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Can I get a B.S. in engineering and still go to law school? Does it make it harder to get into one of the "top 14"?

By Drusba (Drusba) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 09:22 am: Edit

Law schools accept applicants from every form of major (and there is no "preferred" major). Many with engineering degrees go to law school (and many of them become patent lawyers).

Does it make it harder to get in? Possibly, but not because of the degree in engineering. To key to getting into top law schools (and virtually any law school) is to have a high GPA in college and score high on the LSAT exam. The high GPA is where an engineering major may find a disadvantage. Engineering is one of the hardest courses of study to get through in college and to get mostly A's is more difficult than almost all other courses of study.

By Massdad (Massdad) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 09:41 am: Edit

Drubsa,

Your comments are completely accurate, but consider that an engineer will likely pursue legal specialties, such as patent law, where having a top law school degree is unimportant.

In fact, I would venture to say that prestige law school degrees are underrepresented in the patent bar. When we select patent counsel for our inventions, we give careful consideration to the technical skills of the team and no consideration to where they went to law school.

By Driver (Driver) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 09:54 am: Edit

Both of the (very successful) patent attorneys I know were engineering undergrad and went to "non-elite" law schools. One was a chemical engineer at Cornell and says that was absolutely killer. They both say that their ability to discuss their clients' projects at a highly technical level is invaluable to both parties.

By Coureur (Coureur) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:46 am: Edit

My wife went to Stanford Law School after earning her B.S. in Microbiology and working in the lab for several years. Once she was accepted, as part of the recruitment efforts, she got a hand-written letter from one of the distinguished law professors telling her that he especially liked to have scientists at the school and in his classes because they were smart and they always came to class prepared.

I suspect that law schools would view engineers in much the positive same way.

By Patient (Patient) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 10:51 am: Edit

My brother (family loyalty/pride here) is the head of the IP (intellectual property, the new name for patent law) department at one of the premier Silicon Valley companies. He has an electrical engineering degree from MIT and a law degree from University of Chicago. He also teaches snowboarding at Lake Tahoe on the weekends but that is another story.

Agree with all of the above. You don't have to be a patent lawyer of course if you have an engineering degree, but it is an exciting field for someone with a scientific bent. There is patent work, which involves I believe more in the way of consulting, drafting, writing; and then there is patent litigation, which is courtroom work and involves many other skill sets.

Law school is going to be primarily interested in your law school admission test scores and your grades, and is not probably going to nix someone based upon their major. But I would check out law school admissions sites to see for sure.

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 11:32 am: Edit

Sure can. Know several who did. And are quite successful. Arieathena who frequently posts on these boards is an engineer who is in the midst of law school applications.
A very good family friend is an engineer who went to Harvard Business School. There are not any limitations.
The only issue I see that can be a potential problem is that the engineering curriculum is very, very difficult. The engineers in my school did not tend to get high grades because that department ran on a tough curve which I hear is typical. Law schools have a screwy way they examine a transcript. You do not generally send the transcript to the law school but to a service which "sanitizes it and assesses you with a gpa. the problem is that it does not recognize the more difficult engineering courses and sanitizes course names out so that you are competing in the gpa arena with "History of Women Scientists" area majors. That can be to your disadvantage.
If you do a message search on ariesathen, you can find some of her posts regarding law school admissions and you will see what I mean.

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 12:14 pm: Edit

I'm a chemical engineer currently applying to law schools, so although I'm not a parent, my opinion:

Honestly, don't do it. I've spoken with the admissions directors at countless law schools, and the majority of them told me that you need a high GPA regardless of major. Now, some of them said that they love to see engineers, because they make up 1% of the applicant pool, but they are in the small minority.

I took a second major in the classics, and I realize that if I did only classics, I would have a much higher GPA and be a shoo-in at many schools. However, that's not the case, and I'm faced with an uphill battle. The GPA difference between engineering and liberal arts (esp. poli sci, classics, econ, history, etc) is so huge - roughly a half point - and the difference in difficulty is amazing. With engineering, you are working much harder than your liberal arts counterparts, working with generally better students (EN is harder to get into) and getting worse grades.

