@avery111 - Good question! Honestly, a score truly is good for five years and it's not a big deal to take the LSAT once and be done with it. No worries!

I'd say that the bigger deal is this. There are a number of applicants who took the LSAT four years ago, got a score that was good for the schools they were aiming at, waited four years to apply, and now the national app pool has gotten far more competitive. To put it another way - a 170 was at median for a number of T14s four years ago and is now only at median for one (Berkeley).

I don't think there's any reason to worry about this, but I just wanted to say that you should keep your eye on medians in the years between taking the test and applying so that you can make a decision to re-take if it becomes necessary to be competitive at your preferred target schools.

Hey @OliviaSullivan - Happy to help here! Quick FYI that I'm a member of the admissions consulting team and worked in higher ed admissions for a long time before joining the 7Sage team (just to let you know that I'm not a total rando!).

Quick version - no, a gap in your education is not going to hurt you. The "unless" here is "unless you don't explain it and act like nothing happened even though I can easily see that something happened when I look at your transcript." Issues arise for some folks in college and we ask this question on an app just to understand what happened and can incorporate that background into our evaluation of the person's transcript.

Have I personally admitted and enrolled applicants who had gaps in their college career? Yes.

For mental health reasons? Yes.

Was it a big deal that our admissions committee even took more than five seconds to discuss? Nope.

I hope that helps!

@avery111 Can I be honest with you? It’s so rare to see an impressive enough high school job/accomplishment that merits staying on your resume by the time that you’re applying to law school that it’s really a “you know it when you see it” situation. For example - national or international level athletics and/or performing arts.

But the paradox here is that the jobs that would have enough prestige so as to include on a law school resume are - by definition - the kinds of jobs that require you to be in college or beyond.

The far more common example is the job that you began as a high schooler and continued through college. That’s totally alright to have on your resume for law school!

Hey @fmorea - Thanks for the question! I'm Jake and I'm one of the admissions consultants here at 7Sage! Just for a quick bona fides to let you know I'm not an internet rando - prior to 7Sage, I worked for 14 years in higher ed admissions including a stint as the Director of Admissions at Notre Dame Law. I'm happy to help you out with this question!

The default setting for law school admissions officers is that they'll want to hear about jobs after you began college. Only include jobs in high school if they were either crazy impressive (which is exceedingly rare for 17 year olds, but perhaps you earned steady income through high school from being a pop star) or if they continued through college (ex: maybe you started waiting tables at a restaurant when you turned 17 and have continued during college).

And should you include every job or only the impressive ones? I'd advocate for everything. First, you don't know what may catch my eye. Second, you may not consider "hustle jobs" to be impressive but it helps me fill in the blanks about your profile (ie, "Oh, it looks like they were waiting tables for like 20 hours a week all through college - dang.").

I hope that helps!

Hey @itsthegrind123 - one of the 7Sage admissions consultants here and I'm happy to give some insight! Just for a quick bona fides to let you know I'm not an internet rando - prior to 7Sage, I worked for 14 years in higher ed admissions including a stint as the Director of Admissions at Notre Dame Law. I'm happy to help you out with this question!

1) If you're officially on their waitlist, you already have heard from them with an admissions decision (ie, you're on the waitlist). Just saying that part out loud!

2) But if we rephrase your question as "will upping my LSAT help me get admitted from the waitlist before SLU's deposits are due?", that's not likely. If I'm an admissions officer at SLU, I know we're close to deposit deadlines. I might as well wait another few weeks to see how our deposits come in before we do any waitlist activity. Because how silly would I feel if this scenario came to pass - we admit you now and then - the day after our deposit deadline - I find that we've locked down our GPA median by a ton of students but that we've fallen short of our LSAT median by one student. I'd feel a bit silly, even if you have an awesome resume and are a great fit at my school.

So if I were in your shoes, I'd expect the earliest I would hear anything further from SLU would be after their deposit deadline. If they're still a top choice for you in a few weeks, send them a letter of continued interest to let them know. Then cross your fingers, hope that they have some available seats in the class after the deposit deadline passes, and that they reach out to you!

@TRenato

Thanks for the further details!

So, if you've built a lot of your identity on "I do odd things," I'm totally going to rain on your parade ... that club doesn't sound odd at all! I've found that a lot of college campuses have interfaith/interdenominational student orgs whose expressed purpose is just what you mentioned - giving people from different backgrounds a chance to share a common interest in volunteer service or in learning about other religious traditions, etc etc etc. Totally normal! Or at least "totally normal" based on your description!

I'll admit that the title of the student org is a smidge different, but all you'd do on your resume is give the basic description about what the student org does:

"The Dark Church, 2022-2024, Executive Board

• Helped lead interdenominational service organization dedicated to raising funds to teach underwater basket weaving.

• Led efforts to increase club enrollment by 20%."

So is this "too weird for admissions" as far as an item I'd see on your resume? Absolutely not!

