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How & When to Apply

How & When to Apply

When is it important to be first in line?

Let's step back inside the admissions office for a few minutes. Applications are generally printed sometime in September, and schools begin receiving completed applications around November 1. At this point the admissions officer is receiving about fifty applications a week. She can spend as much as half an hour on each file, if necessary. She also has an empty class to fill.  If your numbers are in a range that she knows she will be admitting,  she can afford to be generous with her decisions, as well as with her time.

This is especially true for the disadvantaged or diversity applicant. Your file takes more time to review, because in most cases you're asking the admissions officer to get a fuller picture of your achievement by considering your life experiences and background in relation to your grades and LSAT score.

Conversely, if your numbers are far from the school's medians, early won't help.  Many an applicant applies before Thanksgiving and hears in May.  So why do schools always say apply early?  because their view of admissions differs from yours.  Click here for a view from the admissions office.  They see that 2/3 of their class was admitted early, while I see that only 1/5 of all applicants were in the range that gets admitted early.  

This year it may be unimportant to apply early, as the five-year increase in applications has begun to reverse.  When apps are decreasing, there are often empty seats late in the game.  For an explanation of the trends in application and their effect on you, the applicant, click here.  However, it is undeniably true that the later you apply, the longer it takes for your file to complete.

How Soon Will My File Be Reviewed ?

If your file is mailed by November 1, it will probably be complete by Thanksgiving. Even with exams and winter break, you may hear before the year is out. This can be very encouraging, relieving the stress of the long winter while you are still waiting to hear from a number of schools. If you mail your file over Thanksgiving, it may not be complete before winter break, and you will probably not hear until early February.  From that point on, the time delay is increased by the backlog at Law Services and in the admissions office.  

For schools that have February or March deadlines, a student who begins the process after December 1 is at a disadvantage. You'll be trying to get professors to write recommendations during finals or over winter break, when faculty are hard to reach. You may not receive all the applications you request in time to complete them. If you haven't taken the LSAT yet, you will be at a further disadvantage; many schools with February deadlines will not accept a February LSAT score (because the score won't be available until well after their deadline). And the time needed to prepare the applications and all the supplemental documents may catch up with you. You'll wind up choosing between a lot of sloppy apps or a few good ones.

Early Decision?

I spend a lot of time saying "early decision is a fake."  Oh, most schools who advertise them really do admit some people from them.  (Most?  Not all?  How about, "all who didn't lose their dean of admissions suddenly"?)  But they tend to admit presumptive admits.  Presumptive admits get admitted as easily in December as they do in October; the law schools don't worry about running out of seats until January.  The rest of you get postponed until March.  

But they promised you a decision?  Oh yes, you'll get one.  The decision will be "We've decided to postpone..."  Unfair?  Or just thinking like a lawyer?  I have no opinion on the fairness of it; I only tell you the rules.  So don't worry about early decision unless you're sure you want to go to that school, and need to settle in soon so your kids can start school, spouse can find a new job, etc.

There has been so much noise about early decision programs in the last few years that I made it one of my interview questions in 2001. The big news is that nothing's really different.  Only 24 schools out of 152 reported having an early decision program, and of that number, only 9 are binding.  The rest are what undergrad schools call "early action:"  if you apply early, you'll hear early.  That makes a lot of sense in the undergrad game, where most schools don't have rolling admissions, but most law schools do roll, so early action looks a lot like everyone else. On the other hand, schools are filling up early, and it is helpful to have a good file complete early.  

So what am I saying here?  I'm saying that if your file is complete  before December 1, your chance of being admitted is about exactly the same whether or not you checked a little box labeled "early decision."  The early date is helpful; the little box isn't.  

For a more in-depth look at early action and early decision programs, as well as for a cogent argument that they help schools and hurt applicants, especially less wealthy applicants, see the Atlantic Monthly, September '01.  And thank you to Faye Deal at Stanford for telling me about the article.  

"Is December Too Late?"

Why doesn't anyone ever give a simple answer to this simple question?  

The reason we rely on platitudes is that a comprehensive answer is incredibly complicated, and in the end amounts to nothing more than "I don't know."  

