It's that time of year: waitlist movement time. Many first and second deposit deadlines have passed, and schools are starting the process of finalizing their entering 2019 classes. That's good news for thousands of nervous applicants who are sitting on waitlists anxiously hoping for news. Those of you who were around in the 2017-2018 cycle remember it as a summer of disappointment. The dramatic 7.9% increase in LSAT applicants in that cycle overwhelmed many schools unprepared for such drastic
Our predictions for the 2019/2020 law school admissions cycle.
Data is based on acceptance rates for the incoming class of 2018.
Registration for the June 2019 LSAT closed yesterday.
Introduction We were asked to write about choosing between a T14 school at sticker (full tuition) versus a T20 to T30 school with merit aid. The below constitutes our best stab at that, but please keep in mind that, as always, these are arbitrary cutoff points based on one flawed rankings system and not designed for you as an individual. Point being that a school ranked 18 may be much more valuable to you for any number of reasons that a school ranked 13, etc. If you want to read or watch more
This is an applicant question, and a timely one due to the recent USNWR rankings release and upcoming seat deposit deadlines. The applicant asking the question, I believe, uses “desperate” to mean, will a school that just dropped in the rankings suffer applicant pool consequences and thus need to go deeper into their own pool to admit? I will get to that a bit later in this post (and there is available data that anyone could look up by looking at schools that have dropped in the rankings in past
Thoughts on the "Varsity Blues" scandal.
This data and analysis comes from Reddit user u/HYSLawHopeful [https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/atn0g3/how_many_people_actually_go_to_the_t14_random/] , who graciously gave us permission to repost his great data on our blog. HYSLawHopeful sought out to answer the question of what percentage of law school applicants actually ended up at a T14 law school for the Class of 2021 (2017-2018 admissions cycle). Last year, there were 56,900 total CAS registrants. Note: * EA = En
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Kate Reder Sheikh, a Partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa, one of the top recruiting firms for legal hiring in the nation. Mike and Kate discuss the legal hiring market, how legal hiring may be impacted by the state of the economy in the coming months and years, what you can do to best position yourself for the employment opportunities you aspire to, and more advice and tips for law students and graduates.
Before becoming a recruiter, Kate was a litigator in San Francisco for almost a decade. She is regularly the highest performing associate recruiter at Major, Lindsey & Africa globally, and she was named a partner after 4 years with MLA, among the fastest in company history.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike interviews a current applicant (who we'll call "Barb") about her application process so far. Barb is a splitter with a 176 LSAT and a 3.1 GPA, and she's also a non-traditional applicant with 10+ years of full-time work experience after college. In this interview, we talk through her motivations for going to law school, her school list, the three different personal statement topics she's debating between, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this podcast, Mike Spivey talks about the LSAT-Flex, particularly is it relates to timelines and the pace of admissions this cycle. It is important to note that LSAT scores are higher at the top bandwidths right now than one would expect in any cycle. There are several hypotheses out there for why that is.
LSAC maintains that they will organically come down to natural levels. Spivey Consulting (and others we should note) believes that we won't maintain this pace of increase, just like every cycle, but that we are already past the point where they could come down to "natural" levels barring some extremely inorganic occurrence, and that until now law schools have been trying to figure this equation out. To LSAC's credit, they have provided law schools with data that we think should now speed up the pace of admitting for the cycle — although exactly when and at what pace that happens is still impossible to predict.
You can listen to this podcast below or via SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Please note that our reservation list for next cycle (2021-2022) is now open.
In this video, Spivey Consulting Group founder Mike Spivey answers questions from r/lawschooladmissions on strategies for splitters, international students, non-traditional applicants, reapplicants, and more.
You can also listen to the interview as a podcast on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
COVID-19 isn't going anywhere in the near future, yet only 3 law schools and only 8% of universities and colleges have announced they will be entirely remote for fall 2020.
What is the most recent update, and is there a middle ground that can be reached to decrease on-campus density so that the likelihood of cluster outbreaks is significantly reduced?
Watch below, or listen on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Spivey Consulting Partner Mike Spivey talks about the two primary things at the highest order that make applications stand out and elevate in the admissions process.