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Particularly problematic is the randomization of punishment.

Even if that problem is remedied, it isn't going to benefit the OP.

Also, what exactly is your lesser punishment? This seems pretty severe . . . If your punishment is not less than that, that is unacceptable.

OP got to pass the class so I don't think the punishment was that severe. And whether it was harsh compared to others shouldn't matter to the OP.

The particulars of what happened show an overzealous disciplinary process, an extremely minor infraction for an open book exam

What do you think a more fair punishment should have been? The maximum is being expelled. The usual punishment for cheating is to be failed on the assignment, and with an exam that usually means failing the course.

I also disagree with characterizing this as a minor infraction. I don't know how her program is run, but open book and take home exams were common in my engineering program. It was well understood, and typically reinforced by the professors in person, that open book meant you were not allowed to communicate with another person for the exam. Our exams were heavily curved because the exams were written to be challenging. People that cheated on the exams really screwed over the rest of the class by giving the professor a false idea of how difficult the exam was. For that reason, cheating in our engineering program was way worse than cheating in a gen ed.

OP, there aren't many data points for people in your position. There isn't much you can do from here besides focusing a good addendum. My guess is that you picked the best year to pick up a violation. Frame this as a "I got stressed because of covid, and then made a dumb decision. I realized my mistake, and owned up to it." My last comment, avoid jumping straight to a formal appeal on this. If you take that appeal and lose it, it cuts at your ability to write an addendum about owning up to your mistakes.

None.

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@ Interesting! can you explain the differences?

For prosecution, your job is convince a patent examiner. The examiner does not know case law. Although the MPEP does reference cases, the examiners don't read cases. If you try to make legal arguments (like argument by analogy) you aren't going to get anywhere. To prosecute a patent you need a technical background. And to complete the work in a profitable amount of time (most applicants pay fixed fees these days) you need to be efficient. So employers care a great deal about your technical background for patent prosecution.

For litigation, having a technical background is a plus but it isn't required. GPs especially don't seem to put much of an emphasis on technical backgrounds. Even when they limit their applicant pools to those that are patent bar eligible, they are a lot more forgiving about background.

Look at job postings and the employee bios of various firms and boutiques and you'll get an idea of how things play out.

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whoever is hiring you to be a patent lawyer is going to analyze your ability and experience as a lawyer rather than your ability as a scientist.

For litigation yeah. But for prosecution that is questionable.

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Compared to watching paint dry, studying any subject is going to have some positive result on your 1L grades. But before you go read a hornbook, you should wonder whether the time is worth the gain.

“the less an individual knows going into 1L, the better off they will be”: I don’t think having background is counterproductive. Having familiarity with a topic might be a small boost, but I don’t think it’s worth investing your time into. You can do amazing on exam without having any idea what is going on.

Law school is nothing like med school (I won’t talk about your auto analogy because I don’t know that field). Med school you are objectively tested on the material. Law exams are so subjective that I don’t think you gain much from independent study.

I do not recommend studying doctrinal classes. If you’re eager to do something, learn about effective legal writing.

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It beats any other possible outcome.

Debatable. OP, I'm assuming you'll get into the other top schools. Don't be too quick to commit to Colombia. Check out this long thread: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57313

Congrats!

If you're attending a school that has a good bar passage rate, then your 1L classes won't prepare you for the bar at all. And studying for the bar won't help you with your 1L classes.

If you're bored, there are plenty of books you can read on preparing for 1L. I don't think they are worth the time because professors make classes.

The one universal skill to have before you start is mad typing skills.

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Given the circumstances, I can understand where the Original Poster is coming from. We should show some empathy in circumstances like this, while he may not be in the right and Heart Shaped Box has every right to not give him his money back, the OP has some legitimate excuses. Wife who presumably works on the front lines got sick while COVID was starting and he has two young kids. I can't imagine being a father in times like this with a wife who works on the front lines suddenly becoming ill and having to worry about my children.

The last thing on my mind would be the LSAT. OP may not have been right, but in my opinion and given the circumstances; I think many tutors out there would have refunded him the amount less the one session given. Compare this to air line, hotels, booking companies having to refund people back there money even though they have strict policies in place that do not require them by law to refund people back there money (if you were like me and had summer plans and booked a non-refundable ticket/reservation, you likely got it back in the form of a voucher or full refund). Most businesses are doing it because it is the right thing to do. But to each their own I guess.

