Obviously no one only uses one resource for information about law school. 7Sage is a great resource and there are many others. I just want to warn 7Sagers of a potential issue with another LSAT/Law school website!

According to Reddit, TLS is undergoing a bit of drama and change. I don't really care about the drama, or know what is going on, but want to make sure people don't fall pray to misinformation. From what I've read there is a lot of bad information being passed around right now, so be careful!

It's a good reminder to always be careful what you read on the internet! Fact check, triple check, find multiple sources! This is good advice for anything!

Edit: more info I found,

https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/7uax5l/what_is_going_on_with_tlslawschoollife/

So as this admissions cycle winds down, it is becoming pretty clear that I need to seriously consider re-applying next cycle. With 7 wait-lists, and no acceptances, it is just the reality of the situation I am in.

That being said, I know it's not all bad. It gives me another year to build my resume, and to save money, as I will likely be losing a year of funding for law school since I didn't go this year.

Right now I have a pretty solid resume in my opinion:

and a few more years of work experience to add to this list

My stats are not going to move;

So, other than re-taking which I might consider, but am not really leaning toward, what can I do to boost my chances at acceptance.

I plan on having my applications ready to submit to schools the day they open, so I'll apply MUCH earlier in the cycle than I did this time around. Is there anything else I can really do to boost chances at these schools?

Okay so I’m stuck on what to do here.

Situation: one of my transcripts is getting updated and removing credit hours (but leaving the grades) for 20+ units of failed, and dropped, classes.

I have already applied to 16 schools.

What do I do? Do I call all 16 schools? Will this change my gpa? What does this even mean?

Is it worth pushing or should I leave the cards on the table as they are?

Bleh I don’t even understand what is happening! And I don’t know what to do...

Hey everyone, I’ve been MIA the past couple months. I took not getting into any school pretty hard and had to do a lot of re-evaluation of my life. I took on a second job and have been working 70 hour weeks.

Today, however, I got an e-mail from Northwestern School of Law offering me a spot off of their waitlist. I accepted the spot and will be flying out to a Chicago within a week to start my 1L year at NU.

I had to come back to 7Sage to express my deepest thanks to everyone in this community. From JY, to @"Cant Get Right" to every single person I worked with through this process on the forums, thank you so much for everything you have done to make my dream of attending a T-14 Law School come true.

For everyone out there still struggling and climbing that mountain, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. If you work full-time you can make your dreams come true. If you have a bad gpa, you don’t have work experience, or you are struggling with the LSAT, push through. Your hard work WILL PAY OFF. Do not listen to the plethora of naysayers that will haunt you along the way. Stay positive, stay motivated and keep your goal in sight. I promise you if you do that, and never give up, you will eventually be where you want to be.

I can’t describe how much this community means to me, and even in my absence I’ve still thought about each and every one of you. Again thank you 7Sage from the bottom of my heart.

Hey! So as I’m pushing through my second semester at NU I thought I’d come back and share a little bit about my experience with an extremely late acceptance of a waitlist and what it’s like being on like 12 waitlists with 0 acceptances. Hopefully some of this will help those who are on waitlists and feel as lost and confused as I did.

BACKGROUND FOLLOWS SKIP FOR MY EXPERIENCE:

My story: I was a splitter - last December I scored a 171 on the December LSAT, coupled with a 2.83 cumulative GPA, I was ready to apply to schools and get rejected like crazy. What I wasn’t anticipating was getting waitlisted at half of the T-14 and some other t-20 schools.

My apps were submitted by late January and in March the waitlist began rolling in. Duke, Pen, UCLA, NU, ND, Mich, Irvine...etc etc.

I was getting waitlisted more than rejected. However I ended up in a situation where I was waitlisted everywhere and accepted nowhere.

I played the game throughout spring and summer. I sent LOCI’s every month or two and generally kept on top of them.

Starting in June I started falling off waitlist. This went on until late July, at which point NU was the only outstanding waitlist - and I had just accepted defeat. I got a second job was ready to figure out my life, then NU called - offered me a spot - and like a child at Disneyland I tearfully and excitedly accepted. The only issue? Classes started in 4 days, I was in California and I had to get out to Chicago as fast as possible.

BEGIN HERE FOR MY EXPERIENCE:

When I got to Chicago I didn’t have a place to live. The school got me a hotel for a week but after that it was on me. So basically my first week of law school, when I wanted to be focused on classes, I was dealing with apartment hunting. This really got me off on the wrong foot - was behind in readings and never caught up.

