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Often college students will approach us to ask what they should be doing with their summers if they’re interested in attending law school. If you’re currently in college and want to know how to make the best use of your summers in preparation for attending law school, think about the following.
Yesterday, the ABA publicly released an April 25 memo recommending the elimination of the standardized test requirement for admission to law school.
If you are seriously considering transferring, or are a pre-1L and disappointed with your admission results and think you might transfer after your 1L year, then take a few minutes to review this. I hope it will help you decide what to do!
Reapplying isn’t right for everyone. Here are some observations about successful reapplicants that may help you decide if it’s the right path for you.
As we head into the thick of decision season, law school admissions offices are beginning to send out the inevitable rejection waves. Rejection hurts, but it is also a fundamental human experience, and we all feel its effects sometimes.
Since you are all going to be lawyers soon, let me start by saying something you’ll be saying for the rest of your lives: it depends. But, that isn’t very helpful...
We wanted to provide a template for how to cold email someone, especially when there is an "ask" involved. You don't see many of these online, so here is one exchange below.
Anxiety has no evolutionary benefit, but fear does. Every animal we know of not only has fear, but has a fight, flight, or freeze response to it.
Most applicants understand the basics of what it means to be waitlisted, but in this blog, we wanted to give a quick look at why and how law schools use their waitlists from an insider perspective, then outline the differences between a waitlist and a "hold" or a "hold tight email."
In this podcast, Mike Spivey explains how the scholarship negotiation process works from the law school's perspective and gives some advice and tips for how to strategically approach increasing your merit aid offers.
You can listen to this podcast below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, or RadioPublic.
You may also notice our new name and new look — thanks to u/lightningmcboops from r/lawschooladmissions for the name suggestion, and thank you all for listening to the first official episode of the Status Check with Spivey!
In this podcast, Mike Spivey speaks with Dr. Gabor Maté, one of the world’s leading experts on physical and mental health and author of four best-selling books including "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" and "When the Body Says No." Dr. Maté shares his thoughts and advice on self-doubt, stress, anxiety, and addiction, and offers the following insight for prospective law students (among others):
"You're going to look at all your confident classmates, and you're going to go in there with all manner of self-doubt. You're making the big mistake of comparing their outside with your inside. You have no idea what their inside is like. And believe me, you're not the only one."
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of the Status Check podcast, Mike interviews Reddit user lightningmcboops (who for the purposes of this podcast we're calling "Megan") from the law school admissions subreddit. Megan applied with a 3.9x GPA and a 172 LSAT and received zero rejections despite applying in the most difficult law school admissions cycle we've ever seen, including straight admits from the majority of the T14, including Stanford. Mike and Megan walk through her application process and each of her application components, then discuss some takeaways and advice for future applicants.
You can listen to this podcast below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, or RadioPublic.
In this podcast, Mike Spivey has the opportunity to interview Dr. Kristin Neff, a leading researcher and advocate in the field of self-compassion, creator of the self-compassion scales, and author of two books, "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself," and her upcoming book, "Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive," which will be released on June 15, 2021.
Mike and Dr. Neff discuss the power of self-compassion for motivation and achievement, and the research showing that, in a testing scenario, a boost to self-compassion proves a stronger motivator than a boost to self-esteem (and a far stronger motivator than self-criticism).
"There's so much pressure to achieve, to prove yourself," Dr. Neff says. "And I think people fall into the illusion of thinking, 'I need to be hard on myself, I need to drive myself so that I can get ahead in life,' where in fact, what the research shows is you're more likely to get ahead if you support yourself."
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
A very brief podcast on law schools that are over-committed on their seat deposits, and Mike's thoughts on how waitlist movement might go this summer as a result.
You can listen and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this podcast, Mike and Spivey Consulting COO Anna Hicks have a discussion with a current law student, Amanda Bello, who ended her 1L year at Cornell Law in the top 10% of her class, transferred to Harvard Law, earned exceptionally strong grades at Harvard, and is now going into her second summer with the big law firm Gibson Dunn (check out our interview with Gibson Dunn partner Jeff Chapman here).
Also referenced in this podcast are three interviews we have done with renowned psychologists and wellness advocates Dr. Guy Winch (on handling rejection and waiting), Dr. Gabor Maté (on self-esteem, doubt, anxiety and addiction), and Dr. Kristin Neff (on self-compassion and self-esteem and motivation for test-taking).
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
