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Spring is a tough time to motivate — especially when you are in college. Your friends are outside, or road-tripping, or basically doing anything but studying for the June LSAT… or trying to get their GPA up ever so slightly to raise the bar above a median. You, on the other-hand, need to find the darkest, deepest, windowless library corner and dig in. I’m thinking about you and want to help. Indeed, I want to help both of us. Let me explain. In two months and two days I will be running a 10K, t
Amazingly, I have heard those exact lines before. Many times. I’ve also heard thousands of times, “I way underperformed, I am doomed.” Indeed, we will hear from about 50 people in the next 2 days who think just that. There are hundreds more out there who think the same right now. For so many reasons, you can’t fail the LSAT. And because I have seen the following scenario unfold so many times, I wanted to give some facts. Not an overblown peep talk or a feel good story. Just a few basic facts.
How have law schools' LSAT medians shifted between 2010 and 2014?
An interesting (and fictional) addendum.
“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
Best of luck on the Dec 6th test.
Just a few factual words plus a link to the longer, equally true remarks.
Advice and suggestions on LSAT timing this cycle.
Advice for LSAT takers.
In this episode, Mike and one of our Spivey consultants Karen Buttenbaum (former Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School) catch up with u/lightningmcboops (who we call "Megan"), one of r/lawschoolsadmissions' regular posters from last cycle, who went through the most difficult cycle we have ever seen without receiving a single rejection. After ultimately choosing Stanford Law over Harvard, Megan matriculated to law school in fall 2021 and just completed her first semester.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike speaks with an applicant from Reddit who we'll call "Ryan Reynolds" (you know, just for fun). Ryan has a 178 LSAT and a 3.8 undergraduate GPA, and while he blanketed the top 20 law schools, he has received only waitlists and denials so far this cycle (as of February) despite having applied early on. Mike and Ryan discuss the factors that have likely contributed to this, both at the larger-scale level as far as the nature and pace of this 2021-2022 cycle, and more specifically as it pertains to his application and potential points for improvement.
After reading Ryan's applications, we are very confident that he will be receiving admits this cycle, and we will provide an update in a later episode when he does!
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike gives an update on the data for the 2021-2022 cycle as of early February. He discusses what to expect for median increases/decreases after this cycle, what's going to happen this waitlist season, what to expect for transfer admissions this year, and some early preliminary predictions for next cycle.
Note: You may notice that the data Mike references in this episode is slightly different from the numbers that LSAC publishes. This is because LSAC reports only an applicant's ultimate high score, even if they didn't achieve that score until months or even years after the date in question. As a result, LSAC data overstates prior cycle high scores, whereas we keep track of the volume data as it was on the actual corresponding date last cycle.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
One additional note on our availability for admissions consulting this year. If you are still planning to apply for the current 2021-2022 admissions cycle, and you are looking for full application services, we will only be taking package clients for one more week, ending February 16 (just reach out to us at info@spiveyconsulting.com to learn more). However, we also want to note that we very well may not recommend that you use our consulting services this year. This applies at any stage of the cycle, but especially now—we never want to take a cent of anyone's money if we don't think we can genuinely add value.
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Judson Brewer about proven, concrete strategies to manage anxiety, including how to apply them for LSAT-related test anxiety and the stress of waiting for admissions results. Dr. Jud Brewer is a New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, addiction psychiatrist, and thought leader in the field of habit change. He is the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as an associate professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the School of Public Health. He is the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare and a research affiliate at MIT. Dr. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. He is the author of “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind” and “The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits”.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Links to resources from Dr. Jud Brewer:
In this episode, Mike speaks again with "Barb," an applicant this 2021-2022 cycle with a ~177 LSAT, a ~3.3 GPA, and ten years of work experience. The last time we spoke with Barb, which was in December, she had submitted most of her applications but hadn't yet heard back from any schools, and her anxiety was mounting. She now has six admits (in addition to one waitlist, one priority hold, and three denials), and we spend this podcast talking about her thought process for each of those schools, plus discussing and giving advice on next steps, including assessing whether to pursue the waitlist, navigating scholarship negotiation and seat deposit deadlines, and deciding where to attend.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike interviews law school strategy coach Angela Vorpahl about some of the most common mistakes that 1Ls make and how to set yourself up to get great grades. Prior to starting her own firm to assist law students, Angela graduated from law school in the top 1% of her class, clerked for a federal judge, worked in biglaw, and practiced as a human rights attorney.
You can find Angela online on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and her website.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
