Admissions

21 Mar 2015

Admissions Question of The Day (Comes to us from an AdComm)

Dear Spivey: Do you think there are many schools that admit (a) nobody with both a below-their-median LSAT and a below-their-median UGPA, or (b) no both-below folks other than diverse students? Or “almost nobody” both-numbers-submedian? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Answer: I think every school admits some people below both medians — beyond Special Interest and URM admits. But one way to think of the percentage of these admits is by loo

Read full post
21 Feb 2015

How do students select which law school to ultimately attend?

We measured 28 dimensions and received over 3,000 votes. The following is a rank order of what matters most in selecting which law school one ultimately attends:

Read full post
13 Feb 2015

20 Things Applicants Do That Annoy Admissions Deans and Hiring Partners

We reached out to a number of friends at law schools and at firms and companies to see what things applicants did that made them grouchy (pro tip — it isn’t in your best interest to make them grouchy!) This is what we got, not surprisingly a good deal related to emails. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. When they launch into a sales presentation about themselves the moment we meet -* CEO of Company* 2. Sending emails without subjects

Read full post
26 Jan 2015

Podcast Annoucement

As a few may recall, I was lucky enough to get to do a podcast for The Bucket List Life [http://thebucketlistlife.com/podcast-episodes/], one of iTunes' most popular podcasts. This constituted about 50 minutes covering a wide-variety of topics including law school admissions. We blogged it here [http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/podcast-with-mike-spivey/]. It looks like I am lucky again. I will be doing another on February 23rd, this one entirely on goal-setting and motivation (research topics o

Read full post
15 Jan 2015

A never seen before LSAT addendum

Dear Admissions Committee, In application section 13.2 I am asked if my standardized test scores have been predictive of my success in school, and particularly if my LSAT score is for law school. I scored a 165 and would like to have scored higher, as I know your median LSAT is a 167, and you are my top school. But my highestest test scores were also at 165. So that seems about accurate to me. While I think my combined LSAT plus my undergraduate GPA of a 3.91 together is more predictive of my f

Read full post
10 Jan 2015

Applicant Question: "When a law school Defers/WL's someone well below the medians but has great softs, is this a polite way to reject them?"

Highly likely it’s not. Unless the applicant is some form of “special interest,” meaning that they have people who are donors interested in their admission, connections to the law school itself, etc. you really wouldn’t defer someone just to intentionally deny them later. That isn’t doing either you or them any favors. Rather, you defer them to see how your numbers look throughout the entirety of the cycle. At some point almost every school, including T3, will say “our medians look like x and z

Read full post
09 Jan 2015

Applicant questions answered, "will high LSAT scores be MORE or LESS valuable this cycle"

“Mike and Karen, as the number of takers continues to drop, won’t it become MORE acceptable to drop a median point in favor of maintaining GPA? Won’t this make high scores LESS valuable? For example, if Harvard or Yale’s median is going to drop to 172, doesn’t a 173 become LESS valuable, not more? If the median drops a point, suddenly, the pool of at/above median expands, right? So, in theory, I should be rooting for medians to stay the same?” This is something we spend a good deal of time loo

Read full post
06 Aug 2014

Debunking The 1-Page Law School Resume Myth

Let’s put an end to a false piece of advice that we recently saw on the internet — and more worrisome, that people give mixed messages on every year — about law school résumés. I won’t link the article because we are not writing this to personally call someone out, but it is written by someone who tutors for the LSAT. I imagine they are a wonderful LSAT tutor. The advice however, is about law school admissions, and is stated in such strong language it sounds like a near absolute. Thus, it is not

Read full post
17 May 2014

The Top 10 Law School Personal Statement Mistakes

1. Not proofreading your own work. We’ve all been there: we just want to be done with the darn thing and send it off.  You’ve looked at it many, many times, dissecting every word and comma but you missed that you wrote pubic instead of public. Not the same word! We are not the best judge of our own tone because *we *know what we meant to convey, but does someone else reading it know what you meant?  Have someone read it. Then, before submitting, read again. Out l

Read full post
30 Nov 2013

Generation Neurotic

Every generation, it seems, gets a label. It’s what older, grouchier people like to do — label those younger than themselves as worse at something than they are. And it makes life more simple. For my generation, "Generation X",  we were dubbed “lackluster.”  We lacked passion and focus. To a great extent, I believe that was accurate. When I was 20 I wasn’t worried about graduate school or my career. Indeed, the only career thoughts I had was of opening some small business at a ski town. But most

Read full post