Most engineering classes are graded on a strict curve: half the class gets As or Bs, the other half gets Cs or Ds. If you are in the middle part of an engineering class, you can pretty much expect not to have a GPA above a 3.0, which is death in law school admissions. You will have worked harder for that sub-3.0 than many of your friends will work for their 3.3s in psych or history.

If I knew five years ago that I wanted law school, I would not have done engineering. It's a great degree. I learned a lot and am a better student for it; however, it is not worth the problems I'm facing now. Law school admissions just do not compensate enough for the EN GPA.

It's just my opinion... and you can certainly be an excellent patent attorney coming out of mediocre schools, but most likely, you will go to a mediocre law school.

My email is in my profile if you have questions. I'll also refer you to "Law School Confidential" by Robert Miller (no relation to CC site), which has an interview with the Cornell admissions dean. If law is what you are thinking of, read it.

By Pennamom (Pennamom) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 01:13 pm: Edit

Ariesathena:
The original poster is so fortunate to have your first hand input on this topic! My first instinct in reading the responses was to agree with Massdad and Driver. I have alwyas believed that an engineer with a law degree from a mediocre law school would be at least as employable (if not more employable) than the typical poli sci major with a law degree from a top tier law school.

I would like to know, what has your research led you believe about this assumption? Is it mistaken? Have the law schools you have talked with given you any sense that you might still be better off over the longer term with your low gpa/chemical engineering BS & a JD from mediocre law school than you would be with the high gpa/classics BA & a JD from a top tier law school?

Also, I was wondering, do law schools only consider your undergraduate gpa? If you took a year or two and got a masters in classics with terrific grades, could that help off set your undergraduate grades?

I ask because my husband is a lawyer (old now! ha!) and he sees first hand how difficult it is for young law school graduates to find work these days. His opinion is that good attorneys with technical undergraduate degrees are rare and desirable. Our son is a strong math/physics student and a history fanatic. He is considering law school, but we have strongly encouraged him to avoid that history undergraduate degree because we worry that even with a JD from a terrific law school, he would find himself unemployable.

Your experience in this process is an eyeopener to me. I am worried now that my husband and I may have given our son some bad advice. Thanks so much for your input!

By Massdad (Massdad) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 01:19 pm: Edit

A number of firms in the Boston area even employ scientists (with PhD) and engineers as technical specialists for patent work, and simultaneously pay their way through law school. Most of them attend Suffolk University, a local evening law program, but one is actually attending Harvard Law. This is an interesting comment regarding how desirable the right technical credentials can be.

By Jamimom (Jamimom) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 01:21 pm: Edit

Law schools are unusual in that if you do not get into a top name law school, you are better off going to a local school, local to where you want to practice than going to an equally good school elsewhere. Law firms tend to hire locally. They will make an exception to the chap from Harvard Law but they are not as enamoured with the U of Richmond grad as they are of the local boy who went to Duquesne if the firm is in Pittsburgh.

By Marite (Marite) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 01:43 pm: Edit

Massdad:

I think you are right, but the path taken by these scientists is different from that of most law school applicants. An issue is what kind of signals does the legal field as a whole send to law schools and how receptive are admission committees to these signals. In other words, granted that scientific expertise is valuable in the legal world, how ready are admission committees to try to address its needs and to overlook the lower GPAs of engineering majors?

By Pennamom (Pennamom) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 01:59 pm: Edit

Jamimom: You are so right. I recently read an article in the local paper about how some astounding percentage of the local judges in my area had not only gone to the same law school, but also had gone to the same high school! Though it was written as a "Look, isn't this neat?" kind of article, I found it a little disturbing.

My son has had the misfortune/great fortune to have lived in many of the major cities across the United States during his childhood. We have encouraged him, in choosing a college, to think carefully about where he would most like to see himself working after college. As that is where his alumni network will be and where he will most like spend at least his early working years.

Right now he is looking far, far from Pennsylvania to the west which is the area of the US he enjoyed living the most. I'm kind of envious, because it was my favorite too!

