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lillianmatchett14
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lillianmatchett14
Friday, Jul 31 2020

I was on a webinar for working professionals with the admissions dean at UC Berkeley the other day. This was directly addressed. For those with substantial work experience, she said 2 pages is just fine if it is relevant and helpful to painting the picture of who you are, but avoid going over that. FWIW, mine is about 1.5 pages and I have been out of undergrad 9 years.

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lillianmatchett14
Friday, Jul 31 2020

For all of mine, I went to the school's service and had it sent to LSAC with my ID number. Sounds like the option you have. They all got delivered!

I'm 9 years out of undergraduate and 6 years out of graduate school. My GPA is the same from both, but I don't think it reflects what I am capable of now for the following reasons:

  • I had extraordinary obligations during both: for undergrad, I was working 30 hours a week, and added a business minor late, meaning I had to take up to 25 credits some semesters. I was a music major so I dedicated 3-5 hours a day to practicing, leaving not a lot of time to study. During grad, I left a semester early to start a full time job and complete my degrees from the other side of the country while working full time, and prior to that had a mentally ill and emotionally abusive live-in boyfriend (strong lean toward excluding this part--too personal).
  • A lot of time has passed, and I have become much more mature and better at managing my time. My work performance reviews are all stellar, and I have gotten As in the two extension classes I have taken (finance and law related).
  • I know I want to study law, whereas I was not ready to make that same decision about my areas of study of study in U and G.
  • In addition to that, I ended up taking an extra year to complete my graduate program. Basically, I signed up for "independent study" (my job) for a few semesters until I had the time to thoughtfully complete my final paper. It will look like I took three years to complete the program (which, to be fair, ended up in dual degrees). Does this warrant an explanation?

    Anyone have any thoughts as to what would be worth including, if anything?

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    lillianmatchett14
    Saturday, Jul 18 2020

    It's fine, I waited 2 or 3 weeks after my first LSAT to do it. You just need the sample on file, and I highly doubt schools will be concerned with how long you wait. Many choose to do it immediately after the test to get it out of the way or just because they are already set up to do remote proctoring.

    Beginning with the August test, you will have to have a writing sample on file in order to get your score or release it to schools, but you should be good for July.

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    lillianmatchett14
    Saturday, Jul 04 2020

    LG: Practice! Your diagram should have everything you need to answer every question, so you really should only have to be looking back and forth to verify answers. I started out my study just on printed tests and then switched to the online format. There was a slight period of getting used to it, but now it feels natural.

    RC: N/A, I don't take notes

    LR: You should be able to collapse longer answers. Under the X to the right of the answer choice, you may see a ^ too. I use that to collapse answer choices I have eliminated so I can see all my options at once. You could also make your font size smaller, but that could be an issue if you can't read it.

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    lillianmatchett14
    Saturday, Aug 01 2020

    Thank you so much for your really thoughtful feedback. This is super helpful. Particularly it makes sense that the admissions officer will probably know that given my major was music, I was probably spending quite a bit of extra time practicing or in rehearsals. I think I just have to keep asking myself the question of "would they know this from elsewhere on my application," and omit things that fit that.

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