Does Law School Look at Your Major? The STEM vs Humanities Debate

The Pre-Law Engineering Trap

You are a brilliant student. You decided to major in Aerospace Engineering at a notoriously difficult technical university. You grinded for four years through brutal thermodynamics classes and earned a 3.4 Cumulative GPA.

Your roommate majored in Communications. They took classes on pop culture and public speaking, partied three nights a week, and graduated with a 3.9 Cumulative GPA.

Both of you apply to Columbia Law School. Columbia accepts your roommate and rejects you.

You take to Reddit in a rage. "How is this fair?! My 3.4 in Engineering is way harder than a 3.9 in Communications!"

You are absolutely right. But the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) does not care.

The Tyranny of the US News Rankings

Law school admissions are entirely dictated by the US News & World Report rankings.

These rankings heavily weight the median GPA and median LSAT of a law school's incoming class. When US News collects the data, they do not ask for the "Major-Adjusted GPA." They ask for the raw, numerical LSAC GPA.

If Columbia admits a 3.4 Engineering major, it drags their median GPA down, threatening their ranking. If they admit a 3.9 Communications major, their median GPA goes up, securing their prestige.

The Strategy for Pre-Law Students

If you know with 100% certainty that you want to go to law school, do not pick a difficult STEM major.

The most successful pre-law students major in subjects where they can effortlessly secure a 3.9 or 4.0 GPA (e.g., Political Science, English, History, Communications).

There is one exception: Patent Law. If you explicitly want to practice Intellectual Property (IP) or Patent Law, you must have a hard science or engineering degree to sit for the Patent Bar. In this highly specific scenario, top law schools will often forgive a slightly lower STEM GPA because they know top law firms are desperate to hire students with your exact technical background. Otherwise, protect your GPA at all costs. Choose the easier path.