By Massdad (Massdad) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:07 pm: Edit

Marite,

Yes, your comment is true, but I was observing that the perspective of an employer (who after all will be paying the salary of the attorney!) is very different from that of the top law schools. So, from the view of the OP, I would be less concerned about what Harvard Law thinks about engineering majors and their GPA, and more concerned about what the job market is going to be.

So, here's the fork in the road: if a kid aspires to be a M&A maven in NYC, best ditch the engineering major, take a slacker major and have the highest GPA possible. But, if a kid is truly thinking about a technical discipline and enjoys such, that kid would probably not be happy in M&A (or litigation etc) anyway. In this case, ditch the Harvard ambitions.

So, w/r/t signalling, the real signal is this:

- the firms have let the Harvards know that Harvard need not worry about training future IP attorneys, because the law firms are perfectly happy hiring such experts from "lesser" schools. There really is more specialization in legal training than I suspect some realize. And, some of the sorting and selection occurs at the applicant level.

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:22 pm: Edit

A few more things...

I will agree that a law student with a technical background is highly desirable (mostly in patent law): there are only 25,000 patent attorneys in the US. A friend of mine who just graduated from Suffolk Law had several comments. The students she knows with law-related jobs now are the ones who are valedictorians, members of a minority group (there are many resources for them upon graduation), and those with technical backgrounds. Many of her peers with technical degrees from law school had their education paid for while they worked in firms; the patent office will do the same.

Now, if you want to do patent law or law relating to technical work, having the engineering/science degree is invaluable. So yes, the EN/JD coming out of a mediocre school will be in higher demand than a poli sci/JD from a top school. On the other hand, if you want to do any other type of law, my feeling is that you have problems, in that going to one of the top schools necessary to get these jobs is nearly impossible. Corporate law firms only hire from about the top 15 or 20 schools in the country - they will not even interview candidates at lesser schools. An engineer who realizes that he/she wants to do corporate litigation is faced with nearly impossible odds.

75% of law school graduates work near where they go to school. Harvard and Yale grads can work anywhere; most of the "national" school graduates can work anywhere as well. These schools are generally Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, UPenn, Northwestern, Georgetown, Columbia, NYU, UVA, Duke, UCal Berkeley, etc. (Sorry if I missed one or two.) General advice is to either go to a national school or go to a regional school near where you want to practice. For example, a Suffolk or BU grad would have much better job opportunities in Boston than a William and Mary grad, although W&M is "ranked" higher.

Marite: I'll give you a more definitive answer in April, but my belief is that admissions committees are not looking at the "hirability" of the applicants so much as their straight GPAs. The Cornell admissions dean said that he recognizes what a role rankings play, and those rankings are mostly determined by LSAT and GPA (although, side note, percentage of grads employed does play a role), so they will occasionally accept people with a 164 LSAT instead of a 163, realizing that it could make the difference in one place in USNWR. I cannot imagine that they would then make accomodations for GPAs which are remarkably lower than they are used to. Furthermore, most of the admissions deans probably have liberal arts backgrounds as well and simply do not understand the amount of work and dedication it takes to make it through a rigorous engineering curriculum.

Another piece of general advice is that taking time off between undergrad and law school will help offset a lower UGPA. Getting a master's degree shows the law schools that the student is capable of doing higher-level work, much in the same way that high junior and senior year grades will offset a low freshman year GPA.

My personal take on the actual admissions is that an engineer, who most likely will have a much lower GPA than other applicants, is faced with an uphill battle. Many of my friends in liberal arts readily admit that they could not handle the engin. curriculum, and that just graduating with that degree is an honour. In many ways, it's like running a marathon: just finishing it is an accomplishment, and the time is secondary to that. Despite this, engineers are basically left proving that they are capable of doing the same quality work as history/poli sci majors who have higher GPAs.

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:24 pm: Edit

Much more succient than my advice, MassDad...

By Pennamom (Pennamom) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Ariesathena: Thank you so much for your very informative reply. I am going to print it off for my son to read.

I hope everything works out for you!

