Anna Hicks-Jaco: Hello, and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. Today’s episode is part one of a two-part series on reapplying, and this one is focused on the decision whether or not to reapply—signs that reapplying is a good idea, signs that it’s really not a good idea, the biggest changes you can make to your application to set yourself up for stronger results, the sorts of changes that aren’t likely to make a real difference, some of the risks and downsides of reapplying, reapplicant success stories, and more. Part two will cover strategies and advice for reapplying.
I’m Anna Hicks-Jaco, and I’m Spivey Consulting’s president. I’ve been working with Spivey in admissions for I believe over 12 years now. I’ve also worked with over 25 law schools as a consultant, I’ve been an interim assistant dean for admissions, I’ve worked in career services, served on dean’s leadership councils. I love law school admissions. I love talking to applicants.
Today, I am also very fortunate to be joined by two of our wonderful Spivey consultants, Kristen Mercado and Nathan Neely, both of whom have had roles as the ultimate decision-maker and leader of law school admissions offices, and both of whom went to law school and graduated from law school themselves. Nathan, Kristen, would you like to briefly introduce yourselves?
Nathan Neely: Of course. Nathan Neely, again. I have attended law school, way back in the early aughts. I don’t know that I really want to go too far into that. But with that being said, I started in legal education and admissions specifically in 2007. I worked at an initial program and then moved to another program and then moved to another program, went from an admissions office to an LLM office, worked with various LSAC committees throughout that engagement, and find myself here now in 2026 as a consultant.
Kristen Mercado: So, I’m sort of the opposite of Nathan in terms of my job history in admissions, but I’ll start with law school. I got my start in law school admissions the same place where I actually got my law degree, University of Chicago Law School, which is also where I went to undergrad. And the family joke was always that they started to get a little concerned when I worked there after law school that I was never going to leave the campus, which if you’ve ever been to Hyde Park, it’s not necessarily the cheeriest place. But I love it to death, but not necessarily the place where fun goes to live.
But after working at U of C Law School, I continued to work in the legal field, but doing different things related to diversity affairs and professional development before I went to California, to the University of California Davis School of Law, and I was there for 14 years. Most of that time, I was the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. So I kind of found my spot and just stayed put, and then I transferred last year. So happy to be here, happy to hopefully share some insights, both from the perspective of being the person who often read a lot of reapplicants’ applications, but then also having now had the chance to work with folks who are going through the process again. So, happy to hopefully make it a little bit easier as you figure out whether you want to, in fact, go again.
[3:04] Anna: Thank you both for being here and for sharing your expertise and your insights. Let’s go ahead and jump right in. So, let’s say someone comes to you, they’re a current cycle applicant, and they’re talking to you about the potential of reapplying next cycle. What are some signs—as you’re talking to this person, as you’re hearing them talk about themselves—what are some signs that reapplying is a good idea for them?
Nathan: I think candidly, I want to ask them if they have some intervening change that’s occurred with their application materials, or if they’re just unhappy with their current circumstances. It’s helping them kind of see the balance between that. Are there tangible things that we can think about as they anticipate strategizing a new application, or is it really just simply, they’re just not happy at the moment?
Kristen: Yeah, 100% agree. I would also add, I think there’s sort of a mindset you have to be in, and it’s really difficult to go through a whole cycle and do all this work, you know, you take the test, you put it in there, you send it out into the world, you’re putting yourself out there to be judged. It’s a really difficult process. And so I think there’s a certain resilience and a certain kind of shift in mindset you need to be in where you’re ready to not necessarily let go of what you’ve done in the previous cycle, but also really be in a place where you’re ready to take a critical eye, looking at some of what you did and what you didn’t do, and really be ready to embrace some change and take in some constructive criticism, and maybe make some bigger changes, or some changes that maybe you initially ruled out.
Sometimes I think people are too narrow in their first try, and I always say, just because you put in an application doesn’t mean that you’re saying you’re going to go there, right? It’s just opening up an option for yourself. And so I think if you’re not open to that, in the headspace where you’re open to maybe doing things maybe a lot differently the second time around, it can be tough to be successful as a reapplicant.
Nathan: And I think there’s also a distinction between reapplying to the same programs, or, as Kristen said, reapplying and more broadly.
[4:58] Anna: Yeah, absolutely. Because even if you don’t necessarily have big changes to your application, if you change the range of schools that you’re applying to, you can certainly receive drastically different sets of results. We’re going to be talking a lot about ways to improve your application—ways that sort of are likely to make a big difference, ways that are likely to make a smaller difference—but that is one thing that is really important to note, is that you don’t necessarily need these changes, and you don’t even necessarily need to make the changes to your materials that you would have if you were applying to the same schools again, if you’re just broadening your school list. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that.
The only thing that I will add to that is that it’s a really good idea, if you are thinking about reapplying, if you are planning to reapply, that you have some sort of plan for the intervening year. So if you are just going to spend that time applying to law school, maybe studying for the LSAT, not doing anything in the realm of work or volunteering or things like that, that is likely to be a tricky element of your application, and you want to set yourself up for success as much as possible if you’re going into this reapplication process and you’re investing all of this time and effort and money into it again.
Okay, so this is maybe a little bit of a tricky question to get at the most substantive and important elements, but how much potential improvement justifies a reapplication?
Nathan: That is the question, isn’t it? The difficulty is that you have an applicant that’s considering a reapplication. They’ve maybe taken an LSAT, and they’ve gotten a great score back. They’re then basing their decision on reapplying on information that occurred the previous fall, the incoming class for the fall that are the reported medians. Again, I’m using this as an example as far as the quality.
So if their score comes back and they’re at a program’s median, they’re then taking that median and saying, “I need to reapply because I’m at that school’s median,” without the awareness that the institutional goal for the upcoming fall is one point above that. And so they’re in ostensibly the same circumstances. So that’s a really hard needle to thread, basing it on that kind of quantifiable, achievable goal in the LSAT, because we still don’t know what that upcoming fall will hold for the applicant.
Anna: Yeah.
Nathan: I would throw out, get two points better than their median. But even that is not realistic. Every year, the answer that admissions officers come up with for each application is, it depends. It depends on the cycle. It depends on the variables. That’s the age-old response to many different factors in the application. It depends.
Kristen: Lawyers say it all the time, too. It’s like, doubly cursed.
Anna: Just get used to it, I think, if you’re listening to this.