And is all this really worth the $100 and change to deal with?

lmfao how does this have so many likes.

Your analogy to the multi billion dollar travel industry is ludicrous. Remote tutoring doesn't expose one to covid. The individual tutor is not worth millions of dollars and can't rely on a big bailout. Most of the companies offering cancellations require some notice, which the OP did not give. And, you completely ignored the time frame in question.

$100 isn't much, but I hope the tutor does't refund it. OP seems like a serial Karen that complains until he gets his way. Refunding him would reward his tantrum.

I'm willing to review your PS. However, I suggest that after peer review you look into having a professional review your PS.

I would not retake for the schools you listed. But I would retake to aim for better schools.

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@ Conversely, if you knew you wanted to practice in Utah and not do a clerkship

Colombia's clerkship numbers are pretty meh. Sticker at Colombia is not worth the chance of becoming part of the 5% of the graduating class that lands a federal clerkship.

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If you are going to go, one of your best options (that I myself would do) would be to pay the interest that accrues every month on your loan with your savings.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but given that grad plus loans have an origination fee and a high interest rate, I don't see how your proposal is the best alternative. My intuition is that you save the most by minimizing reliance on grad plus loans.

First, thanks all for the helpful comments.

Grad+ origination is brutal. Only reason I want to do Grad+ is because it has income-based repayment which gives me comfort if all fails in course of pursuing biglaw -- it's like an insurance policy with that origination fee (granted, IBR has some negative tax aspects down the road, but it makes the massive debt size less scary to me). Thoughts, 10000019?

If you're stuck paying sticker (and don't have outside funding), then you're stuck taking out grad plus loans.

If I was set on the private sector, I wouldn't pay sticker at any schools except Stanford and Yale. If you go to NYU, you won't struggle to get into BL. But getting into BL is easy. It's working in BL that is tough.

If you're set on PI, then take out whatever you want you aren't going to be paying it back anyways.

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If you are going to go, one of your best options (that I myself would do) would be to pay the interest that accrues every month on your loan with your savings.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but given that grad plus loans have an origination fee and a high interest rate, I don't see how your proposal is the best alternative. My intuition is that you save the most by minimizing reliance on grad plus loans.

duplicate

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I'm assuming you meant to use the word "law school" instead of "higher education" because for colleges (and many other professional programs) it is beyond debate that being anything other than Caucasian or Asian is a bonus.

Nope, I meant higher education. I didn't say that it's not a bonus--I said that it's not categorized as URM. In the world of the LSAT, your flawed assumption was to assume that "non-URM -> no increase in probability of admission", which doesn't make sense, because a lot of factors matter in admissions other than being URM!

I agree that it's a bonus, and in this case, it's a bonus because--to some extent--higher educational institutions want their student bodies to be diverse, irrespective of whether or not that diversity is representative of the U.S. population. Getting a boost for being a non-white, non-Asian but non-URM applicant is similar to getting a boost for having a unique experience or story that will, ultimately, make the student body at the school more interesting.

But that's a wholly different issue from URM. The primary intent behind the URM categorization is to bring up the numbers of admitted students who fall into groups that have been traditionally disadvantaged in the admissions process, evidenced by their under representation in higher education. The "bonuses" thus exist for different reasons.

URM isn't a universal term in higher education. For the handful of colleges and other professional schools that use the term URM, they do not limit Hispanic URMs to Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. Use a search engine and try to find colleges that use the term URM. You won't find many. Here is one: https://agsci.psu.edu/diversity/awareness/definitions.

I focused on the word boost because, as I mentioned earlier, designating someone as a URM does not mean anything. People want to be classified as URMs because of the boost. Within that group, the boost is not uniform.

The boost of race within admissions is mostly a black box. However, the few leaks we have to work off suggest that other-Hispanics also receive boosts well beyond typical softs, while Asian students do not receive a boost. I can't find the UVA leak that happened (but if my memory serves correct), they lumped together all Hispanics in their data. The Baylor leak also lumped all Hispanics together. If you look at anecdotal reports on LSN, other-Hispanics get into programs with lower stats than say Asians.

