The barriers that keep us out

Since coming to law school, I've had a theory that the institutions in place do everything they can to keep low-income, first-generation (defined as students who do not have at least one parents with a bachelor's degree) or otherwise diverse students out of the legal profession. Here's how: 

Undergraduate education

As we have discussed in class, even getting a bachelor's degree is a battle for many students who represent racial, ethnic and economic diversity. High-income, white families have more resources, leading to higher SAT scores than those from black or brown and low-income families. Without holistic review, or the now unconstitutional affirmative action, the student body in four-year colleges would be made almost entirely of students from white families who are middle class or wealthy. 

Even when diverse students get into college, it is an uphill battle to stay enrolled. Many students don't even try because they fear they can't afford it. Even if students receive the maximum financial aid, it may not be enough. With maximum financial aid, students in California will still need to pay up to $9,000 out of pocket. 

Law school admissions 

Law school applications are expensive. That's no secret. In addition to application fees for every school a student applies to, there are additional fees associated with transcripts, and processing fees through the Law School Admissions Council. Registering for the law school application system, the Credential Assembly Service (CAS), is $207 and the report generated by CAS is $45 per school application. These are all required fees to apply to a law school. Even more significantly, many schools require students to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) to get into law school. Many students take the test multiple times, paying the exam fee each time. These fees may deter students from applying at all.

In addition, first-generation students underperform on standardized tests such as the LSAT. This means they are less likely to get into top schools even if they are able to take the LSAT. 

Even though LSAC offers fee waivers for some of the fees, these waivers are often hard to get. Indeed, getting the waivers often requires a level of self-advocacy and an awareness of relevant processes. My own experience and those of others' suggest that many people are denied the LSAC fee waiver the first time they apply, despite meeting the eligibility requirements. It is possible that first-generation students do not have the time or the resources needed to ensure they get the waivers. 

The summer position job search

The barriers do not end once first-generation students get into law school. Diverse students may be behind the curve in law school hiring. For one, high-paying big law positions are greatly concerned about class ranking and grades. First-generation students, as we've discussed in class, have to worry about family obligations and finances that other students do not. Thee may keep first-generation students from focusing solely on school. This, of course, affects their GPAs. 

Without top ranks and good grades, first generation students may not even be able to get their foot in the door with big law. However, public interest positions require sacrificing a high salary, which low-income students may not have the luxury of doing. 

In addition, many employers want to see prior legal experience, but the positions that provide that experience are often unpaid. Many first-generation students often cannot take on the unpaid legal internships that are available, and instead opt to work in non-legal positions that actually pay, such as customer service or retail positions.  

Finally, first-generation students often do not have the robust networks that continuing-generation students enjoy. Even when their job applications fall short, some students have networks on which they can rely to support them as they seek legal employment. 

The financial barriers don't end here. Once students are admitted, the often face rising law school tuition, and first-generation and low-income students may not have the financial support that other students have. Despite ending up in lower-paying jobs, these students are likely to be buried in student loan debt.

The differences are tangible. First-generation students are more likely to work in government positions, have lower employment rates, and go into private practice at lower rates than non-first-generation students. 

So what do we do about it? 

Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is that there is power in highlighting these inequalities and how our experiences impact our performance even beyond the walls of UC Davis School of Law. I do also know that it is worth celebrating that despite these barriers in place, each and every first generation student at King Hall - and in law schools across the country - has done what seems to be the impossible. People may not know it, or understand the full range of barriers that keep us out, but we first-gen students do. We have all accomplished incredible, difficult things, and that is certainly worth celebrating.

Lucky girl syndrome

Image Description: Photo taken at UC Merced. Rancho Campana High School took students on a "college road trip" across the state annually. 

"Lucky girl syndrome" is a recent pop culture phenomenon. The phrase refers to the belief, or rather manifestation, that things will work out for you. As a first-generation law student, I can't help but wonder whether my success is a result of my hard work or of chance. Am I a lucky girl?

It has become increasingly clear that the primary and secondary schools you attend can have a large impact on the colleges to which you are admitted. A school's course offerings, state test scores, and extracurricular opportunities all influence the way a university might view applicants, despite the fact that students have little to no control over those details.

Advantages of magnet schools include specialized curriculum, improved educational opportunities, and valuing of diversity. They have an interesting history and mission of diversity, initially emerging as a desegregation response in the United States, aiming to encourage integration by drawing in students from different neighborhoods and addressing their academic needs.

Magnet schools typically prepare students for college, offering smaller class sizes for individualized attention, utilizing a hands-on approach, and allowing students the ability to focus curriculum on their particular curricular interests.