I also missed orientation week - which meant I wasn’t on most of the email lists. For the first month I missed many important lunch meetings and seminars. I didn’t even know they were a thing, and since I hadn’t made any friends/Aquintances I was lost. This never went away, even today. I still feel like I’m not a working gear in the NU clock. This is something you want to address right away. I also had to get ID’s made, full out paperwork, deal with school medical stuff....it was a lot in a small timeframe

Moving without housing: huge issue. My first month was spent more on trying to get a place to live, a bed, and everything else you need to live than it was on class work. I flew out with one suitcase of stuff. Trying to deal with this and law school is not for the faint of heart.

People already know each other and you’ll feel left out. People have been taking since orientation - if you weren’t lucky enough to make it to that you’ll be that one guy/gal that is on the outside. It will eventually go away (not the social awkwardness -that stays - law school is weird man) and you’ll start to make friends.

So if you are on the waitlist and thinking of making a split second decision - be prepared to potentially be way behind the curve from the get go. Work diligently and prioritize; but definitely take these things into consideration when you are weighing your options with the waitlists.

It's not a "no" guys :D I have a chance, this is super exciting for me. As a splitter (2.8gpa/171 LSAT) I didn't think I'd make it to even the waitlist...

Guys...guys! I have a shot at U.Mich!!

Thank you so much 7Sage for getting me as far as you have! I love you guys.

So Duke's personal statement prompt is a bit different than most other law schools. They want to hear about significant experiences, and career and personal goals. The issue is I covered a lot of that with my diversity statement and my "Why Duke" essay. In-fact, I'd say I covered all of that in my Optional Essays 1&2. So I'm a lot less sure what to cover in my PS. I don't want to rehash what has already been said in my other essays, but I do want to address their prompt.

Should I risk sounding a little repetitive in order to make sure I hit the check marks, or should I just keep my PS individualized and address things not already covered?

@Alex for everything he has done for this community, and for me. When I first started on 7Sage around Nov of 2016 I was a clueless, lost, and hopeless individual. I had no idea what I was doing, what blind review was, and how to study efficiently. I started to get really active on the 7Sage forums, and @Alex was always able to shed valuable perspective on my situations. He has the ability to make sure we hear every side of an argument, and to make sure we understand the larger implications of everything we are doing. Not to mention his ability to always link relevant and helpful webinars, lessons, or websites to help solve your problem. Because of @Alex, and this community, I was equipped with the best resource to study for the LSAT and eventually beat the test.

I just want to give a shout out to @Alex to say thank you for all that you do. I'm sure I'm not the only one in the 7Sage community who appreciates your continued efforts in helping us all to succeed! Stay awesome!

Hey everyone I’m here to just say, don’t give up.

Four years ago I started my journey to law school with a 2.8 GPA and an extremely low starting LSAT score. After obsession over the test, and with the tremendous help of 7Sage and its community, I was able to score a 171.

Yesterday, I graduated from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and was awarded the Wigmore Key Student award.

Your past mistakes DO NOT DEFINE YOUR FUTURE SUCCESS. Anyone is capable of being right where I am.

So if things are hard right now, if the dream seems to far out of reach, just keep going. You will all achieve your goals. Work hard, study harder. Rely on 7Sage and the community here.

I thought I’d take some time to write this out for you. It’s becoming clear that the LSAT is a good reflector of Law School success for so many reasons that extend beyond just the “logic” of the test. I feel many of these things go overlooked, but are important to keep in mind.

1.) There is NO handholding in law school. They will throw you into the fire right away. It is 100% on you to sit down, sift through all the information being thrown at you, and pick out important take aways. You need to learn how to learn the law on your own.

This is much like what we have to do on the lsat. We are presented with an unfamiliar type of test in which you need to figure out what it is you are suppose to be learning. You have to learn how to learn logic. It’s very much a personal challenge that you have to devlop through on your own. Just like law school.

2.) the way to prepare for finals is to take practice tests and make outlines. You have to dedicate weekends to work on outlines and take full practice tests. This is one big way to prepare for finals. You need to have the discipline to work on your time off.

This is exactly what you do with the lsat. If you want to be successful on that test you need to tell your friends “no” to going out all the time. You need to take a significant amount of your own free time to sit down and do the LSAT. If you can do that, it is an indicator you have the potential to be successful.

