Traits of Law School Applicants Who Outperform ...

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group Founder and Partner Mike Spivey discusses commonalities between applicants who punch above their numbers. This podcast is also available on SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.

Also be sure to check out My Rank, our tool for comparing and ranking law schools with according to your own priorities.

Hi, this is Mike Spivey with the Spivey Consulting Group, and I was asked by my Reddit family a wonderful question that's fun to answer: what are the traits of applicants who punch well above their numbers? Are there any common traits that — in our, you know, I think we have 175 years of experience in admissions at our firm — that we've tracked over time?

So, let me just start by saying that, when I was an admissions officer, and this still holds true today, I would bet a lot of money on just about every admissions officer out there — it's a great feeling to admit someone that you're their dream school. And it's late cycle, and they're below both medians, and you get to call them and, you know, sometimes they scream "mom" on the phone, or start crying in joy. We see that on this side now — we get to know our clients very well, and that's also a tremendous feeling. But let me get to the question. I'll give some examples. I'll give an example from, I think, my first or second year, so we're talking about the year 2000. My friend Justin — I can use his name; there's a blog about this story on our website; he's given full permission — he had a 152 LSAT, I believe, I was at Vanderbilt Law School, and he was the last person we took off the waitlist. When we took him off the waitlist — intentionally, obviously — a 152 at Vanderbilt was below what we had correlated with bar passage results, so there was a drop-off point where if you were below a certain LSAT, it showed that you were a lot less likely to pass the bar. But Justin had visited, and I got to know him during the visit. He visited with with his father; his father was a lawyer. His father said something along the lines of, "You know, hopefully, one day Justin would will come work for me," and Justin was like, "No way, Dad," you know, "I don't want to; I want to do it on my own." There's two ways that could have gone, but I could tell it was sincere. Justin played baseball, I believe in college, and he was a bouncer in college — so he worked, he was a student athlete, and he had a 4.0 GPA. You could just tell, you got the sense that, whatever his LSAT score was, he was going to punch above his numbers. He was one of those work-hard, dedicate, grind-it-out people. Well, what is he doing? Again, this was in 2000. So now he is the CEO of a venture capital firm, and gives tremendously back generously in different ways to Vanderbilt. He knew Vanderbilt took a chance on him, so he proved himself right — he's a tremendous success. An interesting side note is, he lives in the Chicago area, and I feel like anytime I'm within a 50-mile radius of Chicago he somehow knows, and I get a text and he's wanting to buy me dinner. So, you know, he got himself admitted, but he's still very, very grateful to this day.

Another example that came to mind, and research verifies this — research from the Journal of Human Resources says that, during interviews, for example, the best thing that you can have is something in common with the interviewer. Early in my career, I had a boss who was very data-centric, and we admitted someone very early with a low LSAT, and it sparked my interest because of how data-centric and slow we would go in the process, being mindful of data. Usually people well below medians get admitted later cycle. You want to admit to them, but you have to wait for your medians to be locked in. So turns out, my boss had a deep passion for a certain sport, and this person was an Olympic athlete in that sport. So that that was just luck of the draw. But certainly, this is why people should have interests sections on their resumes and show their personality and show what they've done. Just based on having that one commonality, this person was admitted.

So — those are two examples, and that's great; I'm sure they're illuminating. But I think what you all want to hear is traits. So, let me get to that. Let me tell you the one trait that doesn't work that so many applicants overuse, and that is, you can't will yourself into your dream school. You just can't do it. So most of the people listening to this podcast, most of the people we interact with, are very productive, driven people. Unfortunately, you can't just keep writing a law school a letter so many times that they will eventually say, "Wow, look at this person's productivity, we're going to admit them." There's a finesse to the process. So what I don't want people doing, because I see it far too often, is over-spamming/over-pushing the admissions office. That actually goes south; that doesn't help you punch above your numbers.

