Among the applicants this year, I am in the minority. Not only a few China students apply for JD in law school, but also a few engineering students who apply for JD. When I applied, there were no ready-made examples around me, so I took many detours. Here I write down some of my application experience, hoping to help future applicants.
Many engineering students are afraid or unwilling to apply for law school, and always feel that law school is a sideline unrelated to engineering. In fact, in my opinion, law is also a collection of logic. Don't look at those legal papers, they are all interlocking and well-organized logical reasoning. Science and engineering students do not lack training in this field in domestic education, and they will not have any obvious disadvantages compared with liberal arts students when studying law. Moreover, those who can study abroad in China are generally not bad in qualifications, so it is not particularly difficult to apply for law school. Think about turtles becoming less and less popular in recent years, and those who stay in the United States and switch to finance have also broken their heads. One more choice is not a bad thing.
Applying for law school mainly depends on two hard indicators: LSAT and undergraduate credits. These two indicators can determine the grade of the school you apply for, but whether you can get admission smoothly in the end depends on the combination of various factors.
LSAT score is usually regarded as the most important factor in previous experience lectures applied by law schools. It is generally believed that if you can get into 170, you can get into some top 14 law schools. If you can get above 175, Harvard has a bright future. Judging from the admission situation over the years, these two statements are not wrong. Top 14 northwest and Georgetown are famous for their LSAT scores, and LSAT above 170 is almost a guarantee of admission. Harvard can only rely on LSAT as the main criterion to measure students because of its large enrollment. However, relying on LSAT alone is not enough to open the door to other law schools. In recent years, with the increasing LSAT scores, the admission criteria of various schools are becoming more and more diversified. Schools not only value these standardized achievements, but also value the "soft factors" of applicants. In addition, China students have been doing well in standardized tests. In recent years, the super-high scores of LSAT have emerged one after another, and there is a trend of "orientalization" of LSAT. In the next few years, it will be more and more difficult for LSAT to stand out among many China applicants.
Undergraduate credit score is another hard indicator in the application. Since 2007, the Law School Admission Committee (LSAC) has allowed foreign students to send their undergraduate transcripts to LSAC for unified certification. This is unfortunate news for most Chinese mainland applicants. The grading standards of mainland universities are generally much stricter than those of American universities. Therefore, after the transcript is converted by LSAC, the result is usually terrible. For example, if Tsinghua's score of 100 is converted into a score of four according to LSAC standards, the average score of 90 may only be converted into 3.6. This has been achieved by 30%-40% in many universities in the United States. It is not known whether US News will include the credits of foreign students in its law school ranking index. If unfortunately included, some law schools are likely to reject some qualified foreign applicants to ensure that their rankings will not be affected.
The reputation of a school is a factor that is often overlooked, and law schools in the United States are notoriously snobbish in this regard, and will definitely give priority to graduates from prestigious schools when conditions are close. Look at the list of freshmen in Yale Law School. Undergraduate schools are basically the cycle of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. Occasionally, a state university can also make people shine. China students apply for the same question. In the past, there were not many international exchanges in the legal field, and foreigners had no idea about the quality of domestic schools. In recent years, there have been frequent exchanges, and American law schools generally have an understanding of domestic school rankings. Judging from the brand of the school, the students of Peking University are the most widely distributed in American law schools, with a large number of students and far ahead in popularity. Tsinghua has done a good job in international communication in recent years, and has a good reputation. Others, such as Fudan University, National People's Congress, and Political Science and Law, are highly recognized schools abroad. Moreover, some professional colleges have a tradition of applying for law schools, such as the Foreign Affairs College, which has several graduates. Although from a statistical point of view, the sample of China students studying JD in the United States is too small to draw a definite conclusion, at least from what I know, in the next few years, graduation from a famous domestic school is likely to be one of the prerequisites for applying for a top law school.
If you unfortunately do not have the above conditions, you can only work harder in other aspects:
1. Social experience. The tricks that American students play on it are simply dazzling. I met some people who went to Africa to volunteer for AIDS, some who went to poor communities in the United States to be primary school teachers, some who went to the Brazilian rainforest to save wild animals, and even some American soldiers who had just returned from Afghanistan. In short, as long as it is a public welfare social experience, it is quite helpful for the application. To tell the truth, these American students are not idealistic young people. Most of them just want their resumes to look better when they apply to law school. As soon as they graduate, they will turn their backs on the revolution and throw themselves into the arms of law firms. Most students in China are young people who have just left school. A few months' internship in a company or law firm at most is dwarfed by these fancy experiences. If you really want to win by social experience, I advise you to teach in Tibet for about a year. At least it looks decent.
2. Letter of recommendation. Law school professors in China have little academic influence in the world, but in recent years, they have welcomed foreign law schools and met many famous professors. In particular, Peking University, the National People's Congress and Tsinghua in Beijing are said to have good relations with major foreign law schools. Several famous professors in China have a tradition of recommending students. If it can get their attention, the application may be helpful. Another kind of recommendation letter comes from social elites, depending on everyone's nature. In 1980s and 1990s, most China students who applied for law school were princelings, chief translators or English journalists of CCTV, and some of them were really recommended by celebrities. It is said that Gao Zhikai was recommended by Dr. Kissinger to Yale Law School. I can only express my admiration for such a legend.
3. Personal statement. Personal statement is not particularly important when applying for a doctorate, but it is very important when applying for JD. After all, lawyers live by words. If they can't even write their own application documents, how can they expect to write legal documents that ghosts can't understand in the future?
Writing a personal statement is the most taboo to recall the past. On the other hand, many applicants like to move out all their old things. At the beginning, we must talk about his 10 glorious deeds before his/her age, or his parents inculcated him. In a word, I have been determined to do great things since I was a child, and now I finally seize the opportunity to study law and serve the motherland. I hope your school can help realize the great dream of naive teenagers. I am exaggerating, but look at your personal statement and see if it started when I was a child … ...
The other is to list dry goods and submit daily reports, such as "three years ago, I made a project for a company and got the following gains;" Two years ago, I helped Professor XXX do some research and published an article. "It is ok to write a doctoral application in this style, but it is a bit too simple to write the application documents of the college. Law school values not only your past Excellence, but also your future potential. In the same space, you should focus more on your ideals and beliefs than simply repeating the contents of your resume.
China students are also used to emphasizing their "China background" when applying. However, in law schools in the United States, Chinese are already an over-represented minority, and the number of applicants with mainland background has also increased significantly. Too much emphasis on one's "China background" may make it difficult to achieve the expected results. In the telephone interview at Harvard, I also asked some questions about China applicants, and it turned out that their application supervisor didn't seem too keen on the factor of "China", but praised my environmental background. Since the early 1990s, although the number of applicants from China has been increasing day by day, the enrollment of China doctor of laws in major law schools has not increased significantly. As far as I know, Yale, Harvard and Stanford seem to recruit China students every year, but there is only one place each year. And unfortunately, the choice of these schools often collapses, so there are always some schools that will fail. In any case, China students will be considered as a risky choice when they enter law school, because they lack comparable experience and qualifications. Therefore, when applying, compared with local applicants, we will not have much advantage.