The Beginning Of The End Of Blogs As We Know Them

Feb. 11, 2004 - As this is my first update, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a brief history of me so that you can understand why I have choosen law school, and what has transpired so far in the admissions process. For this reason, this first posting will be fairly long, but subsequent updates should be significantly shorter.

I am originally from the Twin Cities Metro Area (Minneapolis/St. Paul), and I earned a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from one of the best public engineering schools in the country (biased view of course, but still quite true). I graduated with a 3.58 GPA (on a 4.0 scale). I went to a different school for my Freshman year where I had a 3.87 GPA (also on a 4.0 scale). According to the Law School Admissions Council, who oversees the admissions process, my cummulative Undergraduate GPA (aka the UGPA, not to be confused with the Un-Professional Golfers Association, or UPGA, to which many of us belong... sorry, bad pun) is 3.65. By the way, I'm not telling you these stats to brag, but so that you will have a context for why I applied where I did, and a frame of reference as to why I got in, got wait listed, or got rejected (OK, I might be bragging, but only a little bit).

After graduating, I began working for a patent law firm in Chicago, where I learned that to work in patent law, you didn't need to have a law degree. I've been working here for 2 1/2 years (3 years by the time I start law school) as a patent agent, writing patent applications for our corporate clients, prosecuting the application through the Patent Office, and doing legal research and analysis for infringement opinions, and recently I did legal research for an Amicus Brief filed by the Intellectual Property Law Section of the American Bar Association. I took the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) in June of last year and received a 167 out of 180 (not great, but still 96th percentile).

With my numbers, I was in the range of some of the top schools in the country (notice I say in the range, not at the top of the range), so I cast my net fairly wide in the hopes of catching some big fish. I ended up applying to a total of 13 schools (way more than I would recommend) of varying degrees of prestige. My top tier, or "reach" schools (i.e. not highly likely, but my numbers still fall in their range, so it is worth a shot) included Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Stanford, and Cal-Berkeley (who insists on including the parenthetical Boalt Hall whenever you refer to them), my "moderate reach" (i.e. better match with my numbers) included U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor, U. of Pennsylvania (Penn), U. of Virginia, and Northwestern, my "right on" schools (i.e. where my numbers are right at the top of their typical range) includes U. of Minnesota, U. of Illinois, Washington and Lee (Virginia), and U. of Iowa, and my "safety" school (i.e., I should have no problem getting in) was William Mitchell (Minnesota).

As it now stands, I have been accepted to (in order of when I received the acceptance letter) U. of Iowa, U. of Minnesota, U. of Illinois, William Mitchell, and Washington and Lee, I have been rejected by the myopic likes of Stanford and Berkeley (bunch of flakey Californians anyway, just kidding... kind of), and I have been Waitlisted by Northwestern (which to be quite honest was a shock to me, because a co-worker with nearly identical numbers, yet with less work experience, got in outright... but whatever). Also, thankfully, I have received scholarship offers from Iowa (full ride tuition), William Mitchell (full ride tuition), Minnesota ($5000 per year, but tuition is out of state), and Illinois ($7000/year, in-state tuition).

Currently, I am trying to finish up my Federal Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and other financial aid applications to have a better idea as to what my options are. Anyway, that's the story up to now. I hope you check back to see what else is going on.