After a few days of sunshine, education, and relaxation at their annual conference in San Diego, admissions officers have returned home to the early onslaught of summer heat and a pile of emails in their inboxes. Those messages awaiting them are going to be a mix of queries from this past year’s applicants as well as prospective students for the coming admissions cycle. While there’s no definitive date when offices cleanly transition from one class to the next, one big milestone is occurring—or has already occurred—around the country in the form of second deposit deadlines. So let’s spend a few moments today talking about that process, how that can possibly affect waitlist procedures, and also what deposited students can expect in the coming weeks.
For many law school applicants, the concept of a “second” deposit deadline is a bit foreign. Their only previous admissions experience was when they applied to their undergrad school. That process tends to be fairly straightforward:
- Early Decision (ED) admits have to deposit sometime in December or January.
- Regular Action or Decision (RA/RD) admits have a deadline of May 1 to deposit.
- Students admitted from a waitlist will have a week or two to make a decision. Most waitlist action happens before Memorial Day.
Law schools can be a bit more fluid with their timelines and procedures. The above note about Early Decision admits is directly analogous—law school ED admits will have to provide a deposit fairly quickly after being admitted. The real differences are for the RA/RD students. First, almost every undergrad school will issue all decisions—admit, waitlist, and deny—prior to their deposit deadline. Meanwhile for law school, there are some students reading this post who no doubt applied to schools before Thanksgiving and are still waiting to hear back. Sigh. Further, whereas undergrad schools have a universal deposit deadline of May 1, law schools are instead directed by the LSAC Statement of Good Admission Practices to have deposit deadlines no earlier than April 1. That opens the door to the variation we see between initial deposit deadlines of April 1, April 15, and May 1.
Adding additional fuel to matters are some factors that are completely out of admissions officers’ control. First—and from my professional experience—high school students considering their college options tend to have a) more thoroughly researched their possible options and b) received more guidance from advisors such as parents, siblings, teachers, and counselors about their college decision than law applicants have. Most law applicants are on their own with the decision-making process. While that’s certainly personally empowering, it can also be paralyzing. Additionally, double-depositing is far more common for law school admissions than undergrad admissions. In the world of undergrad admissions, it’s expected that students will only hold one deposit at a time. In the world of law admissions, that practice is a bit more common mostly because students want more time to consider their final decision.
So to recap:
- On the law school end, there’s more unpredictability when schools may issue decisions and greater variety in deposit deadlines.
- On the student end, more students are making decisions on their own and are willing to double-deposit in order to buy themselves more time to make a final decision (and—in fairness—may still be waiting for schools just to issue an initial decision).
Basically, it’s a standoff where everyone is waiting for everyone else to make their final decisions throughout April and May. Here’s a dramatic reenactment of the process. A school’s second deposit deadline serves the same purposes as Clint Eastwood’s revolver—in less dramatic fashion!—to help clarify matters.
Most schools treat their second deposit deadline as “binding.” They will include explicit language in their deposit form indicating that they expect that students will no longer maintain an active deposit with another school, nor will deposit at another school. While there’s no longer an overlap report that helps schools identify students, most students treat this process seriously and make a final decision. Heck, the students want to get moving on things, too! There are apartments to rent, potential roommates to vet, and moving trucks to reserve and each of those processes takes time to complete.
What does this then mean for students in this year’s admissions cycle? Now that students who were double- (or triple-, or quadruple-) deposited have made a final choice, we may now see another burst of waitlist admission activity as schools assess available seats and the statistical/demographic profile of the deposited class. If you are still on the waitlist at your top choice, now could be a good time to send a “nudge” email reiterating your interest and reminding the admissions office that you would be happy to attend if extended an offer. Keep an eye on the r/LSA board and lawschooldata to see if there’s any movement and—if so—what statistical profiles the admitted students tended to have.
As an FYI, this will likely be the final burst of waitlist activity. Further seats may become available over the summer but that tends to happen due to individual circumstances (e.g., a deposited student is admitted off the waitlist elsewhere; another student has a medical emergency and decides to postpone a year, etc.) rather than from mass movement.
Because there doesn’t tend to be as much waitlist movement after this date, this is also a fairly common time for admissions offices to hand over communications with the deposited students to whichever law school office or officer handles 1L orientation. AdComms may still send out some messages to the incoming students, but more messages may come from Student Services, Career Development, and/or Academic Deans. As a deposited student, it’s now time to think of yourself as an “incoming 1L,” start learning the names of the key people in your law school’s administration, and start logging in to your new school email address.
When AdComms pass the baton for the deposited students to other offices, it is partly with the intention to help those students transition to their law school but partly to clear mental space and professional bandwidth to start planning for the upcoming admissions cycle. So too will we start to pivot this blog a little away from this year’s admissions cycle and more towards the upcoming cycle. While certain events may arise that could be of interest for incoming 1Ls (like a certain Supreme Court case we’re all keeping an eye on), you’ll likely be more interested in memorizing the best coffee shops nearest to your law school. We wish you all the best and remind you to balance your studies with breaks to recharge your physical, mental, and emotional health. Go make some friends and learn a new hobby! Be kind to yourself and to others! And for the law applicants for this upcoming cycle who have been reading these articles and wondering “What in the world is an AdComm?!” we’ll be pivoting more towards introductory measures to get you ready for the upcoming cycle and keep you abreast of news as it arises. Get ready!