Anna: Hello, and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, and a little bit of everything. I'm Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting's President, and today we're continuing our deep dive series on the various law school application components. We did one on personal statements, one on experience/perspective essays or "E/P essays," one on resumes, and for today's episode, we're going in depth on addenda. What is an addendum? Do you need to write one? Under what circumstances should you write one? Best practices for writing optimal addenda, common mistakes—and then we get into all sorts of specific scenarios and talk about whether and when it makes sense to write an addendum based on various types of circumstances.
I should note, as a general content warning, that in discussing those specific types of circumstances, we do touch upon sensitive topics, including mental health and sexual assault.
I'm joined today by two of our Spivey consultants, Derek Meeker, former Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid for the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Danielle Early, former Associate Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School. They've both been working in law school admissions for over 20 years, so they've read a great many addenda, including ones that provided much-needed context and were incredibly helpful—and ones that were drastically ill-advised and very unhelpful.
So, let's get into it. Without further delay, I'll let them introduce themselves a bit further.
Derek: Hi, everyone. My name is Derek Meeker. I'm a partner with Spivey Consulting. I have been doing law school admissions and consulting for well over 20 years now. I don't want to count exactly how many. I served as the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid for the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. I also worked in big law as a recruiting manager, and I have been a law school consultant, I think for 13 cycles total now, maybe even 14. This might be my 14th. So, excited to share some insight on addenda.
Danielle: And I'm Danielle Early. I'm also a partner here at Spivey Consulting. I have actually counted it just recently, and I'm in my 24th year of doing admissions work. I did undergrad admissions prior to working at Harvard Law School in the admissions office, and I have been working with Spivey Consulting for nine cycles now. So, I'm looking forward to talking about addenda too, because we read a lot of them every single year.
Anna: Yeah, so you both have read a great, great many addenda from both directions, from the admissions officer evaluating applications side and helping your clients.
I'd like to start with just the basics. What is an addendum? So someone is coming brand new to the law school admissions process. They see this attachment at the end of the application, it says "addendum." What is that? What does it mean?
Danielle: So an addendum is essentially a short piece of information that provides a little bit of context to something that might not be clear otherwise in the application, or it's something that the school has specifically asked you to provide more info on if you had checked off a box for them. It is not another essay. It's not a way to convince people of something. It's basically just an opportunity for you to provide people more context so that they can understand what they're reading better. It can cover a lot of different areas. It can be context for your GPA; it can be context for multiple LSAT takes; it can be a response to a character and fitness response; it can be a little bit of additional information that you think is pertinent to your application to a particular school that otherwise doesn't fit somewhere in the application. But addenda can cover a lot of different areas and criteria. It is definitely something that is a piece of some people's applications, but it is not something that every applicant should be expecting to write.
Derek: Yeah, I'll just add, I think another good way to look at it is, there are required addenda and there are optional addenda, right? So a required addendum would be, as Danielle noted, if you check a box that says you have been convicted of a misdemeanor, or you had some sort of academic discipline, or some schools ask if your education has been interrupted, like if you had to withdraw for a semester or something. In those cases, the school will require you to write an addendum. Right, so, those usually fall under the conduct or character and fitness umbrella. Optional addenda are often just up to you, right? Like a school may not even prompt you to write them. So you just have to exercise judgment here. But this would be some of the other things that Danielle mentioned: LSAT score disparities, erratic grades, uncharacteristically low grades on your transcript, a gap in your resume. Things like that.
Anna: Thank you both. That's some good context. We are going to get into the most common specific categories of addenda pretty quickly. But first, before we get into that, could you both give me a general idea of best practices for addenda on sort of a broad level?
Derek: Yeah. I would say first, one page or less for an addendum. Now, that's going to depend, obviously, on what you are describing or discussing, but I think pretty much in, I don't know, 98, 99 percent of cases, a page or less is going to be sufficient. I've had a few exceptions where people have maybe had multiple criminal issues that they've had to disclose, or really serious health issues or something that affected their grades and interrupted their studies. But in almost every case, a page or less is going to be sufficient. So conciseness matters.
Danielle: So, I would also say, the vast majority of addenda can be finished before half a page. Shorter is better in the case of an addendum. Best practice would be to be brief, first of all, but also, practice really good judgment. The addendum is not intended to make you feel better; it's to provide more information for the reader. So I think asking yourself the question, am I providing context that, without it, the reader would not really understand what they're looking at? Especially on the optional ones that you're sending in. So I think practicing good judgment is super important.
I think, also, best practice is to take responsibility. This is one of the things that I have seen very often in first drafts is really trying to hedge around the fact that you did something that you need to acknowledge here. So I think one of the ways that you can do that is to avoid passive voice. I received a ticket. I received a bad grade. You "earned" a bad grade is okay to say.
So I think using good judgment, being brief, and taking responsibility for the item are a good set of goals to keep in mind as you're writing them.
Derek: And by the way, when we say a page or less, that is double-spaced, not single-spaced.
Anna: Good clarification.
Derek: Yes. I would also just add, along the lines of succinctness, to keep it narrowly focused. Keep it focused on what the question is. If it's just to explain a gap in your resume, for example, you don't need to go on and on about other employment or jobs that you've held or things like that. Yes, taking responsibility. Not being defensive. I've read many first drafts where people get defensive and don't want to take responsibility or they want to make excuses. But it really is important to just own whatever the action was or the mistake. Admissions committees are forgiving and certainly much more empathetic and forgiving when you take responsibility and own the mistake.
I would also just add to try to end on a positive note.
Anna: Yeah, I like that. The only thing that I will add to that in terms of best practices generally is that an addendum—you were both alluding to this earlier—it's not an essay, it's not a place for you to tell a story, to give a narrative, and set the scene in terms of how you were feeling that day. You want to keep it very factual for the most part. So you want to be straightforward, to the point. Stick to the facts.
