Admissions

05 Dec 2018

This will be a slow cycle, a flat cycle, and a less competitive cycle than last year

All cycles are different – for those that have been following us for a while you will recall the term "counter-cycle" for example – but last year, the 2017/2018 cycle, was truly an outlier. We have well over 100+ years of law school admissions experience on our team, and we have never seen a year with such little waitlist movement. It caught most schools off guard too, but the simple fact of the matter is that if the schools above you are not admitting people off the waitlist, then you aren't ei

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04 Dec 2018

Why Law Schools Defer Early Decision Applicants to the Regular Decision Pool (and why it isn’t all bad)

First, a quick disclaimer (get used to writing these, future lawyers): when we say “law schools” we do not mean to speak for every single law school. There likely are a few outliers. But at the macro-level, here is what is going on. Most law school Early Decision (ED) programs don’t provide the substantial boost that applicants believe. An analogy I often use is that a Las Vegas casino wouldn’t have a blackjack table that loses money. In blackjack, if a player follows perfect betting strategy,

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01 Dec 2018

New Law School Admissions Advice YouTube Channel!

Big news — we just launched our new Spivey Consulting Group YouTube Channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_Rbmm6gSV09dUwrnlBjyQ]. On the channel, we'll be posting videos with all sorts of law school admissions advice on topics like how to choose a personal statement topic, getting off of waitlists, basics of scholarship negotiation, whether you should write a diversity statement, how to ace a law school admissions interview, and more. These videos will come from many of our consultants, fo

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12 Nov 2018

Live Admissions Q&A Nov. 19, and RSVPs for This Cycle and Next

Join us on Monday, November 19, 2018 from 8:00 – 9:30 PM EST for a Live Law School Admissions/LSAT Q&A with Mike Spivey, Karen Buttenbaum, and Derek Meeker of Spivey Consulting, and Dave Killoran and Jon Denning of PowerScore. We will be answering your questions about admissions, strategy, and the application cycle so far! Register at powerscore.com/freeseminars [http://www.powerscore.com/freeseminars/]. Also please note: if you would like to work with us for this cycle or next, RSVP now to our

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24 Oct 2018

Spooky Halloween Blog: Real Stories of Things That Creep Out Admissions Offices

For Halloween this year, we'd like to share some peculiar stories from some of the Spivey consultants' days as admissions officers at top schools such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Michigan, Duke, and many more. If you want to avoid spooking the person making a decision on your file (and making a lasting bad impression), avoid these creepy tactics! Nikki Laubenstein, former Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management at Syracuse University College of Law, had a coworker who was once

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21 Oct 2018

Sample Law School Application Video

For some of these you only have 1 or two minutes. There is no need to talk about resume items, this is your chance to be yourself. There's only one you applying to law school!

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28 Sep 2018

Law School Forum Dos and Don'ts

DO: * Wear appropriate clothing. You certainly don’t have to wear a suit but don’t show up in your pajamas or club wear either. Business casual is the best option. * Speak and act in an adult, professional manner. * Use the opportunity to ask specific questions that can’t be answered by brochures or websites. Some examples:  What factors can improve an applicant’s admissions chances beyond numbers? What percentage of your students secure [employment/clerkships/public interest

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26 Sep 2018

It's early. You're early. This whole damn place is early.*

For most of you applying to law school, this time of year is a busy one. It's also when nerves start feeling frayed. Someone online was admitted to UVA. Then another to Duke. It seems like all others have left the gate and you're still stuck on rethinking almost every single word of your personal statement. Whether you're already sending in applications, waiting for your LSAT score, or in the midst of full-time test prep, one thing is certain: you have a lot of waiting ahead of you. In the past

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29 Aug 2018

What you can learn from Emory Law School's C&F instructions

A big hat tip to Emory Law School for the epically clear C&F instructions. They give reasons behind why they are asking, samples, and explicit instructions on what to do if someone told them not to disclose. Couldn’t have said this better — thanks Emory, and I hope this helps everyone demystify some of the ambiguity around C&F issues. Please do note that C&F instructions is one of the areas where school instructions vary the most, read each carefully. GUIDANCE ON BAR CHARACTER AND FITNESS REQUI

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09 Aug 2018

Class of 2021 Entry Statistics and Changes

As law schools start to round out their final classes to begin this fall, we wanted to keep track of incoming classes’ GPA/LSAT stats and look at how they changed from last year. In past years, law school discussion forums have crowdsourced this data, but since we haven’t seen a similar effort take place yet this year, we put together a spreadsheet that can be added to and kept up-to-date, we hope, from members of numerous different online law admissions discussion communities. We’re posting it

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