Kristen: Every other phrase will be, it depends.
[7:34] I think it also depends on what your expectations were. Like, you had maybe a couple of top choices. You had some programs that you were like, I feel like I’m competitive for this, right? I don’t know. I think I might get a scholarship, even, right? Or did you sort of go in without any kind of expectations, and then you find yourself admitted to quite a few schools, but maybe none of them were at the top of your list, or maybe you’re admitted but no scholarship.
I mean, it’s a competitive time right now in law school applications, and what you turn down or what you decide to discard and redo, I think you want to carefully think about that and think about whether you’re likely to get enough of an improvement in your outcomes that it makes it worth passing on at least a year, right, before you start? And then potentially outcomes that you may not be able to duplicate.
It is the case, I can remember seeing the applicants as an admissions dean, right, where I had admitted them in a prior cycle, even the immediate past year, but the pool was different, and the timing was different, and I waitlisted them. So you can’t always assume that those admissions are going to carry forward, you know, if you’re going to get the same results, right?
Anna: Definitely.
Kristen: So, “Oh, if I just killed my LSAT, then suddenly I’ll get great scholarships”—that might not be the case, right? So even defining what is success for you. I think also realizing that very few people go through the admissions process and at the end of it say they got exactly what they wanted, and it’s just, it was a perfect outcome.
Anna: Super rare.
Kristen: Yeah. There’s some level of disappointment everyone feels in their outcomes, and that’s what I mean, kind of being realistically realistic with yourself and sort of saying, like, “Did I get some good outcomes here? And am I maybe passing on something that I’m going to really regret later,” for either not any improvement, or essentially duplicating your results but now you’ve lost a year of time, right, and lots of money, unfortunately, to do that. So it just kind of depends, also, I think, what you were hoping for when you started the process in terms of how you view your results and what’s possible in terms of improvement.
Nathan: It’s always interesting in those moments that they have been admitted, they’re may be seeking more scholarship and considering a reapplication. At that stage, you’re also giving the admission office a data point that you would be likely to turn them down. That is just another element that, it depends.
Anna: And I will note, actually, right now, that we have a follow-up episode coming up for this where we’re going to be talking about reapplication strategy. So, as we’re talking about some of these risks of reapplying, things like, “A school where you were admitted the previous cycle might, then, think you’re probably not going to attend this cycle,” We’re going to be talking about some of the ways to potentially mitigate that, to lessen that effect, to show them that you really are interested, to explain why you are reapplying. We’re going to be talking about that in the next episode. This one is really focused on whether or not to reapply.
And thank you both for your thoughts on this. I think those are all really, really valuable. I think, as you are assessing your prior applications, which is such an important part of this—Kristen, I like your word of “ruthlessly” sort of looking at your prior applications and looking at those results. I think that can also be instructive of how much of a difference you need to make to have meaningfully different results. Sometimes, reapplicants or potential reapplicants are in a situation where, you know, they were really, really close to a lot of these schools. And maybe they received waitlists to a bunch of their top schools. Or maybe, as you said, Kristen, they received admits, but not sort of the scholarships that you were looking for. That is a different situation than someone who maybe was denied from all of these schools and maybe you weren’t all that close, and maybe you would need to make a really, really significant change to your application to give yourself a real shot at those schools. So I think that being that level of sort of ruthlessly honest with yourself, especially now that you have a set of results to build into that assessment of your application, I think that’s really, really important.
[11:01] Okay, so let’s start talking about specifics. We’ve talked about increasing your LSAT score. I think that that, even as we don’t talk about it in explicit terms, is like, that’s the most important thing you can do. That sort of feels like an implicit understanding that we have been operating under as we’ve been talking already about things like improving your LSAT.
So what are the most powerful changes that you can make to your application from one year to the next to really change those results? And let’s go ahead and say that increasing your LSAT is certainly one of them, but let’s talk a little bit more about that, because certainly there are degrees within that. And then other things that can make a big difference.
Nathan: The definition of insanity, you know, doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. The LSAT is an incredibly easy thing to point to, because it’s a variable that there’s no gray area in it. There’s no “it depends.” You know, if you’re rewriting your personal statement, if you’re rewriting your other materials, you don’t know initially how that landed with the admissions office, and you won’t know the second go around how that lands with the admission office. But the LSAT, that is a quantifiable number that you can look at, you can see how it stacks up against the previous cycle or not, and so that is incredibly helpful in considering a reapplication, as far as finding yourself with different outcomes.
Kristen: Yeah, I just would say, whenever we have reapplicants contact us, in that ruthless assessment of your prior applications, one thing that can be helpful—not every law school does this, but mine did, and I know some others do, especially if you received a denial as opposed to a waitlist where technically your app is kind of still pending. But if you’re denied, ask them, “Could someone talk to you about what could be improved?” You know, that you’re thinking about reapplying.
You know, sometimes you might not get someone who’s super honest, but I always took it as an opportunity to try to be as honest as I could. And so sometimes it was very easy. It would be like, hey, the range at my school from my 25th to a 75th is essentially like a 160 to upper 160s, and you have a 151. You’re going to have a tough road. You need to retake the LSAT, and you need to do significantly better, so like more than five points, you need to do closer to 10 points at least, right? That’s easy. I say it’s “easy”; it’s not easy. It’s hard to do, but it is succinct. It’s a tip I can give them. It’s straightforward.
But there’s sort of a lot within that that you can also do. I mean, the LSAT is a number. It’s a predictor. It’s not perfect, right? But there’s things you can do. Upward movement is always good, but it has to be the right kind of upward movement. So if you’re still very far from a school’s median, getting two points more but you’re still seven, eight points below their median, it’s probably not going to be the kind of significant change that you need. You need to be getting at their median, above their median, right? If you’re already sitting there or you’re like one point below, moving one point—which unfortunately statistically is very likely when you retake the LSAT without doing something very different in your preparation—but even if you make a movement, you don’t want to count on that one point. As Nathan was mentioning before, sometimes that marker will move on you by the time you actually submit. So you shouldn’t be shooting for one point, “I just want to hit the median,” you want to be shooting for above that, right? Maybe it’s the 75th or something if you’re trying to create a target for yourself to study.
But the point is, you really need to kind of assess. It can’t be small. Usually small incremental changes—although they’re big for you, and I don’t mean to diminish them because they know it feels great even when you make a small improvement—it’s usually not going to move the needle enough unless you’re moving other needles as well. So if you’re maybe in your last year of college, you can also move your GPA. Maybe two small movements adds up to enough to get to a different outcome.
