Admissions

21 Jan 2018

A parable on being both an Admissions Dean and Pre-Law Advisor

By Nikki Laubenstein, Senior Consultant at The Spivey Consulting Group When my daughter was little and she asked what I did for my job, I told her that I let students into law school. To which she responded, “Oh, so you open the door for them?” I of course thought about it and said that was exactly what I did! As an assistant dean of admissions, I enjoyed that my job involved opening doors to student’s law school dreams and helping them to discover their passion for studying law. This work, how

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15 Jan 2018

Brief cycle update as of 1/15

This was from today's one-hour Spivey Consulting internal conference call where most of our admissions team shared observations from speaking with hundreds of applicants on a daily basis and admissions deans each week. Thought I'd share a bit of it and hope it helps! * Top schools are maybe seeing even bigger increases in apps, from what we're hearing * As a result, decisions are coming out much more slowly compared to past years, particularly at the top 7 or so schools * E.g. right no

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14 Jan 2018

An Actual Law School Application

Below is what a completely filled out law school applications looks like. And it is a great one — this person received multiple scholarship offers from elite schools and attended law school on a full ride. Please note that anything identifiable has obviously been changed and also note that it would be a very bad idea to copy any part of these essays and use for your own :) That said, I believe this is the first time anything like this has been posted online and we hope it can be both helpful an

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02 Jan 2018

Just What Can We Learn From LawSchoolNumbers.com?

This is a great guest blog post from Warren Buff, who took it upon himself to crunch the numbers and look at the data behind Law School Numbers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like many law school applicants, one of the first resources I found when I began my quest for admission was Law School Numbers [www.lawschoolnumbers.com] ("LSN"). I pored over their scatter charts trying to discern which schools would be open to me and what kind of LSAT

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26 Dec 2017

Law School Admissions Advice: "Is it too late?"

The easiest answer to this question is "almost never" — but obviously there are some qualifications. So let me start with a real life story and then the qualifications. A few cycle ago I got a call from someone who had taken the June LSAT and just received his score, in the upper 170s. He also had a strong LSAC computed GPA and was asking me if I thought he could get into Harvard next cycle (keeping in mind it was like roughly July 1 and Harvard clearly said on their website the application dea

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08 Dec 2017

How Competitive?

In case you haven't seen it yet, the first volume report [http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/december-2017-data/] for this (2017/2018) admissions cycle is out, and the numbers are almost categorically up. The fact that applications are up doesn't come as much as a surprise. We've had hard data on test-takers and forum attendance for a while now, and as far back as June we started having an inkling [http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/predicting-to-2017-2018-law-school-cyce/] that apps and apps at th

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01 Nov 2017

Do I need an admissions consultant?

At its best, working with an admissions consultant is a rewarding and enjoyable experience where both parties learn from one another, and where the consultancy can add a tremendous degree of value to the admissions process. The veritable admissions "bump" can occur exactly because of this teamwork and effort -- we have seen it happen hundreds of times and there is no greater professional feeling to get the phone call from an applicant who just was admitted to their dream school. Words we use in

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29 Sep 2017

Well below your dream school's LSAT? It can still happen.

This was written by a client the day after he was admitted to his dream school despite being almost double digit points below their median LSAT. Published with permission, only edits were to take thanking me out of it a few times :) You thrived academically in undergrad and now you’re hoping to do the same at one of your dream law schools. You look at their median GPA numbers and you’re above them and feel like you’re already in... but then there’s the LSAT. Maybe you just can’t master logic ga

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15 Aug 2017

Getting Admitted Below Both Medians (here's how we did it)

Keep Calm and Trust the System: Advice from a Below-Both-Medians Student Who Got Accepted to Her (T-14) Dream School Your LSAT didn’t go as well as planned, and you swear you remember your GPA in undergrad being higher than the number on your transcript. You’re below both medians, but you’ve managed to pull off a waitlist at your dream school. Congratulations! The good news is: you might have a better chance than you think of getting accepted (full disclosure I worked directly with Mike at Spiv

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02 Aug 2017

Finding Balance in Law School Admissions and Beyond

Preface The legal profession, law school, and law school admissions can be very tough on people. The following comes from a 2014 joint study conducted by the American Bar Association and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation: 33 percent drink problematically. 28 percent suffer from depression. 19 percent exhibit symptoms of anxiety. Those are just numbers, percentages to be exact, to many. But there have been a number of recent articles in the media that put a poignant and troubled face on these

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