This is a very interesting case... I'd be willing to bet that, with some creativity, you could put together an awesome application that stands out from the others. Getting a high LSAT would lend a lot of credibility to what you are trying to do and would likely be enough for them to not care as much about lacking a GPA.
Without a stellar LSAT I don't think it would be convincing though... some people can fall back on a 4.0 GPA if their LSAT is 164 (for a decent chance) for the T14, but you would almost certainly need to crush the LSAT as it would be your only numerical stat for them to go off of.
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I think you should stay on the waitlist. If I were in your situation, it would be an extremely tough call to make based on hypotheticals...I too would have to wait until the actual moment of potential acceptance to really know. I think it will become clear then, like when you are torn between two options so you flip a coin to see what you truly want when it's in the air..something about being in the actual moment always seems to make decisions easier.
I understand from Harvard's perspective why they are so serious about only having100% would attends on their waitlist, makes it much easier for them as they try to fill out the class as efficiently as possible. But it's not like you are a guaranteed no and you just want to find out if you could have gotten in to boost your ego or something...you still seem to be at least slightly in the land of quandary and potentially would accept an offer.
And if you ultimately don't accept the offer, I imagine you will respond swiftly so as not to delay acceptance to another hopeful. No harm no foul in my opinion. Harvard just may have to send a few extra emails !
Yep, i think it would be in bad taste if you knew that you wouldn't go... but as long as you are putting effort into making that decision in the meantime, before the decision comes, I think you will be doing the right thing. Harvard has a large 1L class to fill and the motivation for their WL e-mail has probably come from years of absolute agony dealing with students who ghost/communicate poorly... Those students were probably their target audience. You might be overly worrying about the situation for yourself.
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Waitlisted at Yale
More purgatory :disappointed:
Don't be disappointed! There is no way I'd be able to achieve a WL at Yale and you know it isn't one of the bullshit soft-rejection wait lists... I'd feel pretty good, especially considering the great options you've had!
Stay on the wait list. Especially if you are still figuring the decision out. Plus, even if you do stay on the WL, it's far from guaranteed you'll even have to make the decision. Don't get too emotionally attached to the desires of the school and its business. Do what is best for you.
What is generally recommended as the best prep for being a 1L?
Should we be resting as much as we can to save energy for the marathon? Should we be reading certain materials in preparation? Is there a benefit to getting any of the books early and familiarizing ourselves with the content?
Assuming you have free time, how would you set yourself up for success as a 1L?
Congratulations on a fantastic outcome!
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"Why do people settle for less and allow a 50-hour a week paralegal job (for example) prevent them from reaching their goals?
Financially, those 50 hours are much more valuable when used studying for the LSAT (considering how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you'll potentially save with a 170+ Lsat score)"
Financially, working 50 hours a week is much more valuable because it allows me to have food to put on a plate, and also a plate, and also a roof over my head in the kitchen where I can eat my plate of food.
It's not that folks who haven't quit their jobs aren't thinking about their goals. My goals require me not to be literally homeless. I can't care about hundreds of thousands of dollars in the future if I starve right now.
This reeks of privilege. I understand that the thread comes with the caveat of only applying to those who are financially able to do so, but so few people truly are, and it's not even a matter of "things will be tight but I won't buy my coffee from Starbucks daily and I'll make it through." This post vastly underestimates lower-class and middle-class life, and makes generalizations that sound like those of us forced to work simply don't want a good score badly enough.
How much money do you think it takes to scrape by for LSAT studies? I am a first-gen college graduate that had limited savings from my year of teaching English abroad after graduation. When I returned to the states, I moved out to some country area 3.5 hours away from the nearest city and found the cheapest 250sqft studio i could (with 2 cats), stopped driving my car, switched to the bare minimum phone plan, and walked to a place that I could get internet when I needed... You can actually live off of $750/mo or less if you are willing to do what it takes. Luckily, my gf was understanding of what I was trying to do and I would sometimes take a train home on weekends to visit. Taking comforts away is a great motivator and also helped maintain focus on the goal.
