Nontraditional Applicant Prospect?

dldnjstjr

I am 29 y/o looking to apply in the upcoming admission cycle. I finished undergrad in 2012 and completed MA in 2013. Then I joined US military and did 5 years active duty. My LSAC GPA is 3.85, and I just took the March LSAT, but I expect around 165 give or take a few points based on my last few PTs. Now that LSAT is out of the way, I'm trying to make a list of schools to apply, but I'm not really sure how my "nontraditional" background will factor into determining reach/target/safety. I heard nontraditional applicants get a soft "boost", but I wasn't sure if such boost is negligible or not. I don't want to overestimate the impact of nontraditional background, but at the same time I don't want to undercut myself a possibility.

How much can I add to my numbers to compare with school's median for the sake of determining reach/target/safety? Any suggestions for my list would also be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Leah M B

Hi there! I'm a non-traditional myself, 35 and applying for this Fall. My take on it is that it is a very slight boost at some schools. But overall, it's not worth a whole lot. I would say it's more like if you had similar stats to someone else and the school could only choose 1, being a non-trad might be a tie breaker. I wouldn't think of it as a boost to your LSAT or GPA. It actually may be more accurate to say that a number of schools consider being K-JD (someone straight through school, goes direct from undergrad into law school) a negative, and being non-traditional takes away that negative. I have heard that some schools look favorably on former military, so that's nice to have in your pocket. But again, I don't think it's enough to think about it as adding to your numbers. I would take your numbers at face value in calculating your reach/target/safety schools, but you may have better luck at reach schools that particularly like a non-traditional background.

The only ones that I have much of a sense of is that Northwestern particularly wants people to have work experience. They have a higher than average age of incoming students and a very strong JD-MBA joint degree, so a solid number of people come in with significant work experience since that is required for most MBAs.

My very amateur gut feeling is that Michigan is friendlier to K-JDs and maybe doesn't give much of a boost to older students.

For reference, I also have a 3.85 GPA and a 168 LSAT, and I feel like my cycle has played out pretty much how you would think with those numbers. I'm accepted at Northwestern, which is the only real reach that has let me in - and again, makes sense with their lean toward applicants with work experience. (No other grad school for me, have just been working since undergrad.)

If you'd like to see details on how my cycle has played out, feel free to PM and I'll send you my LSN profile.

Good luck!