For me, personally, and someone mentioned this on Reddit, so they kind of nailed it — the number one trait I've seen doing this is I would call ebullience. So people who, at least from my experience seeing this, tend to be part of that group that punch above their numbers. I had a client last cycle with an LSAT score in the mid 160s, who got into something like 6 of the top 14, including Harvard. It might have been 5 of the top 12, so I might be slightly — but this client is at Harvard right now, again, with no diversity characteristics. And nothing, like, amazing. I would guarantee that she nailed the Harvard interview. Our strategy, I think, was just to get her waitlisted. For some of our clients, when you're well below a median, you want to, I call it "moves management" — you're probably not going to get admitted right away, so you almost play a strategy (I'll do another podcast on this) to get waitlisted, and then you can use that later in the cycle to get admitted to the school where you're 15 points below the median, or 10 points below the median. So the way I would describe her is — she had a lightness about her. There are people you've seen in this world, they bring an internal light with them, so you want to be in their presence. And even though I never met her, just talking to her on the phone, she was eternally lit up. Not in the spazzy way, but in an optimistic, charming way. So ebullience would be one.

I'm going to just read what my partner Derek Meeker, who was the Dean of Admissions at Penn, wrote, because I think this kind of nails the other highly common element of it. What Derek wrote is: "Absent diversity or highly unusual and interesting experiences, the common denominator among all or nearly all of my clients who outperformed their numbers boiled down to this: maturity, self-awareness, and professionalism. They presented applications that conveyed a clear sense of how they got to where they are now and where they want to go. I've had numerous couldn't be less diverse or more ordinary clients," — alright, keep this in mind, this is important — "many K-JDs, punch above their numbers, for example get admitted to top 10 schools, and I firmly believe it is because their applications read as: mature, knows why they are doing this and how they will add value, i.e., they're low maintenance, easily employable people."

Another point that my business partners brought up when we were discussing this is, law school admissions officers are people. I mean that's obvious, but it's important to see them as that, because you want that person to project you at their law school. In their mind, they want to be able to see you as being able to be at their law school. So I guess in terms of traits, that would be what Derek's talking about: professional, mature, we're gonna say calm a lot. We have. Calm and unflappable, upbeat, all of these things. Anyone who sounds frantic, even if you're frantic on Reddit and it can be traced back to you — if you post your numbers and then three months later you're freaking out online, and schools will figure that out by the way — those are the things where people punch below their numbers. But when you're just an upbeat, mature, professional — professionalism is very attractive to other professionals — that is a trait that gets people admitted to law school.

I should note that things vary from cycle to cycle. In all our years when we were talking about this, one of the things we mentioned to ourselves is that, in some cycles you see more people punching above their numbers, and some cycles you see less. And you see different things stand out in different cycles: in some cycles it's work experience; in some cycles it's a lot of the people who visit who showed these characteristics and traits I was just talking about. I want to also, before I conclude, say that one of the common characteristics of people who punch above their numbers is that they apply not just to their dream schools, but they have realistic expectations, and they apply to a set of schools — safeties and target schools. I think that goes along with self-awareness.

So let me just recap. Being upbeat and unflappable, being mature, being professional. Self-awareness is so important, because every part of your application is reflected when you're self-aware. And I hope everyone understands what I mean by that. Knowing yourself, in a sincere fashion, is good. Sometimes you can catch a break and get lucky if you have something very much in common with the person reading your file, or — and I'm not exaggerating — if the person reading your file just happens to be in a good mood that day and you have a little bit in common with them, you can catch a break and punch well above your numbers. Sometimes it's actually untraceable. I had a client with a score in the very low 150s, not diverse, nothing totally exceptional, except I would say his personal statement was unique. It was a topic I had never heard before, and when you've done this 20 years, you've heard just about every topic. And he got into a top 16 school/top 17 school with an LSAT in the low 150s, and I think it was just because the personal statement was so differentiated. So, if I'm going to add one more — and then I'm going to end this this podcast; I don't want it to go too long — it would be, you know, differentiation always helps. Positive differentiation always helps in admissions. Having some cool story in your personal statement that stands out, that shows reflection and introspection, always helps in admissions.

If you found this podcast, you know where we are on YouTube. You can find our blog on www.spiveyconsulting.com. There's hundreds upon hundreds of blog articles of free advice there. If you need a pick-me-up or inspiration, I now have a sort of motivational blog, it's www.spiveyblog.com. And thank you for listening to our podcast and for that great question.