I'm sure I could've begged a friend or family member for a spot in a basement/attic but getting away from everything was a better choice imo. I had the savings, but if I did not, there were several routes to obtain the very small loan that would be needed to accomplish this, whether it was a bank or just credit...
My sacrifices yielded me a score jump from 151 to 172 in 4 months TOTAL time that resulted in a full-ride to a top20 that I was able to negotiate into a full-ride + a $32,000/yr living stipend guaranteed, no GPA requirements. perhaps showing that level of commitment was... dare i say... INCREDIBLY BENEFICIAL to my outcome?!
PLEEEEASE convince me (or really, keep fooling yourself) about how having a gap in employment hurt my app... or that even if i didnt have savings and had to take a bank loan of $750 x 6 mo (it's $4,500 because i couldn't find a month to month) that I am somehow in a worse-off position....
i could barely afford the starter package on 7sage....
not to mention, i've already been getting multiple PM's from members that don't wanna get hammered by the lifelong 7sage members putting in their 3 hours/wk for advice about this kinda thing.... so this topic is incredibly relevant and is clearly something that needs to be talked about.
something that i haven't even mentioned yet either is the recent uptick in applicants to law school... the last few years has seen the lowest number of law students/applicants since the early 1980's following the recession. this year, as salaries continue to rise and job prospects are very high, we are seeing people flooding back towards the law profession. we had a HUGE increase of high-scoring applicants (https://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/2017-2018-cycle-data-as-of-6-27-18/) showing that there are people who scored high but did not apply in previous years and are returning to enter the market now. this has many schools overenrolled and sending out e-mails to students asking them to defer until next year (taking up spots), and causing a lot of great applicants to pull-out and reapply next year as cycle veterans polishing apps and avoiding rookie mistakes. the last couple years would have been the ideal time to get in the market and it's only gonna get harder from here! the time to act is now.
if you get bogged down in the employment gap (which doesn't mean crap) or continuing to live your current lifestyle (making whatever excuses you want, though some are legit ie children to feed) you MIGHT be hurting yourself in this current climate. there are a LOTTT of variables that need to be considered and weighted properly in terms of priority.... OP opening the conversation questioning people who are "on the fence" about whether they could take the dive and give everything to their future career in the law is about as relevant now as it will ever be... 2010-2013 might have been a good time period to keep your job while slowly working up that LSAT score and all the advice the lifelong 7sagers would be perfectly valid, but that is not the environment of today. you make your own bed...
You make interesting observations and all but the real question is... Do you trade your young assets for Kawhi now or holdout and gamble that you can get him for free next year? Taking into consideration the limited time you might have LA Bron at peak performance!
I've been chatting with folks and my opinion is that, with the current roster, they shouldn't clear the bullpen of young talent this year. Newly formed teams never win the chip the first year round and their youth needs at least one year playoff experience with LeBron at the helm. Let the vets back them up and help prepare them for championships ahead!
Starters:
Lonzo Ball 6'6 (20yrs old)
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope 6'5 (25yrs old) needs playoff experience
Brandon Ingram 6'9 (20yrs old)
Lebron James 6'9 (33yrs old now eeek!)
Kyle Kuzma 6'9 (22yrs old)
Backups:
Rajon Rondo
Josh Hart
Lance Stephenson
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk 6'8 (21 yrs old) 2nd round shooter from Kansas
Javale McGee / Mo Wagner
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TLDR: Attending law school earlier won't get you more years at a Big Law salary in the event that you get Big Law, but it will make those years earlier. If you are smart and invest the money the interest will therefore start compounding earlier so it will be financially better.
I like your post and I think you bring up a great point, but you might've understated it just a tad. A few years of extra savings from Big Law earlier in life can make an enormous difference.
Say we have two students who both score highly on their LSATs, and are able to attend UChicago on full-ride scholarships. The students are such that:
Student (A) is a K-JD starting law school at 22 years of age. Student (A) took 4 months off from work to study full-time for the LSAT, and in doing so burned through $4,000 dollars of savings.
