It's hard, given how much of your law school application rides on your LSAT/GPA combo, to see the forest for the trees. Many students with excellent LSAT scores and GPAs are lulled into a false sense of confidence about their application: I already have an awesome profile. I can just wing the rest of this application stuff, and I'll be fine. Sure, you'll be fine with some schools, but not with all--and if you're looking to get into an elite institution (as all of you should), you won't be fine at all.Pretend you're a law school AdCom. Whom would you rather admit to your school: Someone … [Read more...]
GPA Addenda Effectiveness Against the T14
We're now entering application season, and one question that often comes up is at this time of year is: should I submit an addendum to explain my low GPA or LSAT score? And if so, how long should it be? Our resident law school admissions expert, Dave Killoran, talks with a student about her addendum, and provides some handy rules for putting together an explanation. Here's a quick preview. Make sure to check out the full thread to read the entire explanation Dave provided to this student: The Forum posts selected for this series are chosen because they have a universal quality to … [Read more...]
I Messed Up One Semester… Can I Still Get into Law School?
We get a lot of questions from students on our forum and in our law school admissions counseling programs. Many of these questions sound something like this. My freshman year of college I had a 3.87 GPA. Then, my first semester of sophomore year, my grades suffered and I ended up with a 2.73 for the semester. If I were to achieve great grades (straight As) for the rest of my undergraduate career, would I still have a shot at a decent law school? This is a question many, many students ask themselves every year. Students who have 4.0s are few and far between, despite what you may tell yourself … [Read more...]
The LSAT is Unfair
The LSAT is a great test in many ways, but some students complain that the test is not entirely fair, and they do have some valid points:The LSAT is not like other tests. There are a lot of test takers who are very smart—and have the grades and plenty of other evidence to prove it—who nonetheless find the LSAT quite a bit more challenging than expected. It can be a very frustrating experience, even for good students (who also often tend to be particularly self-critical). The LSAT tests a set of skills that may not necessarily have been fully developed in high school or college, even by … [Read more...]
The Value of Work Experience to a Law School
As most law school applicants know, a student’s LSAT score and GPA are generally the most important factors in most law school admissions decisions. Historically, post-college work experience has not been emphasized, and students often go directly from college into law school. Over the past few years, however, many top law schools have increasingly begun to focus on work experience when making admissions decisions.Dean Martha Minow has helped to bring about such a shift at Harvard Law School: Back in 2009, about 40% of Harvard’s incoming law students were coming into the law school … [Read more...]
What’s the Deal with Addenda?
There are several things that can cause students to freak out when applying to law school. Some students worry about the relative “prestige” of their undergraduate institution and how schools will view that during the admissions process. Some have concerns about their choice of major, letters of recommendation, or that one C they got freshman year. Then there are the students that took the test cold and worry about what that looks like on their application. P.S. don’t take the LSAT cold. The list goes on endlessly.For most students, the fears are unfounded. They are simply a by-product of … [Read more...]
What Are Splitters, Reverse Splitters, and Super Splitters?
If you are applying to law school, you will come across an unusual and somewhat confusing term: Splitter. And no, it has nothing to do with baseball pitches, cutting trees, or a certain San Antonio Spurs/Philadelphia 76ers basketball player. A "splitter" is someone who has LSAT and GPA numbers that are split between high and low marks. Often, the medians for a law school play a role in determining if one is truly a splitter. While this concept is relatively easy to follow, over time several variations have cropped up, so let's look at each: Traditional Splitter (or, Just "Splitter") This … [Read more...]