Generally speaking, the advice that I always give to folks is, you really need new materials at the very least, but then also something bigger needs to change. You need to have a promotion, you need to move your LSAT score 5+ points, you need to see something significant change if you’re very far outside the typical norm for that school—or you need to change what schools you’re targeting. That’s the other part of this. But if you’ve got your heart set on something, small movements generally are not going to give you the same return on investment of a whole ‘nother cycle, I guess I would say.
Anna: Yeah. Thank you for that. I think we can all agree that the huge substantial thing that you can really know for a fact you’re improving, apart from your personal statement and you know, your other application materials, which you can really think that you’re improving, but you know for a fact you can improve your LSAT, or you know for a fact that you have improved your LSAT if you increased in score. And if you went from below the median to above the median—asterisk, asterisk, asterisk—that can make a really big difference. Keeping in mind that currently, you know, we’re in the 2025-2026 cycle. It has been a very competitive cycle. There’s been an increase in the number of applicants. There’s been an increase in the number of applicants in the high score bands. So I think, if you are assessing it right now, I would assume that the law school that you’re targeting, whatever law schools you’re targeting, are going to go up one point in their LSAT median. Many of them will not. Many of them will stay flat. But for your purposes, let’s say they’re going to go up one point. And then, as Nathan was saying, you can also assume that they are going to be targeting a point higher than that for the next cycle.
So that’s the safe way to do it, when you’re looking at sort of the notion of going from below median to above median, it is possible that a school goes up two points this year and then wants to go up another point next year. And I think that that’s maybe a little much to assume, but maybe not. I mean, it depends on how risk-averse you are.
Most people don’t have huge GPA changes from one year to the next when they’re reapplying, but it can certainly make a difference if you go from below median to above median for the GPA as well.
[16:09] So, let’s talk about some other factors that people can change. And why don’t I just sort of go down a list of different things that people might do to improve their application? And then we can talk about how much that could help, whether that could help, etc.
So the first one I want to talk about is work experience. When can getting work experience/additional work experience help you? How much do you need? Should it be a different type? Kristen, you were talking about promotions. How can work experience help?
Kristen: I would just say generally, work experience is becoming more and more central to success in the law school application process, so that’s something that’s different than it was even a few years ago, but certainly, like, five years ago. So if you don’t have work experience, get some, if you’re thinking about reapplying. Because even if you have a little bit, it will help you. If your plan is just to work on your law school applications and study for the LSAT for your intervening year, that’s not an ideal plan. Trying to get at least some experience, even if it’s unpaid and you got to have a job at Starbucks to pay the bills but you’re an intern shadowing someone at a local law firm or the DA’s office, something, get some experience.
But I think this is one of the hardest things to add in a year. If you want to immediately reapply, I think it’s very hard to add significant work experience in that time. Because remember, the timing is such that you get your decisions in the spring, and then ideally you’re submitting in the very early fall. So that’s essentially, like, six months of time that you have to do something that you can put in the application. Yes, you can update your applications after you submit, but I’ll be honest, those don’t always get read at the same time as your application, right? Maybe they get read, but they don’t fully because they’re not part of the central materials that you’re used to reading. It’s not always a great plan to supplement later, I think.
So sometimes, if you really feel like everything else in my application, I don’t know what else to improve, if you really feel like work experience is one of those things, sometimes more than a year might be something to think about. Especially if you have a good opportunity. I know jobs for new grads are not plentiful right now, especially good, high-paying ones, but maybe you’re already working and there’s an opportunity to move to a new company or something, and it would give you elevated responsibilities, better pay. Maybe don’t think about immediately reapplying, but your plan is to reapply in two or three years.
I have seen many people do that very successfully. And in fact, in this market, it actually helped them more than they were even anticipating. They were thinking about it from an admissions perspective, but it ended up helping them when they got to law school and they were applying for jobs. Legal employers were like, you have work experience. If it was law-related, so much the better.
I think work experience is powerful, but it is something that, it’s hard to do if your plan is to immediately reapply. But I think consider, maybe, a little bit longer window before the next application cycle, if you have some good work opportunities or you think, hey, I want to work for a while—great. Law school is only three years. You get to be a lawyer almost immediately after you graduate. It’s one of the most insane professional programs ever. There’s no residency where you make peanuts, right?
So law school is going to be there in three years; they’re not going to magically disappear. So there’s plenty of time, is my point. And if you can get some good work experience, it may actually pay off for you more from an admissions perspective, also just for your future career prospects as well. So it’s something to think about if there’s opportunities, and if you know you need to work for a bit, to think about maybe a little bit longer timeline is my thought about that. But whether you do something that’s immediate work experience or not, doing something where you can learn some workplace skills is extremely helpful and is something that, when it’s not on an application, schools right now get kind of nervous. You need to have some really powerful other credentials and experiences to outweigh that, because now it’s seen as a real negative when they’re reviewing applications, because that’s how employers view it now. So, work experience can help you. Try to get it if you can, and think about a longer timeline to make it possible.
[19:45] Nathan: Reflectively, we’re in this really interesting position of saying, “Yes, do better on the LSAT”—LSAT prep requires a lot of time, effort, energy, investment—“Yes, get a job.” And sadly, you can’t just pick one as a re-applicant. If that’s the strategy that you’re employing, you have to do both, ultimately. Law schools don’t want to see that you took off that significant chunk of time from your life after you graduated from undergrad, for instance, and only focused on LSAT, or the presumption they can make is that you only focused on LSAT preparation. They want to know that you’re able to handle both of those elements.
Anna: Yeah, definitely. If the LSAT is a big component of your reapplication strategy, it is a huge, huge risk to do that at the exclusion of other things, and we certainly would not recommend it, having that be the only thing you have going on, even though you certainly could spend all of your time on the LSAT. It is a test that can be very difficult and time-consuming to prepare for. So all of this is easy for us to say and less easy to implement, but this is the reality of the landscape that we’re in.
[20:48] Okay, so thank you for your thoughts on work experience. Let’s talk about the application itself. So, looking at your application, fixing whatever issues are there—or maybe you don’t think there are issues; maybe you’re just improving your personal statement to make it stronger. Changes to the application materials themselves, independent of changes in your life, your stats, how can those help? When do they help? When do they not help? Help us out here.
