Law Schools

Are Yale Students' Pre-Law Worries Pressing?

It really do be like that sometimes.

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yale law schoolThe data shows that the undergrads who tend to do the best on average on the LSAT are Math(s) and Philosophy majors. Since discovering that, I’ve asked myself why teenagers dead set on becoming lawyers do pre-law in undergrad instead of taking the classes that train their mind to think in the analytical patterns that lend themselves to breaking down fact patterns and logic games. It looks like a couple faculty members at Yale have had the same thought too. From Yale Daily News:

[A]t Yale College, pre-law students report feeling somewhat lost in their application journeys. The News spoke with a range of prospective law students who noted — for better or worse — the lack of a clear path for students interested in law school at Yale College.

“At Yale, there’s a very clear, distinct distaste for any pre-professional tracks,” said Mariana Collichio ’25. “And because of that, there’s kind of a vacuum where a lot of people that would probably be interested in law would actually end up going into consulting or things like that because there isn’t a clear path.”

I get that Type A folks like to have a clear goal in mind, but a problem with strict teleological thinking is that it makes it easy to bypass appreciating the here and now. That in mind, I get the gut check uneasiness around early pre-professional tracks. I know it’s Yale and there’s a presumption that if you see a 14-year-old attending classes it’s because they’re going to cure cancer or something by time they’re 19, but even the brilliant deserve a bit of a childhood. The undergraduate period is a formative period for our thinking and our person, and there is some hard-to-quantify cost in bracketing off potential career paths so early on. Who knows, you could major in Math to better your chances at scoring well on the LSAT and — by complete accident — discover a love of probability?

“I don’t think Yale necessarily sets up a clear pathway for students interested in pursuing a legal career, but I actually actually think that’s a really awesome thing,” wrote Kelli Hines ’24.  “I think that if there was a structured undergrad pre-law program it would be pretty limiting in terms of academic exploration.”

It is also worth mentioning that even if Yale doesn’t have the best pre-law program, it’s frickin’ Yale, ya dunce. Don’t be so preoccupied with splicing hairs that you… uhh… miss the whole scalp? Look, metaphors aren’t my strong point but you get what I’m saying.

Mazzarella also told the News that Yale is one of the top feeder schools for top law schools, so there are usually quite a few students from Yale that attend Yale Law School. In 2006, the News reported that 86 of Yale Law School’s 600 students were graduates of Yale College. YLS, which has consistently been ranked as the nation’s most selective law school, boasts a 6.9 percent acceptance rate.

Chill out nerd. You’ll move mountains.

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Pre-law Students Lack “Clear Path” In Application Journeys [Yale Daily News]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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