Graduate degree.. most rewarding/income over next 25 years

[nsxotic911]

I think a JD + specialized field like finance that you're in is going to be a killer niche.

I've considered going JD route given my software engineering and security backround for software crime or hippa down the line, but alas, I'm getting too old and too tied up (I'm 28 :biggrin though have worked virtually full time since about 15 < sigh >.

Best advice I can give you, similar to others here, go to school until you can't stop. Just like being in peak physical condition is going to give you the most athletic options, so will having the most knowledge.

Best of luck, and share the wealth.

 

[sahtt]

As I sit here studying for final exams I thought of this post. I ended up going for something a bit more interesting; an M.S. in a small 10 person a year interdisciplinary program that connects most of the graduate programs at UT with an energy focus. The specialty I developed and am using in my thesis is primarily petroleum/geosystems engineering based but I was able to take courses throughout UT Austin as I pleased (law school, geological sciences, industrial/mechanical/petroleum engineering, etc.).

This will be my last "real" semester as next semester I'll take one last course (leaning toward a risk management course in the MBA program) and finish up my thesis. I had what most people would consider impossible aspirations (finance/eco and mandarin Chinese background taking advanced engineering courses at a top school) but I managed to more or less pull it off. I have worked my same finance job full-time throughout and needless to say it has not been a walk in the park. It has, however, been absolutely worth the time, stress, (many) sleepless nights, $$, etc.

Because I've taken courses across the school I've made friends in just about every large graduate program here at UT. If anyone wants insight into what coursework is correlating with strong opportunities elsewhere, don't hesitate to ask. And thanks to my friends on Prime for their wisdom during my thought process. Three of the 10-12 people in my program are 35-45 years old and I think in some ways they are enjoying it the most; it's never too late.

 

[steveny]

I'm sure it wasn't easy but its worth it. Props!

 

[warrenw]

A lot of extra education is not only expensive, but time consuming. Think of those extra 4 years of school as your last 4 years of your career instead. Those 4 years could be worth $500,000 to $1,000,000 at the end of your career. Then there is the debt of school to pay off. And the chance the hiring manager may think you are over qualified for the role that they have to fill. Anything over 8 years of University is probably too costly to justify.

An example: You could go to North Dakota, where the economy is the exception, work in the petroleum industry, with a college diploma and make $100,000 plus. No school debt to pay, so really you are earning even more in comparison to staying in University. You are in the work force building on experience and well on your way to a promising financial future. I know someone that opened a welding shop outside of Grand Forks. He is paying $2M/year salary to himself. He doesn't even weld! he just opened a shop and hired people that could. (No MBA degree, just good business sense)

I know so many that struggled to get their MBA while working and are today working similar jobs with little extra salary as others that don't have it. Plus they are paying loans they had to get to enter the MBA program. No gain really.

If you are 27 - 30 and still in school, you probably wasted your time getting degrees that actually limit your career choice and promising jobs.

I am 52, and if I could do it all over again, I may not have even gone to University. I will continue my education but not until I retire. I am making too much money now to stop working.

 

[steveny]

A lot of extra education is not only expensive, but time consuming. Think of those extra 4 years of school as your last 4 years of your career instead. Those 4 years could be worth $500,000 to $1,000,000 at the end of your career. Then there is the debt of school to pay off. And the chance the hiring manager may think you are over qualified for the role that they have to fill. Anything over 8 years of University is probably too costly to justify.

An example: You could go to North Dakota, where the economy is the exception, work in the petroleum industry, with a college diploma and make $100,000 plus. No school debt to pay, so really you are earning even more in comparison to staying in University. You are in the work force building on experience and well on your way to a promising financial future.

I know so many that struggled to get their MBA while working and are today working similar jobs with little extra salary as others that don't have it.

If you are 27 - 30 and still in school, you probably wasted your time getting degrees that actually limit your career choice and promising jobs.

I am 52, and if I could do it all over again, I may not have even gone to University.

I agree but its apparent in Steve's case that he won't waste what he's earned.
College will give them knowledge, wisdom they need to bring with'em.

 

[sahtt]

A lot of extra education is not only expensive, but time consuming. Think of those extra 4 years of school as your last 4 years of your career instead. Those 4 years could be worth $500,000 to $1,000,000 at the end of your career. Then there is the debt of school to pay off. And the chance the hiring manager may think you are over qualified for the role that they have to fill. Anything over 8 years of University is probably too costly to justify.