Back to Podcasts

Latest Podcasts

March 5, 2026

r/LawSchoolAdmissions AMA: Waitlists, Predictions, Loan Caps, Scholarship Reconsideration, & More

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, we take questions from Reddit! Mike Spivey, Mike Burns, and Anna Hicks-Jaco discuss just how slow this cycle is (10:19) and how that might impact late-cycle applicants (6:47), why law schools place applicants on “holds” (1:23), decision timelines and how/why they vary (4:23), advice for scholarship reconsideration (11:20), whether schools rescind admits or scholarships if you ask for more money (13:31), how the new student loan caps might impact your request for scholarship reconsideration (14:00), whether you should email a school if you haven’t heard from them since you applied early in the cycle (23:44) and whether they might have forgotten about your application (24:44), predictions for next cycle (19:31) and waitlist season this cycle (15:00), the cannonball strategy of law school waitlists (25:50), how important softs are and whether “soft tiers” are admissions pseudoscience (27:48), essays about institutional injustice and how to avoid coming off overly negative in a way that could harm your chances (34:36), advice for becoming an admissions officer (37:40), and more.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.

Listen

Employment

Law School Preparation

February 25, 2026

AI Law and Policy Expert & Duke Law Prof. Dr. Nita Farahany on Our AI-Driven Future

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Dr. Nita Farahany—speaker, author, Duke Law Distinguished Professor, and the Founding Director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society—on the future of artificial intelligence in law school, legal employment, legislation, and our day-to-day lives.

They discuss a wide range of AI-related topics, including how significantly Dr. Farahany expects AI to change our lives (10:43, 23:09), how Dr. Farahany checks for AI-generated content in her classes and her thoughts on AI detector tools (1:26, 5:46), the reason that she bans her students from using AI to help generate papers (plus, the reasons she doesn’t ascribe to) (3:41), predictions for how AI will impact legal employment in both the short term and the long term (7:26), which law students are likely to be successful vs. unsuccessful in an AI future (12:24), whether our technology is spying on us (17:04), cognitive offloading and the idea of “cognitive extinction” (18:59), how AI and technology can take away our free will (24:45) and ways to take it back (27:58), how our cognitive liberties are at stake and what we can do to reclaim them both on an individual level (30:06) and a societal level (35:53), neural implants and sensors and our screenless future (39:27), how to use AI in a way that promotes rather than diminishes critical thinking (44:43), and how much, for what purposes, and with which tools Dr. Farahany uses generative AI herself (47:27).

Among Dr. Farahany’s numerous credentials and accomplishments, she is the author of the 2023 book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology; she has given two TED Talks and spoken at numerous high-profile conferences and forums; she served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017; she was President of the International Neuroethics Society from 2019 to 2021; and her scholarship includes work on artificial intelligence, cognitive biometric data privacy issues, and other topics in law and technology, ethics, and neuroscience. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, where she also earned a JD, MA, and PhD in philosophy after completing a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth and a master’s from Harvard, both in biology.

Dr. Farahany’s Substack—featuring her interactive online AI Law & Policy and Advanced Topics in AI Law & Policy courses—is available here. The app she recommends is BePresent. The Status Check episode Mike mentions, with Dr. Judson Brewer, is here.

Listen

Well-Being

February 10, 2026

Dr. Guy Winch on Overcoming the Stresses of School, Work, & Admissions

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Dr. Guy Winch returns to the podcast for a conversation about his new book, Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. They discuss burnout (especially for those in school or their early career), how society glorifies overworking even when it doesn’t lead to better outcomes (5:53), the difference between rumination and valuable self-analysis (11:02), the question Dr. Winch asks patients who are struggling with work-life balance that you can ask yourself (17:58), how to reduce the stress of the waiting process in admissions and the job search (24:36), and more.

Dr. Winch is a prominent psychologist, speaker, and author whose TED Talks on emotional well-being have over 35 million combined views. He has a podcast with co-host Lori Gottlieb, Dear Therapists. Dr. Winch’s new book, Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life, is out today!

Our last episode with Dr. Winch, “Dr. Guy Winch on Handling Rejection (& Waiting) in Admissions,” is here.

Listen

Traits of Law School Applicants Who Outperform Their Numbers

Mike Spivey

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

About

For Prospective Students

For Schools

Follow Us

Traits of Law School Applicants Who Outperform Their Numbers

Podcast Transcript

Mike Spivey

Latest Podcasts

Have questions? Get in touch with us

Stay Updated!

About

For Prospective Students

For Schools

Follow Us