Derek: And when I say end on a positive note with that, again, not a whole mini-essay, just a sentence or two, maybe. Right? Like, "I am a much more mature and responsible person than I was four years ago," or just a sentence or two on what you learned or how you grew from the experience is sufficient.
Danielle: I've got one more best practice, if I can throw it in there. Read each school's application, because what one school may be looking for does not mean that every school wants to hear it. So you may see on, for example, I think it's Emory's application, they specifically say, "We're going to look at your high LSAT score; please don't write an addendum about your multiple LSAT takes," whereas other schools say, "Hey, if you took the LSAT multiple times, we'd like to know why." Treat each school individually and provide them the information that they're asking for. I think that's one more piece, is that it's not something that you're sending into every single school no matter what.
Anna: That is a very good point. I feel like we often give the advice to read all schools' instructions carefully. We have said it, I think, at least once in all of these deep dive podcasts. Certainly you don't want to be submitting addenda that a law school has specifically said they don't want to see. You don't want to be disclosing your speeding tickets to a law school that didn't even ask about speeding tickets, that sort of thing. Always read the instructions.
So let's start to talk about specific types of addenda. One of the sort of big categories that a lot of applicants submit addenda for is to explain either their LSAT history, so a low LSAT score, or multiple LSAT takes, or a big difference between LSAT takes, under the sort of general umbrella category of "LSAT addenda." What is your best advice for LSAT addenda in terms of what you want to make sure to do, what you don't want to do, or does it vary based on what schools ask for, as you were talking about, Danielle? What's our advice for LSAT addenda?
Danielle: I'll happily start on this one. I think the first thing about LSAT addenda is, what are you trying to say? If it's simply that you retook the LSAT because you knew you could do better, you probably don't need to write that addendum. There are a couple of schools out there that will give some guidance along the lines of, "If you earned more than five points between the first take and the last take, we'd love to know a little bit more about what you did," then, yes, you should write that LSAT addendum. But generally, the expectation is, if you didn't do as well as you wanted to on your first try, you went and you retook it. That's why LSAT allows you to retake it a few times.
So you don't need to provide information that the school already knows. I think that's a really important thing to start with. What the school may not know is that you took the LSAT when you were under some type of pressure of some sort. I've worked with people who were deployed while they were taking the LSAT. I've worked with people who have traveled to the United States to be able to take the exam because it wasn't available internationally, and they didn't really anticipate the amount of jet lag that they were under. I have worked with people who were dealing with a family circumstance at that point in time, and they ended up scoring a significantly different score than what their high score was. And so I think that providing that type of context can help an admissions officer look at a score that is the anomaly in an application and say, "Hm, I'm not really going to put as much emphasis on that score. I am going to feel a little bit stronger about the other score that's here."
Sometimes that's because the later score that you took actually went down, right? "I had COVID when I took the exam" or something like that. So I think it's okay to write a brief note to say, "Hey, this is what happened here." Sometimes it's a case of, "I took the exam, and afterwards I recognized that I did have a learning disability, and I started learning some of the techniques that I could use, and I was able to bring it up." Some people are comfortable disclosing that; some people don't want to, and that's really up to you. But I do think that there are a lot of different factors that you might include on that.
But I would always start with, is there enough of an increase? Is there enough of a difference in these scores that it's actually worth saying anything in the first place? If you increased your score by one or two points, you probably don't need to write an LSAT addendum, and the admissions office doesn't need to read an LSAT addendum for that.
I would say that LSAT addenda have become less necessary in the last four or five years than what they were previously, because we now have the cancellation option. That's something that didn't exist five years ago, and I think some of the impetus for writing LSAT addenda still comes from years ago, where it's, "Oh, you should write an LSAT addendum to explain those scores." If you have a cancellation on your record, you're like everybody else. I don't know that many applicants who don't have a cancellation on their record anymore. So you don't need to write an explanation for that.
Sometimes you're writing an explanation because technology went wonky during your test, and you'd like to explain that, and that's okay, too. But I would definitely ask yourself the question, "Is there enough of a difference here that I need to make an impact?" And then I think the second question that you really need to ask yourself is, "Am I writing this addendum because it gives the admissions officers context of what they're looking at, or am I trying to convince the admissions officer to ignore my score?" If it's the latter, it won't work. If you're trying to tell the admission officer, "I was able to score 180s on my practice tests, so my 165 isn't really indicative of what I can really do," they're going to look at your actual test score. And again, going back to the concept of judgment, you want to make sure that you are sharing good judgment in what you're sharing with them. You're not going to be able to convince them to ignore an actual score, but you can give context around scores. Derek, what else would you add to that?
Derek: I would just add, the average number of takes among applicants is right around three. It's not unusual for people to take the LSAT three times. I do feel, once you start getting up to four or five takes, then it probably makes sense to explain why you chose to do that.
Danielle: I agree.
Derek: Yeah. I have one client now, I think, who took it four times, and all of the scores are within a couple of points. I don't think they need to because they were consistent, but most of the people I see with that many takes, there are pretty big disparities and sometimes cancellations within there. And so that's a case where I would say to write one.
And I mean, I think, just to double click on the score disparity thing, because I get so many questions about that—I do think that, generally, five points is sort of the mark, right? If you take it a couple of times and your score is within five points, I don't think you need to explain it. But I would say, even if a school isn't specifically asking for it, if it's more than five points, I would certainly be curious about that. So I think that's a good general rule of thumb to follow.