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 02:59 pm: Edit

One more thing... for now:

There are some interesting things found in the US News and World Reports grad school rankings. In the back section of the magazine, they have each law school and data regarding average private practice salaries (25%-75% range), average debt, and how many grads go to which parts of the country. The latter is the most relevant to the discussion about practice areas: it's easy to see that even the schools with a national reputation tend to place grads in the area.

By Emilyp114 (Emilyp114) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 05:12 pm: Edit

My dad's brother is also a lawyer and his undergrad degree was in Engineering Physics. The year he graduated, 5 of his friends, also engineers, went on to law school. Only one is a patent lawyer! And my uncle who practiced corporate commercial law with the largest firm in Canada for 20 years is now General Counsel for the largest bank in Canada. So not all engineers who decide on law become patent lawyers.

By Massdad (Massdad) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 06:31 pm: Edit

Emily,

It's too bad all engineers don't go into patent law. We need more in order to drive the fees down.

By Digmedia (Digmedia) on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Massdad - what we really need is a total revamping of patent law. But that's another (OT) thread...

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 11:24 am: Edit

MassDad:

Hey! Some of us are hoping that we'll be in massive debt and need patent attorney salaries to pay it off!

By Sheela45 (Sheela45) on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 01:47 pm: Edit

PLEASE READ & RESPOND WITH COMMENTS!!!

I graduated in sept. 2003 with a degree in biomedical engineering. I really don’t feel like an engineer though and cringe of the thought of doing engineering work! I did this major more for my parents sake of going to medical school but quickly realized i did not have the passion nor the drive to get through it. So i decided to stick to engineering so that my parents wouldn’t kill me and since their seemed to be a pretty good market at the time.

Now upon graduation I really don’t think i can take it being a biomedical engineer. My junior year I found out about patent law. But it seems that they only want people with PhDs and so forth. I may have the background but that’s it...I do not plan on going on with my masters in this area either!! is there any way i can still practice patent law without having the technical work experience?

I am also thinking of going into pharmaceutical/ medical product liability. This doesn’t require one to be so technical. In the earlier posts i read that it can be quite difficult for a engineer with a low GPA to do much besides patent law...that comment really scared me...is there any truth to that??

ALSO...I am unemployed now because I am so confused as to what i want to do...I have an offer for a biomedical engineering position but i just don’t think ill be happy doing that...on the other hand I am looking into paralegal work with medical product liability..is this a smart move? I feel like I might be wasting my engineering degree by taking paralegal work. But then again if I work 1-2 years in a law firm wont that help my chances of me getting into law school?


PLEASE respond!!

p.s. is law school harder for engineers? Most people that want to go to law school take classes relating to law but I haven’t done that and I have no idea about even the normal terminology

By Coureur (Coureur) on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 02:24 pm: Edit

If I were you I'd take the biomedical engineering job and get a year or two of practical work experience in a technical field while taking the LSAT and otherwise preparing to apply to law school. This would make you a stronger patent lawyer out the back end. A little bit of real experience coupled with book learning goes a lot further than book learning alone. Plus you could save up a little money.

Don't worry about the law school curriculum. There are no specific law school prep classes, so therefore there are none that you lack. And if you can handle a biomedical engineering academic program and have good study habits, you should be able to do just fine in law school.

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 02:33 pm: Edit

Actually, engineers do better than their liberal arts peers in law school. They are more used to the workload, the analytical thinking, etc. You know all of those liberal arts kids who spent college having fun after 10 pm when they were done with their work, while you were growing gray hairs and chained to a desk? Well, at least 90% of your peers in law school will be those liberal arts majors, and the workload will be tougher than engineering. You'll be fine.

Law classes as an undergrad really do nothing to prepare you for law school. Most law school deans will suggest that students take courses in which they can learn to write and think rather than actually learning about the law.

I do not think that patent lawyers are required to have Ph.Ds, though it is certainly helpful. Rather, I think you only need an undergraduate degree in engineering or science in order to sit for the patent bar. (Anyone who has more specific information, please chime in!)