Student (B) began working as a paralegal after graduating from undergrad, and the office they are in has grueling hours. These hours have interfered with their ability to adequately prepare for the LSAT. Nevertheless, after 3 years and several takes student (B) finally achieves a superb LSAT score.
Both students work Biglaw in NY for 3 years before moving on to a different job. They both save 20% of their income, investing mostly in equities with a compound annual interest rate of 8%.
At retirement age....
Student (A)'s savings from their time in Biglaw will equal approx. $3,370,000.00
Student (B)'s savings from their time in Biglaw will equal approx. $2,650,000.00
Now of course student (A) has an opportunity cost of spending that $4,000 back when they began school. Compounded for 43 years, the future value is approx $125,000.00
Even so, student (A) is still at a net gain of $600,000.00. That's future value though -- accounting for TMV gives a present value of around $22,000.00.
So essentially by spending down their savings and entering law school earlier, student (A) "earned" $600,000.00 more by retirement age just by virtue of beginning to save earlier.
And all of this is assuming that student (A) and student (B) have similar outcomes. What if student (B)'s work interfered so much that they never scored 175+ and instead paid full-ticket price to go to UChicago rather than a full scholarship? In such a scenario student (A) is coming out millions of dollars ahead of student (B).
i was going to bring up compound interest too but you did such a great job i'll just smile at your example.
btw, i'm not someone who took 6months off to study for the LSAT but i am someone who wishes they would have last summer :expressionless:
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I don’t think anyone is scoffing at the idea of taking time off, but rather at OP’s seeming inability to understand why everyone doesn’t take the time off. As I’ve said, if you have savings or parents to pay for your time off, that is absolutely fantastic!! But that can’t be a consideration for everyone, which is why I’m confused about the purpose of the thread. I just don’t even know what it’s accomplishing.
i think you need to read OP's first two paragraphs again. he does not say "everyone" and he is merely trying to broach the topic of conversation about why some people who could quit their job, in fact, do not.
in doing so, the OP has already had many replies with people who have put WAYYY too much emphasis on the effect a short gap period will have on their chance of admissions. this could be especially useful because the most frequent posters on 7sage are people studying for the LSAT long term who have not been through the admissions process and, frankly, are spewing personal opinions about what the effect a gap would have based on speculation. after going through the admissions process myself, reading a variety of forums for the past year, and talking with admissions offices around the country / Q+A panels / books interviewing admissions officers, i have NEVER seen someone who under performed their numbers because they took time off to study for the LSAT. i'm not saying it has never happened, but i've read / heard admissions officers say that taking time off "to volunteer, travel, or even just relax" before starting law school is fine as long as you feel fully prepared to start it when you do. so, if they can see it as a positive and share those sentiments publicly, i can feel fairly confident that it would take an extraordinary situation for them to view it as a negative.
this has been one of the best threads on 7sage not related to specific LSAT instruction in a long time.
I think the best way to not get distracted is to stay engaged with the reading in a way that is frequent.
My strategy was to have my own running dialogue in my head with the reading. After each sentence I would make a comment, ask a question, or just explain the purpose of having that sentence before moving on to the next sentence. It helped me to not "get lost" in the reading and stay aware of how the piece was written.
The " " indicate an example of something I might say in my head.
For example:
First sentence cleverly introducing some phenomenon that won't even be the main point of the passage. "cool phenomenon, i wonder how they discovered it" Second sentence explaining how two old dudes who are about to die are fighting over who deserves the most credit for discovering the phenomenon. "ah, it's just some dispute..." Third sentence introducing the argument for who has the stronger claim for credit, the guy with the original thought, or the guy who made it happen. "I could think of reasons for both, let's see what other info there is"
It is doable but it will depend on a combination of your natural ability and how much you are capable of dedicating yourself to it. I started with a 151, used 7sage basic + the LSAT test books with 10 tests each in them to study through the last week of September and October/November (hit 170+ on my last 4/5 PT's before test) and hit 164 on my Dec. 2nd test.