The other thing I would add is, there are people for whom standardized tests are not great predictors, and they will do very well academically in spite of their standardized test scores. And this is a situation where that information would be really helpful for the admissions committee to know. Let me just explain a little more about that. If you underperformed on your ACT or SAT score—I don't even know what a good example would be these days, so I won't use specific numbers, but—let's just say you went to a college where the mean ACT score was 28, and you scored a 24, but you did get admitted to that school, and then you ultimately ended up in the top 10 or 15 percent of the class; you had a strong GPA. Clearly, your test, your ACT did not predict the level of success that you were going to have academically. That is excellent evidence to show that standardized tests don't necessarily predict how you will do academically. And so if the same thing happens with your LSAT score, if you are below a school's median, I would absolutely write a brief explanation and share your experience, whatever examples you have to show those prior test scores, and highlighting your GPA.
Danielle: That's a great example, Derek. Thank you so much for bringing that up.
Anna: One piece of context that I'll add for that type of addendum. They can absolutely be done very well, but there are also some sort of tripwires involved in that type of addendum that you should be avoiding. So keep in mind that if you are talking about standardized tests, that's one thing, but if you are talking about generally, you don't perform well under high-pressure, important tests, that's actually not helpful for you, because law school, for the most part at least for your 1L doctrinal classes, your grade is entirely made up from one high-stakes exam right at the end. And then, of course, there's the high-stakes exam of the bar exam. So you have to really straddle the line there in terms of how you are talking about your performance in the past in standardized tests, and just make sure that you're not saying, "I just don't perform well under pressure" or "I'm just not good at taking tests generally," because taking tests is going to be part of law school and is going to be a part of trying to get admitted to become an attorney. So that's the extra piece of context that I'll add there.
I have a few specific scenarios. I took a look at Reddit this morning and wanted to see, okay, what types of questions are people asking about LSAT addenda? Because I'd like to address some specific questions that people have so that we can try to be as helpful as possible. I'm going to run through these, and feel free to answer as briefly as you would like.
For schools that specifically request an LSAT addendum if your score increased by a certain number of points, but you really just don't have any special explanation, like Danielle, you were saying, you didn't score as highly as you knew you could, so you took it again, or you kept studying, you took it again, and you did better. But the school requires this addendum. How would you recommend phrasing that addendum, or how would you go about writing that?
Danielle: I would do it in one to two sentences. "When I took my first test, I did not score as well as I believed I could based on my practice tests" or whatever else. "And so when I retook and I was able to score X, I think that that's a much better indicator of my abilities." Period, done.
Anna: That's good advice. I think sometimes people have a tendency to think that an addendum has to be a paragraph or a few sentences, and that's not always warranted. And I saw a big thumbs up from Derek, so we're in agreement, all of us, on that one.
Okay. Should you write an LSAT addendum to explain multiple cancellations? Now people can have two, three cancellations on their record. Will schools wonder if you don't explain why you have multiple cancellations?
Derek: I would say one cancellation, definitely no. That's pretty typical. If you have three takes and you have two cancellations, I think I would want to know why. And certainly more than two cancellations. What do you think, Danielle?
Danielle: It's iffy. I think two cancellations, I could completely see that somebody just took it a third time, was happy with it, and that was it. If there was something that happened during one of those tests, go ahead and tell me. If not, if you just didn't score what you wanted to, I think it's fine not to write the addenda. I think you're right, Derek, though. By three, I need an explanation. There's something going on here that I'd like a little bit more detail on. And so I think three or more; I'm almost at a point of definite. I always hate doing, you know, absolutes, but I would say two is sort of, it depends on what the answer is. One, please don't write an addendum.
Anna: Should you write an LSAT addendum about a temporary isolated circumstance like test day disruptions or a short-term illness if you never retook after that, if that was your high score? Will schools wonder why you didn't retake if you were experiencing that temporary issue?
Derek: It really just depends on if you feel that score is indicative of your ability. So if whatever happened, if that isolated incident caused you to underperform or disrupted your focus, then yes, absolutely, I would say include it.
But I guess the question is then, will the school wonder why you didn't retake? For me, it depends on timing, right? If it's October or November, then it makes sense to get your application in, and if your score is competitive, then I could understand not retaking, right? But if an isolated incident happened that affected your score and you underperformed, then you should be retaking, right? And if you're not, then I guess, no, don't submit the addendum.
I hope I didn't make that unnecessarily complicated.
Danielle: I think I'm going to summarize what you said, which is a little different than what you said, but for my answer, which is—if you took it and something went off, and there is a reason why you can't take it again, yes, write the addendum. But if you took it, something went off, and you chose not to retake again when you had time to, then I don't think that any school is going to be able to really change their opinion on your score just because you wrote that addendum. I think what Derek worked himself into, which is the "Why didn't you retake it?" That's the bigger point of that addendum if something went wrong the last time you took it and you're not retaking.
Anna: If your reason that you did not perform as highly on the LSAT as you would like—and I am talking about a high score, so I'm not talking about a lower score and then you scored more highly—if your reasoning for that is that you were too busy to study, so maybe you had a lot of work, maybe you just were too busy at school, but not something like you were taking care of family members who were sick or something like that. But just in general, you were too busy to study as much as you would have liked. Is that something that makes sense to write an addendum about?
Danielle: No.
Anna: I'm seeing shaking heads.
Derek: No.
Danielle: That would go back to the judgment call. No.
Derek: Right. I mean, the reality is you're going to be competing with everyone else in the applicant pool who's busy with school and work. And law school is incredibly busy.
Anna: That's a very good point. Law school is very busy.
Okay, let's talk about GPA addenda. That's another big category where people are contextualizing some part of their transcript, some grades that they've gotten, why their GPA is lower than they think is representative of their true abilities. What's your general advice for GPA addenda? What to do, what not to do?
