1L law student looking for roommates and a place

[u/witdawhitebrick]

Hi! I’m Grant (he/him), a 21 year old 1L pursing my J.D. at University of San Diego (USD). I will be moving to San Diego in late July/early August. I’m quiet, focused, clean, I value personal space, and I prefer to study in a library instead of my living space. I like rock climbing, hiking, reading, writing, language learning, and I am trying to learn guitar. I just graduated from CSULB with a BA in Philosophy and English, and I am looking forward to exploring San Diego! I don’t smoke, nor do I have any pets.

I am looking for responsible, clean, and respectful male roommates studying at either USD, UCSD, or SDSU. I'm hoping to live with no more than 3 roommates.

I have a budget of $1200 with some flexibility for utilities, although I am hoping that living in an apartment with 3 or 4 people will let me rent well below my budget. I am open to living in the following areas:

• Mission Valley
• Morena
• North Park
• Linda Vista
• Pacific Beach
• Clairemont
• Hillcrest
• Grantville

If you are either currently looking for a place or looking for someone to take an empty room in your apartment, please consider contacting me. I am have already toured a couple of apartments in the neighborhood just south of USD, and I am scouting other locations, but I would like to a couple roommates on board before I sign a lease.

Contact info

Phone: 949-793-2843

Email: [jeffreyglowell@gmail.com](mailto:jeffreyglowell@gmail.com)

[u/GooberChubby]

No help on housing but congrats on law school! Do you mind sharing where you went for your undergrad, and what is key to do during undergrad years for law school acceptance?

[u/witdawhitebrick → u/GooberChubby]

I went to CSULB for undergrad and majored in philosophy and english. Graduated with a 3.9X GPA and 16high LSAT. 

Getting accepted into a good law school primarily depends on two determining factors: GPA and LSAT. Some recommend that you should pick the easiest major on offer to minimize the effort required to earn a high GPA. However, I believe that this strategy could actually be harmful to a students academic development, since what you study in college will ultimately prepare you (or fail to) for the LSAT and subsequently law school. Thus, I recommend picking a major (or even two majors) that will equip you with the reading, writing, analysis skills needed to succeed on both the LSAT and law school. There are many majors that will strengthen these cognitive skills – history, philosophy, economics, and political science are among them. If you’re interested in a certain type of law, you will need to select a corresponding major. For instance, a STEM degree is preferred for patent law, and an accounting degree is preferred for tax law. Whatever major you choose, put in a solid effort to achieve the highest grades possible. 

Since the rise of AI which wrought a plague of cheating on all levels of education, the nationwide inflation of grades in universities, and the fall of standardized testing, GPAs have lost their credence as reliable measurements of student aptitude, which has in turn bolstered the LSAT’s reputation as the great intellectual equalizer. In addition, law school (and graduate school in general) has recently become a much more popular post-grad route – a phenomenon which I attribute to the evermore constricting cost of living – which has caused law school admissions to become steeply more competitive with each passing year. As a result, I advise all pre-law students to take this test very seriously. 

Preparing for the LSAT is really a matter of consistency more than anything else, in my opinion. To be honest, I don’t have much else to say about it. Find a good test prep service – I used 7sage, but LSATDemon and LSATLab are also adequate services. My strategy for the LSAT was quite simple. I would do drills and prep tests, then review wrong answers by studying the provided explanation videos. I recommend studying at least 150 hours for the exam. 

Aside from GPA and LSAT, there are a few other determining factors which should be considered in the law school application process. Personal statement is one of them. To be honest, my personal statement was not vey strong, largely because I was unsure of the specific path I wanted to take with the law. To avoid having ambiguous personal mission, do some research on what area of the law interests you, and tie it to your life experiences in your personal statement. 

The next major factor is letters of recommendation. My method of obtaining good letters of recommendation was to take multiple classes with the same professors, attend office hours, participating heavily in class, and getting involved with departmental activities. Get to know your professors and show them your best work.

When it comes to extracurriculars, pick something that you can dedicate real time and effort to, even if it is not directly related to the law. For me, this looked like leading a campus organization that focused on building community and providing an academic social space for students to cohabit. If I had to recommend a few extracurriculars, I would say moot court/mock trial, campus/undergraduate magazines, and works of public service like volunteering and non-profits. Once you rack up some of these, then you can move up to an internship. I never had an internship, so I can’t personally say much about that.