Admissions

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%

Law Schools Ranked by Acceptance Rate

1 Yale University (CT) — 8% 2 Stanford University (CA) — 10% 3 Harvard University (MA) — 16% 4 University of Pennsylvania — 18% 5 University of Virginia — 18% 6 Columbia University (NY) — 20% 7 University of Chicago (IL) — 21% 8 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor — 22% 9 Cornell University (NY) — 22% 10 University of California--Berkeley — 23% 11 Duke University (NC) — 23% 12 Northwestern University (Pritzker) (IL) — 24% 13 University of Southern California (Gould) — 24% 14 University of Texas--A

The Single Biggest Administrative Mistake Law Schools Are Making

Much has been said about the training of law students. Indeed, while it may seem like a recent discussion, this discussion on how best to prepare law students for their legal careers appears in the very first of law review articles. Should they be deeply immersed in theoretical underpinning of the law (a conscious decision made by the early law schools), enrolled in experiential apprenticeship type training (buzz words we often see today), or a combination of the two? If a combination, how shoul

There are no "shoulds"

By Anne Dutia, Senior Consultant at The Spivey Consulting Group When I was a prelaw advisor, and before that an admissions officer at Michigan Law School, I encountered so many students asking me what they should do to get into law school. Of course, there are certain procedures and processes applicants have to follow to be admitted to law school, but these students were looking for the right way to be a pre-law student or applicant. A lot of them were still stuck in the college application men

It's a tough cycle. Here's what you can do about it.

1. Do not obsesses over any one school. This cycle, probably more than any other, I have heard "I want X Law School by far — there isn't really any other school that's close." Often when I follow-up with a simple "why is that?" there isn't really a concrete answer. "For whatever reason when I think about UVa I just can't get it out of my mind," or something along those lines. We (Spivey Consulting) have already seen applicants denied by T14's and yet admitted by T3's. Point being, there are so

The Spivey Consulting Group AMA Admissions Challenge

A parable on being both an Admissions Dean and Pre-Law Advisor

By Nikki Laubenstein, Senior Consultant at The Spivey Consulting Group When my daughter was little and she asked what I did for my job, I told her that I let students into law school. To which she responded, “Oh, so you open the door for them?” I of course thought about it and said that was exactly what I did! As an assistant dean of admissions, I enjoyed that my job involved opening doors to student’s law school dreams and helping them to discover their passion for studying law. This work, how

Brief cycle update as of 1/15

This was from today's one-hour Spivey Consulting internal conference call where most of our admissions team shared observations from speaking with hundreds of applicants on a daily basis and admissions deans each week. Thought I'd share a bit of it and hope it helps! * Top schools are maybe seeing even bigger increases in apps, from what we're hearing * As a result, decisions are coming out much more slowly compared to past years, particularly at the top 7 or so schools * E.g. right no