Derek: The bottom line is, if there were circumstances that affected your grades, whether they were temporary or they continued throughout college, I think in most cases, it's going to be important to provide that context.
This could be for a number of reasons. There are some people that have to work multiple jobs and many hours during college because of financial circumstances. They, unlike many of their peers, do not have as much time, unfortunately, to devote. That's just the reality of the situation. I think that is certainly a time when you would want to write an addendum for grades. If there are health issues that affected you, again, whether it was just temporarily or throughout college, that is something that you would want to share.
But I think, just to step back for a minute, I think you want to try to look at your overall transcript. Try to think of it in terms of the mindset of an admissions person who's seeing it for the first time. Is there something here that really does stand out? Like, when I look at it, is there something that looks very different from other semesters? Right?
So just to provide a little more context around that, because we get a lot of questions about this—if you got one C in your entire academic career, then you probably don't need to explain that. Or if you had two withdrawals or a couple of classes that you took pass/fail. Things like that are not going to stand out as much.
But when you look at it as a whole and you can look at it and see, "Yeah, this year or these semesters look very different from the other ones." Anything that looks like a pretty dramatic change or shift, you're going to want to explain what was going on.
Danielle: I normally tell people, I have a rule of thumb that if your GPA is above the median for a school, you're probably not going to be submitting a GPA addendum to them, because what you're doing is looking at your GPA and saying, "This grade isn't what I'm used to making," and then you're trying to make sure that other people don't judge it the same way. But if you are above the median for the school that you're thinking about submitting a GPA addendum to, they're probably not worried about it. My caveat to that is, if the poor grade or bad semester or whatever it was was during your senior year, which is much closer to when you're applying, then maybe you would want to explain what happened there. But generally, do take a look at the actual institution that you're thinking about submitting a GPA addendum to, because you might not want to send it to your safety schools. You may feel more that it's necessary for some of your reach schools.
I also think that this is a good time to make a comparison, especially if you've been out of school for a while. If you can say, "If you look at my LSAT score, this is more indicative of who I am today than the person I was in college," that works if you've been out of school for a couple of years. That does not work if you are a senior applying to law school. So, you know, putting it into context there.
But I think remembering, when you're looking at your transcript, exactly what Derek was saying—"Would this stand out to somebody else?" is the first question that you want to ask yourself about, "Do I need to write an addendum here?"
Anna: Derek, you were talking about how the advice can vary so much for different circumstances and different situations, so I think now is a good time to run through some of those specific scenarios and situations, again, from my Reddit dive this morning. So let's go through some of these specifics.
Should you write a GPA addendum to highlight the fact that your transcript shows an upward trend, that you did better in your later years of undergrad versus your earlier years?
Derek: I don't think that you need to unless there is something worth talking about. And for one thing, it is very common for people to have an upward trend, right? We saw that a lot when reading applications because, in most cases, that's just a matter of adjusting to the pace and rigor of college. Also, you tend to take more classes in your major and classes that interest you, as opposed to those that are required in your first year or two, and people tend to do better in those classes. In many cases, it is expected, and there aren't going to be questions around it.
But if there were certain circumstances, so if you had mono and that affected you through most of your fall semester, you might want to explain that. You know, I've had clients that suddenly a parent lost a job or something and they have to work 30 hours a week, or they have a sick family member and they have to travel home a lot, and so there's a change in circumstances. Even though it might look like a normal upward trend, in those cases, there was something specific going on, and I think it's worth mentioning.
Anna: The one piece of context that I will add here is that law school admissions officers do not have to read through your whole transcript and make the connections themselves to see that there's an upward trend. They will see on your CAS report your GPA for each of the years that you went to undergrad, so it is immediately and extremely apparent if you have an upward trend. That's something that they are going to see. You don't have to just let them know that there's an upward trend.
Okay, let's go to the next question. Should you always write a GPA addendum if your GPA is very, very low for a school, even if you don't particularly have reasons that you think you should highlight? Is it a red flag not to write an addendum if you have, say, a 2.3 GPA?
Danielle: You know what? I'm going to say that I would be shocked if somebody with a 2.3 GPA hadn't written an addendum. I would also be a little bit shocked if there wasn't time between when they earned that 2.3 GPA and when they were applying to us. So I think that there should be some context that you can be sharing with us at that point in time. I don't normally encourage people to do this, but if the reasoning behind it is all explained in your personal statement or your diversity statement, maybe that's the reason there wouldn't be a GPA addendum. But I think, realistically, there's an elephant in the room that should be addressed.
What you're addressing is not, "Hey, I had bad grades. Pointing them out for you just in case you didn't see them." That's not really what we're doing. We want to see you explaining to us why we should be okay with that elephant in the room. So that could be, "Hey, this is what I've done in the years since. This is the difference in who I am now. When I was in college, I really was focused on the startup that I was creating, and I wasn't focused on the grades, and C's were going to get me a degree. But now, when I'm looking for this, and you look at my LSAT score and the time and the study that I put into that, that's a better representation of who I am."
I honestly think that if I were to get a 2.3 GPA coming through that I had no context for, I wouldn't really feel confident in admitting that person. So, do you have to? No. Is it probably going to help you if you did? Yeah, because hopefully there's more to it than "admit me with my 2.3."
Derek: I agree, and I just feel like there has to be a reason, right? Like, there must have been something going on. And the thing is, admissions people will make presumptions. So that is one thing that you have to think about. That is where common sense and good judgment really come into play here. If you don't provide answers or explanations for something that might raise questions, then it's very easy as an admissions reader to make assumptions, right? I'm going to assume that they were partying all the time, or—right? Right, like, it's just easy to think about things that must have been going on. And I'd much rather hear it from the applicant in those situations.
