Thursday, August 10, 2006

Applications

The single most important thing about your applications is doing them as early as possible. I believe LSAC starts accepting them around July 1st every year. That is when you should have your application done.

Most law schools work on a rolling admission cycle. They do NOT wait until all applications come in, and then decide who to accept. What they do is accept people as they come in, so if you are boarder line, they will more likely accept early on in the cycle rather than later in the year.

Applying early is very very important, it can make the difference of acceptance or rejection.

To apply go to www.lsac.org and fill out your universal application. Then when you choose a school to send that application to, you can customize it for that specific school. Pretty slick. You can also have different personal statements for different schools, in fact you can upload as many as you want. Most schools also want a resume.

A couple things about Personal statements and resumes.
Admissions committees do not want to hear about how you want to save the world, or that you want to be a lawyer because your dad is a lawyer. They want to hear why you think their school is good and why you will be an asset. This does not mean to start blabbing about yourself, and saying "I did this, I did that...." That's Bologna. No one wants to hear you talk about yourself just like in real life.

HOWEVER, sometimes, a real life story about overcoming adversity or hardship will do the trick. Or if you were underprivileged or something, they like that sometimes.

But remember to research the schools you are applying to so that you can incorporate some of that into your letter. Your personal statement is the only way admissions committees can know who you really are, and that could work to you advantage. Or maybe not :-)

For resumes, the only thing I can think of is contact the career services office at your prior school and have them help you to make you resume more professional.

1 Comments:

At 1:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would have to disagree that applying early is the single most important thing. It seems to me that the way most adcoms work is to auto accept the top, autoreject the bottom, and hold out on the rest until they have a better idea of what the pool will look like that year. If you are on the bubble, your application will be held for a while regardless of when you apply.

Some schools specifically state that they do not give preference to early applicants. That says, its never a bad idea to apply early, I just dont think its the single most important.

 

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