well if i went to Cape Cod Community College I could have pulled a 4.0 and been top of my class.

They really don't care that much about strength of your undergrad. They just want the highest GPA/LSAT combination they can report to US News.

yeah, but the difference between Rutgers and UCLA is negligible. they should have something where people can choose to submit their high school stats as well. this would show that i had the potential to go to a better school. but it's good they won't ding me too much for Rutgers.

i just have two quick questions

are law schools that concerned with rankings?
should i start studying anything before i go to law school?

law schools admissions offices are obsessed with rankings.

they arent going to care that you went to rutgers, at all. they will just care about your gpa.

as for studying before law school ill let the guys who have LS experience answer... but i asked the same question of them and they all gave me a resounding "no."

i want to get gifts for my letter of recommendation writers as a thank you (i assume this is a good idea/good form). what's a solid, safe thing to get? i was thinking something like a bottle of wine or scotch maybe?

yeah, i've gotten that from my friends as well, but nobody ever told me why.

Another noob question:

A few of my profs have "class participation" listed as having an impact on your grade. One goes so far to quantify it (together with attendance and professionalism) as 10 % of the grade. Is this something to be concerned about, or is this just a token line most profs put in their syllabus?

It is professor specific obv. I have had professors that severely penalize those that do not participate in class.

Guys sorry for my incessant questions, but I'm just a confused 1L right now. Wanted to say that I appreciate all your help and advice, and I hope to return the favor to the forum after I finish up my 1L year. I'm a mid-tier 2, so I really feel the pressure on myself to finish in the top 10 % of my class, especially seeing the current economy. I'm single, family is relatively close (so no long travel weekends) and I really don't have any other distractions (money issues, etc) to worry about, so I'm just trying to go real rambo on this thing, at least for the first year.

Two more (probably stupid and feel free to call me an idiot if you want) questions:

1. For those of you who did not brief, what did you do instead? Did you still read over the cases in the casebook? Did you still summarize them or just use canned briefs? Since class participation is a graded requirement in some of my classes, I feel like I do need to be at least somewhat prepared if called on.

2. What did you find yourself doing with most of your study time? Learning the black letter law? Where do we learn the black letter law? In the casebook? In class?

Thanks as always.

And like I said before, feel free to call me dumb. I can take it :-P.

gunner alert imo

haha yeah i assumed you were kidding.

i plan on speaking as little in class as possible, tbh.

oh i have one last question.

How hard is law school?

harder than Rutgers

Pretty easy. Getting a job is the hard part.

i figured that much

Well my boss' position is "judges don't read **** over a page or 2". He has been doing this very very successfully for 30 years so I just do what he tells me. It is probably area/judge dependent.

1. I am brand new at this
2. I know the rental car issue comes up first, but this lady is ridiculous. Since her accident on July 21st, she has called me probably 40 times? From what I understand SHE has to pay for it and she gets reimbursed. I have looked her up and I think she is just one of those people. She has been evicted from like 8 apartments or whatever and is trying to get us to pay for every thing she does.
3. Torture Chamber? Please elaborate!

my roommate has been working on Pennoyer v. Neff for like 3 hours now.

As soon as I read that it was just used as more of a "hazing ritual" and the rules from it don't really apply anymore... I quit after an hour.

lol. I applied to 3 of the top 5 (WL to reject from 2. Tulane and presumably rejected from UoA tomorrow morning)

I don't even party, free time = poker time. Unless they meant the Democratic Party.

and how tough are the schools that finished under BYU?

My basic plan for 3L year is to die of alcohol poisoning before my student loans come due, but the 1L class was not full of hot chicks, which decreases my motivation to go out. OTOH, it could encourage even more reckless levels of drinking. We shall see.

Also, they all have boyfriends now, but didn't you kids go to college? Every girl has a boyfriend from home the first few weeks of freshman year.

Seattle really stands out on that party school list. All of the other top schools are large and/or in a high quality of life area, the kids who go there must know how to party.

Yeah. I have not known one couple that came into undergrad together and left together. They ALLLLLL break up, even couples that go to the same school. (I was actually responsible for stealing the girl out of one of those.)

I'll just bide my time until they start breaking up, I suppose.

Although there's one 1L I met who seems to be single who I am interested in. However I question the merits of dating at all in the 1L year. Too much effort to put in when I'll just want to veg out, haha.

Does anyone have experience with Stafford loans? Basically, I took out both sub and unsub stafford loans, but now times have changed and I dont need the unsubidized loan and want to pay it off. For some reason though they're lumped together as one big amount when I go to make a payment, and there is no obvious way I can find to just pay the unsubsidized loan. I'll probably call tomorrow, but was just wondering if anyone knows how to go about directing a payment specifically for just the unsubsidized loan...

Except it shouldn't be a lot of work since you both are in law school, so perfect excuse to not wine and dine. "Wanna come bang and study some personal jurisdiction?" seems like it might be alright.

The correct answer if you're single and headed to law school is to go somewhere that has lots of undergrads and spend 3 years banging 19 year olds. Then when you become a lawyer you're more marketable and can settle down with a chick that was previously out of your range.

lol that's just not me haha

I was nearly one of those chumps coming in with a significant other, but things changed faaaast. It's almost certainly better this way.

And so it begins. I'll probably get annoying and life blog here every once in a while about law school. Feel free to tell me to STFU, and I'll oblige.

We all do it, man, that's why this thread is 60% of the content of the student life forum.