My K-12 educational background is not that of a typical first-generation student, or even one of a non-first generation student. In third grade, my family moved across the state of California and I began attending school in Ventura County. The school I attended wasn't great, but fifth grade was particularly bad. That year, I learned nothing, and I truly mean nothing. One vivid memory I have is when my teacher spent three days (yes, three) talking on the phone to her friend on speakerphone in front of the class. I also remember coming home and telling my mom about this. She was livid. 

The next week, Mom put my name in the "lottery" for a spot in a local magnet school. By the end of the month, we heard back that my name was selected. I won the lottery, literally.

And just like that, the next school year I was a magnet school student commuting thirty minutes every day to the "rich" part of town. My classmates had star-studded affiliations, lived in mansions, and participated in after-school activities like fencing and equestrianism. Class sizes were small, each student was given a school-issued laptop to take home, and the principal knew each one of us by name. It was very different from what I was used to.

I got lucky again in high school. A new school opened five minutes from my parents' house. It wasn't a magnet school, but a "STEAM" public school with three different academies students could tailor their studies to: the Academy of Arts and Entertainment, the Academy of Engineering, and the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Because attendance was in high demand, this school also implemented a lottery system. Once again, my mom put my name in the running, and I was selected. I won the lottery, again.

At Rancho Campana High school, all my classes were geared towards medicine, the field I thought I was going to pursue. It was the most beautiful public high school campus I had ever seen. Better still, by the end of my four years I had a padded resume. In addition to my participation in typical athletics and clubs, this school afforded me the ability to be a certified EMT. I took the equivalent of 6 years of science classes, did a hospital internship, and had cultivated strong, individualized relationships with faculty who could write my letters of recommendation. Furthermore, the classes were academically rigorous, and students performed well on the state's standardized tests. 

Rancho Campana High School is currently ranked 179th in the state. Comparing this ranking to the school I would have attended had my mom not put my name in the lottery is jarring--that school is 1,078th.

(To be clear, not everything was perfect. Instead of US History I took a "US Medical History" class. As a law student, I can say regular U.S. History would have been very, very helpful for Con Law classes.)

The luxury of the education I got from sixth to twelfth grade got me into my dream college, UC Davis. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if the outcome would have changed had I not won those two student lotteries.

As one student wrote, it sometimes seems as if our futures are dictated by our circumstances. Although I like to believe that my own agency, grit, and determination got me to where I am today, I get the sneaking feeling that I had a lot of luck on my side. That makes me wonder if that luck means that I'm taking up space I didn't earn.

It's hard for me to reconcile these conflicting thoughts. I think the only thing I can do is acknowledge how lucky I have been and recognize that those advantages have led me to King Hall. The combination of who I am and the forces beyond my control got me to where I am today. A little bit of luck helped me get to where I am today, and in my opinion there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe I am a lucky girl, but I'm also a lot of other things. 

Sharing Our Stories, Staying Ourselves

by Michaela Anang-Hadjicostandi

To many of us who choose to apply to higher ed, and especially for first generation students, admissions departments are largely perceived as a “black box”... these faceless, nameless entities who decide our futures. Are we worthy? Have our lives proved extraordinary… successful… tragic enough? That’s what the application process can feel like: deciding how much of ourselves feels worth sharing, and which parts of that story will be compelling for the key-holders of our futures. 

In the first few weeks of this course on “First Gen Experiences” we have been asked our histories, our perceptions on engaging vulnerably with each other, our perspectives on various pedagogical praxis, among other conversations. I’ve never been one to shy from those kinds of questions, (in fact, one of my favorite games is called We’re Not Really Strangers– check it out if you’re curious). In this course context, we examine our understandings of the higher education process, which so often leaves so many out of its “hallowed halls.” It’s clear that there is so much, from mental health to cost and beyond, that keeps people from pursuing higher ed and/or law school in particular. With the gutting of Affirmative Action, equity in the application process may have become more obscured and/or feel more inaccessible especially for prospective students of color. 

I’ll be real, I’ve been lucky. I never felt college wasn’t for me (more on this later). What’s more, when I applied to grad school, I was of the mind that I didn’t owe anyone my story. I’m privileged in that sense as well. I reflect on the experiences of law school peers sharing openly about their higher ed journeys, and realize that overcoming an internalized stigma of my upbringing weighed heavily in mine too, but like others, it did not deter me from striving for achievement. 

