Ask Steve: 27 Straight Answers
The questions I get most from college students, answered the way I’d answer them in office hours. Principle first, then what to do. A couple of these go against advice you’ve heard, on purpose.
“I’m a freshman. Isn’t it way too early to be thinking about this?”
It’s the opposite of too early. The whole point of this book is that the cheap, decisive moves happen early, and “I’ll think about it later” is how people lose a GPA they can’t rebuild. You don’t need to obsess. You need to protect your number, take a few hard classes, and start one real thing. That’s a few hours of attention a week, and it’s worth more now than it ever will be later.
“My parents are sure I need to major in political science, or ‘pre-law.’ Are they right?”
No. And it’s worth showing them why, kindly. There’s no required or preferred major for law school. Schools read the GPA your major earned you, not the label. Major in something you can get strong grades in, that builds reading and reasoning, and that you’ll actually do the work for. If political science is that for you, great. If it isn’t, the label buys you nothing and the lower grades cost you plenty.
“I’m first-gen, no lawyers in my family. What am I missing that everyone else seems to know?”
Less than you think, and you’re holding the fix. That “everyone else knows this” feeling is mostly that some students overheard the game at the dinner table. The game is learnable, and this book is the dinner-table conversation written down. Run the field-research ladder in chapter 9 (read what lawyers do, talk to a few), and you’ll close that gap faster than the people leaning on secondhand family lore from a decade ago.
“My GPA is already low. Should I give up on law school?”
No. A low GPA narrows your options and costs you some money, but it isn’t the end. The LSAT is still wide open and offsets a weak GPA better than anything else. A strong upward trend changes the story a reader tells. A gap year can reset your whole position. Chapter 15 is written for exactly you. Plenty of people get in, and get funded, off a recovery-plus-test story.
“Should I take the LSAT early just to get it out of the way?”
No. The LSAT is a skill you peak, not a box you check, so it works best in a tight window about a year before you apply. Take it years early and you’ll forget most of it, or burn through the limited official practice tests you’ll want later. Build the reasoning in class now, and prep when it counts.
“Should I double major to look more impressive?”
Usually not. A second major roughly doubles your GPA risk and stress for a line nobody weighs much. If a second field really feeds an interest or a skill, a minor or a few good electives gets you most of the benefit at a fraction of the risk. Save the double major for the rare case where you truly want both and can carry both without the average slipping.
“Is taking a gap year bad?”
Often it’s the strongest move you can make, especially if you’re behind. It gives you a clean run at the LSAT, time to build a real record, and the room to apply early in the cycle instead of rushed. Admissions readers don’t penalize it. They see a stronger file. The cost is a year, and the payoff is often a better school and far less debt. Run the trade for your own situation instead of assuming it’s a setback.
“Do mock trial or pre-law society actually help?”
Only if you go deep. A title in a club you barely attend helps nothing, and a reader can tell. One activity you stick with for years, grow in, and can tell a real story about helps a lot, because it turns into a recommendation and a throughline. Depth is what counts, not the number of lines on a list.
“Should I study abroad?”
You can, as long as it doesn’t quietly wreck The Number or stall The Record. Weigh it like any trade-off, what it builds against what it costs. If the credits transfer cleanly and you’ll come back on track, go. If it means a semester of grades that don’t count the way you hope, or dropping the one activity that was becoming your story, think harder. The experience is real. Just don’t let it knock the two numbers off course.
“Can you tell me my chances at a specific school?”
Honestly, no, and be suspicious of anyone who says yes for sure. Your odds depend on numbers you haven’t finished building, plus that year’s applicant pool, which nobody can see ahead of time. What I can tell you is the move. Pull the school’s published medians and aim to land above them. Do that and your odds and your scholarship money both climb. Build the position, and the chances mostly take care of themselves.
“What’s the single most important thing, if I can only focus on one?”
If I’m forced to pick one for an early reader, protect your GPA from day one, because it’s the asset with the shortest fuse and no rebuild button. For a late reader, it flips to the LSAT, because that’s where your remaining points and money live. Either way, the real answer is the Annual Long-Game Audit. Figure out your own lowest move and put this year there. The most important thing isn’t the same for everyone, and the audit is how you find yours.