An example: You could go to North Dakota, where the economy is the exception, work in the petroleum industry, with a college diploma and make $100,000 plus. No school debt to pay, so really you are earning even more in comparison to staying in University. You are in the work force building on experience and well on your way to a promising financial future.

I know so many that struggled to get their MBA while working and are today working similar jobs with little extra salary as others that don't have it. Plus they are paying loans they had to get to enter the MBA program. No gain really.

If you are 27 - 30 and still in school, you probably wasted your time getting degrees that actually limit your career choice and promising jobs.

I am 52, and if I could do it all over again, I may not have even gone to University. I will continue my education but not until I retire. I am making too much money now to stop working.

Hi Warren - in many cases you may be right. The total cost of my degree will run me about 15 grand, less than the cost of my s2000. If you read my post carefully you'll see I worked full time through graduate school, any income I lost is not all that material since the days of working two jobs is behind me. I will easily make the total direct costs (not indirect, externalities, etc.) in one year or less of additional incremental income. My current management team has already put mechanisms in place to try to keep me where I am currently that will offset the cost of school in less than one year. It did require a lot of time, that is certainly the case, and most people cannot or will not work at a decent paying job while in school. Most MBA programs, for instance, do not even allow it and will check your tax return to make sure. You are also dead on regarding the MBA market, I always hope people make millions of dollars but just last week I hired a recent MBA grad from Chicago to work with me on my team at work. It is not a job that requires an MBA but half my team has them simply because the financial services market is flooded with them at the moment.

 

[FF Drifter]

A lot of the value from attending graduate school is not from the classes, but from the networking. The right program will have the people that will be your future employers, employees, referrers, or career-building contacts. This is probably one of the biggest lessons I learned in grad school and definitely the most important thing I got out of it. I have the career path I have now because of classmates, and hired on other previous classmates as well.

 

[KSXNSX]

In regards to the JD:

I would say the #1 mistake people make when going into this field is making a decision based on what type of job they think they are going to get, without weighing that against what type of work they will have to do. For example: I remember reading articles in Forbes about tax attorneys that were billing out at over $1000 per hour. When you run some calculations, that sounds very attractive. But then you take tax law, and you realize that your life will end up revolving around the Internal Revenue Code. You can google it and try reading it yourself. It's miserable for most people.

I would say you should ONLY go into this field if you love reading legal cases (and I don't mean news articles you read, I mean judicial decisions). Your employment will depend on your 1L grades, and your 1L year is nearly 100% litigation and cases from centuries ago. You will be reading about cows in Contracts, Railroads in Civil Procedure, and Foxes in Property. The thinking is completely outdated, and I think the most analogous type of reasoning is that you would find in a philosophy class. If you are anything like me, you will be shocked to learn that you will spend a week learning about how a semicolon works. No joke.

Your admission to a top law school is going to depend on your LSAT, which is preposterous to me since I think the only thing on the LSAT that overlaps with law school is reading comp. If you don't like reading those passages in less than a minute, you won't like law school because you will be reading hundreds of pages each night of just-as-dry or drier material.

Now, if you can't imagine yourself working a 30k law job, then don't go into law. I think the people that are the most successful are the ones that buy into how lawyers think and reason, and believe in the system. You won't likely be getting a firm job your 1L summer, so you will have to put up with clerking or some other pro bono legal aid work. If you don't like that, you won't succeed (or will have to endure torture to succeed). Those that end up getting good jobs are the ones that loved their summers clerking for some obscure court somewhere, and writing pointless law review articles that will end up making no impact on our judiciary.

Now, if you can score above a 170 on the LSAT, have a good GPA, and can get into a T-5--AND you love law school work--then I would say go for it. If you miss the T-5, but end up in the T-14 (like I did), I would say you can still get a good job, but you will have to work a lot harder. If you end up outside of the T-14, same thing, but it gets harder and harder the further down the rankings you go. I know people that went to Southwestern Law School and got jobs at top firms like O'Melveny, but they were #1 in their class--and they were absolutely not the norm. Get ready for non-corporate, non-firm work if you are outside the T-14 and didn't kill your 1L year (and don't have contacts).

