We’ve been rhapsodizing the past few weeks that the surest signs of spring are things like lavender coffee at Starbucks and admitted student visit days at law schools. We stand corrected! The surest sign of spring is when your town gets hit by 90 mph straight line winds that knock out your power for a few days. So this week’s post will be a bit of an “express lane” edition as we jockey for shared computer time versus our children doing their e-learning lessons!

Waitlist Strategy and Suggestions

We noted in last week’s blog the emotional sigh of our readers navigating the waitlist at various schools. Given the slowness of the cycle, it’s a bit rough to apply to a school in October and wait through March and April for a decision, only to get the admissions version of a “Hang in there” motivational poster. Or to put things in gif form:

So let’s break down the ins and outs of a waitlist and then come back to proactive steps you can take if you find yourself in this limbo state.

What's a waitlist and why do schools even have one?

Let’s start at the absolute most basic question possible!

Admissions offices utilize a waitlist because they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Or maybe a rock and a great unknown. The “rock”—or “the known quantity,” in this case—is the target number of enrolled students that the law school would like to enroll in the coming class. Schools may have a bit of flexibility on that number but not as much as one may think from the outside. For example, Law School A may consistently enroll about 250 students—some years it may be as low as 235, and other years may see as many as 265. But Law School A is probably bound by restrictions on both the minimum and maximum number of students that it can enroll:

  • At the low end, law schools have to enroll enough students so as to generate enough tuition revenue so that the school can pay everyone’s salaries and for general upkeep (e.g., the literal electric and plumbing bills). These numbers for enrolling students and tuition revenue may be set by the law school’s overarching university and—thus—be completely out of the hands of the admissions office.
  • At the high end, law schools have both preferred and literal caps on how many students they can enroll. A preferred cap may reflect matters like wanting to maintain the quality of the teaching experience for their faculty, equitable access to clinics and externships, and the school’s hiring resources (e.g., not wanting to enroll more students than you feel confident can secure jobs after graduation based on things like your alumni network and connections with law firms). This can be a rather soft cap because who is to say for certain the maximum number of jobs your students could find at graduation? Contrast that with the literal hard cap that every school has—at the end of the day, there are only so many seats in the classrooms and so many desks in the library.

So that’s the rock—a school’s target number for the enrolling 1L class. Meanwhile, the “unknown quantity” is how many students the admissions office has to admit in order to hit the target number. Every admissions office builds some sort of “admit model”—a statistical chart based on past data that shows what happened when they admitted students with this GPA and that LSAT. AdComms can use that past information to then predict what will happen in the present moment. The challenge is that there is no such thing as a 100% accurate admit model because there are simply too many factors at hand. For example, did your school go down in the US News rankings last year but go up this year? How many admitted students attended your visit days last year and how is that comparing to this year? Even seemingly silly things can have big butterfly effect-esque ramifications. For example, if it’s cold and sleeting during your admitted student visit day in April, that may drive down the number of admitted students who decide to attend your school. Crazier things have happened!

This is where a waitlist comes into play. AdComms have their target number of enrolled students and they have a game plan based on past data to inform them of how many applicants they need to admit in order to hit their magic number for enrollments, but they also know that the magic number of admitted students for this year may be slightly different than the magic number was last year.

When do schools go to their waitlist?

This ties back into the purpose of the waitlist!

If admissions officers use a waitlist in order to account for normal fluctuations in their admit model, that means they need to let the admit model play out first. Every school gives their admitted students a “deposit deadline.” This is the date by which admitted students need to inform the law school about their enrollment intentions. Many schools have deposit deadlines in April—the most common dates are April 1, April 15, and April 30/May 1. Once the deposit deadline passes, AdComms should know the answers to two important questions. The first is “Are we below our magic enrollment number?” We discussed this a lot in the previous section. But the second question is just as important—“Are there any statistics or demographics we need to address via waitlist admission?” We’ll come back to this in the next section!

If a school is going to go to their waitlist, the main time they’ll likely do so is in the weeks after their April deposit deadline. This is because this is when they’ll have the most seats available (if they have any available) and because it’s easier to get admits from your waitlist to accept their offer in April or May versus June or July.

Many schools have a second deposit deadline in June. This creates another opportunity for possible waitlist activity.