While puzzling over all that is possible to share with an unknown audience (whether the seeming black-box of admissions boards or the black-box of the internet), I believe in starting with intention. Below, I share my law school application essay (with slight content edits for posting here). I return to this and other application pieces from time to time because I take my words seriously, and hope to uphold them as best I can. I hope sharing this can possibly serve to demystify the application process for some, and I also hope to contextualize some of my past, looking toward my future writing:

“You are your greatest tool. Use you wisely.” (unknown attribution→ likely a meme I saw on instagram)

I was raised rooted in service with the expansive desert skyline beside my childhood home offering me a space of possibility and imagination. In the somewhat rural city of Odessa, Texas, learning spaces were my playground- literally, as I was raised by a single mother who taught Sociology, and metaphorically, as my sister and I were always encouraged to engage curiously and critically as we grew up. I was raised in community involvement and organizing, and thus from a young age I have felt a commitment and calling toward justice and all that means. I honor the place I spent my youth, growing up going to inter-tribal pow wows, being in community despite the legacy of segregation that exists. The continuation after grad school will be a sustained engagement with community, while leveraging my understanding and training to enrich and complicate conversation on the processes of civic and geographic justice. 

 

My journey toward law school, whether or not I knew, has been on and off since my senior year of high school. Back then, it was the Trial of Socrates, where we recreated the philosopher’s trial in a mock court in the public school library. My team and I on the defense, our “Socrates” was found not guilty and thus spared from his historic fate of taking hemlock. Although this was a small and relatively fictionalized exercise, it was an example of what a court system, what a good legal team, and what understanding the story and providing support for one’s client can do. 

In college, my cognizance of the law came closer to home. Sitting at our kitchen counter, my mother and I were engaging in conversation about my late father, who passed away a month before I started high school. He was a man who had principle, strength and dreams, until the US immigration system, which awarded my Greek mother a green card, denied one to my Ghanaian father. I vividly remember starting to formulate a clearer image of the previously unnamed forces that had shaped my father’s, and thus my family’s and my life. As a formerly undeclared college freshman, who had since decided upon Human Services and International Affairs as a major, the sense of justice that I have always had inside and committed to pursuing panged with a need to right a system that could potentially harm others in its wake. 

This sensitivity and my commitment to service, solidarity and justice were motivators for being a part of the founding coalition of Students Against Institutional Discrimination during undergrad. I participated remotely in organizing, while interning in Washington, DC. This period was deeply meaningful in building my capacity for organizing, as I recognized the leadership and advocacy of my peers, while my internship exposed me to issues of global justice and liberation struggles. I became more critically aware and avidly passionate about the issues that keep cultures and societies connected and those that maintain conflict and oppression. 

 

Before graduating, I asked my capstone advisor, the late Dr. Kimberly Jones, about her own experiences with law school. She told me, “You have to either love the law enough, or love what you’re going to do with the law enough.” So I waited to see if the time would come that I would love the law. 

I attended my first legal course while still studying at Northeastern University. The pace, energy and material were so thoroughly engaging, and I began to see the tendrils of what pursuing a law degree could entail. My second “course” in the legal field came several years later, during the immigration “crisis,” at the southern border of the US in the winter of 2018-2019. My mother and I drove cross country from Texas to join a coalition of volunteers to offer support to migrants facing or emerging from detention at the Tijuana-San Diego border. We engaged in a training to learn more about the process of seeking asylum: the arduous and step-laden journey that a family or individual might undergo to reach a sense of safety. I knew that being someone with empathy, understanding and also the training necessary to support others through this process and more, could ultimately come from a law degree. 

I’ve only thus far spoken of the “human” aspect of the law that fascinates and emboldens me in this pursuit. I wish to hold a JD/PhD in Geography. Much of my resolution in this field comes from seeing a wide range of experiences: from the heart and makeup of a city struggling against corporations that threaten lower income communities with continual “development” on behalf of profit over the wellbeing of the planet and people, to oil companies in my own hometown that threaten communities with toxic waste in close proximity to historically Black neighborhoods. I aim to learn about the land, rights as stewards of that land, and the different notions and histories that brought us to the current understanding of both. 

I recognize that not everyone has the same access that I did growing up. Each community and community member has a uniqueness to their situation that generalizations could never do justice to. As a Greek-Ghanaian-American, I bring this perspective to my work: the energy and belief in infinite potential, the weighted perspective of systems, theory and research, and the sincere drive for engagement and solutions. I am grateful to the students and community members who kept me focused on equity. I also hold immense gratitude and reverence for the Boston art community who changed my perspective and connection to art, showing the importance of vulnerability and collectivity. Currently, I am developing my writing practice to be able to share my voice. I have learned immensely from Disability Justice advocates and leaders as well, and keep this as a focal point in my practice. I always wanted to set the needle of the world toward a more equitable and accessible future for all. 

 

Knowing that I am a tool for my community, it is clear to me why law school is on my path. It might not be that I love the law, Dr. Jones, and dear readers, but I love what I will do with it.