Highers for law school
by scotslawstudent
The higher grades you need to enter a law school in Scotland are strict but not picky- I sat a particularly high number of exams when I was at school because I wanted the challenge (and couldn’t decide which class not to take) but there’s no reason that you can’t go directly from 5th year with 5 strong highers – the SQA system is pretty much entirely dependent on your grades. Your personal statement, unless you are applying to oversubscribed courses, will not come into the decision, in my experience. 5As or 4AB will put your place pretty much beyond doubt but it is still perfectly possible to enter law school with some advanced highers and a little less from 5th year than this; it’s actually what I did. I went for a very balanced set of humanities and sciences that I was interested in and felt comfortable doing and went on to blank horribly on a previously extremely strong subject and finished up missing my entry requirements by a mark in the exam. These things happen in life, I reapplied the next year and now I’m enjoying the summer break before my second year.
As long as you get the letters from your exams, avoiding vocational subjects, you will be pretty much halfway to accepted by law school of your choice. UCAS needs done on time but it shouldn’t be a huge nightmare for you in fifth or sixth year. You should ideally aim for subjects you will succeed in, that is- score an A. 5As is a fantastic achievement but it is not all that rare and it is not limited to people who sail through on luck, a reasonable amount of work and strategic selection of subjects will get you there too. Having 5As leaves your options wide open and is well worth having even if you are not considering a degree in medicine or law so everyone should put as much effort as possible into their highers, they really are life altering exam results. That said, lower results are still salvageable, just make sure you are sitting 5 in one exam diet. Skills you already possess are ideal as are good foundations to skill based CVs – my interest in computing was fantastic because I was more than comfortable right up to Advanced Higher, so I scored highly, and computer literacy is a pretty much essential skill to mention on any CV.
The other issue is LNAT, should your school of choice want it. I’ve sat this twice, once in fifth and once in sixth year and still don’t like it as a judging tool. It does however pretty much work out who can reason with words but doesn’t give people a lot of opportunity to work hard to compete with naturally gifted people, in the profession there’s a lot of natural talent but the willingness to work is a very big point in anyone’s favour. It’s not a particularly difficult test, especially because, just like in real law school you aren’t competing with the score instead you’re competing on the curve of everyone else. If you get over average consider yourself safe, any interviews you need have most likely been earned at this point. After you appear at interviews don’t worry if you only scored a point or two over the average score – it’ll be your performance at the interview which distinguishes you from the others so concentrate on giving it your best shot.
I personally feel that you shouldn’t learn substantive law before the start of your course, reading ahead is fine and well but I disagree with the idea of starting off with an entirely new sphere of work while still studying at the high end of your previous level. If you have family or educator friends who can gently ease you into law school preparation then you honestly don’t need this blog and go with the advice they give you, your comments would be very much appreciated. If you try to learn law from books on your own you might end up in the total wrong end of the park from your lecturers and that will create difficulties when you move to law school – you’re going to law school to learn how to be flexible and adaptable with the law as opposed to already knowing it before you arrive. In fact, I started to apply for Cambridge out of curiosity in my 6th year but decided that needing to start reading up on the subject, in advance, was excessive on top of already heavy school workloads and withdrew from the process. The fact that I would need to re-naturalise to practice in Scotland after taking a challenging degree didn’t spur me on much either.
In your fifth and sixth years lots of As (band 1s are nice but don’t matter in the long run) are far more important than having the finer points of delict under your belt before you meet a single teacher, the time for reading ahead is during summer after the holidays (if at all). Request a book list from your university, pick one or a couple of the books up used from Amazon and read simple casebooks, Law Basics books and maybe even have a look (don’t buy) at reference copies of the institutional writers like Hume, MacBryde, Bell, Stair to see what you make of them. But before the exams is SQA studying time.
Once you have accepted your place on your course of choice prepare to enjoy your last lazy summer as much as you can and be ready for a shock when you arrive in autumn. It is technically possible to sign onto job seekers allowance in your between school and university period so this is worth trying to bolster your finances, you could also get a job and this is probably a much more sensible idea to prevent you stopping entirely for months. After you start law school you will work your fingers to the bone and will only slowly begin to realise what the competition between the students themselves means. You have already jumped through more hoops to get to your course than most other students – those of you who were interviewed for your place will know this better than anyone and the people who are left in the course are determined and driven. This of course includes you, even if you don’t feel determined or driven right now it will grow on you as your course progresses. Law school shapes you into a very effective graduate and is a great start on life.
Although, I still think I’m crazy for doing law as a first degree, I’m missing out on all the fun the social sciences guys are having, but I’m gaining from the experience for everything I lose in time at the student’s union.
I read your passage because i am interested in perhaps studying law later on. i am only 15 but need to decide my higher subjects. i have been told history is a good higher to take for law, is this true? i personally prefer modern studies.
thanks for the advice and your time , lauren
I found my high school subjects didn’t really feature into my university classes (except for philosophy and economics which I took as electives). Law is pretty much a whole new ball game when you get to it. What you’re looking to get from both history and modern studies would be research skills rather than any content.
I personally took Modern Studies, and not History, all the way through to Advanced Higher and I would say the AH is a particularly good course for people looking at doing law (I ended up doing a 6th year dissertation on penology and using some of the same textbooks in first year). I think either class will do you brilliantly and what’s most important for applying to law is your grade rather than the subject itself.
Generally you should stick to serious subjects and do make sure that universities will accept them in advance. The biggest tip I would give to anyone to avoid repeating the mistakes I made in applying is to research things early on. I pretty much stumbled into law and it would have been much less stressful to learn how it works in advance.