Tag Archives: Emma Boettcher

Will You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test?

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Think that what you post stays between you and your friends? Well, that’s not the case—employers may look for online infor­ma­tion about stu­dents as they apply for intern­ships and jobs. Recently, Career Ser­vices hosted “Do You Pass the Social Media Recruit­ment Test?” This event served as an intro­duc­tion to the ways stu­dents can use social media tools – among them Face­book, Twit­ter, and of course LinkedIn – in the job search and offered tips on how to man­age your online rep­u­ta­tion. (Career Ser­vices offers sim­i­lar events every semes­ter, so watch their event cal­en­dar or the weekly CareerNews e-newsletter to see when the next one will be offered.)

The ses­sion began with the obvi­ous ques­tion – what is the Inter­net say­ing about you? Stu­dents in atten­dance looked them­selves up on dogpile.com and other web­sites, and hap­pily none uncov­ered too much unsa­vory infor­ma­tion. Some found videos of them­selves, and the one post-doc present saw links to his research that he didn’t know existed. Kath­leen Mannheimer, Senior Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Career Ser­vices, who hosted the event, said stu­dents may be sur­prised what infor­ma­tion exists about them online and what employ­ers can eas­ily access. She sug­gested set­ting up Google alerts with your name so you can see what comes up in searches. She also sug­gested that when post­ing any­thing online, stu­dents should con­sider whether they would want to see that infor­ma­tion, photo, etc. printed in the news­pa­per. If you hap­pen to come across any­thing you would not want to see as pub­lic infor­ma­tion, lifehacker.com has good tips how to remove infor­ma­tion from the Inter­net. Check out this info­graphic enti­tled, “The Google Your­self Chal­lenge” to learn more.

The pre­sen­ta­tion then shifted to LinkedIn, the social media plat­form that was founded with the express pur­pose of busi­ness net­work­ing. Despite this, Mannheimer said employ­ers can use any social media plat­form, even Twit­ter and Pin­ter­est, to track and source can­di­dates. Mannheimer showed one of LinkedIn’s edu­ca­tional videos on cre­at­ing a pro­fes­sional pro­file. Tips included upload­ing a business-like pic­ture and giv­ing an in-depth sum­mary of your expe­ri­ences. LinkedIn has under­gone a num­ber of changes to be more applic­a­ble to stu­dents. “In the very early stages, it was pri­mar­ily for expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als,” Mannheimer said. A LinkedIn page now includes oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dent data such as GPA and rel­e­vant coursework.

Other fea­tures of LinkedIn include the abil­ity to search by com­pany or indus­try and to research a role model’s career path. Mannheimer sug­gested that stu­dents reach out to recent hires at their dream com­pa­nies and ask how they landed the job. She also dis­cussed that when reach­ing out to pro­fes­sion­als on LinkedIn, it is not the same as “friend request­ing” on Face­book. You should add a pro­fes­sional intro­duc­tion and mes­sage to your request for connection.

Face­book and Twit­ter can also be good sources for job infor­ma­tion. Com­pa­nies often have pages specif­i­cally devoted to recruit­ing on Face­book, and there are Twit­ter han­dles that exclu­sively post job open­ings, such as @TweetMyJobs.

Despite the increas­ing rel­e­vance of social media plat­forms in the job search, one stands out. “LinkedIn is going to be the most impor­tant for you right now,” Mannheimer said. Career Ser­vices staff can help you review your LinkedIn pro­file in the same way they offer resume cri­tiques. If you would like assis­tance, sched­ule an appointment.

On a final note, I sug­gest all stu­dents search their name on the Inter­net to see what infor­ma­tion turns up and review their social media pres­ence to find out what an employer might see. Now’s the time to “own” your online reputation!

 

Know Your Passion: Advice on Applying to Graduate School

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On Fri­day, Career Ser­vices hosted “Prepar­ing Your Grad­u­ate School Appli­ca­tion Mate­ri­als,” which served as an intro­duc­tion for stu­dents to the world of grad­u­ate school and grad­u­ate school appli­ca­tions. Satomi Chu­dasama, Assis­tant Direc­tor, Lib­eral Arts & Engi­neer­ing Career Coun­sel­ing, gave the pre­sen­ta­tion, and about twenty stu­dents attended.

Chu­dasama empha­sized that stu­dents should not pick a grad­u­ate school based on rank­ing alone; they should also pay atten­tion to the pro­grams offered. “What you want to do and what the school is offer­ing need to match.

