CALI's Pre-Law Blog

1 Sep, 2006

This week's reader submission has several questions so I'm going to break this up into two parts...

• I am 36 yrs old and have never been to college. I am now ready to finish my dream. I want to make sure I take the correct steps. Should I begin with a community college or should I begin at a 4 yr university? ...(see next post for the rest of the question)

It's great that you are ready to take the steps and finish a dream. Here are my thoughts on your questions.

Am I too old for Law School?
I tackled the age question a couple of weeks ago here. Make sure to read Dave's comments to that post as he adds some great perspective. You should not let your age stop you from taking the steps to pursuing a law school degree.

Will attending a community college hurt my chances at a law school?
I don't think it really matters where you begin prior to law school as long as you finish with a four year degree.

From a law school admissions perspective, a community college likely won't hurt you at all. LSAT score is THE most important factor for getting into law school. GPA is a distant second. And then it seems pretty much every other factor (except something exclusionary, say past criminal record) is just a slight bump up or down in admissions' eyes.

When law school admissions judge GPA, some credence is put into the reputation/difficulty of your undergraduate school and major. But as long as your GPA is relatively good everywhere you've been before law school, you're going to be fine. Just try to make sure you have a high GPA throughout. But even a low or mediocre GPA can be masked by a high LSAT.

In all, I just can't see an admissions decision-maker bumping you down for attending a community college. Especially since your age and situation (single mother wanting to turn your life around) will be be taken as a positive.

Advantages of a Community College?
Community college sounds like a great start for you in your situation. It will be a good way for you to ease back into school as it will likely be a little less challenging and time consuming than a four year university. In addition, community college is probably going to be cheaper.

Once you finish a two year community college degree you can transfer into a four-year university. In some states, like in Illinois where I'm from, transferring from community to bacaccalaureate college is very easy. But from what I understand, elsewhere it can be complicated.

But in my experience, a lot of good universities are very willing to accept community college transfers. The community college you want to attend may even have a program that sets you on track to transfer to certain universities. So talk to someone at your prospective school.

More on transferring from a community to four year here. So I guess the decision comes down to the ease with which you would be able to transfer from the community college to a four year university. I can see a lot of advantages to starting out at a community college for someone in your situation.

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*I am a law student. That means I don't have all the answers. I may be lacking knowledge in certain areas, namely the real world practice of law. But I have done a lot of research into the law school process as a whole and I am currently living through law school. I am also surrounded by a lot of smart and experienced people with unique insight into the law school world who either work at CALI or with whom CALI has close relationships. I hope that you seek others' opinions and insights in addition to mine in order to make an informed decision.