Do international students get the URM bump?

amandapv

Is being international (in my case South America) an asset in terms of diversity? Assuming that a candidate is completely bilingual (ie good writing skills in English) and has stats at the median or is a splitter.

tatas911

URM = underrepresented minority. Not sure if international students at large are considered a minority, but even still I imagine white international students are viewed differently in way from black & latinx students in the same way that American white students are viewed differently from black and latinx students
That said, I am sure you have an outlook on law that is different from an American applicant, so even if you are white, you would still add a diverse & therefore valuable viewpoint to your class as someone who is not from the US.

yeahnice

Yes and no. While being an international applicant definitely brings 'diversity' to the table, if you graduated from an undergraduate degree outside the U.S., admissions officers will most likely need a validation of your ability to thrive in a U.S. institution (and the English language based legal field). Technically you don't have a GPA, or any standard to judge your ability to do well in an all English institution with students in the United States. As such, they will base admissions largely based on your LSAT scores; that said, the higher, the better.

If it's the case that they need this validation, it wouldn't really make sense to give a URM boost to an individual that is a minority but completed their high school/college degree outside the U.S.

So my personal opinions is that most schools would take your international status to be enough to write a diversity statement but not enough to consider it a URM.

https://www.top-law-schools.com/urm-applicant-faq.html

amandapv

I am Latinx but I'm not sure how they would know my ethnicity through my application (unless I explicitly mention it in my DS -which I probably will) since Latinos can be white after all. I did go to college in the US so I have an undergrad GPA and it's quite good 3.9high.

Manik Panic

lol i highly doubt canadians
indians in cad do not.
ya lots of indians but we are like seventy perc harvard
we didnt get fk all
ask my cousin harvard mba. from canada. good luck all.
im fine on own terms. millions pre fin law. if lucky pre starting too. but have law exp. just getting in a bit late. not bragging/ it's quite a lot of hard work.

vc/trading/law. mostly law. lsat. soon. gotta go. tk care.

--not hating use whatever helps enuff business to go around/
--law schools too.
--also not bragging on finances, just involved in mining, day trading, and did 12000 stocks canadian in weeks. took me seconds to beat SNP.
--but i do have 2 econ degrees and work 20hrs a day at times.-
--studying is quite tough too. harder for me than making money but...
--that only got easier in recent weeks and months. lots of work.
--good at lr and rc very good but need to up lg game. take care.
--i hope you get in. me too, im rewriting but may have a firm in part of CDA\
--or setup smthing else in another part. quite busy.
--i know iranian, indian, etc ppl here in canada that had scholarships and like they were removed or useless. canada fundings kind of odd. same in my ugrad biological sci (tho switched to economics).

--have a cousin that got into jon hopkins med he went to UofT instead.
-my brother got 99th perc mcat (he's GREAT at tests, etc).
--i uh will not get 99 on the lsat. anyways we all have dif skills/talents.
--the thing is... taking debt is fine if it advances careers and you can pay it off, and taking major paycut for an MBA or JD or Doctorate, Masters, etc is worth it if you stategize, on work exp and end game, and altv. ways to earn.
--if just choosing random schools and towns that give a person 100k or 200k funding it may not be worth it, just speaking logically, ppl on here many are smart, so surely this is commonly known. take care. MC.

LOWERCASE EVERYTHING

@amandapv said:
Is being international (in my case South America) an asset in terms of diversity? Assuming that a candidate is completely bilingual (ie good writing skills in English) and has stats at the median or is a splitter.

i think the title and the content of your post are asking two different questions.
"urm boost" and "contributing to diversity" are functionally different in the admissions process.

that being said:

the answer to the title (if international students get an urm boost): this is a no.
international students fall into a separate category of their own.
more info here: https://www.top-law-schools.com/urm-applicant-faq.html

to answer your second question (an asset in terms of diversity) — yes; they do contribute to the diversity at your school. many also write diversity statements, and this is something you should consider.

good luck!