What’s Going On in the Admissions Cycle Right Now?
As the trees and flowers start to bloom around law school campuses, law school admissions officers continue to host admitted students for visit programs and are also preparing for one of the biggest days of their year—deposit deadline day. Let’s take a few minutes this week to go through some of the basic details regarding deposits and protocols.
Maybe it’s because I have school-aged children, but I oftentimes revert to who/what/when/where/why/how explanations when confronted with questions. Whether it’s “What kind of bird is that on our patio?!” or “Deposit? What’s that?!”, this can be a useful way to organize information!
Who, What, and Why
Law schools have spent the past few months reading applications and making offers of admission. At some point, they need to start taking a head count of those admitted students (i.e., the who, not to be confused with The Who). Who is planning on coming to your school and who is planning on going elsewhere? Deposit forms and fees (the what) are the main mechanism to achieve that end.
Most students intuitively understand submitting a form indicating that they plan to attend. But why a deposit fee? Because this encourages students to take the decision super seriously, and that helps with enrollment management. The more accurate your head count, the better you can understand some critical matters such as:
- Do we have seats available in the class for students on the waitlist?
- How are our LSAT and GPA looking? Do we need to give either (or both!) preference for waitlist admission?
- How is our scholarship budget?
- Based on the answers to the questions above, how much wine should I drink before giving my dean an update on the incoming class?
When
The LSAC Statement of Good Admission and Financial Aid Practices encourages schools to “request commitments of any kind from admitted applicants only after applicants have had sufficient opportunity to consider other offers” and mentions April 1st has historically been a good “no earlier than” date. While students who are still waiting to hear decisions from schools that they applied to before Thanksgiving may scoff at the first part of that request (and this is a good reminder that the Statement of Good Admission Practices has as much binding power as the Code of the Brethren from Pirates of the Caribbean), the second part has generally held. Except in cases of binding early decision, law schools don’t ask for deposits prior to April 1. You then have three general groups of deadlines:
April 1 – Usually local and regional schools outside of the US News top 25-30.
April 15 – Usually the schools in the US News T15-30 range.
April 30/May 1 – The T14.
There can be some variations in there depending on the year. For example, April 1 and 15 fall on Saturdays this year so some schools have adjusted their deadlines either to the preceding Friday or the following Friday.
It’s important to read the fine print regarding the timing for each of your schools. Some may actually set a particular time of day for their deadline—for example, “5PM Eastern on April 14.” If you don’t see a time, you can assume that the form is open through 11:59PM local time (for the law school, not for you!) on the day in question.
Where and How
So where do you find your form and how do you fill it out? The most likely place to find this information is on your initial admit letter/email or somewhere on the school’s admitted student website. The majority of forms are electronic, and the deposit fee—if a school requires one—can also be paid online. For most schools, this process shouldn’t take more than five minutes as long as you have your payment information (i.e., checking account info or a credit card) ready to go when you start the process.
But now that we’ve gone through Deposits 101, let’s step up a level to material covered in Deposits 201:
Can I deposit at more than one school?
As always, the answer is “it depends.”
Most schools frown upon holding multiple active deposits at one time—this is called “double-depositing.” This messes up their head count and can make it challenging to figure out what further work they need to do with possible waitlist admission.
However, let’s say that it’s not a case of holding multiple active deposits. For example, let’s say that you deposit at School A now and then are admitted at School B in May. That’s totally fine! You would deposit at School B and then reach out to School A to tell them that your plans have changed.
Speaking of which….
Should I tell a school that I’m NOT going to attend?
Yes, you should definitely tell them!
This is partly a courtesy to them and part of quote/unquote “being an adult.” If you’re invited to a wedding but you can’t attend, or if you’ve been offered a job but you’ve decided not to accept it, the proper thing to do is to politely decline.
But this is also a courtesy to those students on the waitlist. Remember, schools can’t know whether they can admit students from the waitlist until they feel like they have a good head count. So be nice to your confreres on the waitlist!
But can’t I just let the deposit deadline pass?
You could. That’s what we in the biz like to call a “passive cancel.” An “active cancel” would be a student who formally declined their admit offer.
But if you know that you aren’t going to attend a school and if you formally tell them, this—again!—helps the school with their enrollment management. If they’re a week away from their deposit deadline and they see cancels tracking higher than in past years, maybe they are more generous in scholarship negotiations. Maybe they start assembling their preferred waitlist candidates to reach out to.
What if I’m still waiting to hear back from my top-choice school?
Oh, yeah. The entire “there are students who are still waiting to hear decisions from schools that they applied to before Thanksgiving” thing that we mentioned before!
You have a few options. First, you can reach out to the school where a) you’ve been admitted, and b) you’d attend if you don’t get admitted by your top-choice school, and you can ask for an extension on your deadline. Some schools may be happy to give you a few more days. Others may say that your other school being extremely slow with decisions is not their problem—c’est la vie. In that case, you could also reach out to that top-choice school and ask them when you might expect to hear a decision from them. Feel free to mention your deposit deadline at your backup school. If they fail to budge, your best bet is likely to deposit at your backup school while awaiting word from your top choice. While you would lose your deposit at the backup school if/when the top choice admits you, this at least avoids the worst-case scenario—not depositing at the backup school because you’re sure you’ll get good news from the top-choice school … and then the top-choice school denies you.
I’m horribly confused by my school’s deposit policies—what should I do?
Always feel free to reach out to the admissions office. A key part of their job is to help navigate admitted students through this process. They should be happy and willing to talk things out!
Last but not least … am I doing alright?
As always, you’ve got this!