The number one post-graduation employment in our major, retail. That’s something we don’t advertise much. It’s not entirely our fault. Communication has traditionally been a catch-all for business and computer science drop-outs, as well as the sustaining academic wing of the football team on some campuses. On the other hand, I am perhaps the worst defender of our undergraduate program. I would never want my own kid to go through our program, and if you look at where our faculty send their own children, you’ll find I’m not alone. We don’t do professional preparation — because we’re a “research” institution — but we also have students who have never had to write a full paper in their undergraduate careers.
Oops, got a little off track there. A solid minority of our undergraduates end up in graduate school, many of them in law schools. I just ran into this Advice for Getting Into Law School, and I’m linking it here as a reference for undergrads who read my blog and may be thinking of law. I’m not sure I agree completely with it (for example, if you are admitted to Harvard Law, you borrow the tuition, because you know you will earn it back), and it lacks a criticism of the LSAT, but it does give some pretty solid advice for students coming from large, public universities who are interested in getting into a good law school.
I should note that especially in today’s market, a good law school is important. Our local school has dropped precipitously in national rankings lately. Those rankings may have nothing to do with the quality of the program, but they do have something to do with potential employers’ perceptions. While most law graduates still find jobs, it is not always the kind of work they had hoped they would be doing, and it is not always law. Right now, there are more law graduates than there are new positions, so you should consider law only if you think you’ll like doing it (that sounds obvious, but it doesn’t seem to be) and if you think you will be a very successful law student at a decently ranked school.
Getting into law school
The number one post-graduation employment in our major, retail. That’s something we don’t advertise much. It’s not entirely our fault. Communication has traditionally been a catch-all for business and computer science drop-outs, as well as the sustaining academic wing of the football team on some campuses. On the other hand, I am perhaps the worst defender of our undergraduate program. I would never want my own kid to go through our program, and if you look at where our faculty send their own children, you’ll find I’m not alone. We don’t do professional preparation — because we’re a “research” institution — but we also have students who have never had to write a full paper in their undergraduate careers.
Oops, got a little off track there. A solid minority of our undergraduates end up in graduate school, many of them in law schools. I just ran into this Advice for Getting Into Law School, and I’m linking it here as a reference for undergrads who read my blog and may be thinking of law. I’m not sure I agree completely with it (for example, if you are admitted to Harvard Law, you borrow the tuition, because you know you will earn it back), and it lacks a criticism of the LSAT, but it does give some pretty solid advice for students coming from large, public universities who are interested in getting into a good law school.
I should note that especially in today’s market, a good law school is important. Our local school has dropped precipitously in national rankings lately. Those rankings may have nothing to do with the quality of the program, but they do have something to do with potential employers’ perceptions. While most law graduates still find jobs, it is not always the kind of work they had hoped they would be doing, and it is not always law. Right now, there are more law graduates than there are new positions, so you should consider law only if you think you’ll like doing it (that sounds obvious, but it doesn’t seem to be) and if you think you will be a very successful law student at a decently ranked school.
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