Kristen: So, we do something at Spivey called Decision Analysis, where you can, after you’ve gotten your results, right, show us one of your apps, and we can give you some feedback. Sometimes also, depending on how candid the admissions officer is, sometimes where having a chat with someone at a school where you received a denial can be helpful. Because it’s very hard to have that insight into something you’ve spend a lot of time on and you think is good, but sometimes there is something, maybe the topic you chose for your statement, maybe it’s just something that turns off folks, right? And it’s your story, so you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong, right? You can tell a story in lots of different ways, but I do think that sometimes getting some outside perspective from very objective people—so like, not your mom or your dad or your best friend—like, people who are going to maybe be a little more tough on you.
Nathan: Ruthless.
Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. Can be really helpful to know what you need to revamp, what you need to tweak. Because my general recommendation is that, maybe with the exception of your recommenders, you probably need to just redo all of your materials. It’s just a better strategy, I think, to take a fresh start at it. Your recommenders, sometimes that’s not possible and you want to keep that letter. Maybe it’s hard to get a hold of that person. But I do think that it’s important to really kind of look at them and sort of say, hey, you have lots of stories to tell, so you probably have more material for all of your essays and things like that. And I think it’s important to think about a fresh start with the application, especially because there are some schools that will look at your previous app if you applied there previously. So the last thing you want is for them to open your app, open their old app, and be like, “Oh, couldn’t even be bothered to write a new statement. Deny,” you know, right? That’s not showing the level of commitment that I think you want to demonstrate.
Nathan: Just attacking it from a different perspective. Yes, it takes roughly—and it’s been a minute since I’ve been in an admission office, but—it takes six clicks to get to the old application materials. Why not take the advantage of telling new stories about yourself, bringing new perspectives? If they’re looking at the old application and they’re looking at the new application, that’s two times the amount of space and material that you’re able to offer to help convey yourself to these random strangers in the admissions offices.
[23:18] Anna: I have a hypothetical for you all. I’m a potential re-applicant. I want to work with both of you. My application last cycle, my numbers were strong. I don’t think it makes sense for me to retake the LSAT. I’m already above the 75th percentile at my target schools. My GPA is already set in stone; it’s not going to change. But this last cycle, I had to put together my applications really quickly, and if I’m being honest with myself, I look at them, they’re really sloppy. The resume just doesn’t look good. I found like 10 different typos. I found a place where I, like, mentioned the wrong clinic to a school. My application, just in general, was very weak. Right? I’m not going to be able to change these other objective factors. I’m going to stay in my job. I’m going to keep doing the same job; that’s not likely to make a huge difference. Is just the fact of taking this really sloppy, poorly put-together application and making it ideally a buttoned-up, well-put-together, very thoughtful, strong application, is that enough for me to reapply?
Nathan: I think so.
Kristen: Yeah. I think, only because, especially at the top programs, they have plenty of really amazing people with strong credentials, strong numbers. And so sometimes the decisions have to come down to differences that, in another pool, right, might not be as consequential, but your ill-prepared materials are not doing you a favor, because it gives them an easy way to sort of pass on your application and on your candidacy. And in some cases, sometimes the reader can be a little persnickety, right? And they’re almost sort of offended that you didn’t take the time to at the very least proofread your application, and they are very emphatically denying you and—it’s just never a good thing. It’s such an easy thing. Plus, you’re going to be a lawyer. Like, it’s important that you spell things correctly and you pay attention to details. It’s a detail-oriented profession. So it’s not so much a single typo, sometimes that happens. But it’s indicative of a lack of attention and seriousness of purpose, and that’s really the thing that could be fatal. So you definitely don’t want to risk communicating that, especially if you have the goods, right? You have the raw goods to back it up.
Nathan: You don’t want to put them in a position of saying, “Let’s take a risk on this applicant.” You want to take away that thought process, take out the errors, take out the mistakes. Be more honest and ruthless with how you’re discussing yourself. Take the opportunity to provide that polished work so that, again, they’re not in that position of, “Well, let me look at these numbers, and there’s all these other candidates that were able to do these things for us and give us the polished materials.” You don’t want them to have to think, “Okay, let’s take a risk on this person; I’m sure that was just a bad weekend or something.”
Anna: Yeah. No, that’s a very good point. And I’m glad you brought up the term “risk,” because Kristen, you touched on this earlier, but I do also want to specifically call out, if you know that you took some risk with your application in the prior cycle—you wrote about some topic that is potentially offensive, maybe it’s really divisive—that’s one area where you could potentially make a big difference simply by not writing about that. I think that can be a really, really hard thing to assess when it’s for yourself. So I think that’s where it goes back to the advice that you both were giving before of, try to talk to somebody who can be objective about you more so than you can, more so than your mom can.
[26:24] Okay. Moving on to our next potential application improvement. Let’s say I have a character and fitness issue of some kind—and it’s not a sort of “nothing” character and fitness issue like a speeding ticket or “Freshman year of college, I got caught with alcohol or weed in the dorm.” Let’s say I have a serious C&F, or some degree of serious C&F. Can it be helpful to get more distance from that C&F? Or, if it’s currently up in the air—you know, maybe I’m in the middle of proceedings or whatever—resolving that C&F, can that make a big difference?
Nathan: If this is the risky thing in your application, you still need to talk about it, just FYI. So this is not an optional, like, let’s pull this back and not talk about this thing. I mean, yes. Time heals all wounds, right? And so along those lines, if you have a more significant distance in time from the final outcome, distance in time from what the actual outcome was, I think those are all helpful elements that are going to help the admissions committee members envision it.
Oftentimes, they’re taking these character and fitness responses and trying to project into the future, with an application to the bar exam, will this applicant be able to sit successfully for it? Oftentimes, that’s kind of in the cases of felonies, which I think typically the window is five years, as a little fun tidbit, aside. But generally speaking, I think, again, the adage time heals all wounds is certainly helpful in this regard.
Kristen: I would just add, in terms of things that you can think about, if this is something that’s pending—if it’s anything I would say moderately serious, it’s very difficult for an admissions officer. They’re just generally not able to take that risk, right?
Anna: Yes.