I don't like you suggesting that being a other-Hispanic is a soft. It undervalues how much of a boost it might be in admissions. Recognizing the potential value is important because it encourages applicants to apply to schools where they are below the medians. Law schools applications aren't cheap. Applicants aren't going to apply to schools that they think they have no shot getting into. Most of us recognize that traditional softs aren't going to get you into a school when you're below both medians. On the other hand, it's accepted that URMs have a shot at schools even when they are below both medians. Even though the bonus of being a other-Hispanic is not clear, my guess (based on LSN self-reported data and leaked admissions data) is that other-Hispanic applicants should reach further than Caucasian or Asian students.

To summarize, your first post would have been correct if you had used "law school admissions" instead of "world of higher education." Your first post wouldn't have been wrong, but I wanted to make clear that other-Hispanics may be receiving boosts that are higher than traditional softs and approaching the coveted URM boost. Your second post, however, had a host of false information.

Whatever score helps the school maintain its target 50th percentile.

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I have considered retaking solely for financial aid purposes, but I don't think it's worth the toll it might take on my mental health. I got really depressed while studying and am worried about going through that again. I figure that I'll either do big law to pay off loans or take advantage of Berkeley's LRAP program & public loan forgiveness.

If you're going the PI route, then I wouldn't bother retaking. But if you think that paying off sticker is easier than studying for the LSAT you're mistaken.

Also if studying really depresses you, you may want to reconsider law school. The bar exam makes the LSAT look like a BuzzFeed quiz.

Congrats, Berkeley is a great school. But unless Berkeley is your #1, I'd suggest you retake. You're capable of pulling that LSAT up, and with a higher LSAT score you'll be competitive for the elite schools.

Neither of those schools. Get your LSAT up and you'll be competitive for the top schools.

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@ What is considered a meh LSAT Score?

I read that my cumulative UGPA could change due to the LSAC conversion, but I don't really understand it much. I do know that I want to get the highest score I capable of obtaining. My target LSAT score is a 175, but I wouldn't mind if I score about a 172.

A meh LSAT score is anything below the median of your top school. At Yale that would be a 173. At Harvard, also a 173.

https://classic.7sage.com/admissions/dashboard/

Given your GPA, my advice is don't settle for a meh LSAT score.

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I'm not entirely sure. I'm intrigued by the idea of BigLaw, but not 100% committed; I'm pretty positive I want to try for a clerkship though.

As for negotiating -- I just sent in the scholarship app for Cornell, and I'm hoping I can use whatever they give me to negotiate with Columbia (thoughts on if that will work given that Cornell is bottom T14 and Columbia's #5?)....Vanderbilt gave me a pretty decent scholarship too but I don't know if I can use it to negotiate, and I'm not really considering going there...

Premature to being making a decision. Hypothesizing is fun but not a good use of time. Once you know how much each school will cost then you can make a decision.

In the mean time, you should learn more about post-grad opportunities.

Lastly, Vanderbilt is a good school. The T14s don't know you aren't serious about going there. Use it as leverage.

What are your goals? Have you tried negotiating with the other schools?

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@

Fair point but from what I hear, the unique nature of the legal profession plays a major role in accounting for this situation. Law school is different than medical school in that almost all graduates from med school find jobs as doctors; the same can’t be true of law school graduates.

If you aren't going to be a practicing attorney, you shouldn't spend the time becoming one.

Also, for lawyers, it seems the case that there are way tooo many lawyers, and too few legal positions (again, the opposite situation with doctors). And within the legal field, there’s often a major disparity in the career outcomes of the graduates of the top 20 and the other 120 law schools that may account for why it may appear there may be so many unhappy lawyers.

That's another reason why many prospective applicants should reconsider going to law school.

I’m not saying all T14 grad lawyers are happy. But I may very well bet money that if you do a survey of all Yale Law School graduates, their happiness/satisfaction levels of being a lawyer and attending law school would be relatively much higher than the average for all lawyers.

You're talking about a super minority. Since the OP didn't mention an offer from YLS, why focus on them?

Some lottery players become millionaires. Doesn't mean it's smart to play the lottery.

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@ im pretty sure u Can find ppl who dislike their jobs in almost any profession. There are unhappy teachers,lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc. no profession is perfect.

Yes you can, but, on average, the job dissatisfaction for lawyers is higher than those other careers.