“I’m at a community college or planning to transfer. Does that hurt me?”
No, not on its own. Law schools recalculate your GPA from all your transcripts, so the grades travel with you. That cuts both ways. A strong community-college record helps, and a weak one follows you. Treat every term as counting, because it does. The main thing to manage is the transition. Credits transfer, but grades sometimes get counted in ways you don’t expect, so check how yours will be counted before you assume. Otherwise, play the exact same game. Protect the number, build the mind in your hardest classes, find one real thing, and start a recommender relationship at whichever school you’re at now. The path in matters far less than the position you build along the way.
“Honestly, how many hours a week does this take?”
Less than you’d think early on, because most of it is doing things you already do, better. Freshman and sophomore year, the Long Game is mostly a handful of good decisions plus one weekly habit. The major you pick, the classes you choose, one argument a day read for its gap, showing up to one office hour. Call it a couple of focused hours on top of normal college life, and a ten-minute audit once a year. It ramps up later. Junior year adds the real money research and the recommender work, and the year you prep for the LSAT is a real commitment. But the early years aren’t a second job. They’re attention, not hours. The people who fail this didn’t run out of time. They never aimed the time they had.
“What if my parents won’t help pay, or don’t want me to go?”
Two different problems, both workable. On money, the whole point of building a strong candidacy is that it earns scholarships. So the position you build is partly how you shrink what anyone has to pay, parents included. Read chapters 11 and 12 closely and lean hard on the scholarship side, because for a strong-enough file, law school doesn’t have to mean full sticker. On the pushback, run their objections through chapter 2’s detector. If their worry is the debt and the job market, they might be right, and The Read is how you answer it with real numbers instead of a fight. If it’s just “I pictured something else for you,” that’s their picture, not your call. Either way the move is the same. Get the facts, make the honest call, and let a strong, well-funded plan do the arguing for you.
“Do internships at a law firm before law school help?”
They can, but not for the reason people think. A pre-law internship doesn’t impress admissions much on its own. It’s just a line. What it’s really good for is the field-research ladder. It shows you, up close, what the work is actually like, which either confirms the path or saves you from it. So take the firm internship for the information, not the resume line, and judge it by what it teaches you about the job, not the name on the door. If it also turns into a real relationship and a recommender, even better. But that comes from doing the work well, not from the title.
“Should I retake a class I bombed?”
Sometimes. It depends on your school’s policy and the rest of your record. If a retake replaces the original grade in your school’s GPA, it can help, though remember that law schools recalculate from all your transcripts and may count both attempts. The bigger value is usually the trend and the foundation. Retaking a course you’ll build on, and acing it, lifts the line and shows you learned the material. Don’t retake out of guilt. Retake when it moves the number or fixes a foundation you need. Otherwise, spend the credits going forward, not backward.
“Is it worth going to a lower-ranked school for free?”
Often, yes. This is the calculation Part 4 and the school-choice book exist for. A full ride at a school with solid outcomes in the market you want can beat sticker price at a more famous one by a hundred thousand dollars and years of freedom. The ranking matters most at the very top and for a few specific career paths. For a lot of people, the debt matters more than the logo. Run the real numbers, weigh the outcomes where you want to work, and don’t let a ranking make a six-figure decision your bank account has to live with.
“Does it matter where I go to undergrad?”
Less than you’d think, for law school specifically. Your LSAC GPA, your LSAT, and your record do the heavy lifting, and a strong record at a normal school beats a weak one at a famous school every time. A well-known undergrad can help at the margins, but it won’t rescue a low GPA or a thin record, and it isn’t worth taking on debt or a brutal curve to chase. Wherever you are, the game is the same. Protect the number, build the mind, grow one real thing. The college name is a small factor. What you do there is the big one.
“I’m an athlete, or I work a lot. How do I fit this in?”
You may be in better shape than you think, because a serious commitment is record, not a distraction from it. A sport you’ve played for years, a job you’ve held and grown in, caring for family, those are the deep, stuck-with-it things that become a story and a recommender. A padded list of clubs is not. So don’t treat your big commitment as the thing keeping you from the Long Game. It’s one of the four moves, already in motion. Protect the number around it, build the mind in the classes you do take, and let the commitment you already have count as the real record it is. Heavy schedules don’t disqualify you. They often hand you your throughline.
