What's Going On in the Admissions Cycle Right Now?

As we advance toward the holidays, law schools are beginning to slow their recruitment travel. Take advantage of any final information sessions and open houses to connect with the schools on your list, and catch them at the LSAC digital forums and local events if your top schools are outside of your region.

If you’ve submitted your applications already, make sure that you check your online status checker to confirm that your applications are processed and completed. If something is missing, you’ll be able to see that on your status checker.

As recruitment season comes to a close, schools will focus more time and attention on application review, and you’ll want to make sure to check your email and spam folder for updates, to ensure that you aren’t missing any communications from schools on your list. Waves of decisions and other communications will begin to pick up over the next couple of weeks. During this time, scholarship committees will also be reviewing admitted applicant files (this process can take longer for higher-ranked schools, while gift aid notifications may accompany admissions decisions from other schools). Some schools may require admitted candidates to complete supplemental forms that help them assess financial need.

Helpful Link

The registration and accommodation request deadline for the January LSAT is December 3. If you’re planning to take the LSAT, or you’re registered and need to request accommodations, make sure that you don’t miss the opportunity!

Discussion

How strict are application instructions? Are page limits or word counts rules or suggestions?

It’s important to make sure that you are following application instructions for a myriad of reasons—the first of which is because they’re the standard and guide being set by the law school for the application. It’s where law schools are communicating with you their expectations on what they require and what supplemental items they might allow. Pay close attention to prompts, formatting instructions, drop-down menu options, character and word count limits, and specified time periods to explain in terms of gaps in education or employment, or in case you have to account for every job you’ve had since high school. Every school has different instructions and is allowed to create school-specific questions on the application.

Some schools use their instructions as a tool to assess the candidates that follow directions, weeding out those that cannot. Consider application instructions to be rules and not guidelines. If the instructions state that the word limit is 350, the school expects a statement of 350 words or less. Do some AOs actually take the time to check? Yes. What happens if the website and the application instructions differ? Always defer to the app instructions—these are updated each year with the application itself and are used as the standard when assessing your application. The website could be out of date.

Font sizes and double-spacing are important! Please be kind to your AOs—make sure that your documents are properly formatted. Yes, we can tell when the margins aren’t an inch wide. I recommend indenting paragraphs as opposed to having a line space between them. Do have line spaces between your positions on your résumé so that they don’t bleed together. Do make sure to format headers at the top of your statements (your name, your L#, and the name of the statement) so that they’re easily identified. It makes referencing certain pieces of the document and scrolling through a lot easier for us.

The same PS may or may not work for every school. I know you’re tired of hearing it, but it really does depend! Make sure that you’re checking the prompts for each school. If there is one, you might want to specifically tailor your PS to fit that school. Make sure that you’re responsive to any prompt that is provided, and that you’re within the preferred page range. If you write a PS that is one page, but the instructions say two to four pages, you’re not being responsive to the prompt. If the school doesn’t want a why X statement, because they want you to talk about their school in the PS, make sure that you follow through rather than sending a generic two-pager.

Along those lines, it can be tempting to create a template statement and then just follow that template for each application, but some schools create prompts to get away from these generalized statements/responses. A why X school statement, Penn’s Core Strengths essay, and UCLA’s Programmatic Contribution essay should not have identical content. Similarly, some schools format their diversity statement prompts differently, folding in their school’s values or how the candidate might contribute to diversity while on campus. Would a general statement work here? It depends on the statement’s content. Yes, homing in on these details takes a little more time, but the payoff (a potential offer of admission) is well worth the effort.

Events

On Tuesday, December 7 at 9:00 p.m. ET, David and the 7Sage Tutoring Team will host a webinar about timing and pacing on the LSAT. There will be time reserved for a Q&A session, and two attendees will win free LSAT Assessment and Planning Sessions. We'll pick the winners by lottery. Visit our discussion forum for more information and to register for the webinar!

Upcoming Recruitment Events

Here are some of the upcoming recruitment events through early November:

  • American University Washington College of Law is offering virtual information sessions for prospective students through Tuesday, December 7. Virtual information sessions will cover the same topics and be offered on most Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET—these events will be capped at 20 participants. Register here.
  • The LSAC December Digital Forum will take place online on Saturday, December 4 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET. This will include live and on-demand workshops as well as a digital law fair with schools from across the country (a list of participating schools is not yet listed). Register by December 2.
  • Michigan Law students are hosting casual and informal drop-in sessions for Q&A. Access to the daily times and Zoom link are available on this page.
  • NYU Law is hosting an information session to discuss the admissions process, application procedures, curriculum, and financial aid on Thursday, December 16 at 1 p.m. ET. Register by Monday, December 13.