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Hello,
I'm reaching the endgame of essay writing, and I just realized: how are we formatting them? I have them double spaced, times new roman, etc. Specifically, are we doing a blank line between paragraphs and no idents, or no extra line between paragraphs and idents?
Also, if one of my essays is 11 point font and another is 12 point font, is that fine as long as it's above the school's minimum font size?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to receive fee waivers, but schools have been deadnaming and misgendering me like crazy. Some will even use my preferred name but still misgender me, which I find a bit funny.
I get that it’s likely automated systems screwing things up, but geez.
I'm not an AO, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I doubt that there's a crazy difference between submitting your application now or submitting it by the end of september. I think you'd be better off waiting until you have your new score and spending the extra time going over your materials.
You see this a lot on LSA: a random Reddit account that makes some point with way too much confidence. LSA is full of randos who have read so many blog posts and gazed at LSD for so many hours, they imagine that they themselves are practically Admissions Officers.
I’m just so tired of trying to get some balanced opinion or advice and having to deal with some reddit throwaway that thinks the random opinions they’ve rationalized are the real and true thoughts of an HYS AO.
I also have an inkling that some of the people on the subreddit who will say ‘I’m an AO’ are not, in fact, AOs.
At least here I can get some good advice from Jacob.
TL;DR stay of the subreddit
Sure! For reference, I work in higher ed, so I review student essays all the time.
Hey all,
As I finish up my essays for this cycle, my current focus is on the 'why x' essay, probably one of the most important supplementals. I'm wondering what y'all believe makes for a good why x. I know it's a bad idea to just regurgitate the website, and I was planning on doing a 'here are my values/goals, here's resources/clinics/etc you have that match those, here's what I'll do with them."
Thoughts?
I'm not an expert, but I would suggest having the rest of your app ready beforehand. That way, you can fire everything off the day of score release.
It seems kind of random looking in from the outside. Sometimes folks with above median stats get nothing, while a splitter gets half tuition.
I think it's a bit hard to say because we have no way of knowing whether or not the folks admitted ED would have been admitted regardless. Like, even with ED, they're not going to admit a candidate who doesn't catch their eye, and it's not as though they don't have plenty of strong candidates in RD, you know.
Now, I imagine there could be. ED gives a school confirmation that you will attend, so they don't need to worry as much about their yield, especially if you have some quality that might be deemed competitive. I think the biggest beneficiaries of a possible ED boost would be people above both medians and splitters.
Typically they're narrative, focusing on one or two formative experiences and connecting them to your desire to pursue law school.
My best advice is to write a straightforward, reflective story that talks about what inspired you to go to law school. And whatever you do, don't turn it into this verbose, ornate mess. I remember last year Yale sent out example PS to some folks, and the LSA subreddit bashed them because they felt the writing was mediocre. I read through them again a few weeks ago and found that they were quite solid; the real problem is that many people confuse style with substance.
Would anyone like to start a group where we read each other’s essays? Obviously it’s not going to be as good as a consultant, but at least we can catch simple mistakes and make sure the right ideas are coming across.
I think Dean Andy, an administrator at Georgetown, put it best: your lsat and gpa set the bar, and your sifts determine if you clear it. What you need to understand is that top schools have many people with stats that could help them lock in their medians. What will differentiate them is factors such as essays, WE, and other softs. I think when people dismiss softs, they’re being overly cynical.
I don’t necessarily think there is such a thing as a universally strong soft. The tier list we use was actually created by a Redditor. A strong soft likely depends mostly on how it contributes to the overall cohesiveness of your application. If you want to go to law school for immigration law, for instance, working for a non-profit that helps connect immigrants to legal services will likely be a strong soft.
@bawstonlaw hey man, t14 medians are high as the clouds. I know my gpa is absolutely on the higher end, but it’s a different ballgame than it was even a few years ago.
I’m a splitter (3.82, 175, urm) aiming for t14. The consulting id rather expensive, and I wanted to source some reviews before I took the plunge.
@zunair to clear things up, I went to a school that pumps people into the t14, and having read many of their essays, you’re vastly overestimating their writing ability.