3.) you have to want it. Law school doesn’t come easy and it is easy to let the work “slip” into the back seat. Doing the readings, staying on top of office hours, and briefing cases can become easy to “put off”. If you put it off until finals come you’re screwed. Cramming in law school is just not an option.

Which is exactly like the lsat. You can’t cram for that test. It just doesn’t work like that. You need time to develop the understanding of the logic and how to properly spot and apply it. Just like the law where you have to learn to spot issues and apply the law. The parallel is uncanny.

These are just a few of the parallels I notice so far. So when you hear that the lsat “isn’t even what we learn in law school” it’s because that is looking at it wrong. It’s not the subject matter that the LSAT tests, it’s your ability and desire to learn subjects that are largely unfamiliar and your dedication to that pursuit.

Keep at it 7Sage, you will be successful!

Back to Civ Pro reading.....

Holy cow my anxiety is peaking! Are they all waiting to reject me in one fell swoop? I know I'm just being impatient, but still! Anyone else still waiting on a bunch of schools to get back to them? lol

Hey! So I have a few questions about things I should/should not include in my LOCI's...they are rather specific to my situation and I just want to see what people think about including them.

1.) Resident - As a resident of California attending these schools at a lower cost is something I consider heavily. My Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will also cover 2 full years of tuition WITHOUT the help of the school if I attend law school in California at a public school. Should I include this as a reason I'd commit to the school in my LOCI?

2.) No acceptances - As suggested by a couple users here, should I carefully mention that I've received no acceptances this year but am on many waitlists. Saying something how accepting me off the waitlist is likely to result in me being fully committed to their school. Obviously I would do this VARY carefully and not make it seem like a bribe....haha

Those are my two big ones; any thoughts on if I should include that stuff or not?

http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/2019-usnwr-rankings/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Irvine please respond to me! Lol

I just wanted to hop on real fast and say sorry to the community! I haven't been super active the past week or so because I'm stressing out over some stuff the LSAC is doing and it's impacting my applications horribly. I promise once this is resolved I'll be able to get back to answering questions and giving suggestions/motivation!

I'm still here! :D

So I'm pretty confused on this. I had to check the "yes" for academic probation because when I attended community college in 2008 I was put on probation for bad grades. Some schools seem to require Dean cert letters, but I'm not sure which do? I know Cornell and Duke do, Stanford was mentioned as needing one, but I can't find that anywhere.

I'm now really worried. I also called my community college and they said I wont need one. I applied to like 15 schools so now it is a huge mess. Does anyone have any clarity on this?

So this is the list I have so far;

Columbia: Yes

Stanford: No

USC: No

Duke: Yes

UVA: No

Cornell: Yes

And I'd have to say I am still as unsure and lost as before I had my decisions from the schools...

My final results are:

Acceptances:

Waitlist:

Rejections: (mostly expected here)

Two still pending:

So what the heck am I suppose to do. I have to go this cycle, I really don't have an option. I need to push these waitlists until I can't any longer. I just don't know what the best strategy is.

Obviously I have schools I'd rather attend on the waitlist, but since I'm on the waitlist I don't get to choose. I have to beg them all and hope someone likes me enough right?

Sigh, I have to say....this is not fun!

May your pencils be sharp, your negations quick, your passages interesting, and your games straight forward!

Hey! It's me, again, for like the gazillionth time.

As I am organizing and submitting my applications I am reading more and more about different joint degree options. Some of them are right up my ally. I feel like I'm not qualified to apply for them though because I am a splitter (high LSAT, low cGPA). I feel like I'd just be lucky to get in under their JD program and that I should just ignore the dual degrees and be thankful for getting in as a JD only.

So I have some questions, and they might be better tailored for the schools, but I thought I'd ask my favorite people first.

1.) If I apply to a joint program, and get accepted for the JD but not the LLM, can I still attend the school for the JD only?

2.) If I choose a school on just their JD program, do any schools allow you to enroll in a joint program after you start your law degree. (say I finish 1L at a school, and then sign up for a joint degree the summer between 1 and 2L)

3.) Any other advice/recommendations about joint degrees in general?

Did anyone else feel sick doing it? Lol I felt like I was going to mess something up, or like I mixed up which documents went to which schools. What if I missed a small mistake?

I kinda wanna go back to my safe place of studying for the LSAT...

Hey all, so I'm finally starting to hear back from schools which is awesome. The not so awesome part is so far they have ALL been waitlists. I'm sort of unsure how to handle this position haha...