I'll second Coureur's suggestion of working in a biotech area while studying for the LSAT and applying to law schools. It would make you a stronger patent lawyer, and I think you would have a better understanding of some of the issues surrounding patent law. Also, look into working for a company which will put you through law school. Some of them have programmes in which you can work full-time, go to law school at night, then work for them afterwards. Graduating without debt, if you are sure you want to do patent law, would be excellent.

Also, if you do some sort of biotech, try to see if you can spend your lunch hour or whatever in the legal department of whatever company you are at. This will give you some idea of what patent lawyers do (and though the work experience won't help you much, it's still valuable).

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Oh, and your timetable:

LSATs are administered in June (which is on a Monday at 12:30), October, December, and February. The last three are on Saturdays at 8:30 am. Applications are done on rolling admissions, so you want to have them in by the middle of October, absolute latest. Last possible LSAT you can take should be in October. You'll need to spend about three months studying (which is what I did, and I never studied for SATs) and taking practice tests.

You'll need to ask for letters of recommendation by the middle of August. Those get sent to a central reporting agency (LSDAS), along with your transcripts, and then distributed to the law schools to which you apply. If everything is in mid-September, it will be ready for reporting come October when your apps are in.

Start working on your personal statement in June or July, so it will be done for October.

Applications are up 17% nationally from 2003, and up over 30% at some schools. Get those apps in early.

Think about being a paralegal for a patent law firm. I think you often only need a bachelor's degree.

Send me an email as well, so I can send you a reading list and LSAT tips.

By Eafkhami (Eafkhami) on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 03:56 pm: Edit

I did my undergrad in electrical engineering in canada and am now doing a MS at Boston University so I've been in north america for a while, however I'm originally from Iran. I'm wondering if I qualify as a minority and how effective would it be (being a minority) in getting into a top 20 school.

I would appreciate your comments.

ehsan

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 11:26 am: Edit

I believe that 96% of law school students are white... so minorities (at least at some schools) may be highly sought-after.

By Momstheword (Momstheword) on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 12:19 pm: Edit

Interesting thread. My dad was an aeronautical engineering major, graduated top of his class, went to a mediocre law school, became a patent attorney and also worked with companies involved with the space program. One thing's for sure, he always had interesting job opportunities even without Harvard on his resume. Maybe times have changed, though.

By Burningsands (Burningsands) on Thursday, April 22, 2004 - 03:18 pm: Edit

Sorry to get into the post later or after the fact, but I felt compelled to respond since this topic hits so close to home.

The original question by CollegeGuy:

Can I get a B.S. in engineering and still go to law school?

YES.

Does it make it harder to get into one of the "top 14"?

YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!!!

AriesAthena couldn't have said it any better. Having the engineering degree makes you more appealing to law schools, but I am here to tell you that the Law School process is a dirty game. Aries was right, they really only care about 2 things, your GPA and your LSAT. For the "Top 14 Schools" which are, in order:

Yale
Harvard
Stanford
Columbia
NYU
Chicago
Michigan & Pennsylvania (tie)
Virgina
Duke & Northwestern (tie)
Cornell
Cal Berkley
Georgetown

All of the students accepted to these Schools average LSAT scores of 165-170 out of 180 (very very good), and all of them average cummulative GPA's of around 3.7, which as you know is also very good.

I'm not saying all of this to detour you from majoring in engineering in college. But like you've heard, realize that engineering is NO JOKE.

I recieved my B.S. in engineering and was just recently accepted to Rutgers School of Law where I start this fall on my way to becoming a Patent Lawyer. Most engineers will go that route if they decide to go to Law School, because of the high demand in that field.

Much like Aries, I had really had it up to HERE with the Law School Admissions game. As an engineering student, you work, you work, and you work some more. As you progress from freshman to senior it doesn't get any easier, in fact that's when the real fun begins when you get to those senior engineering design classes. I was in a major where the average GPA was a 2.46. For a liberal arts student, a 2.46 is terrible, but for engineering, a 2.5 is almost like a 3.5. Consider what you're required to take. In liberal arts you might have a semester of Western Civ, English 350, Coms 130, and Math 101. As an engineer you might have a semester of Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Structural Analysis, and Circuits 211. Which student is more likely to pull a 3.0 out of those two semesters? Pretty obvious right?

