大家建议，值得一读。目前美国法学院申请人数下降情况习，很多很好profile人看ROI不成比例，没有申请法学院，先去工作情况。LSAT的分数对于中国本科毕业人，就是王道。小北给的建议如下：

So for a typical Chinese candidate with an undergraduate degree from China, what’s the game plan? Apparently the GPA is not comparable with (and most likely lower than) those of the U.S. schools, so here are a few remedies:

1. LSAT score. Easier said than done, but assuming an average GPA from a respected Chinese university and no advanced degree or work experience, a 170 will almost certainly get you into some of the top 14 schools, and a 165 will give you a good shot at the lower top 25.

2. Graduate school. Get a graduate degree, be it MA, MS or PhD, from a top school, in any serious subject. Law school admissions people are snobs. If they don’t know enough about your undergrad institution, they’d better know how good the graduate program in EE at Berkeley, or political science PhD program at Yale is.　Hardcore Oxford/Cambridge/LSE degrees from the UK can work their magic too (although everyone in this business knows what the deal is with those 1-year master’s degree these places sell to those who can pay, so those are excluded.) This will allow you to score perhaps a few points lower on the LSAT than option 1 and still get into equivalent schools.

3. Work experience. Unlike grad schools, this is harder to quantify , and I can’t say much about this except that it can certainly help when presented the right way in the right light to the right people. However, it is said that prior work experience, especially in the technical field if you are into intellectual property and patent law, can help immensely in landing you summer internships and long-term employment after graduation. But as someone who’s at least 3 years away from graduation, what do I know.

4. Transfer up. If you don’t get into your first choice schools, you can always attend the best you can get into, work your tail off, and aim to transfer after 1L. Top law schools are increasingly open to transfer students and may admit up to 10% of their 2L from transfers. For a typical Chinese applicant, the lack of a U.S. undergraduate degree is often regarded by the adcomms as a risk factor — what if this candidate cannot perform well in the American academic environment? If you have aced your 1L grades at a lower ranked law school, you will have conclusively proven that you can survive and thrive in such an environment, and that you will make a fine student at a higher ranked school. In fact, Harvard takes in one or two transfers from third tier schools almost every year, along with transfers from other T14 and tier 1 schools, although you pretty much have to be among the top 2 or 3 at a third tier or top 5-10% at lower T14 to have a realistic shot at transfering to HLS.

http://wpwy.org/blog/?p=329

zhifeixieUID: 3399992

今年一起申请Jd的一堆小伙伴表示 完全感受不到“这2年美国申请JD是最容易2年” “目前美国法学院申请人数下降情况习”的气氛啊 都是泪啊！ 而且小伙伴们大多分数还很不错啊:mad:

washulawUID: 3502447

zhifeixie 发表于 2014-2-24 09:22
今年一起申请Jd的一堆小伙伴表示 完全感受不到“这2年美国申请JD是最容易2年” “目前美国法学院申请人数下 ...

他们LSAT分数够了吗？上170了吗？如果他们目标是申请好的学校。

washulawUID: 3502447

虽然快10年了，小北这篇写的也非常好，现在还是适用：

Law School Admission Series – School-specific Admissions Tips
Each law school has its own preferences when it comes to admissions. The same applicant may be viewed and valued very differently by two otherwise very similar and comparable schools. The following is a brief summary of what my personal impressions are regarding the preferences in admission policies at T14 schools, after combining my own experiences with accounts from other applicants.

Yale

The concensus is that every applicant, even a 180/4.0 from an Ivy, is a crapshoot at Yale Law School. It is simply too unpredictable. You would have to find the cure for cancer or become Mother Teresa Jr. to guarantee an admission.

If there has to be some regular pattern, then it is that those who are admitted tend to fall into at least one of two categories: they either have extremely high numbers, or write extremely well, and, as is the case with most admitted students, both. But such people abound in the pool of Yale applicants, and only a small percentage of these people are admitted.

Just about any other law school allows you to submit an essay on an arbitrary topic and sets a 2-3 page limit – a reasonable restriction that translates to about 1000 words. Yale asks you for a 250-word essay as the primary personal statement. This not only makes it impossible for you to reuse your essay prepared for other schools, but is also a highly challenging task. Effectively marketing oneself in only 250 words requires a mastery of the English language no less than that of Lincoln, and even he went 22 words over that limit in his Gettysburg Address.