The pre­sen­ta­tion drew many par­al­lels between grad­u­ate school appli­ca­tions and col­lege appli­ca­tions, but the chief dif­fer­ence between the two is that fac­ulty mem­bers read grad­u­ate school appli­ca­tions. Because of this, it is impor­tant that under­grad­u­ate inter­ests cor­re­late with the pro­gram. “Grad­u­ate schools want you to know what you’re apply­ing for,” Chu­dasama said. Hav­ing this sort of pas­sion is impor­tant for rea­sons beyond the appli­ca­tion. Grad­u­ate school, espe­cially a Ph.D. pro­gram, is all-consuming. “It’s intense.”

When con­sid­er­ing which pro­gram to apply for, it was empha­sized that highly ranked schools might not be ideal for a student’s spe­cific inter­ests. Stu­dents need to look at spe­cific offer­ings as well as other char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as loca­tion (“You’re going to spend a long time there.”) and fac­ulty.  One tip Chu­dasama gave was to look at the authors of arti­cles you enjoy read­ing for class. “If they are teach­ing some­where, where are they teaching?”

As far as spe­cific appli­ca­tion mate­ri­als go, Chu­dasama men­tioned the let­ter explain­ing grade defla­tion that Prince­ton encloses with a tran­script and said tran­scripts are also scru­ti­nized for the stu­dents’ course selec­tions. Stan­dard­ized test scores can also counter a sub-par GPA. Since scores are valid for five years, it was rec­om­mended that stu­dents take tests while they are still in school, when they have good study habits.

For the state­ment of pur­pose, stu­dents may show their pas­sions. “There’s no right or wrong way to write this state­ment, which is tricky for a lot of peo­ple,” Chu­dasama said. Career Ser­vices can pro­vide read­ing and edit­ing ser­vices, but it’s best to avoid the late-November rush.

The dead­lines may be in the fall, but it is advis­able for stu­dents look­ing to pre­pare over the sum­mer. Sopho­mores, she said, should develop their pas­sion and spe­cific area of inter­est, but juniors can do more to research spe­cific schools and take the rel­e­vant tests.

Career Ser­vices can pro­vide more infor­ma­tion on grad­u­ate school, set­ting goals, and spe­cific ele­ments of one’s appli­ca­tion. Chu­dasama also high­lighted the Cre­den­tials File ser­vice, which keeps let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion on hand for stu­dents apply­ing to mul­ti­ple schools or apply­ing sev­eral years after grad­u­a­tion. For more infor­ma­tion about the Cre­den­tials File sys­tem or about grad­u­ate school in gen­eral, visit http://www.princeton.edu/career/undergrads/grad-prof/.

 

Students and Summer Planning

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Now is the time of year when well-meaning adults and class­mates ask, “What are you doing this sum­mer?” While I tend to answer in tones of great despair, it seems that many Prince­ton stu­dents have their plans all sewn up.

Natalie Scholl, a junior in the clas­sics depart­ment, will be work­ing in the office of Con­gress­woman Michelle Bach­mann this sum­mer. Scholl was drawn to the intern­ship because it would be in her native Min­nesota, only a forty-five minute drive from her par­ents’ house. Scholl is explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in law for after grad­u­a­tion, and said, “It’s good to be involved in local pol­i­tics.” Scholl cred­its her extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, which include lead­er­ship roles in con­ser­v­a­tive Prince­ton groups, for help­ing her to land the intern­ship. She made use of Career Ser­vices’ online tools and guide­lines in writ­ing her cover let­ter and orga­niz­ing her resume. Despite resources from Career Ser­vices, Scholl said that one of the hard­est things about the intern­ship search “was just know­ing where to look.”

Bran­don Zamu­dio ’14, a pol­i­tics major, will be intern­ing in France this sum­mer. Through OIP, he found a museum intern­ship at Musée de Com­piègne. “You can put that I’m not inter­ested in muse­ums,” Zamu­dio said, who looks at the intern­ship as “expo­sure to cul­ture and lan­guage.” Before com­ing to Prince­ton, Zamu­dio had never taken French, but is now look­ing at a French cer­tifi­cate. He sees the intern­ship as an oppor­tu­nity to “be inde­pen­dent inter­na­tion­ally and in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage.” Though the intern­ship appli­ca­tion was sim­i­lar to that of a domes­tic intern­ship, there was one notice­able dif­fer­ence – the inter­view was in French. Zamu­dio said he pre­pared for it “just like in any other inter­view,” though he took care to brush up on spe­cific phrases he thought he would need. “If I have a good answer but can’t artic­u­late it, what’s the point?” Zamu­dio said. Clar­i­fied 4/19/2012: Zamu­dio, while not explor­ing museum work as a long-term option, still looks for­ward to explor­ing related pro­fes­sions dur­ing his sum­mer internship.