Since your dad is a lawyer, that may help. You basically need someone with influence over the hiring committee. I know people that were average students, but their dad was the hiring partner of a huge firm. Guess where they got their job? Besides having that type of paternal connection, that guy you once met at a cocktail party isn't going to help.

I believe law school apps are down because news is trickling out of the lack of employment in big law. Keep in mind when you read a school's statistics, please make sure to clarify what the percentages represent. Schools have been sued over misrepresenting firm employment when they really counted every type of job out there. There are people that ended up going into non-related fields, and schools counted that as employment.

Look for big-firm employment statistics.

If I could re-do it again, I would get an MBA if I got into a top-5. I know many more MBAs that got jobs than lawyers. And this is coming from a T-14 school.

Law school is nearly perfect for that humanities major in undergrad who finished a year early, and has no shot at any other type of job. They can graduate by the age of 25, and start their careers and hopefully make partner in 10 years by the age of 35. At a top 20 firm, that should put you near or over 1 million per year. But unfortunately, the reality is more like being passed over for partner and/or burning out, and making lateral moves until you find a firm that has a good balance of life + work.

In sum, being a lawyer is not what you see on TV, or what your image of it was from the outside. If you have a scientific mindset, a lot of legal reasoning is going to sound like BS to you. If you are good at things like finance, you probably are more mathematically/scientifically inclined. You will be completely surprised when you get to law school. Everything is qualitative. You will be using the word "reasonable" in every other sentence you write. The question is how much you can put up with to reach your goal of a big law job.

Also, besides legal writing and research, and maybe some upper level classes like Securities Regulation, don't expect to learn anything of value in law school. By the same token, if you need a lawyer, never hire a first-year associate, as they have no idea what they are doing and you are likely paying for them to learn. So if you are going to law school hoping that these skills will help if you decide to go into business, don't. You might gain a little knowledge, but it certainly won't be worth $200,000 + and 3 years of your life. Law school for people that want to go into business is complete overkill. Just go into business, and take a business law class. If anything, law school might shake your confidence in deals because you will learn that there is almost always an argument for the other side, and that over 90% of cases end in settlements.

Also with regards to your confidence in getting straight As in law school, keep this in mind: your grades are based on 1 final per class. Nothing else. Each final is a 3-4 hour long series of 1-5 essays. It is open-book most of the time, but you, and all your classmates are writing from notes you took from class. Lots of people share notes, so many essays look the same. Distinguishing yourself out of the crowd is extremely rare. If you want a sample, here is a conlaw case you are sure to read. It's a little on the lighter side for your typical case:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0317_0111_ZO.html

I think when we read this, it was one of maybe 10 cases for the assignment for that night. x (3-4) classes. And that's a fair rep of your work load for the night.

In sum: only go into law if you love the law and believe in the system.

The best ROIs I have seen in terms of educations have been undergrad finance degrees, particularly ones from the Ivy Leagues. My cousin went to UPenn undergrad, and was making between 100-200k his FIRST year out of undergrad. I think he was making over 300k in a few years at a hedge fund, possibly more as he was promoted several times.

Some other friends went to Northwestern and Duke. Both finance majors. they eventually got married. Duke became a derivatives trader on wall street making 700k per year, and Northwestern went to JP Morgan as an analyst making 300k. Combined income of over 1 mil per year from 4 years of undergrad, at the age of 28.

 

[SilverStone05]

In regards to the JD:

I would say the #1 mistake people make when going into this field is making a decision based on what type of job they think they are going to get, without weighing that against what type of work they will have to do. For example: I remember reading articles in Forbes about tax attorneys that were billing out at over $1000 per hour. When you run some calculations, that sounds very attractive. But then you take tax law, and you realize that your life will end up revolving around the Internal Revenue Code. You can google it and try reading it yourself. It's miserable for most people.

I would say you should ONLY go into this field if you love reading legal cases (and I don't mean news articles you read, I mean judicial decisions). Your employment will depend on your 1L grades, and your 1L year is nearly 100% litigation and cases from centuries ago. You will be reading about cows in Contracts, Railroads in Civil Procedure, and Foxes in Property. The thinking is completely outdated, and I think the most analogous type of reasoning is that you would find in a philosophy class. If you are anything like me, you will be shocked to learn that you will spend a week learning about how a semicolon works. No joke.

Your admission to a top law school is going to depend on your LSAT, which is preposterous to me since I think the only thing on the LSAT that overlaps with law school is reading comp. If you don't like reading those passages in less than a minute, you won't like law school because you will be reading hundreds of pages each night of just-as-dry or drier material.