You have to—and by the way, I think sometimes why people don't write them is because they're afraid to say what was really happening. I've had applicants say, "Yeah, I partied too much." Not in those words, obviously, but you know, but basically, they owned that being on their own for the first time in their life at the age of 18 and they just focused way more on socializing and maybe extracurriculars and spending time with their friends than they did on their academics. Now, if you're applying directly from college, and that's the situation, I would suggest maybe taking a few years between college and law school and showing that you can be mature and responsible. But it is okay to provide those explanations.
Same with health issues. I know that there are people that don't like to talk about health issues, and that can be a little dicey and uncomfortable, but the reality is, it is legitimate. No matter what the issue was, if you had a legitimate health issue and it affected your grades that much, it's okay to talk about them. I've worked with many, many clients over the years who have been very candid and transparent, whether it was mental health or other health issues, and they got admitted to many excellent schools. So yes, think in those cases, just provide an explanation, whatever it is.
Anna: Yeah, I mean, presumably, you are not going into law school intending to get a 2.3 GPA. Presumably, you are going into law school thinking and hoping that you are going to perform well academically. So I think the question is, how are you different now from how you were when you got that 2.3 GPA? And why should the admissions officer feel confident that you are not going to come into law school with those same exact problems and perform in the same way?
Okay. Should you write a GPA addendum about changing your major from STEM to humanities and then doing better in school after that?
Danielle: So I'm laughing as I hear that question, because I've seen that addendum many, many times—and sometimes it does provide a little bit of context. However, it is an addendum that often comes with a couple of sentences that really turn off the admissions officer. So I'm going to throw out those warnings. Please do not tell the admissions officer that the STEM majors are harder, period. Please don't tell the admissions officer that you were able to get a better grade when you were out of the hard sciences, because there are people who are still getting A's in those hard science classes, and the admissions office knows that. So what you should do, though, is give it the context. You know, "When I changed over and I found my passion for these classes," as Derek mentioned earlier, once you get to take classes that are more interesting for you, that you're more enthralled with, you do tend to do a little bit better. We don't want to say, "I do better in classes that I'm interested in, but I don't focus on the ones that I'm not interested in," because you will take some classes in law school that you're not interested in as well. I don't think that it should be the entirety of the addendum is that you switched from STEM to humanities.
Anna: Should you write a GPA addendum to highlight the fact that your undergraduate performance is from 10+ years ago? So we're assuming here, it's not like there's a super low GPA, but maybe you're a little bit below median or a little bit below 25th percentile, but your transcript, your undergraduate performance, was from a decade ago or even longer. Should you write an addendum just to explain that?
Derek: Not unless there was something that was happening that caused your grades to be lower, right? But they're going to know when you graduated and that it's been 10 years. So if it's just normal circumstances, you don't need to argue that it's not indicative of who you are today because it was 10 years ago. But I do work with a number of so-called "non-traditional applicants" who have been out of college for many years, and they do have reasons why their grades were lower. But again, it's the, I think the extenuating circumstances need to be there.
Anna: Should you write a GPA addendum to explain that your LSAC cumulative GPA is lower than your degree GPA because of retaken classes that you failed and high school dual enrollment? I'm really getting at when people have a big difference in their LSAC cumulative GPA.
Danielle: No. That's as straightforward as I can get. They'll have your transcript. They'll see the transcript and the grades that are there. They'll see the degree GPA. LSAC is creating a universal way of looking at everybody's grades, and that's what your GPA is in the LSAC calculation.
Anna: Okay, that was a very simple answer. This one might be a little bit more complicated, a little bit more nuanced.
If your reasons for writing an addendum have to do with traumatic circumstances, how detailed can you get? How detailed should you get? Can the addendum be a little longer in this scenario? It can be sort of a tricky situation to navigate. What advice do you have for this type of situation?
Derek: I alluded to this a little bit earlier, because traumatic experiences often are related to health or mental health issues. I think it's absolutely fine and important to discuss them. Again, I've worked with many applicants who have had these sorts of issues and traumatic experiences, and they wrote about them. I can only think of maybe one or two cases where it went more than a page. I think that that's still a good rule of thumb that you can do it in a page. It's hard to answer how much detail to go into there. Let's just say if someone was sexually assaulted in college, do you have to provide a lot of details about that? No. Right? Because, I mean, anyone reading that will understand that something as serious as a sexual assault or being a victim of some other type of violence or trauma, it's going to affect you. You don't have to provide all the nitty-gritty details, you know, about the pain or the suffering or the details of the event itself. If someone tells me that they experienced assault or some other violent incident like that, then I understand that is going to impact you, probably for not just that semester, but maybe if you remain at the school, it might continue to affect you for a while after that.
Danielle: I would add to that that I'm going to believe you. So you don't need to provide significant detail for me to believe you. If you want to write in one sentence, "During my freshman year of college, I was sexually assaulted, period. It affected my grades. As you can see, my junior and senior year are stronger when I had moved through the Title IX process. All that type of stuff." That's as much info as I need. So I don't want to indicate here that a traumatic experience requires you to write a longer addendum. You can absolutely still do it in a short factual manner.
The admissions office will take the information that you provide them as well. So if you were dealing with a mental health issue, if you were dealing with an issue with your family members who were going through something difficult or something like that, please don't feel like the admissions office requires you to give detail that you are not comfortable giving. You can provide a broad context, and again, we will believe you.