Also plan­ning on an inter­na­tional intern­ship is Reena Glaser, a sopho­more in the psy­chol­ogy depart­ment. Glaser found her con­sult­ing intern­ship through Birthright Excel, which con­nects stu­dents with intern­ships in Israel. Before com­ing to Prince­ton, Glaser had thought of becom­ing a den­tist, and last sum­mer she shad­owed den­tists and other doc­tors. How­ever, through per­son­al­ity tests and ses­sions with Career Ser­vices advi­sors, Glaser found that con­sult­ing would be a bet­ter fit. She applied for around 30 intern­ships, but was rejected from all but this one. Glaser suc­ceeded in spite of the obsta­cles of chang­ing her career path in the last year and hav­ing “no busi­ness learn­ing on cam­pus.” Intern­ships are essen­tial for sup­ple­ment­ing a busi­ness resume.

Though Zamu­dio and Glaser’s intern­ships are tak­ing them to dif­fer­ent coun­tries, remote intern­ships allow the work to come to you. Lizzie Mar­tin ’14, who is in the Woodrow Wil­son School, has two remote intern­ships lined up for the sum­mer. Mar­tin said these oppor­tu­ni­ties are rare, but found “apply­ing for them to be rel­a­tively easy.” She will be work­ing for lit­er­ary agency and for a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, which requires her to read man­u­scripts and write reports. Mar­tin has been work­ing for the lit­er­ary agency, which is based in New York City, since Jan­u­ary. Meet­ing with Career Ser­vices advi­sors helped Mar­tin land both jobs. “I have a solid resume because of the help I got in Career Ser­vices,” Mar­tin said.

These stu­dents all have dif­fer­ent plans for the sum­mer, but they all approached their searches with great dili­gence and patience. It can take time to find a dream intern­ship, and some­times the per­fect intern­ship doesn’t present itself right away. What counts is mak­ing the most of any oppor­tu­nity given.

What Kind of Law Will You Practice?

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Tues­day night, Career Ser­vices hosted “What Kind of Law Will You Prac­tice?” a panel fea­tur­ing seven Prince­ton alumni with legal degrees. Around thirty under­grad­u­ates attended, and the alumni shared their expe­ri­ences in law school and beyond.

The major­ity of the event was given over to the alumni to describe their career tra­jec­to­ries and offer advice. Among the panel, there were sev­eral uncon­ven­tional paths to law school, includ­ing Chris Colvin ’88, who was an MAE major at Prince­ton and Jason Eaddy ’98, who worked in com­puter sci­ence before obtain­ing a law degree through night school.  “It took my par­ents a good five, six years to under­stand what I do for a liv­ing,” Eaddy said, who now con­sults with lawyers on technology-related cases.

The panel also included two alumni who work in crim­i­nal law. Fac­ing a ques­tion from the audi­ence about the pos­si­bil­ity of becom­ing jaded as a pub­lic defender, Arthur Hop­kirk ’81 and Isabel McGinty *82 offered words of encour­age­ment. Both agreed that work­ing as a pub­lic defender was a very tough field. “There’s no let-up…in crim­i­nal law, it is people’s lives,” McGinty said. Hop­kirk said it can be dif­fi­cult to find ful­fill­ment in pub­lic defense if you want to win cases, since even the best lose 80 – 90% of their cases. Instead, “you have to really take inter­nal sat­is­fac­tion,” Hop­kirk said.

Two pan­elists who talked about the real­ity of debt incurred over law school were Christina Ked­die ’03 and Ani Mason ’00. Ked­die was drawn to law school as “the extended Rob­bie George expe­ri­ence.” She now works as a labor and employ­ment lawyer, say­ing that non­profit work may not pay enough to effec­tively man­age the debt. In con­trast, Mason was able to obtain schol­ar­ships because she was inter­ested in human rights.