Kristen: It’s very difficult. Committees hate them. They hate pendings. So if you had a pending situation, even a pending, like, academic issue, that can be something they’re like, “No, we’re not going to judge, and we don’t know what the facts are.” So if it resolves, and certainly if it resolves in your favor—but if it’s something where you made a mistake, hey, people made mistakes, doesn’t mean that law school is off the table for you, but if you have opportunities to take affirmative, voluntary, rehabilitative steps, I strongly encourage doing that and making sure you document it. Like keep a list of it, right? I saw a lot of pending DUIs when I was an admissions dean. Like the case, the issue was probably going to get some sort of probation, it wasn’t going to end up in a conviction, but it was pending, right? So I appreciated the person when I would see them reapply, right, the person who took the time to do more than the obligatory, whatever it was, 20 sessions of AA, they did more than that. Or they got involved in AA on a volunteer basis. Just finding ways to make sure that it’s very clear, especially when you know you made a mistake, that you communicate through your actions that you know it was a mistake. That can actually turn into an asset in your application, because you’re someone who has developed insight, and it can be instructive to you as a lawyer, if you’re working in certain fields, certainly. But in any case, that’s something that I think is really important to think about, if you have anything pending, is trying to not just resolve it, but find ways to make sure that you can find a silver lining in what is definitely not an ideal situation from an application perspective.
Nathan: As a fun note, we have a video from prior to Status Check with Spivey that talks about character and fitness issues and how to tackle them.
Anna: Nathan, I don’t know if you follow our TikTok, but I actually posted a clip from that extremely old video.
Nathan: Oh, did you?
Anna: Of you!
Nathan: I’m not wearing the same suit, I promise.
Anna: I don’t know. It looks kind of similar.
Nathan: It does.
Anna: It was a very helpful and well-watched TikTok.
Nathan: Well, it “depended,” right? That was a big response in that.
Anna: It certainly “depends” a great deal in a discussion about C&F.
Going back to what you said right at the beginning of your first response, I actually spoke to an applicant this cycle who reapplied to a school where they disclosed a C&F last cycle, and then they did not disclose it this cycle. They had reasons that they had done that, but suffice to say, the school immediately called it out, contacted them about it, did not think their excuse was sufficient, and denied them very quickly, even though they were not denied last cycle. They were waitlisted last cycle. So, certainly would not recommend not disclosing a C&F you have previously disclosed.
[30:15] Okay, so how about getting stronger letters of recommendation? Can that make a big impact?
Kristen: Here’s a situation where I do recommend it or think it can make a difference. If your first time you applied, let’s say you’re that same person that you’re talking about, you’ve got great numbers but put together your application in a hurry and it’s very messy. Maybe you also took that same approach to who you asked to do your recommendation. And so you asked folks who weren’t your teacher, didn’t evaluate you, didn’t grade you, didn’t employ you, didn’t supervise you, right, but you ask people who were convenient. Your uncle who’s a lawyer—not a great recommender, but in an act of desperation and little time can be better than nothing, right? Now you’re reapplying, let’s think a little more carefully and get some recommendations that can actually add value to your application. Because I find that letters of recommendation are often something that people don’t spend enough time thinking about, and so they end up not hurting the applicant, but they really don’t help them. And your recommenders can say things you can’t say, or you can’t say as well. “Hey, my grades were bad my freshman year, but I did so much better throughout the rest of college, and I was a really strong performer by the end of college,” it’s much better to have your professor say that about you than for you to try to say it in an addendum or something, right?
So if you were someone that did not take seriously or could not take seriously choosing recommenders and made sure they were prepared and knew what you were up to and all those great things about you, maybe it’s time to revisit that list of folks and help them write great letters. Because if you were maybe marginal, you know, or you were at the border between waitlist and deny or between waitlist and admit, sometimes it can help. It definitely can.
It’s hard to know, also, right? That’s the biggest problem is, you don’t know what your letters say. So if you don’t have reason to think that they’re bad, they’re probably fine, and it’s hard to know whether new ones would actually be better than what you have. I find that to be the hardest part about advising people about letters of rec is that you don’t get to see them. Usually, you don’t know what you have and what could be better. But I would say that is one situation where, if you blew it off the first time, definitely take it seriously and get some quality letters the second time around.
Nathan: If you were confident in your letters of recommendation, just a little pro tip is that you can ask your recommender to go back into their account on LSAC and maybe refresh the letter to at least kind of help illustrate that ongoing relationship and engagement that you have with them. So if you assess that it is a good letter of recommendation, you don’t have to go find new letters either. There is the opportunity to continue to use those, but again, with some fresh insights would be helpful.
Anna: Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that level of nuance from both of you.
[32:23] What about some sort of notable achievement or award or honor?
Kristen: It’s not a bad thing, but if you’re sort of riding all your hopes on this promotion that you got, unless your promotion was to like be the senator, one of the senators for your state or, I don’t know, something really significant, it’s probably not going to be enough to really move your result. But it is going to help your application overall; there’s sort of a cumulative effect. You’re going to need to make some other positive changes.
Nathan: And if you are considering reapplication and you are waitlisted at a program, you should absolutely send that note about the promotion to the programs you’re waitlisted with. So, as a reapplicant or thinking about reapplying, there’s this tension to get focused on that next cycle, but quite frankly, a lot of folks that are in a position of considering reapplication, they’re not done. You know, you still want to think about the current cycle that you inevitably are in as a reapplicant. Don’t come into it with all hope lost. You know, a promotion, absolutely a cumulative help in the long term for a reapplicant, but in the short term, it’s something very hopeful for your waitlist strategy.
Anna: Very, very good point.
Okay, what about improving my interview skills? I’m back in hypothetical mode; I’m using first person. I interviewed very poorly this past cycle. I just bombed all of them. What if I just really worked on my interview skills? Could that make the difference?
Nathan: I guess my question would be, which programs were offering you an interview that you felt you bombed, right? There’s going to be programs that offer everyone an interview, and it’s really difficult to discern if that was the deciding factor. If you were selected for an interview and then received the unfortunate news, then maybe that can help, but it’s on this long list of “it depends.” Can it help? Sure. But you still would probably want to refresh the materials and give new insight into the entirety of your application to reflect that you’re putting the effort and energy into this new application process.