I’ve read a few essays from people who got into Yale Law. One wrote about the GPS unit in her car, and another wrote about his reflections (pun intended) over a puddle of water. They are very interesting to read, somewhat spiritual and not at all like the typical “look at me, i am so great” essay.

In short, if you have to try your chances at Yale, write well, especially that 250-word essay.

Harvard

Harvard Law is both easy and hard to get into.

Harvard is very easy to get into if you are from a top undergraduate intitution, have a 3.8+ GPA in a real major and score a 174+ on the LSAT. If you fall into this category, then don’t waste your time on writing your admission essays or going after profs for recommendation letters. All you have to do to get into Harvard is to file your application on time. Here “top” undergraduate intitutions include the ivies, elite liberal arts (AWS), elite private non-ivies (From Hopkins/Emory and up) and very few publics (UM, UT, Berkeley, UNC and UVA).

Harvard gets slightly harder to get into if you fit all of the above but the GPA rquirement. People with 3.7+ GPA from one of the top schools above generally get in. Sometimes people with 176+ LSAT and a less than ideal GPA get in as well.

Getting into Harvard Law becomes an uphill battle if you fit the following profile: 171 (+/- 3 points) LSAT and 3.9 (+/- .1) GPA from an average (read: big-state-u) UG.

For most people, anything less than 168/3.8 is next to impossible to get into Harvard, barring the few who enjoy affirmative action and/or legacy status.

Conclusion: Compared to Yale and Stanford, the admissions game at Harvard Law is played very conservatively. Their adcomm appears highly risk-averse. LSAT, GPA and UG prestige are by far the three most important factors in their decision making process.

Stanford

Stanford is another odd ball in the admissions game. Like Yale, it doesn’t admit people by the numbers only and rejects plenty people with 175+/3.8+ (almost auto-admit for Harvard), so again, just about anyone is a crapshoot at Stanford. However, while Yale’s emphasis seems to be on personality and writing skills, Stanford seems to like those with an unusual story to tell (Harvard couldn’t care less about this), those with graduate degrees from the most competitive programs (such as Stanford EE), and those with a strong view that’s considered unorthodox by most.

So if you have the stats for Stanford, one way to construct your application is to write about your homosexuality and fervishly support gay marriages, assuming you are indeed gay. As one xoxo poster once lamented: Stanford Law loves gays.

* * *

The rest of the T-14 pretty much work by the numbers, with a few exceptions as noted as follows.

Penn
Yield protects (*) by deferring people. To avoid yield-protection, remember to write that “Why Penn” optional essay. Don’t be deceived — it really isn’t optional. This essay is almost trivial to write — most common reasons to attend Penn Law as mentioned by applicants are: 1. I heart Wharton and 2. I heart Ivy. Too bad neither has anything to do with Penn Law itself but the adcomm there seems easily satisfied with such answers, so make sure you write a few lines about how you heart ivies and Wharton.

Also of note: Penn’s U.S. News ranking of #7 is not an accurate reflection of its position in the pecking order of law schools. It is known to be a heavy manipulator of data (acceptance rate, employment rate, etc) to artificially boost its ranking. It’s a fair game they are playing, so just don’t be misled.

Michigan
Strong emphasis on personality matches and less on sheer numbers, so make sure you spend time polishing those essays. Yield protects by waitlisting people.

Berkeley (Boalt Hall)
Boalt has gathered a reputation of disliking people with high LSAT scores. Whether Boalt actually prefers 168s over 174s is probably a myth that can never be proved or disproved, but it’s almost certain that Boalt places an unusually strong emphasis on GPA and the rigor of undergraduate education, much more so than any other T14 schools. So if you are a big splitter with a low LSAT and high GPA, throw an application to Boalt and see what happens.

Northwestern
Somehow Northwestern Law wants to duplicate the success of Kellogg, but so far hasn’t succeeded. Among the T14 schools it has the lowest reputation score and despite its #10 spot on the U.S. News, really isn’t considered a top10 school by many in the profession. Northwestern is known to be a manipulator of ranking data as well as seen in the sudden jump of the LSAT/GPA median in just one year.

One area Northwestern Law really shines (and not reflected in the U.S. News data) is the prior work experience of its students. Running under a b-school model, Northwester Law encourages applications from those with 2 years or more work experience. So if you have been out of school for a while and worked full-time, Northwestern might be your best fit.

