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“Mike and Karen, as the number of takers continues to drop, won’t it become MORE acceptable to drop a median point in favor of maintaining GPA? Won’t this make high scores LESS valuable? For example, if Harvard or Yale’s median is going to drop to 172, doesn’t a 173 become LESS valuable, not more? If the median drops a point, suddenly, the pool of at/above median expands, right? So, in theory, I should be rooting for medians to stay the same?” This is something we spend a good deal of time loo
A guide to the timing of applying to law school, from undergrad on.
Let’s put an end to a false piece of advice that we recently saw on the internet.
Admissions timeline for June through December of the fall you plan to apply to law school.
Learn the mistakes to avoid in your personal statement.
Remember that exhausting exercise you had to go through applying to college? It’s about to get worse.
Thoughts on law schools ranking their waitlisted applicants.
The waiting has begun.
The following is the collective advice we (Karen and I) have given on top-law-schools, without the external noise, bad jokes (mostly from Mike), etc. It is organized categorically, not by date posted. Enjoy! http://www.mediafire.com/view/ng3p9aw0dbbcc28/SpiveyQA.pdf
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a discussion with two Spivey consultants—Derek Meeker, former Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid for the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Danielle Early, former Harvard Law School Associate Director of Admissions—diving deep into the law school application addendum. This episode covers guidelines, best practices, common mistakes, and specific examples of tricky situations (including a discussion about mental health in addenda) related to addenda generally, LSAT addenda, GPA addenda, and a bit about C&F addenda (see our longer, more in-depth video on C&F linked below for more on that topic).
You can find the previous episodes in our deep dive series here:
Additionally, you can find our 35-minute video all about Character & Fitness (evaluating the seriousness of your C&F issue(s), how to decide what to disclose and what not to disclose, and advice for writing a strong addendum) here.
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Megan Carpenter, Dean of the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law, on the highlights and challenges of being a dean, the future of law school and innovation in legal education, generative artificial intelligence as it relates to both admissions and the practice of law, and her best law school admissions advice (plus, what res ipsa loquitur means).
Dean Carpenter has a distinguished reputation and was recently named one of the 20 Most Influential People in Legal Education by National Jurist. She is a prominent expert and scholar in intellectual property and technology and is the author of the book, Evolving Economies: The Role of Law in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She has been in legal academia for nearly 20 years, including 7 and a half years as a law school dean, and she is the founder and former director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M School of Law.
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with two Spivey consultants and former law school admissions deans—Derek Meeker, former Associate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid for the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Shannon Davis, former Assistant Dean for Admissions and Communications at Lewis & Clark Law School—on “Why X” essays (advice, best practices, common mistakes, misconceptions, and more). Why do law schools actually ask for these essays, and how much can they help you if done well? What are the most ideal reasons to include in a Why X essay, and what are some less-than-ideal reasons? How can you research and obtain information for a strong, differentiated Why X essay even if you don't know anyone who's attended that law school? This episode covers these topics and more.
You can find the previous episodes in our deep dive series here:
Derek and Shannon's full bios are here.
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Kyle McEntee, LSAC's Senior Director of Prelaw Engagement and the founder of Law School Transparency, centering around the newly released 2024 ABA 509 disclosures and how applicants should consider the data therein. They discuss interpreting class size changes, the ongoing rise of GPAs and grade inflation, LSAT inflation and how the highest LSAT percentiles have changed over time, the new option for law schools to obtain variances from the ABA to go test-optional (plus an explanation of what variances are and how the variance process works), the removal of the non-residents category from 509 reports and what that means for international applicants, diversity data (and how that's impacted by the non-resident recategorization), ordinal rankings (including a discussion of U.S. News and MyRank by Spivey), rising law school tuition and how law schools function financially within universities, and more—plus, what all this means for current and future applicants.
You can read our recent blog post with a breakdown of some of the new 509 data here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. A full transcript of this episode is below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a discussion with two Spivey consultants—Joe Pollak, former Associate Director of Admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, and Nathan Neely, former Director and Associate Director of Admissions at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Law and The University of Houston Law Center—all about the waitlist process. They talk about which applicants law schools waitlist and why, how law schools use their waitlists, how many people they typically put on the waitlist, the timeline of the waitlist process, what factors law schools consider when they evaluate their waitlists, strategy for getting admitted from the waitlist, common mistakes, best practice, factors that go into your chances of admission, tips for visiting a law school while you're on their waitlist, ways that the law school waitlist process has changed over the last few years, and much more.
We mentioned a few blog posts in this episode:
You can find the previous episodes in our deep dive series here:
Nathan and Joe's full bios are here.
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike gives a brief update and pep talk for current law school applicants during the 2024-2025 admissions cycle.
Mike mentions our podcast with world-renowned psychologist Dr. Guy Winch in this episode—you can listen to the full interview here: Dr. Guy Winch on Handling Rejection (& Waiting) in the Admissions and Job Search Process
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. A full transcript of this episode is below.