Kristen: Yeah, I’d agree. I think this is also where it’s a little bit hard to assess on your own, right? So you might want to think about if any of the schools that did interview you, if they’re willing to give you feedback on your application as a whole, and there’s maybe an opportunity to ask, were there any things I could improve about my interviewing, right? The other thing is, especially if you’re like a more recent grad or you’re still in college, right, just get better at interviewing. It’s not going to hurt you. It can only help you. Even if it wasn’t the real ultimate culprit why you didn’t get in. Or, your career advising is open to you as a graduate, as an alum, right? And a lot of times they’ll do like mock interviews or something, and they may be more geared towards job interviews, but if you’re someone that even has a thought in your head that you didn’t do a great job interviewing, any kind of practice interviewing can be helpful. Or, you know, if you have a friend who’s like great at that kind of stuff, aces, gets these jobs, right, after they’re just like the interview king or queen, right?
At the bare minimum, you can record yourself and kind of see, what are your tics, maybe you do something, you have a nervous habit or something like that. But I don’t feel like there’s a lot of situations where that ends up being the tipping point for people. But it can be at some programs, again, where they’re making these very small distinctions because they have so many people who are so amazingly qualified, and they need something to kind of help them differentiate. And your poor interview skills could have been what tipped you out of the running at a particular program. But you can improve it with a little work.
Anna: Yeah. Okay, so what I’m hearing is that it’s probably pretty unlikely, if that’s the only change you’re making, that that’s going to be the game changer, but certainly something to invest your time in preparing if you are reapplying and you feel you did poorly on your interviews.
[36:09] Okay, what about applying earlier? Can that be the game changer? And then also, how does that question change based on when I applied this cycle?
Kristen: Yeah. So I used to tell people when they’re applying, do better in your LSAT is easiest way. But the past few cycles, when you apply could have a significant impact on your results. There were really amazing people who just didn’t get very good results because they applied too late. Now, if you applied in October this cycle, you should not expect that applying in September is going to get you radically different results. But if you applied in, say, late February, yes, applying in October is going to make a huge difference, even if very little else changes in your application.
I think, like all of these, it needs to be coupled with other things, but huge jumps in timing can make a big difference. Small jumps in timing or applying in January when this cycle you applied in late February, not going to make the needle move a lot. But again, those sort of big jumps can make a big difference, because there’s so many applications, and there’s only so many seats, right? And until they know what they have, oftentimes people that a school might have been very happy to admit earlier in the cycle, they just aren’t able to do until they have more information, so you end up on a waitlist, and then it’s much harder to predict what will happen or whether a seat will open up. So I’m a huge proponent of, if you didn’t think about timing, to really think about it.
Nathan: By the flip side, if someone applied on September 1st, it might actually help them to apply a little bit later. I think there’s a notion that you have to rush and get it in. And so in that aforementioned hypo that you gave us, Anna, that the person rushed to get things in, it might’ve been because they wanted it in on September 1st, when at the end of the day, that date wasn’t going to be the difference maker in their decision. It was the quality of the material. So, going from a February to an October timeline for your submission might help. But by that same token, shifting from a September to a mid-October submission could also offer a benefit as well.
Anna: Yeah, if that means just taking the time to actually put together thoughtful, strong materials that you have proofread, you have had other people review for you, and you feel really confident in, as opposed to submitting September 1st was something you put together really quickly.
[38:17] Okay, so I want to talk about the notion of applying because the cycle when you applied for the first time was just really competitive.
Nathan: “Bird in the hand, two in the bush” comes to mind. It’s hard to predict what the next cycle will ultimately yield as far as the competitive nature. If it is equally or more competitive that future cycle, you’re in the same position, you’re in the same boat. But in that regard, thinking back strategically about the programs you’re selecting is going to be an important part of that process. Casting that wider net, not being as strict with what you want your outcomes to be.
But again, it’s really hard to look at the current cycle and say, “It will be substantially easier for me to gain admission,” quite frankly, do you want it to be easier? Isn’t this a hard thing? Don’t we want to do hard things?
Anna: Oh gosh.
Kristen: You want to be able to brag that you got in in one of the most competitive cycles ever. You got these amazing results.
Nathan: Exactly. [Tonal note: this exchange was sarcastic.]
Kristen: I think it’s less about thinking about what your competition is going to be and whether it will be more competitive next cycle or less competitive. It’s thinking about, am I going to be more or less competitive in the cycle this year or next year. Right? “Are there things that I’m going to do that are significantly going to improve my candidacy,” right? And if your reason for going into another cycle is because you think it’s going to be less competitive and so maybe you’ll get different results, you know, the truth of the matter is that, even though we can observe changes ex ante, right, we see what happens over a cycle and we can sort of see certain trends, it’s not like admissions teams—I guarantee I did not know these things. You don’t know them at the outset, right? It’s sort of a culmination of all of these environmental factors. And so the best that you can do as an applicant is think about, okay, do I plan together? Is it an achievable plan, both in terms of my ability, my finances, my time, all of those things? And if you really think there are things that you can improve, then reapply, right?
But the honest answer is no. And if your only reason to think about reapplying is because you think it’ll be less competitive next cycle, I think that’s a risky strategy, and I’m not sure that it’s one that’s going to get you better or even different results with a reapplication. Focus on the things you can control, and what’s happening with sort of a larger level of competition in the cycle is not one of the things you can control as an individual applicant.
Nathan: No marathon runner goes into a race thinking about what their competitors are doing to prep for the race. They’re focusing on what they’re doing. They’re focusing on their training. If you start focusing on what other people are doing, how other people are competitive, that totally negates any effort that you’re doing, because you’re no longer running your race; you’re running their race.
Anna: I think that’s really good advice. It’s just very, very difficult to predict. I think Mike Spivey is one of the people out there who has been most accurate in his predictions of where competitiveness and applicant volume in law school admissions has moved over time, and even he will tell you, “Do not plan to reapply to law school based on my prediction about next cycle.” We don’t know until we’re there. And things can happen in the world, in the country, that can completely change the trajectory of things. So very, very, very, very risky strategy. It might end up being much more competitive next cycle. You don’t know.
[41:33] So, does it make a difference just the fact of reapplying, in that it demonstrates determination and tenacity because you are continuing to try at this thing that you didn’t succeed at the first time?
Nathan: I don’t think admissions offices are thinking about it in that way when they see a reapplication. The sheer volume of applications that they receive, that they have to process, it’s rare that it’s going to cross their mind, in my opinion, that, “Oh, this really shows that go-get-’em attitude from this particular applicant, and that’s something that we want in our class.” I mean, the way you illustrate that is in your materials, the aspects of your resume, you know, talking about it your personal statement. The mere fact that you’re reapplying because of the volume of applications, because of the volume of reapplications, typically, it’s not going to really have any sort of assigned idea to it by the office.