“How do I email a professor without sounding weird?”
Use the three moves from chapter 10. Name the specific thing of theirs you’ve run into, a class, a paper, a lecture. Add one honest sentence showing you engaged with it. Make a small, concrete ask, like a few minutes at office hours or a basic task you could help with. Keep it short, skip the flattery, and don’t apologize for existing. Professors get plenty of generic “can I have an opportunity” emails and ignore them. They answer the ones that prove you know what they do and ask for something specific. Weird is vague and all about you. Normal is specific and partly about them.
“I’m a sophomore and I’ve done nothing yet. Is it too late?”
No. Two-plus years is plenty of runway, and “nothing yet” describes most sophomores, including the ones who end up with strong files. The fix is the same as the whole book. Pick your lowest move and start it this week. Find one thing worth sticking with and begin, because depth needs time and the clock starts when you do, not when you feel ready. A sophomore who starts one real thing now has a two-year record by application time. A sophomore who waits for the perfect plan has a panic. Start small, start now, and let it build.
“What if I do all this and still don’t get into a school I want?”
Honest answer, a strong position sharply improves your odds and your money, but it guarantees nothing, because the pool and the year are out of your control. Even in the bad case, though, you’re far better off than the version of you who didn’t build the position. A stronger GPA, a real LSAT, and a genuine record give you a better reapplication, a stronger gap-year pivot, and more options outside law if you want them. The work isn’t wasted if the first cycle disappoints. It’s the exact thing that fixes a disappointing cycle. Plenty of people get in the second time on a file they improved on purpose. You don’t lose the investment. You just get more cycles to cash it in.
“Do grades in my major count more than my other classes?”
No. Law schools recalculate a GPA from every graded credit on your transcripts, so your gen-eds and electives count as much as your major courses. That cuts two ways. Don’t blow off the “easy” requirements, because a string of B-minuses in classes you didn’t respect drags the same average a hard major course would. And don’t assume a strong major GPA hides a weak overall one. Protect all of it. One extra thing: rigor and trend get noticed on top of the number, so a demanding load you handle well reads better than an easy one with the same GPA. But the recalculated number itself doesn’t care which class earned which grade.
“Course or self-study for the LSAT, when the time comes?”
That’s a real question, and it’s the LSAT book’s to answer, because it depends on your starting point, your budget, and how you learn. Short version, both can work, and what decides it is the review habit, not the format. What matters at your stage comes before that choice. Build the reasoning now, so whichever path you pick later starts from a strong base. Decide course-versus-self-study when you’re about a year out. Until then, it isn’t your problem to solve.
“Should I care which professors I take, or just the subjects?”
The professors, more than students think. The same course title can be a transcript-killer with one instructor and a fair, well-taught class with another, a passive lecture with one or a mind-building seminar with another. So scout both, for your GPA (who grades fairly) and for your mind (who makes you argue). A great professor in a subject you’re lukewarm on often beats a dull one in your favorite, because you’ll work harder, learn more, and maybe find a recommender. Pick the teacher, not just the topic.
“Is it bad to change my mind about law school partway through?”
Not at all, and the Long Game is built so it costs you nothing. The four moves, a strong GPA, a trained mind, real experience, an honest read on careers, are good for almost any path. So if you pivot, you walk away with assets, not regrets. Better still, you’ll probably spot the pivot earlier, because The Read and the field-research ladder are built to surface “this isn’t for me” cheaply, before the expensive commitment. Changing your mind at 20 after looking honestly is a win. Changing it at 26 with six figures of debt is the thing this book exists to prevent.
“How do I know if I’m ‘a notch above’ a school’s median?”
Look it up. Every school publishes its median GPA and LSAT, and “a notch above” just means your numbers sit a bit higher than both. The catch early on is that you won’t know your LSAT until you take it. So until then you aim. You know your GPA trend, you set a target score a few points above your target schools’ medians, and you build toward it. Once you have a real score, you recompare and adjust your list to the schools where you clear the bar. It isn’t a one-time calculation. You aim now, measure later, and adjust when you know.