Mason also said net­work­ing through the Alumni Careers Net­work was instru­men­tal in build­ing her career. At any point in her career, she was try­ing to develop rela­tion­ships with peo­ple in the field. Colvin, who founded two net­work­ing com­pa­nies, sup­ported this view. “Net­work now, and net­work for your entire careers,” Colvin said.

Though the panel dis­trib­uted a lot of infor­ma­tion on the dif­fi­cul­ties of law school and a legal career, Zachary Gold­stein ’05 was opti­mistic for the atten­dees’ future: “You go to Prince­ton. It’s up to you.”

For those look­ing for more infor­ma­tion about law school, Lyon Zab­sky is Career Ser­vices’ pre-law advi­sor. She was present at the event and can answer more detailed ques­tions about law school applications.

Learning About Business Etiquette in Japan

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On Fri­day, Michiko Yamashima gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on Japan­ese busi­ness eti­quette. Around thirty peo­ple attended, with many of those being stu­dents who planned on work­ing in Japan.

Yamashima began her pre­sen­ta­tion with an overview of Japan­ese demo­graph­ics and gov­ern­ment. She then moved on to cul­tural norms, such as the Japan­ese empha­sis on cour­tesy and respect.

Bow­ing was a major topic of dis­cus­sion, and Yamashima brought up the fact that bows are often seen as a sign of sub­or­di­na­tion by the United States. To Japan, said Yamashima, a “bow is a gesture…showing respect and sin­cer­ity.” There are three lev­els of bows, with the deep­est being for apolo­gies and the least pro­nounced being a casual ges­ture. All bows are from the waist; nod­ding, Yamashima said, “is not a bow; this is neck exer­cise.” Other eti­quette for bows includes the speed (slow is prefer­able to fast) and eye con­tact (at the begin­ning and end but not dur­ing a bow).

Yamashima cov­ered other ele­ments of Japan­ese busi­ness eti­quette as well, such as the proper attire (dark suits with white shirts, and white socks are too casual) and the han­dling of busi­ness cards, which should be given and received with two hands. Respect for busi­ness cards is very impor­tant. “The busi­ness card is the per­son him­self,” Yamashima said.

Most ele­ments of Japan­ese busi­ness eti­quette empha­size humil­ity and respect. A junior employee should seat him­self near the door of a tatami room and in the least com­fort­able posi­tion in a car. A junior employee should also use hum­ble expres­sions when describ­ing him­self and his com­pany, but may use hon­orific expres­sions when describ­ing his supe­rior or his client.

Mis­cel­la­neous items cov­ered were Japan­ese resumes (should include age, busi­ness pic­ture and dates in the Japan­ese era), com­pul­sive retire­ment in Japan, and rules for serv­ing alco­hol (females should serve males, and junior employ­ees should serve seniors before seniors serve them).

This is Career Ser­vices’ third year host­ing the Japan­ese busi­ness eti­quette sem­i­nar, and even for those not con­sid­er­ing jobs in Japan, it proved a fas­ci­nat­ing topic.

Women’s History Month — Alumni Advice for STEM Majors

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Three Prince­ton alum­nae gath­ered Wednes­day at Career Ser­vices Wis­dom for Women in STEM Majors. Akira Bell John­son ’95, Cheryl Rowe-Rendleman ’81 and Joanna Nice ’06 have all had sub­stan­tial careers in the sci­ences since leav­ing Prince­ton, and they offered advice and per­spec­tives on being a woman in the sciences.

One of the most repeated pieces of advice was to find a men­tor. All the women spoke about being hum­bled dur­ing their under­grad­u­ate years, and John­son put it suc­cinctly when she said, “It doesn’t pay to try to fig­ure some­thing out for a long time.” In any sit­u­a­tion, it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize when you need help, because that pro­duces bet­ter results. “It’s okay to ask ques­tions,” said Nice. “Part of your job is to ask questions.”

The women also empha­sized the impor­tance of a sup­port sys­tem while bal­anc­ing work and fam­ily. A few grad stu­dents asked the panel mem­bers, all of whom had chil­dren, how they approached the work-home ques­tion. Rowe-Rendleman had her first child while in grad­u­ate school, and said, “He sat on my lap while I was writ­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion.” Though the women it said it’s impos­si­ble to be per­fect, John­son said that hav­ing a “net­work of sup­port around your fam­ily” helps immensely.