Kristen: I actually would say that, for me as an admissions dean, there would be some reapplicants where they’re going on four or five times applying to our program. Even without looking at those prior apps, but I can see the results, right, and I’m thinking, “Now I actually just have concerns about your judgment, because I’m guessing there are reasons why you got those outcomes and continue to get the same outcome and continue to reapply, because I’m looking at a current application that is not competitive.” And I’m not thinking you’re tenacious. I’m thinking that you lack insight, and I’m concerned about how you’re choosing to invest your time and resources. And that’s not the recipe for success in the admissions process, for sure. I mean, I always respected applicants, reapplicants especially, because it is difficult to put yourself out there to be judged again, right? Especially if you got rejected from places, and then you go again.
Anna: Mike Spivey would say “denied”!
Kristen: Yeah, you got denied there, right? Turned down for admission. But my job was to try to figure out if there was a spot for them in my class. Were they a good fit? And that wasn’t going to be the factor that would tip me into saying, “Yes, this person is a good fit,” just the fact that they were reapplying. There’s better ways to demonstrate resilience and tenacity. Yeah.
Nathan: Plus, there’s some programs that actually have a restriction on the number of times you reapply. If you’re just reapplying to show that tenacity, you’re now wasting an opportunity to have a meaningful change in the application, potentially.
Anna: Yeah, certainly. All good advice.
[43:51] Okay, so we’ve already talked about some of the risks of reapplying. You know, you could end up with worse results than you achieved this cycle. You could end up not getting admitted to schools that admitted you previously. You could end up with smaller scholarship offers from schools that admitted you previously. Next cycle could be more competitive. There could be higher medians at your target schools. There could be higher applicant volume. Higher applicant volume at the LSAT score bands where it’s relevant for you. What are some of the other downsides to reapplying that applicants should just have in mind to be aware of as they’re making this decision?
Kristen: You know, not to be discounted, it takes a emotional toll, right? It is a significant endeavor to go through this process. It’s a very difficult process to be judged by strangers, right? You put your heart and soul into this thing. It’s an imperfect process that we use. You know, we try hard to make tweaks here and there to make the process more fair, but ultimately, it’s a very stressful process. Costs a lot of money, costs you a lot of time. And I think that at the end of it, you are most likely to get imperfect results.
That is a significant downside to doing that again, especially if what you have in front of you right now is opportunities to go to law school, right? So if you’re not the reapplicant who’s sitting with all denials, right, you have some options sitting in front of you, that’s part of that really ruthless assessment you need to do about what you have and what’s the potential gain. Because going through this process again is significant in what it demands of you as an applicant.
Then you get to go to law school after that, which also demands a lot of people and requires a significant investment. So just remember, that’s the reward waiting for you is three years of law school. Think carefully, before you decide, about that piece of it and whether you’re sort of up for it. Which is also why sometimes, maybe not immediately reapplying. Maybe reapplying is smart for you, but maybe not doing it the immediate next cycle. Like maybe it might take a couple of years. I’m a big believer in law school, it’s always going to be there. I would say this to people all the time; I’m like, “I swear it’s going to be here. It was here two years ago. It’ll be here two years from now. Take more time. It’s okay.”
Nathan: I think just avoiding that limbo of what your future will hold. You know, will you stay with this job that you’re currently in? Will you go to law school? If you have opportunities currently and you’re focused on a legal education, you really want to ask yourself, is it worth it being in this kind of state of disarray of not knowing what my future holds? Or should I go with the current opportunities that I have in front of me? So I absolutely agree with Kristen.
Anna: Yeah. And this is something that we’ve brought up before in this podcast. But the general opportunity cost of, this is another year that you are not going to be a lawyer. That means different things for different people, depending on what your goals are, depending on what you’re doing now, but something to take into account. There’s also the cost. You know, it costs money to apply to law school. It’s increasingly expensive. So keep in mind, you know, there also is that straight monetary cost.
Nathan: 2025 people that applied and then decided they wanted to reapply were now made aware that they no longer have access to financial aid opportunities through the Graduate PLUS Loans. That was a very real kind of significant factor that certainly hit applicants—I don’t know that they were necessarily surprised by it, but I mean, that’s a pretty significant change that I don’t think a lot of folks were anticipating.
Anna: Yeah, there may be risks that aren’t even on your radar.
A lot of this conversation has been targeted toward people who do have options this cycle because that’s typically when you’re really having to think about the decision of whether to reapply. You have options this cycle, so you’re thinking, “Should I take those or should I reapply next cycle?”
[47:10] I’d like to speak a moment to folks who maybe don’t have any options this cycle. And first I will flag, it’s April 2nd right now when we’re recording this. I think we’re going to publish this in maybe two and a half weeks. If you don’t have any options and it’s mid-April, you very well may have options in May, in June, in July, in August. So don’t count yourself out right now. But let’s say you do get to the end of the cycle, or let’s say you’re not on any waitlist, you have received all denials. You don’t have any options this cycle. And let’s say that this person also is making the same decision of whether or not to reapply, but the other option, instead of going to law school this cycle, is, “Maybe this just isn’t for me.” What thoughts do you have to share with someone who’s in that situation?
Kristen: I think of the person who is a solid applicant and will be a good lawyer, but made a big miscalculation in terms of their level of competitiveness and sort of worked off of a mindset of, “I have to go to a T10 school, so I’m only going to apply to the T14,” and they have a strong application, but it’s not an application that’s going to get them admitted, and they only applied to those type of schools. There’s just a fundamental real mismatch, sort of, between where they applied and their application is strong, but where is it strong, right?
So I think for that person, that’s hard. I mean, that’s hard to really think about yourself differently and to think about another option as being very good for you and leading to a successful career. You have made a definition and a path to success that only includes certain schools. I see this a lot with people who went to great undergrads and maybe have some good work experience, they don’t have great LSAT scores, and the standardized tests are just not their thing. And so it’s going to be very challenging for them, but they are going to do great at a school a little below that. They’re going to get a great job. They’re going to be fantastic lawyers. They have a lot of paths to success, but they need to see them as viable, attractive paths, right?