What I would say is that the addendum gives the admissions officer the ability to recognize whether or not this is going to be an issue that will follow you to law school or not. So if you're going to put more space into the addendum, I would actually put that space into the work that you've probably done to overcome that situation. The things that you've put priority on to make sure that you are ready to head to law school. I think a couple of sentences that talk about the ability to ask for help, the knowledge of where to get your resources, the care that you take for yourself—that's actually where I'd rather see more detail than you giving me detail of the trauma that you went through. That's not what I need to spend my time worried about, because I want to know who you are today, as you're coming to us. That's where I want to evaluate you, is who you are now.
So I want to give you the permission to recognize that you are in charge of choosing how much you choose to tell.
Derek: That's such a great point, Danielle. Thank you. It reminded me, in working with clients, we often go through multiple drafts with these, right, because they are difficult to write. And for some people, it is cathartic for them to write out those details to talk about it, but then, after we've done that, they'll look at it and say, you know, I want to focus more on what Danielle was just talking about, right? "I want to focus more on what I did to overcome that and the resilience that I developed," and so the addendum ultimately becomes more about that. And I think that that is such an excellent point.
Anna: Thank you both. I think that's very helpful.
Okay, I have two more of these for GPA addenda. The first one is, should you write an addendum to explain one class where you did really poorly—maybe you got an F, maybe you got a D—because of some sort of conflict with the professor? You had some sort of issue with that professor. Maybe you feel like you were singled out in some way, maybe they gave assignments in some way that you didn't like. There's some issue with that professor. And this is something that I think we've all seen probably many times. Should you write an addendum about that?
Danielle: If it's just one class, I'm going to say probably not.
Derek: Even if it's a D or F?
Danielle: Well, that was where I was going to say, most of the time when I hear that it's somebody who got a B or a C in that class. I think if you failed that class, you should be addressing it, yes.
I also want to say if you really think that that had to do with a significant issue with the professor, I'm hoping that you went through a process of appealing that with the department—hopefully that doesn't exist there. But I do think that you need to walk a really fine line of blame. We talked about this at the beginning about taking responsibility for whatever the thing is that you're reporting. I would be cautious to place 100% blame on the professor there. You can certainly present things in a way of, "My professor and I never saw eye-to-eye on this. I pushed back at some of the arguments from the professor," or something like that, but you do want to make sure that you're not coming across bitter. I think that's my biggest fear with that type of an addendum. Derek, how would you advise?
Derek: Yeah, I agree. It's really hard to not sound defensive in a case like that, but I would want to know if it were a D or an F, especially if this is someone who's mostly an A student or has really high grades otherwise.
But yeah, I mean, I think in this case, this is where succinctness is really important. Don't dwell on it. Like Danielle said, you can sort of present a couple of sentences as far as maybe why you feel you were singled out, but I just feel like, ultimately still taking ownership and responsibility for the grades you earned is going to earn you more points with the admissions committee than anything else.
Anna: Thank you both. Good advice.
Okay, this one is for—just generally, let's say you've written a GPA addendum. It's strong, it makes sense. Maybe you had a health issue; maybe there was some family issue. Something came up, extenuating circumstances that admissions is going to understand and receive well, you assume.
Should you include, if you think that it reflects well on you, what your GPA would have been if you take out that given semester, year, class, whatever it is that you're explaining?
Derek: I don't mind it. Admissions people, I think, have differing opinions about this, but I actually kind of like it. I feel like, "Oh, good, you did the math for me." I think some people would say, "Well, I could look at that and figure it out," but again, succinctness, right? You don't have to go on and on about it, but I like it when somebody highlights that and does the math for me.
Anna: So maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't. It probably depends to some extent on the circumstances.
So, I want to talk about character and fitness, C&F, relatively briefly. And the reason that I want to be relatively brief with it is that we actually have a pretty long and pretty thorough video—and we're going to link that in the description; we're going to link that in the blog—that's all about character and fitness. So not just about how to write your addendum, but about how different types of character and fitness issues might impact your admissions process, how you should respond to that in multiple ways. So we don't need to get super in-depth with character and fitness, with C&F, because we already have a pretty long video about that.
But in this context, really staying narrowly focused on C&F addenda and the writing process of that addendum, what sort of brief general advice do you both have on writing these addenda effectively?
Derek: First piece of advice is you must read every school's question very carefully, because they do differ, and some are really broad, and they frame the question as, "Has X ever happened," right? Any sort of discipline, any sort of warning. "Were you subject to any sort of disciplinary proceedings," right? That is incredibly broad. And so, same with criminal offenses. Some schools will say you can exclude matters that have been expunged. Some schools will say you only need to include convictions. Other ones ask for everything. "Have you ever been arrested, charged, or convicted?" and you must disclose even if they've been expunged. So it's so critical to read every question so carefully for every school.
And I would also say, err on the side of disclosure. Some of these questions are not straightforward. I mean, they could be a little clearer, and you may be wondering, "Well, I think it could be argued either way," but just disclose it.
Here's the thing: in probably 95% of these cases, it's not going to have any impact on the admissions decision. Most of the things we're talking about are possession of alcohol, noise violation, like, you know, a lot of them kind of fall in the category of minor offenses. They're extremely common. I would venture to say that a third of the people I work with have those sorts of issues. So just disclose if you're not certain.
And again, some of the things that we already talked about in terms of best practices: take responsibility. It's not really the time to argue why you shouldn't have been arrested or charged or convicted. State the facts; keep it succinct. Like I said earlier, end on a positive note. What did I learn from this experience? What have I done differently?
Danielle: I would just reemphasize that it's not the place to re-adjudicate the circumstances. What the admissions officer is really looking for when they're reading through the character and fitness addendum is that this is not something that they need to worry about occurring while you're in law school or as a lawyer, that you've learned from the mistake, that you understand that it was something that you shouldn't have done. So the more you try to re-adjudicate or defend yourself, you're actually getting in your way of the admissions officer feeling confident that this isn't something that you're going to do at their school. So definitely take the ownership, focus on what Derek was talking about at the end, what you learned from it, and it's not going to be a big deal. For the vast majority of these character and fitness things, you read it, and you go, "Okay, no problem," and you move on.
