My dad was the first person to tell me: if you want to be a lawyer, you have to major in political science. “Every lawyer I know majored in political science,” he said. At first, I accepted this sort of cult mentality for the sake of comfort. I felt safe. And then, I started planning classes, spending hours scouring the course catalog for the law-related content I found so fascinating (and, of course, relevant). At that moment I realized that I didn’t just want to arbitrarily pick my undergraduate degree with only the future in mind. I wanted to enjoy the classes I was taking and feel like they weren’t just a means to an end.
So, I started looking into other majors. English was my instinct. Not only have I always loved the topic (being passionate about your major is important), but the argumentative writing and creative thinking skills that the major provides are unparalleled and extremely relevant in the legal field. Not to mention, there was still a level of safety associated with choosing English to consider: it is still in the top five most common majors for students accepted into law school.
Unfortunately, the legal background is a bit lacking for the major. Though the English major requires in-depth historical research, including knowledge of Supreme Court cases and trials, the background provided is certainly not extensive. So, I declared English and began my search for a second major—one that would provide me with more hard facts and a more straightforward knowledge base.
At this point, I considered making my own major. I looked into UCLA’s entire course catalog, plucking out any classes I found intriguing. As it turned out, shockingly, nearly every single class on my list was offered by the same major department: Communication.
Entertainment Law, Legal Communication, Entrepreneurial Communication, Social Networking and Integrated Marketing—these are just a few of the fascinating courses that attracted me to the Communication major.
The most difficult aspect of my decision to apply for the Communication major was the stigma, especially because I had long since bought into it myself. I’d heard it all: “people who don’t know what they want to do go into comm,” “comm is for athletes who only care about college for sports,” “comm is an easy major.” Even if I didn’t believe these words were true, it was daunting to think that others did.
The thing is: I do know what I want to do, and I am not an athlete. I am a Communication major, nonetheless. And I had to work for it.
Ambition, involvement and performance in school are far more important in attaining a good career than your major. That said, here are just a few reasons why I chose Communication as my second major as a pre-law student and a few facts to begin the destigmatization process.
Let’s start with the obvious: the course offering is ideal for a pre-law student. Not only are there classes specifically related to the legal field but also classes in business and marketing that are appealing to me as someone who wants to go into business law specifically. Plus, there is the classic journalism and politics route of Communication: countless top reporters and news anchors major in Communication, and these areas are heavily interconnected with law.
You would be surprised just how many industry professionals majored in Communication if you checked LinkedIn. According to my roommate (and current president of Her Campus at UCLA), Bella, a considerable number of business and marketing executives at NBCUniversal, where she interns, were Communication majors in their undergraduate years.
Now to debunk some of the stereotypes. Communication at UCLA is no joke. You cannot even choose the major when applying to the College of Letters and Sciences, but you have to apply later after taking the infamously difficult prerequisite COMM 10 and preferably some upper-division courses in the major to supplement your application. The application includes a review of transcripts, answering two short essay questions and, of course, getting an A in COMM 10 (the grade distribution for the class is quite daunting; in Winter 2021, only 6 percent of students received an A in the class).
That said, the acceptance rate is 9 percent—one of the lowest of all the majors at UCLA. For reference, other impacted majors, such as Economics, Biochemistry and Biology, have acceptance rates of 13 percent, 29 percent, and 13 percent, respectively. It is in the top ten most competitive majors for admission out of all of the UC schools.
Moral of the story: Communication is the unsung hero of pre-law at UCLA. I am now doing the best I can to end the stigmatization of the major (that even I once bought into) and help educate students like me about its merits. That said, whether you choose Communication or not, hopefully, you now believe that political science is not your only option as a pre-law student!