For those not think­ing that far into the future, the panel also shared their per­spec­tives on what to do in col­lege. “It’s never too early to start intern­ing,” said John­son. Even non-science pur­suits can be valu­able, added Nice. Nice did crew while at Prince­ton and said she learned about “hard work and dis­ci­pline and tenac­ity and team­work” from her team­mates. As far as pick­ing a major, the women agreed that it’s impor­tant to do some­thing you’re pas­sion­ate about that allows you to shine.

For their final words, the panel encour­aged tak­ing risks. And “if the guys are talk­ing, talk louder,” said Rowe-Rendleman, later clar­i­fy­ing, “Or, talk differently.”

The Magic of Movies Meets the Reality of Hard Work: Careers in Film and Television

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Stu­dents want­ing to learn about careers in media received some tough love at Career Ser­vices’ Careers in Film and Tele­vi­sion event. The panel fea­tured three Prince­ton alumni, who spoke about the tra­jec­tory of their careers and then took the time to answer ques­tions and offer advice to the stu­dents gathered.

Kather­ine Car­pen­ter ’79 was the first to address the group. A doc­u­men­tary film­maker, Car­pen­ter showed a clip of “Bones of Turkana,” the National Geo­graphic spe­cial she co-produced. She then spoke about her work with the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, which she joined in its early days. “It was just really fun to work in the early days of cable where every­one was just mak­ing it up as they [went] along,” Car­pen­ter said. Fun seemed to be the dri­ving force of Carpenter’s career; she had got­ten involved in media after notic­ing that press teams on the cam­paign trail always had a good time, and from those begin­nings she became an award-winning pro­ducer with an Emmy to her credit. (Not bad for a com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture major who didn’t give tele­vi­sion a sec­ond thought in col­lege!) Though she always fol­lowed what she thought would be enjoy­able, Car­pen­ter had some words of wis­dom for the crowd: “Write the scripts, change the toi­let paper, you need to be will­ing to do every­thing.” Her expe­ri­ence had been that skills in writ­ing and Excel were espe­cially use­ful in the field.

In con­trast to Car­pen­ter, Sandy Kenyon ’78 started look­ing at media careers when he was six­teen years old. While at Prince­ton, he joined a fel­low student’s radio pro­gram, “Focus on You,” and became so involved that school­work was an extracur­ric­u­lar in com­par­i­son. Kenyon said the indus­try prizes endurance and offered his per­sonal opin­ion and this anal­ogy: a finance firm, Kenyon said, will put you through four days of excru­ci­at­ing inter­views before giv­ing you a hefty pay­check, but the film indus­try will put you through five to seven years of 80-hour weeks before pay­ing you a pit­tance. A career in film and tele­vi­sion, said Kenyon, is for peo­ple who “love it deep enough and wide enough and long enough.” Kenyon also warned about the pos­si­bil­ity of burn­ing out or becom­ing unmar­ketable after ten years, though he said he’s been lucky. Early expe­ri­ence doing film reviews in his career led him to his cur­rent job, doing con­cise movie reviews for ABC that air in New York City’s taxicabs.

A more recent grad­u­ate, Josephine Decker ’03 was able to talk about film and tele­vi­sion as it relates to her job as an inde­pen­dent film pro­ducer. Like Car­pen­ter and Kenyon, Decker said that hard work and ini­tia­tive was key. After work­ing as a pro­duc­tion assis­tant, she has moved onto other projects where she has more cre­ative con­trol. How­ever, these projects require a wider knowl­edge of film­mak­ing and han­dling items such as pub­lic­ity. When asked if she would rec­om­mend film school, Decker responded that what’s impor­tant is choos­ing a path that will address a filmmaker’s spe­cific strengths and weaknesses.

In all, the pan­elists agreed that fol­low­ing one’s pas­sions would yield a dif­fi­cult but reward­ing path. Film and tele­vi­sion careers may not be for every­one, but for those that don’t mind hard work, they are attainable.

For more infor­ma­tion about careers in the arts, visit Abbey Racelis, career coun­selor for arts, non­profit and pub­lic sec­tor (and mod­er­a­tor for this panel). And if you want to improve your social media lit­er­acy (a valu­able skill accord­ing to the panel), make sure to RSVP to “Do You Pass the Social Media Recruit­ment Test?” on April 16.