Anna: Thank you both. For more details, do go please check out that character and fitness video that we have and that we're linking.
Okay. I want to briefly talk about mental health generally, because I think this is something that a lot of applicants wonder about and aren't sure how to write about in an addendum. Is it okay to write about mental health in an addendum? How should you talk about it in an addendum, and what should you avoid?
Derek: Yes, it's absolutely okay to talk about mental health in an addendum. It is a health issue. Now, I do feel that I have to say, I can't guarantee that every person who reads application files is going to look at mental health the same as they do other health issues. So that is one caveat. You can't control how the reader is going to interpret or accept that information.
All I will say is that in my many years of reading applications and working as a consultant, and in the many conversations that I've had with my colleagues who still work as deans of admissions, particularly in recent years, by and large, they will say, yes, it is okay to disclose, and that they would rather know. And it's, at this point, much more common. And in my experience in working with many young people who've had mental health issues, they are more comfortable talking about it. Not everyone is, and that's okay too. But I think, to answer this question succinctly, I think, yes, it is okay.
And in some cases, it's going to be necessary, right? Because if you withdrew from school for a semester or an entire year because of mental health issues, you're going to have to explain that. I will just say that, you know again, for reassurance, I have worked with many people who have disclosed mental health issues, and they've gotten into great law schools, including top 14, top 10 law schools, whatever. It's not going to preclude you from getting admitted.
I think the important thing is, how have you navigated it? What are you doing to manage it? That's really important because, from the admissions committee's standpoint, whatever the situation or the issue is, law school is stressful. It is difficult. And they just want to be assured that you're going to be at your best and that you are going to be able to do well and succeed in law school and have the support and resources that you need. So if you can convey that, that's just a really important thing to keep in mind. Yes, absolutely disclose, but know that it's important for you to talk about how you're managing it and show them that you are aware and know of the resources that you need and the steps that you have taken and will continue to take to manage it.
Danielle: I'm going to add a little bit here. I would think about disclosing mental health from a strategic point of view. Why are you choosing to share this information? Is there something about the grades that you've earned, the situations that you've been through, time off, something like that, where if you don't share this information, it's going to feel like a big missing piece of the puzzle? I think that strategically, it makes sense to include what Derek was just talking about of, what you've done, how you're going to manage it while you're in law school—is another piece of that strategy when you do disclose it. But ask yourself why you're disclosing it. Is it adding to your application? Is it providing more context of what you bring to the table? What strength you bring? Does it explain grades that are no longer going to be an issue? That type of thing. But if it is not answering a strategic benefit for you to include it in your application, then I would not include it.
As you heard Derek saying, you know, the last few years, there is so much more acceptance over talking about it. The generation that is now applying to law schools are much more open to disclosing. But law school is stressful, and law school does create environments in which people do struggle at times. And so, if you're providing information there that doesn't strategically help your application, we don't want it to also be something that makes somebody say, "I wonder if this is the right place for them." So be really strategic in choosing to include it or not.
Anna: Thank you both. I think that's really helpful advice.
So we've talked a lot about different scenarios where it makes sense to write an addendum, where it's helpful for you to write an addendum. What sorts of situations should you not write an addendum for?
Danielle: I think, in general, every person needs to take a look at their whole application and see if there's anything that needs to be explained. I'm not sure that there's necessarily a scenario that I would say you shouldn't write an addendum for, but what I would say is, don't treat the addendum section as another place to write an additional essay. So, if you couldn't decide between one personal statement or another one, "I'm just going to throw in the other one in this addendum section." When they say, "Is there any other information that you'd like to share with us?" Don't submit an additional essay. Don't choose between, "I really liked this other option I had for my personal statement. I'm going to send it here." But do read the instructions for every school, because some schools are having you put your "Why" essay for "why that school" into what they're calling an addendum section. Others call it the additional info section. So just again, going back to what we say all the time, read the instructions from the schools—but know that there is no school that is expecting you to put in a second personal statement into an addendum section.
Derek: There are some schools, also, that ask on the application itself if you don't think that your grades are indicative of your potential, or your LSAT. In those cases, you may have drafted an addendum that you're intending to send to every school that you apply to, but then you come across a school that actually asks the question on the application. Try to adhere to that. I mean, if they're providing it on the application, then that's where they want it. So you might have to pare it down.
Danielle: And the benefit of doing that is, when they're reading through the application, they quickly see that, and they have that answered for them, and they've moved on, and then your personal statement ends up being the last word that you get to give to them. If you're adding addenda after that, the last word that you gave to that school might be about your grades, whereas everybody else talked about their grades early on in the reading process. So the school is giving you that opportunity to have them have moved on from it. Don't just write, "please see addendum" because you want to keep the longer essay and stick it at the end.
Derek: That's such a good reminder, right? Because yes, addenda are often the last thing that get attached. So again, it goes back to something I said earlier, end on a positive note, if you have to attach an addendum.
Anna: Yeah, definitely. The one thing I will add is, do not use the addendum space to attach any sort of writing sample. Do not attach your senior thesis. Do not attach some article that you've written for your school newspaper. I have seen this multiple times. Don't let it be you. Don't do it. They simply do not have the time.
Derek: They don't need medical records; they don't need arrest records; none of that. They will take your word for what you are saying. If they want additional information, they'll ask for it, but 99.5% of the time, they will not.
Anna: Okay. I have a more philosophical, I suppose, strategic type of question. Let's say you have written a really strong GPA addendum, or you have written a really strong LSAT addendum—how much can that actually mitigate low numbers? If the reasons are good enough, will the law school basically just overlook your numbers? How is this actually impacting how your application is evaluated?
