@ said:

That's so awesome you truly self-studied!

Did you have a lot of extracurriculars on your resume like school clubs/volunteer work/internships or is your resume mostly work experience?

My resume was about equally balanced between volunteer and work. Since I didn't have any law-related work experience, I think having significant volunteer experience (though not law-related either) was important for me.

I was not heavily involved in school clubs and did not feature any on my resume. My belief is that school club participation matters more so for college admission than graduate school admission (I can say this with some authority as both my work and volunteer experience involved college counseling to high schoolers).

@ said:

I also don't have connections to the legal community. Having said that, I'm wondering if you were able to have someone read over your personal statement and give you advice. I am assuming that you didn't spend money on consulting so I'm curious who you asked to read your stuff. I'm looking to apply upcoming cycle, and that's the stuff I'm wondering. Do I ask someone in my peer group, or someone who is in a professional field, even if it's not in law? Thanks for your thoughts. And congratulations!!!! :)

This was exactly the question I had! I ended up stumbling on to JDMissions - a law admission consulting website that offers a free written PS review (hopefully they still do). I was happy with the quality of the review. They also have a bunch of PSs posted on their website with critiques from advisors. I didn't ask any peers or professionals I knew b/c my statement was quite personal in nature (no pun intended :)

@ said:

How long did you study? Did you work full or part time while studying? How many times did you take the LSAT? When did you apply?

Also, congrats on kicking ass at life.

@ said:

Congrats on Harvard! What was your diagnostic and how did you study?

Thanks guys! My diagnostic was 157 and I took the test twice: 170/177. I applied in mid Dec. I studied for about 6 months total (from March to the Sep test). During the spring I was in school and working about 15 hrs/week. Over the summer I was working about 30 hrs/week. I started my studying by first focusing for about 6 weeks just on logic games, since this was the part of the test most foreign to me. For the rest of the time I would take1 pt/week and drill for a couple hours about 4 days/week. I relied only on the LSAC's official10-test bundles.

I think the significance of the employment gap between top schools and more middle tier schools is overstated.

The reason for this is that it is not like we are seeing identical students go to Yale and Miami. If this were the case, then we could conclude that it is primarily the power of a Yale degree that yields much greater benefits in the job market.

But in reality, the higher employment stats of higher schools are at least partially driven by he fact that the most academically gifted, motivated, and well-networked students go there. I would venture to say that Yale admits that choose a more modest school still do pretty well in the job market.

Of course school ranking makes a difference, but is hard to disaggregate this from the self-selection bias I have described, and it seems like everyone seems to ignore the latter and focus on the former

(D) is correct b/c it shows a clear positive correlation between the establishment of mammals (which we are told follow colonization) and an increase in the rate of island plant extinction, exactly as the biologists theory would predict!

(C) actually weakens the explanation. According to (C) it is commercial development that is ruining plant habitats rather than the plants being eaten by large mammals. Furthermore, (C) does not account for why island species are going extinct faster, as there is presumably at least as much commercial development t happening in mainland areas

The argument is that the slogan presented is not informative or scientifically useful b/c it is a tautology. We can negate (D) and the argument still holds. As long as the scientific claim in question is not a tautology, it very well could use terms the same way they are used by the public and still be informative.

I disagree that the question you posed cannot be answered based on the passage. The author attacks Rohwer's conclusion that plumage variation in sparrows supports the SSH b/c it cannot does not explain status variation among Individuals, saying it thus cannot be properly characterized as status signing. The author then goes on to discuss the titmouse and explain why they provide the best evidence for the SSH. Implied here is that width of the breast stipe CAN account for variations in status of inviduals that are not part of the same age group for example. So, back to you theoretical, while the author may concede that width of breast strip is positively correlated with age, he/she would still assert that a young mouse with a wider breast stripe would be signaling a higher social status than an adult with a smaller one

The problem with (E) is that the argument goes beyond saying it is likely that the tourist industry would never knowingly damage the environment: it outright says they would NEVER do it, so the language used in (E) does not match the stimulus

Yes, you are right. The argument is discussing ratios rather than a set number of planets. The flaw is that there is no justification for presuming that 1/9th of planets in other solar systems will have life, because other solar systems might be nothing like ours