Between the Dec. 2nd and Feb. 10th test I only took 2 PT's, without BR, and left with a 172 on the February test. So, technically, it took me 4 months total time to secure a 172 on a legit exam but the timing of when you test is a little different than mine, essentially offering you an extra month before your first test and hopefully you can avoid the conditions of my first testing experience.
I was PT'ing up to the day before the Dec. test which I think was a mistake... also, poor testing conditions at the location.. flip-up desks the size of an 8"x12" piece of computer paper caused us all to have to put supplies on the ground, hold answer sheets/tests on our thighs and switch them to the desk, the test itself (almost the size of a newspaper opened up) was hanging over both sides of the desk, everyone had supplies/tests dropping and rolling and we had to chase them down. i took the second test at a different university that had large table-desks.
Everything about my life was geared towards the LSAT during this time. Exercise + diet, napping to retain info and regain energy before waking back up to go at it again, playing JY's videos with the sound turned up while cooking/going to sleep for passive retention. I've pushed myself for physical endeavors at that level before but never for a mental task.
Most of the advice you will get on 7sage will be from folks who prefer moderation and balance, which I admit is best for the vast majority of people, but if you want my blueprint then send me a PM. I wasn't able to benefit from someone else's experience when I started that journey and I would have done some things differently if I could do it over again. I don't mind sharing what I did and my advice about how to do it better than I did.
Edit: i see you are one of the rich people with ultimate+! perhaps you won't need the LSAT books that i used... i've been broke as hell for a long time now haha but i managed to get it done with the basic course!
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So, it sounds like spending the rest of the summer polishing my app and studying for a retake is in order so I can ED really quickly if my retake isn't that much better.
Congratulations! You are on the right track and I bet you will do great. Perfect game plan!
If you do take time off, make sure you really boost that LSAT. Ultimately, if you took a year off but got a 169/170 (median for majority of T14) you would still outperform the guy who worked full-time at some job but got a 165... assuming all other things equal. Go volunteer somewhere that won't tax your energy too much and use all your good stuff for LSAT studies. They aren't going to care that much unless you're applying to Yale or Stanford... Just don't fill-out the section telling them you smoked weed and played video games all day and they'll forget about it before the end of reading your app.
I don't know the sources of the other info in this thread came from about a 6mo - 1yr gap being horrible on your app. There was an question/answer panel with admissions officers i listened to where they mentioned taking a year off to relax, travel abroad, or volunteer before starting the beast that is law school and beyond is perfectly okay if you have the resources to do it and they even proceeded to give examples of how it could be a positive thing... I've never once read/heard about a gap year causing someone to under perform in admissions, but i definitely have heard about a low LSAT score causing someone to not get the outcomes they wanted. High GPAs are common but given the curve of the LSAT means there is a finite number of high scorers each cycle, being one of those will set you apart more than anything else.
Aside from being a sack of crap during your free time, there is almost no better thing you can do but try to raise your GPA/LSAT for admissions outcomes... plain and simple. Every year people think that some random job they thought was awesome (when really no one cares much what kind of job 99% of the time) or some other master's degree program or something will be a good excuse for their GPA / LSAT and will ultimately help them outperform someone who had a gap or didn't "do as much" but they are gonna be sad come admissions time when reality sets in. I can't speak from experience with the lower-ranked schools but I'm guessing if you are willing to take a year off you are aiming for somewhere in the top20.
The only caveat i would add is that if you are k-jd who has NEVER held an actual job there could be an argument between getting work experience or LSAT studies but it still appears that the higher LSAT gets better admissions outcomes. Feel free to spend a week scanning LSN and other sources if you want to see exactly what i mean. Only once you hit 170+ do you start to get diminishing returns on raising your LSAT compared to work experience (assuming you had no prior work experience). If you already have ~2 years work experience, it's an absolute no-brainer that raising your LSAT is the way to go.
