Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Economics, alternative paths drive down law school applications
By Rachael Scarborough King
Columbia Daily Spectator (Columbia U.)
02/27/2006

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK — More Columbia University graduates have been entering the work force immediately after graduation instead of pursuing advanced degrees over the last few years, in keeping with national trends showing a marked decline in law school applications.

Columbia Law School saw a 4 percent drop in applicants this year, while Columbia Business School saw a small jump after two years of declining applications.

The most common rationale given for the decline is a rebounding job market, which lowers students' willingness to invest large amounts of time and money in a law degree when other lucrative jobs are available. Nationally, law school applications dropped 4.6 percent last year and 9.5 percent this year, according to a recent New York Times article.

After a 30 percent surge in 2002 and 2003 in the amount of Columbia students applying to law school, the number of would-be lawyers has leveled off to about the 2001 mark, according to Megan Rigney, Columbia's director of pre-professional advising.

Rigney said that cycles of application numbers tend to have an inverse relationship to the ups and downs of the economy. When the economy is strong, she explained, students see more benefits in starting their careers right away, whereas when jobs are scarce, there is more security in staying in school for another three years. However, she noted that it is difficult to draw generalizations based on the Columbia applicant pool.

"Every student ... makes individual decisions about why they want to go to law school, why they don't want to go to law school, why they want to delay law school," she said.

E. Nkonye Iwerebon, dean of admissions at Columbia Law, said that the decline in applications would not affect the incoming class since the group included more "outstanding applicants" than in previous years. She speculated that the economy was one of the major factors in the drop and in the 19 percent increase in applications between 2001 and 2002. The increase in the number of high-quality candidates, she said, could be due to better pre-law advising and awareness of the continued competitiveness of admission to Columbia.

"We are hopeful that, at the end of the admissions cycle, we would have attracted many of the best and brightest that this nation, indeed the world, has to offer," Iwerebon wrote in an e-mail.

A wide range of factors affects an individual student's decision on attending law school. Some members of the class of 2006 said they focused more on pursuing their own interests than on taking the path that would offer them the highest salary.

Matthew Dinusson, SEAS '06, had originally planned to attend law school but decided to take a job in finance after a "random" internship last summer piqued his interest. He said that salary did not play an important role in his decision.

"I had an internship this summer and it was awesome and tons of fun, and I don't think graduate school would be as enjoyable," he said. "I had such a good time at the job that I couldn't see the point of going to law school."

Laura Rosner, CC '06, she said that she never wanted to practice law and realized that her interest lay more in political economy and government. Additionally, she said she was influenced by a group interview session she attended for Georgetown Law School.

"Seeing the type of people there, these people are really obnoxious, I'm not enjoying this at all, and if this is what the core classes of law school are going to be like ... then forget it, this is really not what I want," Rosner said.

For other students, economic factors were more important. Alex Crohn, CC '06, who has already been accepted to the law schools of Harvard, Columbia, and New York University, said he applied based on a combination of personal interest and financial considerations.

"Right now I'm totally broke, so I'm like, 'Oh, I want to work in corporate law,' because I really need to go shopping and all my friends have these really lucrative banking jobs and I'm jealous, of course, but ultimately I want to work in international law," he said.

Rosner added that she understood the link between the economic upturn and the decline in applications but didn't think it was very applicable to Columbia students.

"The economics explanation makes sense for the people who are just applying to law school because they don't know what they want to do, but I don't think there are a lot of people like that at Columbia," she said. "I think more than ever now if you don't know what you want to do you're not going to spend the money on law school."

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