Advice

19 Jun 2018

The Top Two Traits of Leadership

If you can be good at one thing, you can be good at anything. Leadership has always fascinated me (in fact much of my doctoral program work in Higher Education Leadership was on just that) — but more precisely — people who always seem to successfully lead organizations and teams are the most intriguing, and for obvious and self-serving reasons — I'd like to emulate them. That number of "successful at whatever they do" leaders, however, gets surprisingly low very quickly. There are many people

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18 Jun 2018

Your Gap Year and the LSAT: What you need to know

Note: Since the time this blog was published, the landscape of law school admissions has developed a great deal with regards to the importance of work experience prior to law school. Check out this updated 2024 blog for more information and advice. This post was written by Tom Robinson, Spivey Consulting Group's newest Senior Consultant. Hi Everyone, I’m excited to be on the Spivey team and enjoyed working with clients in my first week with Spivey Consulting after spending my last three at Ha

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15 Jun 2018

How many LSAT "takes" is too many for law school?

This is a question we’ve been getting a great deal since the June LSAT and something we also bounced around the entire Spivey Consulting team in a large and lengthy group discussion. Here is how we look at it, with a brief bit of salient history. Apologies in advance for the length of this post; I’ve tried to incorporate different parts of the many inquiries we have received into this one blog. When I, and a few of my colleagues at Spivey Consulting, first started admissions in the late '90s, t

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06 May 2018

"Hey Spivey, you look badass today"

"The only guarantees in this life are death, taxes, and email blunders" is how the expression should be updated. We pretty much all have made said blunders and will almost be guaranteed to make them again. This happens to hundreds, if not thousands of applicants in the admissions process each year at some level, ranging from disastrous to laughable. How bad can the mistakes be? Epically bad of course — you have likely heard some from friends or online. But those aren't mine to tell. So instead,

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20 Apr 2018

Don't Make This Common Wait List Mistake

Dear Dartmouth Law Office of Admissons: My friend, Ramsay Bolton, just withdrew as an admitted student and will be matriculating to another law school. I realize this opens up a place at Dartmouth Law, and believe I would be a great fit for your incoming class. DLS has always been my top choice and, if admitted for this spot, I would immediatly deposit. Most Sincerely, Theon Greyjoy A couple of things. 1. Just about every [actually exisiting] law school will get a letter like this, and

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23 Mar 2018

SCG Consultants' Favorite Helpful Quotes for the Law School Admissions Process

Other than waiting for LSAT scores, this time of year can be one of the most frustrating and stressful points in the law school admissions cycle. Many (many) law school applicants are still waiting for decisions, and there are loads of students on waitlists throughout the country. Whether you get your inspiration from a quote written in chalk on the road during your morning hike like Shannon, have quotes pinned to your bulletin board like Nikki and Danielle, or find your motivation in other way

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21 Mar 2018

The Single Biggest Administrative Mistake Law Schools Are Making

Much has been said about the training of law students. Indeed, while it may seem like a recent discussion, this discussion on how best to prepare law students for their legal careers appears in the very first of law review articles. Should they be deeply immersed in theoretical underpinning of the law (a conscious decision made by the early law schools), enrolled in experiential apprenticeship type training (buzz words we often see today), or a combination of the two? If a combination, how shoul

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10 Mar 2018

There are no "shoulds"

By Anne Dutia, Senior Consultant at The Spivey Consulting Group When I was a prelaw advisor, and before that an admissions officer at Michigan Law School, I encountered so many students asking me what they should do to get into law school. Of course, there are certain procedures and processes applicants have to follow to be admitted to law school, but these students were looking for the right way to be a pre-law student or applicant. A lot of them were still stuck in the college application men

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13 Feb 2018

It's a tough cycle. Here's what you can do about it.

1. Do not obsesses over any one school. This cycle, probably more than any other, I have heard "I want X Law School by far — there isn't really any other school that's close." Often when I follow-up with a simple "why is that?" there isn't really a concrete answer. "For whatever reason when I think about UVa I just can't get it out of my mind," or something along those lines. We (Spivey Consulting) have already seen applicants denied by T14's and yet admitted by T3's. Point being, there are so

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12 Feb 2018

Law School Forums

Just a bit of a repeat of our last message, that the last six years we have been fortunate to receive and publish exclusive data for law school applicants. You can find us generally linking data like the below at two forums: LawSchool.Life [https://www.lawschool.life/] and the Law School Admissions Subreddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/]. But as we may not always be able to be as prompt on boards, you can also always get immediate data and rankings releases at our Twitter [http

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