Should I take time off before going to law school?
This is an important decision, and a personal
one. No one can tell you what to do; I can only give you some things
to think about. There are a number of good reasons to take time off
between college and law school:
You will gain experience (work/volunteer,
preferably legal);
You will save some money to pay for law school;
You will be a more competitive applicant;
You will have the benefit of all of your senior year grades on your
transcript;
You will have more time to prepare for the LSAT;
You will have the time to determine whether law school is right for
you;
You will be more mature, a quality that law schools place a premium
on.
Taking time off is likely to give you an
advantage. In today's extremely competitive environment, it is
increasingly difficult for a college senior to put together an
application package to rival those of graduates who have been out in
the "real world" for several years. (This is true, incidentally, for
all graduate and professional schools. Entering classes everywhere
are getting older, not younger.)
A large percentage of applicants (67%) have
taken time off between college and law school. They use this time to
work, to travel, or to obtain an advanced degree. The consensus
among law school admissions directors seems to be that it doesn’t
matter so much what you do with that year or two (or more) off, but
rather what you learned from it. The time off is supposed to mature
you, and to make you more prepared to attend law school. Hopefully
you can make a better case for why you want to go, and how the
interim period has contributed to your decision to attend law
school.
Many parents are concerned that if their
child takes time off after college, he or she will never return to
school to advance their education. That’s possible, I suppose, but
the statistics suggest otherwise. Two-thirds of law school
applicants have taken time off, and have still chosen to apply. If
law school is right for you, taking time off should only make you a
more competitive applicant. If you are too distracted or
uninterested to apply after taking time off, law school was not the
right choice in the first place. Let’s face it: most law school
applicants are highly motivated to go, regardless of how much time
has passed since college.
In sum, you should think seriously about
taking time off. Often it's simply the smart thing to do.
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