Most of what we see on the various admissions blogs are essays considered some of the best, the really impactful ones that might genuinely have moved the needle a crazy amount for the author.
But is anyone else interested in what the average law school essay looks like, especially for the elite schools? I think the examples we’re given create this false impression that most applicants are crafting these beautiful, breathtaking statements, but that’s obviously not the reality. I’m just curious what an average essay at a T14/T20 looks like.
It’s definitely something they consider. I think an important fact to consider is that first-gen students made up about 30% of the total applicant pool last year; however, if you look specifically at folks who scored between 170-180, which contains the median of almost every single elite school, only 10% of those applicants were first-gens. There’s an easy to see disparity there.
Additionally, when schools release their class profiles each year, one of the stats they often display front and center is the percentage of first gens.
I don’t think it’s a sizeable boost; you probably aren’t slipping into Duke with a 3.4 and a 154 because you’re a first-gen. But I could see it being significant enough to help out a splitter of other on the edge applicants.
It seems to me that LSAC has created a split system that will last for the next cycle or two. As these changes run their course, I assume that DE grades will essentially be viewed similar to a master's transcript, ie. a soft factor. However, this cycle will have some folks whose gpas were calculated before this change and include Dual Enrollment grades, and some folks whose gpas were calculated after and do not include these grades.
I suppose I'm wondering what schools will do in a case with two hypothetical candidates: Applicant A, who submitted their transcripts after the change and whose LSAC GPA is a 3.77, but would be a 3.87 with DE grades; and Applicant B, who submitted their transcripts before the change and would have a GPA of 3.76, but their DE grades bring them up to an LSAC GPA 3.85.
At the end of the day, the answer is, of course, that law schools have medians, that those medians are calculated using LSAC GPA, and that LSAC GPA is whatever LSAC says it is, even if you and the guy next to you have had it calculated in different ways. But I'm interested in what the community thinks
This will make this cycle quite interesting for admissions officers. Part of your apps will still have LSAC GPA calculated the old way, and part of your apps will have a new little note.
@CooperButtari It says only for transcripts submitted from today forward, which means that if you've already submitted them, your LSAC GPA will still be calculated the old way
I think the first thing that's important to understand is that schools give out way more acceptances than they have spots. This is because of their yield, ie. the amount of students who actually accept an offer. Some schools - such as Yale - have extremely high yield, almost 100%, and so they typically only send out a few more offer than there are spots in the class. Most T14s do not have that kind of yield - the average is probably 30-40% - so many of them will send out a total number of acceptances that are double or even triple the number of people in the class. Even if one considers that people get into multiple t14s, someone did an analysis of lsd a while back and found that the vast majority of people get accepted to only one or two, iirc. My point here is that there are more A's going out than the 4.5k number you brought up.
Low GPA, I agree that it's not 60%, but the LSA vibe that everyone has 4.0 and a 175 is a delusion. I can also promise you that a 170 in no way indicates competency, as I've known plenty of people who got that score but were, say, terrible writers. It's also important to understand that a significant amount of those scores are probably KJDs, and while I think the tax can be overstated, I do think there's a measurable impact that a lack of work experience can have on an application.
I also want to note that a high score has never been a guaranteed acceptance to a school. Plenty of people for years and years have been rejected even though they had high stats.
The only school I can think of off the top of my head that does this is Michigan. If it's something a school wants, they'll definitely say so on their application pages.
The general vibe that I've gotten from these addendums is that they should be short and factual. Something like "I tried a new study program" or something like that is probably fine.
@LSATTAKER I see what you’re saying, but being a reverse splitter is more difficult still. There’s far more high gpas than there are high lsats. Keep cracking at the test, and if you need anything, dm me. I have an official score of 175 and I won’t charge you money or any of that bull.
A bit surprised you haven’t found anything more recent. I’ve only ever heard great things about them, and had wonderful interactions on Reddit. They also put out so much content that helps make everything more accessible, even for those of us who have trouble affording the fees. If you have the money, I definitely think they’re a solid option
@JacobBaska Yes, exactly. I always use it as more of a map, but the map is not the territory, so to speak. I just have to shake my head when anonymous redditors start acting like they know what's going on in an Admissions Office.