Updating applications--From admissions office

tylerdschreur10

I recently emailed back a forth with the admissions office at UofM, and I thought the correspondence might be useful for those of us retesting in December.

Tldr; Apply as soon as you can, if you improve your score they will reevaluate you for both admittance and scholarships.

Me:
My question is about the process of applying now and then potentially updating my application if I do in fact raise my LSAT score. I would like to apply as early as possible both for admission and to put myself in the best possible position for scholarships. Is there any disadvantage to applying and then updating vs simply waiting to submit any materials until my application is complete?

UofM:
Thanks for your e-mail and your interest in Michigan Law. I would encourage you to submit your application as soon as you can. If you submit your completed application before the December LSAT scores are released, because you have a score from a previous administration, we would consider your application to be complete and we would begin to process your application and place it into our queue for our reviewers. It's possible that our reviewers could be ready to consider your file before a December score became available. If our reviewers were inclined to admit you, then they would do so without waiting. If they were considering a negative decision, then they would know to wait for your December score before finalizing that decision.

Me:
I do have one follow-up question. When would scholarship allocation be decided? At the same time as admittance/denial, or later? Would this follow a similar system of being evaluated initially based on my score on record and then adjusted later if my December score becomes relevant?

UofM:
All our admitted students are automatically considered for merit-based scholarships, and yes, this does typically occur a bit after the admissions decision is made (scholarship decisions generally start rolling out in January while admissions decisions have typically started coming out earlier than that). We do also have a mechanism to consider any updated LSAT scores for scholarship decisions, even if we made a previous determination.

LSATcantwin

Good to know, thanks for this!!