Make sure you make a decision using data that relates to your specific situation. Find interviews/panels with admissions folks, scour over LSN data, read many anecdotes on reddit from people who have already gone through the admissions process. You know, to someone applying to some schools with LSAT medians in the low 160's and down, the work experience might be better because you kinda have a wildly varying applicant pool with some people who did care a lot about LSAT studies and some people who didn't and those schools might place a stronger emphasis on other parts of an application as stronger indicators of success. The same could be said about Yale and Stanford who have small class sizes and get to choose from an applicant pool where everybody was so good at the LSAT that it becomes hard to distinguish candidates at scores so high. For the rest of the ~2,500-3,000 spots at the higher schools, the biggest portion is gonna be your GPA/LSAT.
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They only care about 3 things: LSAT, GPA, race. Trust me. Law school is a business and the above 3 factors count the most because they influence school's rankings.
I'm assuming that wasn't a hyperbole. Softs can be a huge factor. Not only can they break you, but they can make you. But I think by the time most people are visiting the 7sage website, the only thing they have control over is their LSAT score.
And to answer the OP, I have never heard of a school giving weight to that.
I had amazing softs: 3 scientific publications (nature, cell) not American citizen( permanent resident), graduated high school in a different country, learned English at the age of 18, single parent household, worked full time while doing 30 hours of research and full time school and Dean's List. Previous professional degre and work experience....etc And take my word for it, it counted for maybe ONE lsat point... I got accepted to schools where I was around the average. Maybe two in 25% lsat/gpa. I applied to 23 schools. No great surprises.
I don't think that softs are supposed to adjust LSAT or GPA at all... and that is not how we should be thinking about, because that's not how schools think about it either. GPA and LSAT are king.... when you and another candidate have the similar GPA and LSAT then softs will be what tips the scale.
getting accepted to schools where you are "around" the average is exactly what softs are intended to do. i can promise that MANY people "around" the average don't get accepted. that shows that your softs did count and you should be very happy!
the fact of the matter is, unless you are HYS, GPA/LSAT are the two things that schools know for sure are legit and they aren't gonna go digging around an applicant's background to make sure they aren't lying or exaggerating. not only that, but they have lots of data on the correlation between law school success and a student's GPA/LSAT while not so much on varying softs. its also hard to compare success in STEM with law school success (i was STEM as well).
Whether you should apply ED or not depends on your new LSAT score. You have a great GPA and if your new LSAT is median or greater, i would not recommend ED'ing at all... if your new LSAT is still lower than median, then I would ED at NU given your situation.
If your LSAT is median or higher at the T14 (generally 169+) then you would be in the running for a variety of scholarships that are better than ED outcomes at UCB or NU. Think Darrow/Dillard. Not to mention you have a good chance of just flat-out getting ~$150k reg scholarship offers. If you happen to get a 172/173+ then you're looking at the opportunity of HYS and are also in the running for money at T6, as well as the previous opportunities from the 169ish LSAT.
The ONLY way I see ED being a wise strategy in your situation is if you score a 168 or lower on your next LSAT. It really is quite incredible what those last few points do for candidates as they approach the 99th percentile!
151 diagnostic. spent 2 months living/breathing 7sage in october and november where i did the CC/BR in the evenings when i didn't have any "sprinting" energy left from doing PTs in the morning. 5 PTs a week. took the december 2nd LSAT and hit 164 but i was all fried out (4/5 of my last PTs leading up to the test were 170+). only took 2 PT's between the december 2nd and the february 10th test administrations and ended up with a 172 on the feb test.
my biggest takeaway: treat the studying like you would if you were training for an iron man competition. you can go as hard as you want but you have to remember that the day of the performance is gonna bring new challenges and stresses. even if you could hit 170+ taking many PTs each week you have to know that it won't be the same on the actual test day when your cortisol levels rise. don't be overly neurotic like me... you WON'T forget it all in a week haha just like it wouldn't make sense to max out all of your lifts/cardio before the iron man, don't bust your butt the week of your test!
also, you don't lose as much as you think after taking a break... what are those lyrics again? im not as good as i once was, but im as good once as i ever was!
