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Admissions officers are settling into a winter of reading, and the file review process is really just beginning to get into full swing for most of them. So when will decisions be coming out?
This week, the American Bar Association published this year's required 509 disclosures—standardized data on admissions, enrollment, scholarships, faculty, and more. We took a look at that data, and here are our early takeaways.
There is often a shroud of mystery among applicants once they submit their applications. As former admissions officers, we'll walk you through how the process tends to work.
A list of how the top 50-ish schools refer to themselves in their marketing materials.
As we have podcasted on before, misinformation in the law school admissions process comes from all directions, and law school admissions consulting firms claiming to be experts (with little or no real admissions experience) are a growing source.
When will law school applications open for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle? Here's the full list.
In this post, we hope to help you think through the mountain of information and choices out there so that you can set yourself up for a successful application cycle.
There are thousands of ways to differentiate yourself in law school admissions—here's a list of some of those ways.
We have received many questions about law schools' new life experience/perspective essays (formerly categorized as diversity statements). Here are our answers to the most common ones.
You can find Part 1 of this episode here.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike and Dave answer more questions from the Law School Admissions Reddit! Part 2 discusses personal statements topics, reapplying, letters of recommendation, the relative importance of "softs" generally, Why X essays, work experience vs. going "K-JD," how law schools look at leaves of absence during college, and undergraduate record addenda.
Relevant links from this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
** A note on our personal statement examples: Probably not every personal statement in this post will be your personal taste, and that is perfectly fine! However, they are all essays that contributed toward the applicant achieving great results, i.e. multiple acceptances where they were below both medians or substantially below the LSAT median. The examples come from our team of consultants with collectively over 250 years of experience reading law school applications and making decisions on files, and they were each deeply authentic and genuine for the applicants who wrote them (in addition to fitting well within the greater context of their applications). Ultimately, those are the personal statements that are the most positively differentiated—those written sincerely from the heart—so certainly don't try to write something like one of these essays if it's not your cup of tea. We hope they are helpful examples nonetheless.
In this episode, Mike interviews best-selling author and storyteller Mishka Shubaly about personal creative writing. Mishka holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and teaches writing at the Yale Writer's Conference. You can find his new book, The Long Run & Other True Stories, here.
If you're looking for writing advice specifically pertaining to law school applications and personal statements, listen to our podcast on The Genre of Application Essay Writing here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Content Warning: This interview includes content related to suicide and the guest's experience with a school shooting.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike speaks with long-time Spivey consultant and former Penn Law Admissions Dean Derek Meeker about tackling the genre of law school applications.
Crafting a well-written essay is just one part of the equation — necessary but not sufficient for a strong application — and in this interview, Derek takes lessons from his graduate-level writing coursework, combined with his extensive experience in admissions decision-making, to offer valuable insights into how you can connect the dots in your law school application within the full context of your experiences, background, and personality.
Mike and Derek mention a few different examples and resources in this episode, including our blog post of example personal statements, Derek's video on choosing a personal statement topic, our interview with Michigan Law's Dean of Admissions Sarah Zearfoss, an example of a Georgetown video from one of our former clients, and an essay from Mike titled Failure is a Liar. Also check out our recent podcast with Mishka Shubaly.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike and Dave answer questions from the Law School Admissions Reddit. This will be a series of two episodes, with Part 2 coming out next week! Part 1 covers predictions for the upcoming 2022-2023 law school admissions cycle, discussion about the LSAT and GPAs, application timing, and more. Part 2 will cover more of the "soft factors" of a law school application, including personal statements.
Relevant links from this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Natalie Blazer, who currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at the University of Virginia School of Law. Dean Blazer talks about her path to law school and admissions, the differences and similarities between the admissions operations at the various law schools where she has worked (including Columbia and Georgetown), her thoughts and insights into the application process at UVA (including the new application question they added this year, on resilience), and both her biggest frustrations and her favorite parts of working as a Dean of Admissions.
Dean Blazer's new podcast, Admissible, launched earlier this month—you can listen here!
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Bill Eddy, an award-winning mediator, attorney, author, and therapist who developed "high conflict personality theory" and is an expert in dealing with high conflict people in the practice of law. Bill is the Co-Founder and CIO of the High Conflict Institute and faculty at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