However, if you can accomplish a B.S. in engineering, you will definitely be well equipped for the analytical thinking that will be required of you in law school. Engineers tend to handle law school better than their non-engineer classmates because of the harder work they did in undergrad.

The trade off is that if you major in engineering in undergrad, you will be at a disadvantage with liberal arts students when competing for Law School. Even though admissions counselors will tell you that everything is considered in a law application, the truth of the matter is that when applications arrive at the 187 ABA accredited law schools around the U.S., they are weeded out by what is called an index. Why? Because of the massive volume of applications. Every school has its own formula for an admissions index, but they all involve those two numbers, your GPA and you LSAT. They take those 2 #'s, plug them into a formula and if the index number comes out above the cut off point then you advance to the next round where your application is reviewed more extensively. If your index number is not high enough, then you get one my favorite pieces of mail as of late, "Mr. So&So, we regret to inform you..."

So the real question comes down to which is more important to you? Becoming an engineer, going to law school and maybe going on to the lucrative field of patent law, OR getting into a top 10 Law School period. If your desire is only to attend a top 10 law school then you would be better just majoring in Poly/Sci, English, History, etc. keeping that GPA up, take lots of Gym classes, lots of basket weaving, kick ass on the LSAT and then apply to Yale or Harvard Law and get in.

However, as aforementioned, most engineers in law school end up going into Patent Law. Patent Law does NOT require a top 10 law school at all. Although, this is not to say you will be an automatic shoe-in coming from a 4th Tier Law School. Ask any lawyer in any firm and they will tell you the same thing: get into the highest ranking law school that you can. This is because the legal field is very particular when hiring new associates. Again, in the case of patent law firms, one need not be from an ivy league Law School, but if you were you would definitely beat out another applicant from a 4th Tier Law School.

To answer SHEELA45's question about what it does require, to become a patent attorney, and to be officially registered before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, you MUST HAVE a degree in engineering or the hard sciences. If you have an engineering degree you're automatically eligible to register. If you don't have an engineering degree but have a scientific degree (such as a Ph.D in biochemistry) then you can prove yourself by submitting certain evidence of abilities, etc. that show the USPTO that you are competent in reading and explaining the technology used in patents.

Good luck to all.


Burning Sands

By Mimi (Mimi) on Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 01:10 am: Edit

Hmm.. not to sound ridiculous, but since it's been mentioned that law schools take anybody and looks for high GPAs and such, then would a person majoring in liberal arts have a higher chance than an engineer in law school?!

By Dadofsam (Dadofsam) on Tuesday, June 01, 2004 - 04:52 pm: Edit

Mimi: you may be interested in the posts under part 2 of this thread.

By Prop7750 (Prop7750) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 08:14 am: Edit

Hi...I recently graduated with a BS in biomedical engineering. I have been thinking about patent law for about 2 years now. What really worries me is that my gpa is only a 2.8 (major 3.1 is this counts for anything at all)I would like to practice in NY (originally from Philadelphia) what are good law schools that I could possible get into? I have been looking into St Johns, Pace, cuny law school, NY school of law just to name a few. Are any of these good law schools to go to? My 1 and 2nd year I goofed off and I primarily had all general engineering classes which served to weed out the non serious students. I however stayed with my bad grades! but I did become allot more serious and i took 20 credits each term and I did fairly well so you can see a progression in my grades. Do law schools look at this?? I’m also trying to shoot for a score of 160 or higher on my LSATS.

Another idea I had was to become a patent agent. If I took the exam for this and passed would this increase my chances of getting into law school? I’ve been trying for about 6 months to get a job as a entry level paralegal in the IP area but its so hard to get. I am currently working as a scientist since I am not very interested in working as a biomed engineer. Fixing instruments or working in the lab does not catch my interest. Does anyone have any advice for me?? Whenever I have downtime at work I’m researching the IP area...any advice would be helpful! Thanks