Admissions

The top 10 most overly, wrongly, and (at times) annoyingly used words in law school applications

With more than 100 years of law school admissions experience between us, we have read over a hundred thousand law school essays and applications. That is an incredibly rewarding experience, but there can be times when you start to see the same words used, or used out of context, again and again. The following list of words includes some of the most overused and/or at times aggravating usage of words we see in applications. Keep in mind that not all of these words annoy every admissions officer —

GRE vs. LSAT: Answers from the Deans

The introduction of the GRE to the law school admissions process has created a great deal of questions, confusion, and theories about how it’s being used. Almost everyday we get these questions, and as with the free-for-all of advice on the internet, the reality of how it impacts the admissions process can be confounding. Because of this confusion and lack of reliable advice, we wanted to help you sort out how to think about the GRE — so we took some of the most commonly asked questions to our f

Top 50 Law School Application Opening Dates for the 2018-2019 Cycle

*Please note, schools can change these dates, and it is possible that when we called to ask them that they gave us the dates applications become available to fill out on the LSAC website rather than when applications are accepted (although we were very careful to clearly articulate what we were asking about) — but this should be highly accurate to the extent we can control it. Also please note that several schools told us that they had not yet decided on an exact date that they will be acceptin

How many law schools should you apply to?

First published October 2017; updated October 2018 With LSAT scores having recently come out, your school list may grow – for those who did better than anticipated, you may consider schools that are now a possibility; for those who didn’t get quite where you had set a goal, well, perhaps you will add a couple other safeties in your group. Either way, your list could get longer, prompting the question, how many law schools should you apply to? I’ll confess that my own strategy when applying to

Your Gap Year and the LSAT: What you need to know

Note: Since the time this blog was published, the landscape of law school admissions has developed a great deal with regards to the importance of work experience prior to law school. Check out this updated 2024 blog for more information and advice. This post was written by Tom Robinson, Spivey Consulting Group's newest Senior Consultant. Hi Everyone, I’m excited to be on the Spivey team and enjoyed working with clients in my first week with Spivey Consulting after spending my last three at Ha

How many LSAT "takes" is too many for law school?

This is a question we’ve been getting a great deal since the June LSAT and something we also bounced around the entire Spivey Consulting team in a large and lengthy group discussion. Here is how we look at it, with a brief bit of salient history. Apologies in advance for the length of this post; I’ve tried to incorporate different parts of the many inquiries we have received into this one blog. When I, and a few of my colleagues at Spivey Consulting, first started admissions in the late '90s, t

Mike Spivey's first year in admissions recruitment travel schedule

Update from the road

Some brief things I've heard from week 1 of travel that might be of interest to applicants. 1. Another WL wave is likely coming soon. That said, the general consensus is that this will be a slow summer as far as WL movement. Most schools feel "content" (precise word I keep hearing) with where they are right now. 2. The ABA ditching 503 might not be as much of a slam dunk as I (and my collegue Dave Killoran at PowerScore) have thought (see our blog on the topic [h

What lies before us...

Here is a statement that I suspect most people have not considered, or that even may seem contrary to what we are conditioned to believe: The vast majority of law school applicants don't get admitted to their dream school. It even sounds odd for me to say out loud, because I have the wonderful privilege of talking to, working with, and meeting a number of people every year who indeed get to go to their first choice. But from a 30,000 foot level, almost all applicants are below at least one med

Predicting the 2018/2019 Law School Admissions Cycle

1 — The "bump" this year looks more like an outlier than a trend, especially at the top. For starters, it has followed seven years of down cycles — so the macro trend is still down. How down? The 56,900 CAS registrations this year are almost 30,000 fewer than the high water mark in 2009-2010, and CAS was only first introduced by LSAC in 2009-2010. Additionally, when the cycle started, applications were up 17.1% and applicants were up 14.2%, and now they are down to 8.5% in applicants and 9.2%