Georgetown
Georgetown, or GULC (Georgetown University Law Center), is known to be a “huge LSAT whore” (quoting an online poster), almost the exact opposite of Boalt. So if you are a big splitter with a high LSAT but low GPA, give GULC a try.

Others
I know I am leaving out Virginia, Duke, Chicago, Columbia and NYU. I don’t know enough about the admissions practice at these schools to make a comment, but as mentioned above, they all more or less play the numbers game, with Chicago least so and NYU/Duke perhaps most so.

* * *

(*) Yield Protection is when the school would like to admit a strong applicant but thinks this person will get into higher ranked schools and is therefore unlikely to accept an offer of admission from this school if admitted. In this case, some admission officers will ask the candidate to submit an extra essay, come in for an interview, or simply defer/waitlist the candidate’s application to gauge interest. If no subsequent actions are taken by the candidate, then the school assumes that he/she indeed does not have a genuine interest in attending and will reject/waitlist this person despite his/her strong credentials.

One may ask why would schools yield protect at all if the candidate in question qualifies for admission. The answer lies in the annual U.S. News ranking of law schools. Yield, the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll, is one of the ranking factors and supposedly measures the reputation of the schools in the eyes of law school applicants. A low yield rate at a school means most of its admitted students turn down offers in order to attend other schools. The lowest yield rate in the top 14 is, unsurprisingly, Georgetown and the highest is Yale.

Often schools waitlist borderline candidates, and this is not to be confused with yield protection waitlists. How to tell the difference? First off, none of Yale, Harvard and Stanford employ the tactics of yield protection. They don’t need to. If you are waitlisted at other schools, compare your numbers to the published middle 50% LSAT/GPA range of the school. If both of your LSAT and GPA are above it’s 75th percentile, then there’s a good chance your waitlist decision is a yield-protect.

===============
I just realized that I left out Cornell in my earlier post. Oh the fun in dealing with Cornell. How can I have left that one out? So here it is…

Cornell
At the end of the admission season, I came away with a feeling that Cornell is the most insecure and least confident school among t14. True, it is the bottom ranking school among all ivies with a law division, but nothing warrants the self-consciousness exhibited by Cornell’s admissions office.

In almost every single piece of correspondence I receive from Cornell, from admission offer to scholarship letter, invariably asks people to withdraw from Cornell as early as possible if they have made up their mind to go to other schools. If this behavior doesn’t strike you as odd, just think when is the last time you read an admission letter that expects itself to be turned down?

An admissions office that doesn’t feel confident about itself naturally employs the yield-procetion tactics in the admission game. Cornell is perhaps the most protective of all schools I have dealt with. It asks the “Why Cornell” question in the main section of the application form, and requires an interview for many applicants with high numbers. Unfortunately, the interviews were above and beyond their original purpose of gauging interest–they almost also serve as a deterrent against actually attending Cornell. Bratcat went through such a telephone interview and rated the experience as awful, with the interviewer, someone on the regular Cornell admissions staff, being especially rude. Who would want to attend such a school?

Conclusion: can you say “Cornell is my number 1 choice because… “? I am sure they will love to hear this and the reasoning behind. They need assurance, so give them some.

http://wpwy.org/blog/?p=330

zhifeixieUID: 3399992

washulaw 发表于 2014-2-24 09:24
他们LSAT分数够了吗？上170了吗？如果他们目标是申请好的学校。

一堆170+的。。。。。。。不知该去哪里说理去

washulawUID: 3502447

zhifeixie 发表于 2014-2-24 09:26
一堆170+的。。。。。。。不知该去哪里说理去

如果有他们具体申请学校结果，这个是很好信息。

washulawUID: 3502447

zhifeixie 发表于 2014-2-24 09:26
一堆170+的。。。。。。。不知该去哪里说理去

U.S. Law School Enrollments Fall
Lack of Jobs Has Students Steering Away From Legal Career
http://online.wsj.com/news/artic ... 4579264730376317914

By JENNIFER SMITH CONNECT
Dec. 17, 2013 7:41 p.m. ET
First-year enrollment at U.S. law schools plunged this year to levels not seen since the 1970s as students steered away from a career that has left many recent graduates loaded with debt and struggling to find work.



The American Bar Association said on Tuesday that the number of first-year law students fell 11% this year across the 202 U.S. law schools that the group accredits. The total—39,675 full and part-time first year students—was one shy of 1977's total, when the nation had far fewer ABA-approved schools.

