Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience? Forum

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PineSolver

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Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience?

Post by PineSolver » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:28 pm

Here's the gist of my problem:

I currently have a 3.761 GPA from a state school. If I get As in all my classes this semester and spring semester (which I believe I will), I'm on track to graduate with a 3.80 GPA in the spring. I won't be graduating with any honors.

However, I'm not on track for fall 2018 law school admissions (haven't taken LSAT yet, studying now). I'm planning on applying in for fall 2019 admissions. I have to do something in the year in-between.

Would it be worth it to defer graduation, and pursue a second major? My current major is finance. There is a humanities major I could get in less than a year. If I do that, and retake a couple of classes that I didn't do so well in freshman year (my study habits have vastly improved), I could get a 3.835 GPA in the eyes of law schools, and a 3.91 GPA in the eyes of my current university, putting me on track to graduate cum laude at the very least, possibly magna cum laude.

Is it worth it to stick around? Should I instead try to get some interesting work experience in during this time, or possibly a 1-year masters degree of some kind? Any and all advice is welcome.

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UVA2B

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Re: Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience?

Post by UVA2B » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:34 pm

A GPA is always better than that minimal work experience or a throwaway masters. So if you can bump up your GPA, do it. But don't stop there. Don't target a year to apply to law school. Get what you want out of your UG education, find a job you could see yourself enjoying for at least a couple years, experience life as an actual adult for those couple of years, and come back to law school if it still fits your goals.

Most K-JD aren't as ready for law school as they think they are. And that has nothing to do with academics. You're committing to a profession you know at most minimally about, and you know very little about yourself in a professional environment. Getting minimum two years work experience should be your goal. You'll be better set up in pretty much every way when you possibly enter law school (more personally ready, better professional profile, and more confidence when you eventually have to convince employers to give you a job as an attorney).

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Re: Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience?

Post by PineSolver » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:49 pm

UVA2B wrote:A GPA is always better than that minimal work experience or a throwaway masters. So if you can bump up your GPA, do it. But don't stop there. Don't target a year to apply to law school. Get what you want out of your UG education, find a job you could see yourself enjoying for at least a couple years, experience life as an actual adult for those couple of years, and come back to law school if it still fits your goals.

Most K-JD aren't as ready for law school as they think they are. And that has nothing to do with academics. You're committing to a profession you know at most minimally about, and you know very little about yourself in a professional environment. Getting minimum two years work experience should be your goal. You'll be better set up in pretty much every way when you possibly enter law school (more personally ready, better professional profile, and more confidence when you eventually have to convince employers to give you a job as an attorney).
I guess my main worry about that is that I would really like to be done with law school, and preferably, a couple years of post law school employment by the time I'm thirty, just for the purpose of starting a family. I'd ideally like to be done having kids by thirty-five, and I'm pretty sure that law school and the first few years of employment immediately following law school are not ideal times to be pregnant.

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UVA2B

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Re: Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience?

Post by UVA2B » Sun Nov 19, 2017 10:03 pm

PineSolver wrote:
UVA2B wrote:A GPA is always better than that minimal work experience or a throwaway masters. So if you can bump up your GPA, do it. But don't stop there. Don't target a year to apply to law school. Get what you want out of your UG education, find a job you could see yourself enjoying for at least a couple years, experience life as an actual adult for those couple of years, and come back to law school if it still fits your goals.

Most K-JD aren't as ready for law school as they think they are. And that has nothing to do with academics. You're committing to a profession you know at most minimally about, and you know very little about yourself in a professional environment. Getting minimum two years work experience should be your goal. You'll be better set up in pretty much every way when you possibly enter law school (more personally ready, better professional profile, and more confidence when you eventually have to convince employers to give you a job as an attorney).
I guess my main worry about that is that I would really like to be done with law school, and preferably, a couple years of post law school employment by the time I'm thirty, just for the purpose of starting a family. I'd ideally like to be done having kids by thirty-five, and I'm pretty sure that law school and the first few years of employment immediately following law school are not ideal times to be pregnant.
I appreciate your attempt at planning the next 8-10 years with any amount of precision, but IMO it shows your inability to see the number of moving pieces that will happen in your life and your professional development. Thinking you can precisely plan BA-->JD-->Legal work-->a couple kids-->??? is a bit...optimistic.

There are a ton of personal reasons alone to question whether your plan will work. Are you about to get married or already married, and have you discussed this proposed family planning? Or are you just hypothetically thinking you'd like your life to go that way? To that end, if you're motivated to succeed in this profession, why are you paying so much attention to when you'll be able to have kids? If you want to find success in the legal profession, you'll need to be dedicated to the profession, and if/when you find yourself pregnant, your reputation at the job will make the maternity and new family issues covered by that reputation.

I'm all for trying to plan for your life purposefully, to include balancing your personal and professional life, but at the stage you're likely at personally (and if I'm wrong and projecting about where you're at personally, I apologize. I'm definitely making assumptions that may or may not be fair), you should mostly concern yourself with setting up your career that you haven't started yet, and the truth is people with several years of substantive work experience do generally better in the legal profession, at least in getting that first job.

So absolutely improve your GPA, but you should seriously, seriously consider getting some separation from your UG experience. I promise you'll be a lot better off than you would be with the detailed life planning you're trying to do now.

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Post by Gray » Sun Nov 19, 2017 10:36 pm

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Re: Should I bump my GPA a bit, or get in work experience?

Post by coskigirl » Mon Nov 20, 2017 2:19 pm

Forgive me for being the old woman with a bit of life experience but I'm going to speak up a bit. I understand the plan to have kids by the time you're 30 but plans change. When I was graduating from UG I expected the same thing. It hasn't turned out that way in the slightest. Cliches are generally cliches because they are true and the old one that says "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans" is absolutely true. Very few of my friends have had their family timelines come in the way they would have as they graduated UG. Do what is right for you now, not because you want some timeline of when you want to have a family. Life just isn't a nice, neat package.

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