I went to the College of William & Mary for my BA.
After 10 years in the working world, I am applying to Law School and I find myself particularly interested in William & Mary Law (especially their Insitutute for Bill of Rights Law). As a side bonus I may qualify for in-state tuition. In other words I find myself, astoundingly enough, contemplating a return to The Burg (truly I never dreamed those words would pass my lips).
Is this in any way “frowned on” or a black mark when it comes to post-Law School life/job searching/etc.? I know that in some graduate fields it is not The Done Thing.
It hasn’t hurt “Triple Eagles” any. (Boston College High School, Boston College, and Boston College Law School.) They are very well regarded and sought after, in Boston anyway.
I’m in law school now. It seems the primary topic of conversation for law students is their future careers. So far I’ve never heard that it’s frowned upon to go to the same school for BA and JD. In fact several of my classmates went to my school for undergrad as well.
Based on some real-world academic experience, there is a vague distain for post-baccalaureate degrees earned at the same university and in the same general department as the undergrad degree. The rationale is that students who spend such a long time at one university department has perhaps learned to game the system/bureaucracy, and so may not have been as challenged as someone coming into a fresh graduate school.
I doubt this would apply to the OP’s situation; not only is there a ten-year gap, I’m guessing his/her BA wasn’t pre-law (if he spent 10 years in the working world:-))
I’ve heard of people not liking it, and one of those people is a partner at a firm who participates in hiring decisions, but I don’t think anyone considers it a big deal, especially if you’ve been out of school for a while. I think why people who don’t like it don’t like it is because it suggests – for someone who went straight through – that they don’t really care about the law, but that they just didn’t want college to end and so found a way to hang around a few more years.
I’ve also heard that it is generally frowned upon, but have never really heard a reasonable explanation as to why. Although that of course doesn’t necessarily matter; it’s impression that counts oftentimes.
I can’t speak to lawyers, but when I was in Journalism school we were strongly and directly urged to find another school if we wanted to do graduate work. The explanation was that most of us had already been exposed to many of the graduate faculty, we knew their general likes and dislikes and wouldn’t be as exposed to a diversity of opinion or as challenged as if we moved on.
Thank you everyone for your input. As some posters have surmised, I did not do “pre-law” in my undergrad (actually W&M does not offer such a program, though they do of course have a Government department and the Jefferson School for Public policy). My major was Anthropology with a minor in Theater, in case anyone cares (I have been writing professionally in a marketing context since graduation).