50th Entering Class Joins King Hall Community

King Hall's 50th entering class began their first semester courses last week, bringing a wide range of talents, backgrounds, and interests to the King Hall community. Chosen from more than 3,000 applicants, the 180 J.D. candidates in the Class of 2018 are a diverse and impressive group.

The entering class posted a median GPA of 3.51 and median LSAT score of 163. About half of the class identify as students of color, and 48 percent are female. Roughly 40 percent are graduates of the University of California, and another 11 percent attended a California State University.  The class also includes graduates of numerous schools outside California, including Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Howard University, Yale, NYU, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan. The new class includes students from Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, Alaska, Texas, New York, Illinois, and other states, as well as foreign countries such as China, Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

Many members of the Class of 2018 arrive with some experience in law, having worked as clerks in law firms, paralegals, or judicial interns.  Many are immigrants or children of immigrants, and many have participated in public service programs such as Teach for America, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps, or done volunteer work on the behalf of the homeless, prisoners, or public schools.

A few highlights from the narrative profiles submitted by members of the Class of 2018 to the School of Law include:

• Hannah Bogen: After graduating from UC Davis with degrees in Sociology and Spanish, she spent two years with the Peace Corps in South Africa, working to promote safe sex practices, HIV prevention techniques, and gender equality. She plans to practice child advocacy law.
• Elizabeth Chang: After earning degrees in Physics from Colby College and Engineering from Dartmouth, Chang worked as a research specialist at the Stem Cell Center at UC Irvine designing and developing drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases. As a college student, she was a finalist in the 2012 Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington, D.C. and also participated in competitive basketball and boxing.
• Nick Chase: Served four years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, including a combat tour in Afghanistan during which he led a platoon responsible for finding and clearing roadside bombs. While a student at UC Santa Cruz majoring in Politics, Chase served an internship with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the UCDC program.
• Sara Ehsani-Nia: Worked on both Obama presidential campaigns in California and Pennsylvania and served internships in the White House, at the AFL-CIO, and with Congressman Brad Sherman. Following those experiences, she worked in a Washington consulting firm that advised the White House, Fortune 500 Companies, and NGOs in matters of domestic policy. At the University of Pennsylvania, her senior thesis on U.S.-Iran diplomacy was awarded honors, the Captain Victor Gondos Award for best thesis in diplomacy as well as the Ruth Marcus Kanter Research Award and published in the Penn History Review.
• Dane Jones: As a student at Brown University, she worked as a research assistant on various agricultural projects while also serving as a suicide hotline operator and publicity director for the Samaritans of Rhode Island Brown University chapter. She is a Davis Scholar, and graduated from United World College in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, a school focused on the furthering of knowledge and understanding regarding post-conflict societies.
• Jonathan Ogata: As an undergraduate at UC Davis, he founded and captained the UC Davis Mock Trial Team. Since earning a degree in Political Science and History in 2013, he has served as a Deputy Clerk and Case Manager at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and coached both the UC Davis Mock Trial Team as well as several high school mock trial teams.
• Bianca Rodriguez: While a student at Cornell, where she majored in Industrial and Labor Relations, Rodriguez worked as a Congressional Intern for two summers. She also studied abroad in China and Ireland, surveying the human resources and labor relations practices of large corporations including branches of Coca Cola and Facebook.
• Fabián Sánchez Coronado: After immigrating from Jalisco, México at the age of nine, Sánchez Coronado earned degrees in Political Science and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, where he was Assistant Director of the USC Latina/o Student Assembly and a member of Sigma Lambda Beta International Fraternity. He has worked for the United Farm Workers Foundation in his home town of Bakersfield, California, and looks forward to practicing immigration law.
• Danielle Stewart: A graduate of UC Berkeley with degrees in Conservation and Resource Studies and Sociology, she has worked as a Juvenile Justice Policy Assistant at Oakland's Impact Justice, a Communications Coordinator at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and a Legal Assistant for the Bar Association of San Francisco's Justice and Diversity Center. She has also volunteered as a counselor for the Berkeley Free Clinic, and was an Emerging Leader Intern at GLIDE in San Francisco.
• Kimberly Waldon: She graduated magna cum laude from Howard University with a degree in Political Science, earned a paralegal certificate from Emory University's Continuing Education program, and has worked as a paralegal with a law firm specializing in personal injury litigation.