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Lots of people work full-time and study for the LSAT. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but schools are not going to care at all and I would recommend against writing to that effect.
Haha no thank you for your honesty and for replying. I'll most likely use my work experience to negotiate for more scholarship money (if any) later in the process. Also, I agree many students work full-time and study, and I shouldn't make working full-time an excuse for not studying well enough to get a higher score.
I think that is the right attitude to have! I had the same sentiment as you at one point in time... but I think that, ultimately, law school requires sacrifice just to have a chance at getting admitted and a big part of that is the LSAT :expressionless:
Yeah, it actually is a boost to your application to have had a year or two off if you used it to gain work experience or other valuable experience. Heck, UMich is sending out e-mails this year to some of its KJD (students who are trying to go straight from kindergarten to their JD without a break) asking if they would like to defer for a year to get work experience because their incoming class will be comprised of about 85% of people who took time off and have work experience.
I am questioning other parts of their advice as well but other 7sagers seemed to cover that pretty well.
Lots of people work full-time and study for the LSAT. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but schools are not going to care at all and I would recommend against writing to that effect.
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i think the wait list priority goes like this:
do we need certain stats to maintain stats? if not, proceed to #2
who are the candidates we really liked? are we over budget? do we need people to pay sticker?
who of said candidates are we sure will accept the offer?
I think 3 might be closer to tied with 2. If someone on the waitlist doesn't accept it hurts their yield and also makes it harder to get the next person since they might have committed in the interim.
maybe if they didn't like any leftover candidates? lol
but yeah, i think sometimes adcomms reach out to applicants to get a sense of 2/3 at the same time. ie: contacting an applicant to see if they would be willing to accept even though scholarship funds have run dry.
i would be willing to bet that, often times, candidates have been writing LOCI/contacting the school themselves offering up information that answers a lot of these, and other, questions!
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What is it about the hiking and camping experience that you think best highlights who you are to the admissions committee? At the end of the day I think it really comes down to how you write it. Have you tried writing a draft of both?
yeah, write both... see which you feel speaks to who you are the most.
i think the wait list priority goes like this:
do we need certain stats to maintain stats? if not, proceed to #2
who are the candidates we really liked? are we over budget? do we need people to pay sticker?
who of said candidates are we sure will accept the offer?
The core curriculum is included with any package you buy from 7sage. I bought the starter package just to get access to the core curriculum.
i used the starter course to improve from my diagnostic of 150 in September to a 164 on the December LSAT and eventually to a 172 on the february LSAT.
i've said it in many threads, but the LR learning materials in the core curriculum are by far the best available. you can learn LG for free through youtube or other materials and RC is something you can learn but it is hard to teach.... LR is the hardest section to find great materials to learn from in my experience and the 7sage core curriculum is the best.
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Thank you everybody! I was initially planning on doing Lsat part time, but I guess I really should be focusing on studying. 40hrs/wk for 7 months should be sufficient... right? tho I guess it depends.
Lsat and ps. got it :smiley:
I'd say study full-time if you can. That being said, it's important that you incorporate other things into your week. Maybe work part-time on a personal project or do some charity work. Something to take your mind off of the LSAT a few times a week and something that would look good on a resume.
Agreed, 40hrs/wk on the LSAT for 7mo is too much. I think the initial phase of studying, ie the core curriculum portion of the 7sage material, is good for long hours of studying because it's a lot of reading and watching videos where you are taking some notes.
Once you get to the point where you are doing full-on 5 section timed practice tests you would not be getting too many more benefits doing 40hrs/wk than you could with 25hrs/wk. The reason being that you can only fire your brain up to maximum intensity for so many hours and still perform at a high level. Sure, you could take it to its limit every day, but I guarantee that limit will start to decrease unless you get a little time off.
When you are doing full PTs I highly encourage you to spend a fair amount of time on blind reviewing (you will learn about this) between your PTs, not just because it's crucial for finding/fixing your weaknesses, but because it will afford you something you can do to continue improving while giving your brain a little rest for the next 3.5hr sprint on your next PT!