Now, if you can't imagine yourself working a 30k law job, then don't go into law. I think the people that are the most successful are the ones that buy into how lawyers think and reason, and believe in the system. You won't likely be getting a firm job your 1L summer, so you will have to put up with clerking or some other pro bono legal aid work. If you don't like that, you won't succeed (or will have to endure torture to succeed). Those that end up getting good jobs are the ones that loved their summers clerking for some obscure court somewhere, and writing pointless law review articles that will end up making no impact on our judiciary.

Now, if you can score above a 170 on the LSAT, have a good GPA, and can get into a T-5--AND you love law school work--then I would say go for it. If you miss the T-5, but end up in the T-14 (like I did), I would say you can still get a good job, but you will have to work a lot harder. If you end up outside of the T-14, same thing, but it gets harder and harder the further down the rankings you go. I know people that went to Southwestern Law School and got jobs at top firms like O'Melveny, but they were #1 in their class--and they were absolutely not the norm. Get ready for non-corporate, non-firm work if you are outside the T-14 and didn't kill your 1L year (and don't have contacts).

Since your dad is a lawyer, that may help. You basically need someone with influence over the hiring committee. I know people that were average students, but their dad was the hiring partner of a huge firm. Guess where they got their job? Besides having that type of paternal connection, that guy you once met at a cocktail party isn't going to help.

I believe law school apps are down because news is trickling out of the lack of employment in big law. Keep in mind when you read a school's statistics, please make sure to clarify what the percentages represent. Schools have been sued over misrepresenting firm employment when they really counted every type of job out there. There are people that ended up going into non-related fields, and schools counted that as employment.

Look for big-firm employment statistics.

If I could re-do it again, I would get an MBA if I got into a top-5. I know many more MBAs that got jobs than lawyers. And this is coming from a T-14 school.

Law school is nearly perfect for that humanities major in undergrad who finished a year early, and has no shot at any other type of job. They can graduate by the age of 25, and start their careers and hopefully make partner in 10 years by the age of 35. At a top 20 firm, that should put you near or over 1 million per year. But unfortunately, the reality is more like being passed over for partner and/or burning out, and making lateral moves until you find a firm that has a good balance of life + work.

In sum, being a lawyer is not what you see on TV, or what your image of it was from the outside. If you have a scientific mindset, a lot of legal reasoning is going to sound like BS to you. If you are good at things like finance, you probably are more mathematically/scientifically inclined. You will be completely surprised when you get to law school. Everything is qualitative. You will be using the word "reasonable" in every other sentence you write. The question is how much you can put up with to reach your goal of a big law job.

Also, besides legal writing and research, and maybe some upper level classes like Securities Regulation, don't expect to learn anything of value in law school. By the same token, if you need a lawyer, never hire a first-year associate, as they have no idea what they are doing and you are likely paying for them to learn. So if you are going to law school hoping that these skills will help if you decide to go into business, don't. You might gain a little knowledge, but it certainly won't be worth $200,000 + and 3 years of your life. Law school for people that want to go into business is complete overkill. Just go into business, and take a business law class. If anything, law school might shake your confidence in deals because you will learn that there is almost always an argument for the other side, and that over 90% of cases end in settlements.

Also with regards to your confidence in getting straight As in law school, keep this in mind: your grades are based on 1 final per class. Nothing else. Each final is a 3-4 hour long series of 1-5 essays. It is open-book most of the time, but you, and all your classmates are writing from notes you took from class. Lots of people share notes, so many essays look the same. Distinguishing yourself out of the crowd is extremely rare. If you want a sample, here is a conlaw case you are sure to read. It's a little on the lighter side for your typical case:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0317_0111_ZO.html

I think when we read this, it was one of maybe 10 cases for the assignment for that night. x (3-4) classes. And that's a fair rep of your work load for the night.

In sum: only go into law if you love the law and believe in the system.

The best ROIs I have seen in terms of educations have been undergrad finance degrees, particularly ones from the Ivy Leagues. My cousin went to UPenn undergrad, and was making between 100-200k his FIRST year out of undergrad. I think he was making over 300k in a few years at a hedge fund, possibly more as he was promoted several times.