After the second deposit deadline passes, any further activity from a waitlist depends on the deposited students. In their perfect world, AdComms would be done with their waitlist and enrolling class around June 15. They would then fully switch to planning for the coming admissions year and enjoying their summer. But that’s not what happens! What happens is that a few of their deposited students will change plans. Maybe it’s because they were admitted off a waitlist at another law school, maybe it’s because of a family or personal matter that has arisen, or maybe they’ve just looked at their first tuition bill and are now reconsidering their life choices. When this happens and that deposited student changes their plans, that then opens up a seat for another student to be admitted from the waitlist.

Who will the admissions office want to admit off the waitlist?

Those aforementioned “statistical and demographic needs”!

Let’s say that Law School A

  • Wants to enroll 200 students and would like a GPA median of a 3.70 and an LSAT median of a 166.
  • After their deposit deadline, they find that they have 185 deposited students, a GPA of a 3.68, and an LSAT of a 166.
  • On the GPA, they would need to add 10 students with high GPAs to move that median to a 3.70.
  • For the LSAT, they would have to add 30 to get to a 167, and they have a buffer of 30 before the median would fall to a 165.

In this scenario, the admissions office would give preference from the waitlist to students with GPAs above a 3.70.

But let’s add a twist! Let’s say that they would like to have a 50/50 gender split in their incoming class. But after the deposit deadline, they find that they are currently skewed 60/40 towards women. In that situation, they would not only target waitlisted applicants with high GPAs but probably give a preference to any high-GPA men.

That was a lot of words to explain that most of this is completely out of my hands. Thanks!
So is there anything I can actually do?

We’re getting there!

Let’s go back to the scenario above. If Law School A needs to enroll 15 students off the waitlist with high GPAs and with a preference for men, they may find that there are 40 students on the waitlist that fit that description. Who among that group will the AdComms admit? Some may be admitted because they have the best résumé, or maybe they also have a high LSAT. Some may NOT be admitted because there’s something in their application that puts them towards the back of the pile—maybe a tough character and fitness issue. But for the remainder of the candidates who have similar statistical profiles and whose applications are all about the same, the last key factor is in some ways the simplest—who is most likely to accept this offer of admission?

Consider this reality—admissions officers are human beings. They want to get their job done and go home to their families. To them, the best-case scenario for the AdComms at Law School A is that they admit 15 students and all 15 accept the offer. The worst-case scenario is to admit 15, give those admits a week to make their decision, all 15 take the entire week before declining their offers, and now the AdComms have to repeat their process all over again but they’re one week deeper into the summer.

This is where a letter of continued interest (LOCI) comes into play. A LOCI serves two functional purposes. The first is to provide any updates to an application—new grades to report, further items on a résumé, etc. But the second is to directly inform the admissions office that—yes—the student is still interested in attending this law school, even after all those months of review and weeks spent on the waitlist.

The best time to submit a LOCI is right around a school’s deposit deadline. If that’s the earliest a school may analyze their deposit numbers and consider making an offer from their waitlist, it’s good to provide a LOCI right around that time.

The content of the LOCI can be very straightforward. At its most basic, consider this simple game plan:

  • The first paragraph is your opportunity to introduce yourself and why you are getting in touch with the admissions office.
  • Then transition into any updates you have for the AdComms to consider. If you don’t have any updates, skip ahead to….
  • Explaining your specific interest in this particular law school. If you submitted a Why School X statement with your application, it’s okay to reiterate the same points. Just keep it at a high level. But are there any new reasons for your interest? Any further research or networking you’ve done that affirms that this school is the right fit for you?
  • Wrap it up by thanking them for their time and consideration. If it’s relevant and if it’s true, consider ending on this direct note—indicate that this school is your top choice and you would accept an offer if one was extended to you. This just makes sure that the AdComms don’t miss out on the main point!

Aim for about a page’s worth of content. It’s okay if you write less than a page, but try not to write more. Consider that AdComms are reviewing multiple waitlist files at one time. As such, they tend to scan LOCIs more than read them. Additionally, you can hold some material back for a future LOCI. Recall that while the most likely time a school will go to their waitlist is after their first deposit deadline, the next most likely time is after their second deposit deadline. If you send one email per month with the first one in April, you’re hitting the right balance of “maintaining contact” and “going overboard.” A lot of waitlisted applicants run out of material for subsequent LOCIs, so saving a bullet point or two for the May edition could help out!

7Sage Events

After a hiatus of a few weeks, we’ll be back with our admissions classes on April 16th. First up will be an AMA-style session with both a 7Sage LSAT tutor and one of our admissions consultants. And a brief reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

The next episode of the 7Sage Admissions Podcast is coming on Monday and features the recording of our March Law School Deans’ Roundtable. Be sure to tune in on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!