I know all about LOCI's and stuff like that, but waitlists keep me in purgatory, some even warn that I might be stuck on them until August. So I'm starting to worry about what this means for my planning/decision making.

I'm also worried about sending LOCI's to the schools, getting taken off the waitlist, and then having another school take me off their waitlist that I'd rather attend, then what do I do? Am I bound to attend the schools if they remove me from the WL? Even if I'm not, I don't want to take the spot for another potential admit.

The jury is still out on most of my schools, but with 3 WL's and counting I'm beginning to see new dilemmas arise. Any advice on how to handle multiple waitlists?

I've posted about this before, but have hit yet another road block and need some advice on how to proceed.

Back Story:

I've sent one e-mail to the schools I applied to letting them know my transcripts would change after my CC sent the right one. The transcripts did change, just not accurately. So now there will be a SECOND change to the transcripts.

So this is where I am stuck, do I e-mail the schools again saying "oh sorry, something else is messed up now" or do I just wait for it to get completely resolved? (I have no idea how long that will take) Will schools just auto-reject me because of this? This is absolutely insane...

The diff in GPA is 2.83 vs 3.1x if it is done correctly.

This is absolutely killing me!

So I'm a bit confused by this section of Cornell's application. No one influenced me to apply to Cornell (except secretly Andy from the office...) but it is a mandatory part of the application with a little * and all.

Now I'm pretty sure all I have to do is write something like: N/A or Not applicable here.

What I'm stuck on is if I should maybe write more about my decision to apply to the school here instead? This sounds wrong, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

https://media1.tenor.com/images/b04fd4704fcc9b5602e8c1999cae133f/tenor.gif?itemid=5368207

When I open 7Sage, make it so it doesn’t close my damn music! Lol this might be a problem unique to me, but it’s been a problem forever!

Hey all,

As many of you know my application cycle did not go very smoothly. One of the biggest obstacles I faced during this process was the LSAC. My transcripts from about 10 years ago underwent a change after I spoke to the Dean of my old community college. She enrolled me in an academic renewal policy that removes all credit attempted and calculated for grades given at the college. I re-submitted my transcripts to the LSAC, because based on their posted policy at the time my GPA should have been significantly improved. (2.8 - 3.1)

I fought with them for months, filled out forms they had for me, updated schools of my situation, put my applications on hold, and ultimately I truly believe this is what landed me on all the wait-list as I still have not been able to send a final update to the schools as to what the outcome will be.

I fought very hard against the LSAC because I knew their policy was wrong. I filed a complaint with the BBB and during the correspondence there they continued to reviel that they did not understand their own policy. The contradicted themselves multiple times, and I even received an E-mail from the BBB agent that stated she saw their inconsistency and left the complain as "unresolved".

I brought all this to a lawyer, who believed I 100% had a case against them. Their policy was wrong, and they were holding it against me. It was up to them to change their policy, but they DID hold my applications back. He advised me not to litigate though because he thought they'd appeal me to hell. I'm still unsure if I will purse this.

Some good has come out of this however, the LSAC HAS UPDATED their entire transcript summerization policy due to my persistence. While the LSAC has ultimately crushed my dreams and hampered all my hard work, I have at least ensured that it wont happen to someone else.

(failing grades, and grades to be excluded are totally different now)

https://www.lsac.org/aboutlsac/policies/transcript-summarization

Their new policy explicitly excludes me from having my grades changed now, and replaces ALL the wording I pointed to that showed them why it should be changed.

It's a hallow victory, I am sitting on a ton of waitlists now and I really do contribute it to this. Especially after e-mailing schools to put my applications on hold for almost a month.

Just know, you should NEVER back down. You should always fight for yourself. Always fight for what is right, even if it doesn't help you know it can help someone else later.

I plan on staying on 7Sage, especially if I don't get off a waitlist. I hope to help and get you to realize some of your dreams as well. Keep up the hard work 7Sagers.

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." - Calvin Coolidge

So when you are sitting there, stuck on a hard LR problem. When you are perplexed by a logic game. When you have no idea what you just read about in reading comp. (Still not sure why Elline Gray was putting licorice on wood) Remember that it is your persistence to push through that will make or break you. Ram your head against a brick wall enough, eventually it will break. So go about your studies in the most efficient manner you possibly can, but just remember your determination and persistence are there to back you up; to push you past those road blocks. As everyone always says, the LSAT is beatable. YOU can beat it.

You got this!

https://i.imgflip.com/u9qcy.jpg