The first thing we can tell you, most definitely, is that fewer than half of all apps are submitted by December 1. Application volumes reach the midpoint after January 1:

But that's a national picture; it doesn't tell you what's happening at one particular school.  (For a view of when apps are received at one school and how long it takes to process them, click here.)

The next thing we can tell you definitely is that minority applications come in later, and thus decisions are made later.  African Americans, the largest minority group applying, reach 10% of the applicant pool in late March. Back in January they were only 8%. In January, all Latinos combined totaled 6% of the applicant pool; by mid-March they comprise 8%.

One of the most troublesome results of this trend toward late applications is that minorities get in at a lower ratio simply because there are fewer seats left by the time they apply.

Why do minorities apply late?  

There are a number of possible reasons:

• Poor counseling.  They aren't told to prepare for the LSAT in their junior year, and start in the fall of their senior year instead.
• Poor Finances.  Unaware of the high cost of applying, many minorities delay sending application until they save up the money.  
• Poor Planning. Many minorities (and others who attend state schools) have trouble meeting the rigid requirements for their major. They wind up taking a course overload in their senior year, and are trying to write essays and complete apps while studying for six courses.

Wait a Year!

What should you do if you recognize yourself in the descriptions above?  Wait a year.  Write your essays, choose your schools, and take the LSAT after your senior year, and apply for the following year.  It's better to be well prepared next year than poorly prepared now.  

Sometimes Late is Better

File management at schools that have rolling admissions (as most do) is done by comparing the number of applications received last year, by week and by index number, to the number received this year.  As these numbers vacillate, percentages admitted will be adjusted up and down to compensate.  

Of course, most apps are received in the last month before a school's deadline, so most adjustments are made at the last minute.  And most schools create a hold category to offset interim fluctuations.  But no one really knows whether your application will have a better chance of being accepted early or later until after the school's deadline.  

So why does everyone always say "apply early"?  Because your app will get a better review early.   There will be more time to look at your app in the early stages, because there are so many fewer apps to review.  This is especially true if you have any weaknesses in your file or any diversity you need them to evaluate.  In December, an admissions officer may see an arrest record or a poor semester and ask. "What's going on here?"  In February, (s)he may look at the same file and simply toss it in the rejection stack, or, if you're lucky, the hold stack.

So get your file as perfect as you can as early as you can, then hope for declining apps after you apply.

Predicting the Future

"Doesn't the admissions officer, or Law Services, or someone, know whether apps are increasing or decreasing?"

I used to think so, but 1998 proved me wrong.  The traditional indicators (number of LSAT takers and number of Law Forum attendees) were down.  Number of applicants was down at most top schools through January 1.  But apps dramatically increased at most top 25 schools after January 1.  As far as I can tell, this is because of the skewing in the LSAT curve.

Moreover, apps increased by only 1% overall, but Law Services reports that 8 schools had apps decrease by more than 20%, while 9 had apps increase by that amount.  (Sorry, they don't publish which schools.) So Forum attendance and test takers may predict overall trends, but they're useless for predicting what's happening at a particular school.

"Isn't there any way to predict more accurately?"

There is theoretically, but not actually.  If Law Services were to publish the number of people actually receiving each LSAT score, instead of publishing the percentile accorded that score in the previous three years, schools would at least know how many competitive applications to expect.  So far, however, Law Services isn't providing this information, so most admissions officers have to do exactly what we do -- wait and see what happens.

So my bottom line advice is:  early is better than late, but polished is better than slipshod.  

Bad and Good Advice

If a prelaw advisor suggests that you take a later LSAT instead of an earlier one when there is no particular reason to wait, you're getting bad advice.  If (s)he tells you to send your file in early without an LSAT score, or to rush your essays, you're getting bad advice.  And if you can't get an appointment with a prelaw advisor until your senior year, you're getting bad advice.

I sometimes begin meeting with clients or prospective clients as early as their first year of college to help them plan their future.  Course selection now can make a difference in what a law school will think of you three years down the road.  People planning a semester or year abroad in their futures should consider the implications on the law school application process.  Some components of the file, especially the LSAT,. may be better taken before leaving than after returning.

In all cases, advice should be made available and publicized by the second semester of your junior year.  You should be thinking about the LSAT, investigating prep courses, and planning who will write your recommendations now.  If you wait until your senior year to begin, it is virtually impossible to meet the dual goals of early and polished applications.