Early Registration Results & Dilemma

Not too long ago, I blogged about making my Early Registration Requests at the Law School. The process isn't too complicated. You rank a bunch of courses according to your interest and indicate the maximum number of credit hours that you are willing to accept. If you haven't taken a writing seminar yet, you can separately request a writing seminar through Early Registration (if you've already taken one seminar and are pining after another, you can register for seminars that still have open spots during regular Registration).

Results were released ahead of schedule today and, for the first time ever, I received every class on my list! It took two years of trying to get into Business Associations with Sokolow and failing before I was willing to settle for Corporations (just in time to be able to squeeze in Securities Regulation before I graduate). I'll also take Transactional Drafting, Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions and Corporate Tax. It will be a very transactional, law school heavy semester.

But that's not all. I need to take at least one class at McCombs each semester, per the JD/MBA program rules. I'm still not certain which class that will be. It all depends on the outcome of the business school's comparatively complicated bidding system. The first day of bidding for MBA classes was Monday and because I spent most of Monday on a plane, I missed my opportunity to bid during the first round. While I was pretty upset about this conflict, it isn't too great of a loss. You see, the MBA program gives us all the same number of points to use for bidding, even the JD/MBAs who will register for fewer classes at the business school each semester. This leaves me with a whole semester's worth of points to bid on just one class, while most of my classmates are trying to grab five classes. (This might be the only JD/MBA perk out there.)

It has been difficult to pick just one business class. There's so much to choose from! Right now I'm hoping for New Venture Creation (if there are still spots available). I think NVC would be a great follow on to the work I've done this semester in my commercialization of technology class (a/k/a "Lab 2 Market").

The only problem is that I still have to take one of the required McCombs "flexible core" classes. There are three flexible core classes offered to 2nd years this coming fall and all of them conflict with Corporations and Transactional Drafting (the Law School and McCombs do not use the same time blocks to schedule classes, which is a problem during the semesters that I have to take a blended JD/MBA schedule). Ordinarily, I could wait to take my flexible core class in the spring, when there are usually tons of offerings. But because of the switch to short courses for first-years, it is unclear whether there will be any long semester flexible core courses offered to 2nd years next Spring. I e-mailed my advisor to confirm whether long semester flexible core courses would be available in the Spring and he responded without answering the question. Instead he just said: "I trust your law school classes don't conflict with all three flexible core courses that will be offered in the Fall." Yeah. Not helpful. The whole point of my original e-mail to him is that I had schedule conflicts with all three flexible core courses.

One way to take all of the classes that I want next Fall without risking a problem with fulfilling the flexible core class requirement is to take the flexible core class during summer school (another plus: this approach would save me from taking 17 credit hours during both the Fall and Spring semester next year). But in order to be in Austin in time for the second session of summer school I would have to ask to leave Summer Firm's summer program one week early. Given all that's going on with law firms out there, I wonder if this would be a dumb move. Would I necessarily be jeopordizing my offer by asking to leave the program one week early? I spent a full summer with Summer Firm last year and, optimistically, I think Summer Firm would be happy to support this decision. I'm actually more worried about giving up the week of salary that would otherwise go a long way towards covering expenses during my last year of graduate school. Advice anyone?