Princeton Alumni are a Great Resource

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Last Fri­day, Danny Steiner ’10 spoke about Careers in Hol­ly­wood. It is great to meet alumni who can pro­vide insight into the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to stu­dents. Career Ser­vices offers sev­eral options for con­nect­ing with alumni in your field. Here are your choices:

  1. Net­work­ing events. Career Ser­vices hosts sev­eral events specif­i­cally designed for stu­dents to net­work with alumni. Last Friday’s Careers in Social Entre­pre­neur­ship, for exam­ple, was part panel and part net­work­ing. Every fall they host an “Alumni Con­nec­tions” event and net­work­ing recep­tions are held at regional alumni clubs every sum­mer. Stu­dents have the oppor­tu­nity to inter­act with sev­eral alumni at all of these events–not just one given speaker. These events are great ways to meet many peo­ple in your cho­sen field.
  2. Solo speak­ers. I’ve yet to go to a Career Ser­vices “Careers-in” event where the speaker didn’t spend a few extra min­utes after­wards to talk to indi­vid­ual atten­dees. While it’s not the spe­cific pur­pose of an event like Careers in Hol­ly­wood, ask­ing ques­tions of the speaker is a way to show inter­est in his field. Worst-case sce­nario, you learn more about a career that inter­ests you; best case–you get a busi­ness card with an email address.
  3. Find­ing alumni on your own. The Alumni Careers Net­work is a great place to start. It’s a search­able data­base of nearly 5000 Prince­ton alumni who have vol­un­teered to help stu­dents that’s run by Tiger­Net, another great resource. With the ACN, you can search by degree, employer, or job title. Some alumni make them­selves avail­able just to give gen­eral infor­ma­tion, but oth­ers offer assis­tance on find­ing jobs or intern­ships. All you have to do is send that first email.

While Career Ser­vices pro­vides many ways to get to know alumni, all of them have one thing in common–the stu­dent has to take the ini­tia­tive. For more tips on exactly what to say and where to look, visit the Career Ser­vices’ page on devel­op­ing con­tacts here.

 

Interested in Law School?

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Career Ser­vices co-hosted the Law School Pre­view last night with the Fire­stone Library in order to give stu­dents an idea of what their legal future might hold. For some­one like myself, whose knowl­edge of law school comes from The Paper Chase and Legally Blonde, the pre­view was an eye-opening experience.

The pre­view opened with a small talk from David Hol­lan­der, who is Firestone’s legal librar­ian. Hol­lan­der intro­duced the future legal stu­dents in the room to the phrase “the magic of legal research,” and pro­vided infor­ma­tion on research­ing the law. Hol­lan­der prac­ticed law for three years, and he said that knowl­edge of pri­mary (court cases, exec­u­tive reg­u­la­tions, and statutes) and sec­ondary (Law Review, trea­tises) sources was essen­tial for every law student.

The major­ity of the pre­view was con­ducted by Michael Herz, a fel­low in Princeton’s pro­gram in Law and Pub­lic Affairs (LAPA). Herz explained that he would be sim­u­lat­ing an “ordi­nary class,” though he wouldn’t focus on the Socratic method, a for­merly pop­u­lar method of teach­ing law. Instead, he said that the class would be “hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion, less that [I’m] grilling you or test­ing you, or humil­i­at­ing you.” The reports of ultra-scary law pro­fes­sors (think The Paper Chase) appar­ently have been greatly exaggerated.

The twenty or so stu­dents attend­ing the pre­view had received a packet of cases upon reg­is­ter­ing for the pre­view. Case law, Hol­lan­der had pre­vi­ously explained, cre­ated prece­dents but not statutes.

Among points cov­ered in the dis­cus­sion of the cases were the three ele­ments needed to under­stand a case: the out­come, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for that out­come, and the legal rule that could be extracted. “You don’t know what a case means until you’ve seen it applied,” Herz said. In the dis­cus­sion, stu­dents were asked to look for “mean­ing­ful dis­tinc­tions” between cases, or, alter­na­tively, to look for cases where the same jus­ti­fi­ca­tions could be applied. In this way, stu­dents learned how lawyers con­sider cases related or unrelated.

This is Career Service’s fourth year host­ing the Law School Pre­view, but you don’t need to wait until it comes around next year to learn more about law school. Keep an eye out for the alumni panel “What Kind of Law Will You Prac­tice?” (Tues­day, April 3, 7:00 pm at Career Ser­vices), or sched­ule an appoint­ment with Lyon Zab­sky, the career coun­selor in charge of pre-law advis­ing and all other things law-related!