What’s Going On in the Admissions Cycle Right Now?
As the weather continues to improve and the world blooms all around them, law school AdComms are consumed by one thing—chaos. Maybe also “dread” with a pinch of “hope … if it isn’t too much to ask for.” The most popular date for deposit deadlines—April 15—is here. This day always leads to all kinds of stress and shenanigans for admissions officers. But adding an additional twist of the knife this year is the release of the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings. Let’s deal with that second note first because what is Deposit Deadline Week if not an opportunity for the last to become first and the first to end up canceling with you because—even though you admitted them in November and gave them a full scholarship before Christmas—they finally got their admission and scholarship package from their T14 school after that school dragged their feet on issuing a decision for six months and is only doing it now at the last minute? Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything!
As we discussed last month, this year’s USNWR rankings are going to be quite different. A number of schools will no longer give in-house information to USNWR. That means that the publication has to rely on publicly available information via schools’ required disclosures to the American Bar Association. As such, schools had a pretty good sense of what information would likely go into the rankings—it had to be on one of the ABA forms. What schools didn’t know is how the rankings formula would change. Would USNWR shift more weight to admissions metrics like LSAT and GPA? Would they prioritize job outcomes? Would they bow to pressure from the schools that no longer participate in the rankings and give weight to law school-funded post-grad positions? We’re starting to get some answers to all of that this week. First, USNWR published a very brief outline of their methodology on Tuesday the 11th while also publishing the top portion of this year’s rankings. The rest of the rankings will drop next week and we’ll all be able to gasp, laugh, and cry together at that time.
Law schools, on the other hand, get a head start on that emotional roller coaster this week. USNWR typically provides schools with the rankings the week before things get published. So if you hear any rumblings on the horizon, it’s not an approaching spring thunderstorm but the collective groans from admissions officers as they receive a forwarded email from their dean, subject line: “Internal Rankings—Let’s Talk.”
Now, as we mentioned last month, no change in the rankings actually affects the educational quality of the school! Harvard is the same school now (when it’s ranked in a tie for 4th with Penn) as it was last year (when it fell to 4th behind Chicago) as it was fifteen years ago (when it was ranked 2nd ahead of Stanford). There has been no actual change in the reality of what a Harvard Law education entails and there’s an almost nil chance that this will change employment outcomes for students graduating in three years.
Yet, with that said, applicants can be weird sometimes. Schools know that a certain chunk of their admitted students will make decisions based on shifts in the rankings. That’s just life in admissions. But to have drastic changes in the rankings formula combined with the late release date for the rankings (typically in mid-March but pushed to mid-April this year) that happens to coincide with the most popular deposit deadline? Hopefully all the AdComms remembered to pack their emergency bottles of whiskey in their lunchboxes.
Speaking of said deposit deadline, we’re here! It’s April 15th—Happy Deposit Day to all who celebrate the high holidays! If you want to participate in authentic and traditional celebrations, I encourage you to go to a spreadsheet, create a pivot table, and refresh it every five minutes while doing your best Samuel L. Jackson impression.
For admissions officers, this is the first big test for all the hard work and recruitment strategies that they’ve pursued since last spring. They’ve built application and admit models based on past years’ yield rates. They studied how admitted students deposit based on all kinds of variables like LSAT, GPA, in-state vs. out-of-state status, scholarship amount, race, gender, whether or not they’ve visited campus, and a million other things. Deposits may have trickled in up to this point—perhaps with a cohort of Early Decision admits, maybe a few more students who deposited after they visited for an admitted student open house—to give them a glimpse of whether their calculations were actually right. But AdComms just won’t know anything for certain until the first deposit deadline passes. Fun fact—the vast majority of admitted students will submit their deposits within three days of the deposit deadline. As such, things can change quickly! An AdComm may be worried about their LSAT median on Wednesday … only to discover on Friday that the real issue was that they didn’t admit enough high-GPA students. It’s no big deal—just whether or not all their work was worthwhile and if your school will bring in enough tuition revenue to stay solvent.
But now that we’ve given some insight into this process, what are things that you should keep in mind as an applicant (other than to be nice to AdComms at this time of year)?
First, if you’ve been admitted somewhere, you should let the school know whether you are depositing or not. If you are depositing, follow the instructions that the school gave you on your admit letter. If you don’t see any there, call the admissions office to ask how you can deposit.
Be mindful of the actual deadline. April 15 falls on a Saturday this year, so some schools have moved their deadlines to the 14th or the 17th.
Pay attention to whether the school mentions a time for the deadline. Some schools set their deadline at 5 PM in their time zone (i.e., the form is open until they leave work that day). Others set it for 12 PM local (i.e., so that they can give a full report on deposits to their school’s leadership by the end of the day). If there’s no time mentioned, you can assume that the form will be open until 11:59 PM local on the day in question.
After you deposit and take a few deep breaths, let’s come back to the other schools where you’ve been admitted and the ones where you’ve been waitlisted or ghosted.
For the schools where you’ve been admitted but have chosen to deposit elsewhere, the best practice is to reach out to them to cancel your offer of admission. They should have provided you instructions for this process but you can always send an email to their general email account to accomplish this task!
Now let’s move to the waitlisted schools. If there are any that you’d still consider attending over the school where you’ve deposited, this is the time to send in that letter of continued interest (LOCI). Schools with April 15 deadlines will let the dust settle from the deposit deadline, then assess their available seats, statistical needs, and scholarship budgets, and may start reaching out to waitlisted candidates soon thereafter.
And remember that you don’t have to stay on a waitlist! If you’re excited about the school where you’ve deposited and want to start making plans for moving there, finding a roommate, and scouting out the coffee shops where you’ll spend hours reading case studies, you can do that! In that case, just be sure to reach out to any schools where you’ve accepted a place on their waitlist and tell them that you’ve decided to move on. This will remove clutter from their spreadsheets and will let them more efficiently identify and reach out to other waitlisted students when the time arises.
Finally, there are the schools that have ghosted you to this point. You applied in November, you bought yourself a sweatshirt in December as a pre-admit Christmas present to yourself … and the sweatshirt has stayed in your closet for five months. Now that the schools know the new rankings formula, it’s possible that they’ll start making some last-minute offers of admission once their deposit deadline passes. Now is a good time to send them a check-in/nudge message. You can mention that they’re still one of your top choices but that you’re also facing a few deposit deadlines. Provide any relevant updates you may have and offer to address any questions that the Admissions Committee has regarding your candidacy. Keep it light and professional.
And after all of that—depositing, canceling, LOCIing, nudging!—you can then go get your emergency whiskey from your lunchbox to join in the celebration and be satisfied that you’ve done all you can to advocate for yourself!