Hey @TRenato! I'm Jake and I'm one of the admissions consultants here at 7Sage! Just for a quick bona fides to let you know I'm not an internet rando - prior to 7Sage, I worked for 14 years in higher ed admissions including a stint as the Director of Admissions at Notre Dame Law. I'm happy to help you out with this question!

Actually though, I'm going to ask a follow up before really answering. So, what kind of interests are we talking about? Can you give me something concrete? Like "I'm totally into underwater basket weaving, but only if it's salt water. Freshwater underwater basket weaving is such a sellout." Because what you consider strange may be kinda mainstream. Example - I worked in a rare books library as a grad student. One time, we had a world famous violinist visiting the library ... and I had no idea who this dude was. Just not my thing and everyone was SHOCKED because this dude was a HUGE DEAL. Meanwhile, we once had someone leave their CD of Oasis's "What's the Story (Morning Glory)" in the coat room (so we can totally date my grad school experience - there were CDs). And I was like "That's a bummer for that person. That's an AWESOME album!" ... and everyone else looked at me funny because they didn't know who Oasis is. One man's "this is basic information, people - they were arguably the biggest rock band in the world for a year or two" is another person's "say what?"

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Hi @MichaelBerkowitz and thanks for the question!

So let's acknowledge out the chute that reading the actual app is different than hearing about the app. You've offered TONS of great detail! For example, there's a difference between reading what your PS is about (eg, "lived experience, professional development, and motivation for law school") and actually reading the thing. While that's a perfectly solid way of explaining your PS, there's a big difference if it's really well written and absolutely/convincingly explains why you want to go to law school versus "hmmmmmm, it's mostly just a resume recap with just a smidge of 'law school motivation' at the end."

So my "chance me" is going to be a bit more basic, which is sometimes the most accurate:

• You're a GPA splitter at both schools based on last year's medians. You're far enough above both of their most recent medians that I wouldn't worry about possibily falling behind the schools' targets for this year (for example, if they had a 3.92 GPA median last year, it's conceivable that they could aim for a 3.95 target this year, thus meaning that your GPA is "low" for this year's consideration).

• You have a lot of good professional experience. If your legal interest is in any way shaped by your professional background, that's a really good thing.

• But you also applied in mid-Jan / early-Feb in a year when national applications are likely to be at a 15 year high. That's the real whammy here.

As a GPA splitter, you have a "statistical foot in the door." You are helping them with at least one of the two counting numbers. While your LSAT is below their most recent medians, a 157 versus a 164 (St. John's median last year) and a 165 (Cardozo) is not such a detrimental gap as to be worrisome. Your resume nudges that door even wider for you. My only worry is the timing of your app and the national increase in applications. If you'd submitted in September/October/November, I think you'd have a much more solid chance of an Admit. You still have a solid chance in my assessment based on the info you've provided, but it's lower and it may require a stop on the waitlist (and then a hope that they need high GPAs if/when they begin to pursue waitlist admission).

Regarding scholarship, the most comprehensive resource is to check out the schools' profiles on lawschooldata.

• St. John's - If you filter the admitted students for GPA splitters, the most common award I'm seeing in this range is for $10k/yr.

• Cardozo - They haven't admitted any GPA splitters with an LSAT below a 160 (yerp!!!) but it looks like their award in this range is for $15-$20k/yr.

To translate that "yerp!!!", I'd adjust my assessment for your odds at Cardozo. I'm not going to pretend that lawschooldata is comprehensive. But the fact that we're seeing no GPA splitters with sub-160 LSATs isn't a great sign for you. Based on this data, I'd put your pre-waitlist admission chances higher at St. John's than at Cardozo.

Fingers crossed for you!

Hey All,

7Sage admissions consultant here! Happy to provide some advice!

While acknowledging that there's always a healthy dose of "it depends" for admissions questions (eg, are you applying ED anywhere, what's your LSAC GPA, what are your target schools, etc), waiting to begin working on app materials until wrapping up with the LSAT in August or September is not too late in order to apply in a normal admissions cycle. But if students want to follow this plan, I advise that they "accept" a few tradeoffs:

- There will be others who are taking the LSAT in Aug/Sept and are working on their app materials now. You're going to be behind them. #thatslife

- You may need to re-take in October. If you're not working on app materials until after the LSAT, there's a possibility that this will all take longer than you'd like. So what's the plan if this happens?

- You'll need to work quickly on your app materials. Some folks want to write a draft of their personal statement then let it sit for two weeks before the next round of edits. If you start working on things in September, this won't be an option.

- August and September are a great time to do research on the schools you're applying to. If you can't do that because of LSAT prep and focusing on app materials, try to do that research in the spring/summer instead.

And on that note and working against the premise of this prompt (ie, what if I don't start working on app materials until post-LSAT), I'm going to throw something out there. It's currently February. The August LSAT is six months away. That's A LOT of time! While acknowledging that there's always a lot going on in people's lives, I think it's also possible to start outlining the master docs (like a personal statement) and to do an updated resume now. Doing this basic prep now won't take away from LSAT prep. But doing that basic prep now can help an applicant turn things around more quickly once it's Go Time in Aug/Sept. Just my two cents!