Danielle: That's an interesting question. I often say that the admissions office looks at your numbers twice. The first time is, they're asking themselves the question, "Can they do the work at our institution?" The second time is, "What benefit do we get if we admit this person versus somebody else?" So that's when the medians matter. Right? "If you're above a 170, then you help us. If you're below 170, you don't help us," and that doesn't change no matter what context you've given. So that second question, your addendum has no influence on whatsoever.
The first question, though, which is the one that matters more, is, "Can they do the work at our institution?" And I think that that's where the addenda can make a difference, because we're evaluating all the things that go into answering that question. We're looking at the combination between the LSAT and the GPA. We're looking at all the grades that you've received. We're looking at the trajectory of those grades. We're looking at letters of recommendation supporting your academic abilities, your research, your writing abilities. We're getting all of this context to say, "I think this person could succeed at our law school." If there is something that numerically tells me I'm concerned that this person wouldn't be able to do the work at our institution, but there's context that comes in through an addendum that says I don't need to worry about that, then yes, that addendum can make a difference in answering that question: "Can they do the work at our institution?"
You have to have the other things also supporting it, though. If you write an addendum that says, "Please ignore my GPA from college because it's not indicative of my academic abilities," and then you apply to a law school where your LSAT score is 10 points below their LSAT median, and you're writing an addendum about how you retook the LSAT this many times, but there were technical issues and this and that, and here's the excuse for that one, and there's really no support for your ability to do the work of that institution—then the addenda don't make a difference there. But if the anomaly is explained through that addendum, yeah, it can have an influence.
And remember, when we're talking about that second question of "What benefit do we get if this person is admitted? Are they above or below our medians here?" Half the people who matriculate are below median. It's not like there aren't spaces for people whose numbers don't hit those medians. But they do want to still answer the question: yes, I think they can be successful at our institution. So, I think that the addenda matter. But they do not erase what is being looked at. They're just giving context to it.
Derek: I don't really have anything to add. I think Danielle answered it perfectly. It's going to be about everything else, right? What other evidence is there in the file to support that this person would be successful and someone who would make a valuable contribution to the law school community?
Anna: Thank you both.
Okay. What final pieces of advice would you leave our audience with if they are sitting down to write their addendum?
Derek: I would like to say, I often come across two camps of people when it comes to addenda. Those that have this idea that addenda are bad. That seems to be really common, like there's this sense out there that you should not be submitting addenda, that somehow it's a bad thing. And I just want to say that that's not the case. I would encourage people to look at it as a positive if you need to include one, because this is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your concise and compelling writing skills, which is exactly what lawyers need to do. And it's an opportunity to show, maybe, how you grew from an experience or something that you learned. So try not to think of it as a bad thing. I've had many people who've come to me after they've applied and not gotten into schools and asking for advice, and I look at their file and there are questions, and they didn't write an addendum, but that's because they had the sense of, "Oh, well, I thought that addenda, you know, you shouldn't write them," or "They don't want a lot of information and they don't want you making excuses." But as we talked about, there are many reasons that are legitimate.
And I also want to say, I just think it's important, especially for people who have not had necessarily linear paths in life or in their academic career. There are people who have really earned their degrees in really different circumstances than what might be the so-called "norm," right. Again, people that have to work multiple jobs, the first in their family to go to college, or dealing with having to take care of parents, I mean, there are a lot of things. And I don't want anyone to ever think that they're going to be at a disadvantage or they can't or they shouldn't explain those sorts of things because it's going to make them look bad. Admissions people are human. They are empathetic. And again, you follow all the advice we gave, and you do it well, and you do it succinctly; it can be and should be a positive and add something valuable to your application.
Danielle: I like that.
I would add that, for a lot of people, writing an addendum is a scary part of the application, because they're talking about something that they don't necessarily think is a strong part of their candidacy. It's okay, first of all. As Derek was just saying, it can be a positive. But I would also encourage you to let that negative aspect of your candidacy be contained in that addendum. Sometimes we will find people who repeat the information in their personal statement or in their diversity statement, or in a lot of other parts of their application. Go ahead and let your personal statement shine about why you should become a lawyer. Let the rest of the application encourage the admissions officers that they want to help you become a lawyer. And then this is something that helps them feel confident in helping you become a lawyer. But don't feel like, if there's something you have to write an addendum about, that your whole application has to be defending that particular issue. Allow the different pieces of the application to let you shine.
And then, if you do feel a little bit sad or nervous about what you're including with your addendum, go back and read your personal statement, your perspective essay, your additional essays that you're writing to schools along with that addendum. And remind yourself of how much more you're offering than that one semester of grades or that one character and fitness issue that you're responding to. We can often really focus on the bad, but allow yourself to see the entirety of what that application is presenting to the admissions office, and allow yourself to tell them that you're worth admitting in all of those other places too.
Derek: And by the way, even some of the most serious offenses and incidents are not going to preclude you from getting into law school. Some of my favorite and greatest success stories, I think, have been people who have had to disclose some serious incidents. I worked with two people just last cycle who had felonies on their record. They're both in law school. One is at a top 14 law school. I also worked with a few people who had plagiarism in college, and they got admitted to top 14 schools. So, don't think that anything is going to necessarily preclude you from being admitted to law school.
Anna: Thank you both. I think that's a great place to end.
I hope this was helpful for you if you are writing an addendum, if you are thinking about whether or not you should write an addendum.
Thank you to our listeners. Feel free to subscribe if you're looking for more content and more information about law school admissions. We'll be putting out podcast episodes throughout the cycle. And we'll see you next time.
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