So that’s sort of one scenario, I would say. And that’s, again, part of this ruthlessness you kind of need to do with looking at where you ended up and why did you end up there and trying to figure it out. You mismatched yourself. Now, does that mean that you couldn’t do the work at those schools? No, that’s not what I’m saying. But there’s a process, and this is the process, and this is how it exists. And you have to sort of be realistic and pragmatic about that.
So that person, I think, is in a different scenario than sometimes what I see are people who struggle with standardized tests, have atypical academic paths and so their GPA is also—which, once it’s fixed, it’s fixed, right? So there’s not as much opportunity for them, and there’s a school of thought that says, “Maybe the reason that it’s not happening for you is because you shouldn’t be a lawyer.” Well, I don’t know that someone else gets to decide that for you. But there’s lots of ways to be involved in the legal profession, and sometimes somebody just needs a little more time to, for lack of a better word, marinate, right? You can do amazing work as a paralegal or something else, right? Get immersed. Be successful in another pursuit. And maybe you’re just someone that needs a little bit longer before you come back and can be successful at this process. And you need to give yourself time to grow and mature, rather than, like, slamming your head into this wall that is there for you, but it’s not there permanently.
And so I would say to both those people, it does require that you need to be very honest with yourself and honest about, what are the obstacles for you? And thinking about alternative paths, it’s the hardest thing for people to do as applicants, but the better you get at envisioning that there’s more than one path to success and to having a successful legal career, I think the better off you will be, not just as an applicant, but when you actually get out and start practicing, because a legal career is the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing. There’s so many different paths, and it requires you to do a lot of changing and pivoting. And I didn’t think this is what I would be doing when I went to law school. So things can happen in a good way, right? But be open to alternate paths and alternate timelines.
Nathan: Certainly, in the space of this podcast, it’s hard to offer an opinion about someone who has identified this as their future, as their goal, and to say, “Well, here’s some things you should consider to not follow that goal. This is why you shouldn’t do that.” That’s a hard question for sure. But I think using the resources around you, talking to the admissions offices, talking to people about your application, being ruthless, as Kristen said, about evaluating your materials, but also about evaluating what your plan is with the future. Why is that the goal? Why is that where you want to take your life overall? It’s not just a three-year commitment. It’s a lifelong commitment to the education and to being a lawyer.
Anna: The only additional thing that I will add is that, if the primary thing that has you thinking, “Maybe I shouldn’t reapply, maybe I’m not meant to be a lawyer,” is the decisions you received and interpreting those decisions as these gatekeepers to the legal profession telling you, “You aren’t supposed to be a lawyer, you aren’t going to be a good lawyer,” that’s not what it means. You can go and search for podcasts and search for videos and hear tons of admissions deans at top law schools, at wonderful law schools, at law schools all the way down the line, saying, “We have to deny people every single year who we think would be amazing students here, who we think would be fantastic lawyers.” It does not mean that these people think you’re not going to be a good lawyer or a great law student, the fact that you don’t end up with an admission there. So that’s the only thing that I will add.
I would like to end on a positive note. So, Kristen, you have had one cycle with Spivey Consulting, but you have many years running an admissions office. Nathan, you have also that experience, but a little farther back, and you have much more experience in the consulting realm. Can you share a reapplicant success story?
Nathan: I can. Three weeks ago, roughly two months from when I guess this podcast will drop, I spoke to someone on the phone, and they were strongly considering reapplication. And I kind of stopped them and said, “But what about this cycle?” And the next day, they were admitted to their dream school with a full-ride scholarship.
Kristen: Wow, okay.
Nathan: So it’s not exactly a reapplication success story, but it’s about, again, kind of being mindful of the current cycle, certainly, and not shuffling hope off to some other place, keeping hope alive, but also being mindful of what your application reflects.
Kristen: Yeah, so I had one of my clients this cycle, she actually was one of those people that we’re kind of talking about, where she’s a good applicant. I think she had a little bit of mismatch, and also it was a competitive cycle. And I was a little nervous when we first started working together because I was like, “She did a good job. This is a good application. And, like, her scores are not bad, her grades are good. I’m not sure that we’re going to see a lot of difference in what happens.” She did retake the LSAT last fall and did just shy of what I would say is significantly better, so she had a four-point increase. But it was like one of those examples we were talking about, where it was the right four points. So she went from just below to just above one of her top-choice schools’ median. And even with the score increase, because she had a little bit, you know, it was four points and not just one point, she was able to still stay ahead of the median when the new numbers came out, as she was submitting applications. We also refigured kind of where she applied and talked about that, and she looked at a broader range.
And she actually got a few more offers this year and better offers, but the school that was her first choice at the end of last cycle that she was waitlisted at, she’s going to this fall. And I’m really happy for her. She’s very happy. I think it was a hard decision to reapply, because she did have an opportunity to start school last year, but she’s really happy with the decision to go ahead. And I think, you know, if you know it’s right for you, that’s the most important thing, right, is feeling confident that it’s the right choice for you. So I’m happy that she’s happy, and that it all worked out well and we aren’t sitting with her on the waitlist all summer either, so I’m glad the decision got to her nice and early. She was able to decide this month.
Anna: Well, congratulations to both of those folks who probably aren’t listening to this because they don’t need to reapply again.
Nathan: Not at all.
Anna: I’ll share one, too, which is actually one of my favorite stories from my work with Spivey Consulting generally. I’ve been with Spivey Consulting for a really long time; for a big chunk of that time, I was talking to the folks who are coming into the firm as potentially wanting to work with us. And there was this one individual who just kept coming back year after year, and it was like the third year, I think—he had a really distinctive name, so I, the name just stuck out to me. I was like, haven’t you reached out to us just over and over again?
And this just kept happening. He had not applied all of these years; he had applied some of these years. It was around year six that he did end up finally working with us, and I was very curious, so at the end of the cycle, I checked in with his consultant, and I was like, “How did this person do? He’s applied a number of times. He’s been thinking about applying to law school for at least six years, probably longer than that, and has been taking steps as if he was going to actively apply to law school for at least these last six years.” And he was matriculating to Yale. So, there you go.
Sometimes it takes a long time to get there, but everybody’s on a different path. And just because you did not get into where you wanted to get into your first time applying does not mean that amazing things aren’t in your future.
Well, thank you both so much again for joining us, and thank you to all of our listeners. Feel free to subscribe if that’s something you feel like doing, or don’t if that’s something you don’t feel like doing, but either way, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everybody. Bye!
Nathan: Thank you.
Kristen: Bye!
Nathan: Bye.
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