Some other friends went to Northwestern and Duke. Both finance majors. they eventually got married. Duke became a derivatives trader on wall street making 700k per year, and Northwestern went to JP Morgan as an analyst making 300k. Combined income of over 1 mil per year from 4 years of undergrad, at the age of 28.

Erm, you're about 3 years too late. He's near graduation from an MS program.

Hey - Aren't you the guy who suggested I hone my reading comprehension skills in another thread? :biggrin:

I won't even bother breaking it down for you. I think you were the one who said you won't bother going back to read through everything. You were right. You didn't read. Try it some time.

OP - Congrats, brother.

 

[sahtt]

In regards to the JD:

Silverstone is right timing wise but I still read your entire post in detail. I actually took the LSAT twice and got in the mid/high 160's both times (bit frustrating frankly) but in hindsight I am glad I didn't get a 170+ because I probably would have went with law school; I wasn't considering going unless it was a top tier program.

I did, however, get to take a law course at the UT law school covering 'energy law' which was great [it's very difficult to take a true law school without being in the law school, a great attribute of my program]. It was exactly how you described and I enjoyed it and learned a great deal about what being a law school student and lawyer is in the process. I managed to get an A despite being graded as if I was a 3L student as the law school does not grade on a separate curve/scale for non law school students. Only a certain fraction gets an A in the class so the fact I could compete without the first 2 years of law school behind me makes me relatively confident I could do law school in the future without too much trouble (although lots of hard work, longest/most difficult paper I have written was for that class).

 

[Daedalus]

I'm floored by the thought of being able to get a MS at a good school for $15k tuition, all in. Congrats on gettin' it done.

 

[KSXNSX]

Silverstone is right timing wise but I still read your entire post in detail. I actually took the LSAT twice and got in the mid/high 160's both times (bit frustrating frankly) but in hindsight I am glad I didn't get a 170+ because I probably would have went with law school; I wasn't considering going unless it was a top tier program.

I did, however, get to take a law course at the UT law school covering 'energy law' which was great [it's very difficult to take a true law school without being in the law school, a great attribute of my program]. It was exactly how you described and I enjoyed it and learned a great deal about what being a law school student and lawyer is in the process. I managed to get an A despite being graded as if I was a 3L student as the law school does not grade on a separate curve/scale for non law school students. Only a certain fraction gets an A in the class so the fact I could compete without the first 2 years of law school behind me makes me relatively confident I could do law school in the future without too much trouble (although lots of hard work, longest/most difficult paper I have written was for that class).

Congrats man! Yeah, if you loved that class, then definitely pursue what you love. My whole post was just a warning to people that thought it would be like Suits. lol. First year is much worse than upper level classes though, but who knows, you might love it.

Of course I didn't mean for you to go back to undergrad. :tongue: But IIRC, one option you listed was finance. My point was just that if you are good at finance, it can be a great choice as opposed to law school, and that kids with even only undergrad degrees in finance are succeeding.

I've seen your posts before, and no matter what you do I am sure you will be successful. You seem like a very smart guy.

As for the LSAT and your dreams, you can try again and see if you can score higher. But imo, if your scores are consistent, it's unlikely you will jump much unless there is one area you are weak on that a class can correct. The LSAT is scarily consistent with SAT scoring percentile-wise. I think they really got the psychometric aspect of standardized testing down, even though I disagree with some LSAT answers/reasoning.

However, the good news is, that despite nearly all the law schools making the LSAT the main determinative factor for admission (I think the split was 80/20 when I applied) there are schools that also weigh heavily on GPA. I will admit I skimmed over your post, so I don't recall if your GPA was great, but Berkeley, Yale, and some other liberal colleges weigh GPA heavily.

I think you need around a 3.8 and a 169+ for Berkeley (may have changed), and that school is great not only for Bay Area, but they are pass/fail.

My ex-gf only got a 171, but had a 4.0 and got in to Harvard.

So don't give up if it is your dream.

_____________

Erm, you're about 3 years too late. He's near graduation from an MS program.

Hey - Aren't you the guy who suggested I hone my reading comprehension skills in another thread? :biggrin:

lol. Are you now stalking me, and quoting me from other threads after all this time because you are hung up on being called out?

It's been weeks man. Get over it.

I can't believe you went into the other thread, quoted me, copied that text, then came back here, quoted me, and pasted it. This is just embarrassing... lol. I appreciate that you are still thinking of me, though.