Admissions

15 Apr 2019

Accurate Names of Law Schools

When referring to a school, you should make sure that you are using the names that they prefer to be called rather than what you may know them as colloquially.  Also make sure that you are using the correct name – some are schools of law, some are law schools, while others are colleges of law.  You don’t want to miss such details. Here is a (likely incomplete) list of how the top 50-ish schools refer to themselves in their marketing materials: 1 - Yale Law School – YLS – Yale 2 - Stanford La

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06 Apr 2019

The Top 15 Characteristics of Applicants Who Have Admissions Success Beyond Their Numbers

1. They stay positive and engaged for the entire admissions cycle. 2. They pay attention to every little detail of their application. 3. They are genuine and write from the heart. 4. They are self-aware. 5. They are actively involved with things that are important to them outside of the application process. 6. They have a very clear reason why they are applying to law school and they can articulate verbally and in writing. 7. They are adaptable. 8. They utilize every op

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29 Mar 2019

How to choose between a higher ranked school at sticker price and a lower ranked school with a scholarship

Introduction We were asked to write about choosing between a T14 school at sticker (full tuition) versus a T20 to T30 school with merit aid. The below constitutes our best stab at that, but please keep in mind that, as always, these are arbitrary cutoff points based on one flawed rankings system and not designed for you as an individual. Point being that a school ranked 18 may be much more valuable to you for any number of reasons that a school ranked 13, etc. If you want to read or watch more

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15 Mar 2019

When a school drops in rank significantly, does that affect how "desperate" schools get?

This is an applicant question, and a timely one due to the recent USNWR rankings release and upcoming seat deposit deadlines. The applicant asking the question, I believe, uses “desperate” to mean, will a school that just dropped in the rankings suffer applicant pool consequences and thus need to go deeper into their own pool to admit? I will get to that a bit later in this post (and there is available data that anyone could look up by looking at schools that have dropped in the rankings in past

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13 Mar 2019

Spivey Consulting Group Statement on College Admissions Scandal

I am writing to address the cheating scandal in undergraduate admissions. At the start of my academic career, I taught business ethics at the University of Alabama. In that course, we spent the vast amount of time talking about different ethical imperatives: what is morally and ethically important to people and to societies and why. But at the end of the class I added one more element: we case studied companies and people who cheated. I wanted students to see that even if they possessed any ince

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24 Feb 2019

Poll: How do you feel about your admission cycle so far?

If you are currently a law school applicant for the 2018-2019 admissions cycle, please fill out the brief, one-question poll below! Overall, how do you feel about your admissions cycle so far?Very satisfied Somewhat satisfiedNot sure/neutralSomewhat disappointedVery Disappointed##

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23 Feb 2019

How Many People Actually Go to the T14?

This data and analysis comes from Reddit user u/HYSLawHopeful [https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/atn0g3/how_many_people_actually_go_to_the_t14_random/] , who graciously gave us permission to repost his great data on our blog. HYSLawHopeful sought out to answer the question of what percentage of law school applicants actually ended up at a T14 law school for the Class of 2021 (2017-2018 admissions cycle). Last year, there were 56,900 total CAS registrants. Note: * EA = En

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21 Feb 2019

Every piece of Spivey Consulting Law School Waitlist Advice

It's that time of year again — law schools are beginning to place applicants on the dreaded waitlist. Luckily, we have two helpful resources if you've been waitlisted this cycle.

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28 Jan 2019

2018/2019 Midpoint Cycle Update

We are about 50% through the cycle, and I wanted to share some observations, data, and then remaining predictions with everyone. Much of the data can be found here [https://www.lsac.org/data-research/data/current-volume-summaries-region-raceethnicity-sex-lsat-score] , and, for the first time ever, is publicly available and updated daily by LSAC. A deep-dive analysis is also done weekly by our intern on his blog weekly blog here [https://docs.google.com/document/d/14qVpQWwtDdplBXBitItcHOP5I2xWHX

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15 Dec 2018

Breaking Down the 2018 Law School Data

You can see the full data here [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sFeqvSqCJGyk9o4fYJjpW_sUq0hR7NQU-bOhUHh5eVc/edit#gid=1117512034] . LSAT median changes for the fall 2018 entering class: No Change 1 point increase 2 point increase 3+ point increase Decrease Top 14 Ranked Schools 8 (57%) 6 (42%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Top 20 Ranked Schools 10 (50%) 10 (50%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Top 100 Ranked Schools 39 (39%) 50 (50%) 5 (5%) 0 (0%) 6 (6%) Top 150 Ranked Schools 63 (41%) 68 (45%) 6 (4%) 3 (2

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