The decline highlights the crunch in the legal profession in the wake of the recession. Lucrative work in fields like mergers and acquisitions dried up as the economy stalled and law firms cut back on hiring.

As the pool of would-be lawyers dwindles, the upheaval is putting heavy pressure on law schools. Shrinking budgets have led some to shed faculty and staff, and critics predict a few may have to shut down.

"It is a big drop-off," said William Henderson, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law who has written extensively on the legal profession. "The wind has been at our backs for many, many decades, and we haven't really had to operate like a lot of businesses, with adjusting to swings in demand."

Not all schools are in trouble. Students are still vying for places at elite schools such as Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School.

Stand-alone law schools that aren't affiliated with large universities and some schools housed within smaller universities are suffering the brunt of the drop in revenue, according to a recent credit-rating analysis of 123 ABA-accredited law schools by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

The 2013 drop extends a decline that is now in its third year. More than 52,000 would-be lawyers entered their first year of law school in 2010, an all-time high. Many of those students were thought to be seeking shelter from the economic tumult of the recession.

Even then, the job market for newly-minted attorneys was contracting.

Many big law firms laid off junior lawyers during the downturn and slashed expenses as clients facing their own financial troubles pressed for discounts. Some lower-level legal tasks that firm associates had done, such as document review, are now increasingly farmed out to contract attorneys or legal outsourcing companies that can do the work more cheaply.

"I think the collapse of the job market a few years ago was a surprise to the profession, and to law schools," said Barry Currier, the ABA's managing director of accreditation and legal education.

Reacting to the drop in demand for new attorneys, law schools have been retooling their course offerings to try and better prepare new graduates to find legal jobs.

Many schools now emphasize hands-on training through clinics and so-called externship work experiences, particularly in the third year, which was once largely devoted to specialized electives with little practical application.

President Barack Obama and other critics have questioned the utility of that last year and suggested that students might gain more through apprenticeships than paying another year of tuition, which can run more than $50,000 a year.

Others say revamping law school curricula doesn't address the larger problem: that there are not enough jobs to employ the flood of newly minted lawyers. Five years after the last recession ended, the legal job market remains challenging for recent graduates, some of whom emerge with loans that can total more than $150,000.

Those considering legal careers appear to be paying attention. This fall, approximately two-thirds of the 202 U.S. law schools accredited by the ABA reported declines in first-year enrollment. That slide exceeded 10% at 81 law schools, though the ABA has declined to say which ones.

Law school enrollment grew from the mid-1970s through the 1990s, with first-year enrollment ranging between about 39,000 and 44,000. Those numbers then began to climb more steeply early in the last decade. First-year enrollment jumped 7.46% in 2002, for example.

"There was a presumption that the market for law school graduates was growing," Mr. Currier said. Still, schools shouldn't have expected "those numbers were going to be sustainable for a long time."

A handful of law schools have lowered tuition, often by reducing the amount out-of-state students pay. Some schools have relaxed admissions standards to keep up class size, while others have intentionally shrunk the number of students they admit to preserve their standing in law school rankings that factor in entering students' grades and test scores.

But the news isn't all bad. For example, this year 27 law schools expanded their first-year class sizes by 10% or more, according to the ABA.

"Some schools may have corrected and are now in a position to increase their enrollment," the ABA's Mr. Currier said. "Some schools are still in the process of correction."

The decline also means potentially less competition for law school seats among applicants and for jobs among future graduates.

Leandro Quatel, a first-year student at Charlotte School of Law in North Carolina, hopes the shrinking pool of students will improve his prospects in the job market after graduation.

"I'm one of those students who is counting on a decline of my competition," Mr. Quatel, 26, said in an email. "I keep telling my wife that the more people drop out of law school or decide not to enroll or even apply, the better it could be for me in the long run."

washulawUID: 3502447

zhifeixie 发表于 2014-2-24 09:26
一堆170+的。。。。。。。不知该去哪里说理去

最新数据：

http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/three-year-volume
Three-Year ABA Volume Comparison
The following charts report ABA applicants and applications for each of the past three falls.
As of 2/7/14, there are 227,912 fall 2014 applications submitted by 32,532 applicants. Applicants are down 11.1% and applications are down 12.2% from 2013.
Last year at this time, we had 62% of the preliminary final applicant count.


打开链接有图表。