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Recent NewsLast Updated July 22
April 1, 2008 -- We've turned 21.21 is a difficult age. Along with the privileges of adulthood come the responsibilities. And one of those responsibilities is noticing that we're in the 21st Century.Eleven years ago I had good reasons for keeping the web page as plain and clean as I could. Bandwidth marked a serious division between the more and less privileged, as well as between metropolitan and rural (or even merely urban). On a dial-up line with a 14.4k baud rate, a typical image from today's digital cameras would take a minute or more to download. With the widespread availability of DSL and cable, that's just not true any more. So I bought some books (mostly ones with "For Dummies" in the title), ordered some software, and set about trying learn how to make the appearance and functionality of deloggio.com as worthy of the 21st century as the content is. What we hope for is:
Of course, deciding this is easy and doing it isn't. But over the course of this year, we plan to upgrade format as well as content. Did You Notice?The first change is already in place. We've gently nudged our logo out of the way to make room for more important information. We've also added a calendar, so you can see at a glance when we've updated. Before next year, there should be a direct link from the calendar to each update. We've also given our success stories a whole new look. Please take a peek, and let us know what you think of it. As with any revision, I'm sure we missed a few things. If you find any problems, please let me know. Forum ScheduleIn 2008. September is Forum month. There will be four events between September 12 and September 29. The DC Forum is earlier, and Chicago Forum is later, but September is when I'll meet my clients. NOTE that there will be no west coast forums this fall; the Feb. Forums that just passed were this year's west coast events.
Nonetheless, we'll still insist on meeting every client before completing applications. Too many things can be overlooked if I don't know you personally. April 1 -- They Know ...
After all, they've been admitting students for numberless years. The system hasn't changed in at least the 30 years that I've been a part of it. So why do you think that telling them you "need to know now" will have any effect? I once had a client who actually called the law school and said, "I absolutely must know by this weekend." The law school was very obliging; they sent her rejection letter the next day. There's no way to rush them to admitting you; any attempt will only reduce your chance of admission. If you really cannot stand the emotional strain of waiting, or the financial strain of paying multiple deposits, make your life and theirs easier by withdrawing your name from the applicant pool. Otherwise, learn to wait with a little bit of dignity and grace. USNews RankingsOnce again, I refuse to engage in squabbles about whether Stanford deserves to be tied with Harvard or whether one should be rated higher than the other. I'm happy for my friend Janice that Penn State has risen from 91st to 77th in the rankings. I'm unhappy that Temple (my alma mater) is ranked second in trial advocacy instead of first. I'm surprised that Alabama is ranked so high and that Case Western is ranked so low. But I don't think any of it matters a single iota. I'm far more concerned that I can find no rationale to movements in the rankings than I am about the ranking of any particular school. Here, look: Yeshiva (Cardozo) is ranked 55th -- 58th, and Pepperdine is ranked 59. Pepperdine is noticeably lower in virtually every category of the ranking. It has a lower academic reputation, which is 25% of the total score. It has seriously lower LSAT range and selectivity rate, and a slightly lower student faculty ratio patents employment rates. With all those serious differences, it's only one place lower. Granted, it has a slightly higher lawyer reputation, but that number is only 15% of the total score. Brooklyn Law school is ranked 63rd. It is ranked higher than Pepperdine in academic reputation, LSAT score, selectivity rate, percent employed, and bar pass rate. I therefore reiterate that USNews data can be very informative, but USNews rankings aren't worth the paper they're printed on (especially with today's price of paper). April 15 -- New Services, New LookAs promised, we've completely revised the fees and services section of our web page. Along with the the colorful new look, we've added important information about our services. We've also streamlined the section describing our admissions service -- take a look. As we continue upgrading, you'll be able to tell by the light blue sidebar and purple links which sections have been revised. And of course, we'll mention it to you here. The Waiting GameYou can't rush them; any effort to do so will only antagonize them. And you can't keep calling me; I can't rush them either, and sooner or later you'll antagonize me. But you have to do something. So here's our list of Ten Things to Do While Waiting to Hear from Law SchoolsMay 1-- Making ChoicesI once had a client call me just before a deposit deadline. He said, "Loretta, I'm holding the check; help me figure out where I'm sending it." It's that time of year, and many of you are trying to make that crucial decision. To make matters more difficult, you haven't heard from all your schools and you haven't visited all the ones who've admitted you.
Those unfinished schools are trying to protect themselves
and you from a mess.
When fewer applicants apply to more schools, it stands to reason that some schools will wind up with empty seats -- but there's no way to tell which ones. Columbia's full; NYU's full. Georgetown's full; Penn's full. But they all know that vast numbers of applicants applied to all four schools. Which one will they choose? Because in the end, they can only choose one. Meanwhile, Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard aren't finished. How many will they pull from each school? There's just no way to know this early in the year. If a school admits too few people, they can always go to their wait list. If they pull too many, YOU have a problem. Overcrowded classrooms and libraries, can be irksome, when you paid $40,000 or more for that seat, you at least want to be able to sit! So schools wait for seat deposits and Overlap Reports, and hope they haven't already admitted too many or wait listed too few.
We can't make the schools finish their decision process any faster,
but we can make your decision process a little easier.
Still Nowhere Near FinishedOut of the 215 applications submitted by my clients collectively, only 110 have final decisions from the law school -- 60 offers of admission, 50 rejections. Another 70 are in a non-decision place -- 40 on a hold or wait list, and 30 who withdrew without hearing. And 35 still have not heard at all! Granted, many of them applied late, but not all; I have one client waiting to hear from NYU who applied before Christmas. Why are they not finished?Data released by LSAC shows that 40% of the February LSAT takers -- over 10,000 people -- were taking the test for a second (or third, or...) time. And another 14,000 took the test for the first time in February. Granted that those 14,000 new test takers were probably not applying to top schools (which often do not accept the February LSAT), but many of those 10,000 retakers were looking for a new higher number. If you weren't finished, how can the schools be? Soon!A number of top schools have seat deposit deadlines today. They'll be checking the mail through Monday or Tuesday, in case something straggles in. Then they'll decide whether to admit a few more people. So look for more wait list action in the next week or two. But don't get your hopes up too high; at this stage, more schools drop people from the wait list than admit them. May 15 -- Practically FinishedNot entirely, of course.
Amanda is reading books on Chicago, preparing to attend Northwestern. Ashley withdrew from all her wait lists; she will be heading to Cornell. Carlos J. will head off to CLEO, then Wisconsin, unless another school makes him an offer he can't refuse. Carlos R. will join him in Wisconsin, unless a waitlist offer comes along. Chao has a seat at Iowa, but we're holding our breaths about another few schools. Charmaine will attend #1 choice Florida A & M [FAMU], withdrawing all her other apps. Christina has a seat at Case Western, and her name's on a few wait lists. Corlandos has chosen Michigan thus far, but he still hasn't heard from all his schools. Don will attend American in the evening and let the patent office [USPTO} pick up the tab. Estina is packing up to attend Cleveland State's LCOP program. Gary is also heading for Cleveland State, but he'll be spending his summer at CLEO first, while hoping that the wait list gods will bless him. J . [who prefers not to be named] is still choosing: Vanderbilt? Berkeley, or Tulane? Juan will attend Pittsburgh unless some wait list magic happens. Marcia is staying in Houston for reasons of the heart [a/k/a/ George]; she's admitted to South Texas,. and is very happy with that result. Nadia got off to a quick start with Georgetown. I don't know if she got other offers, since we didn't stay in touch. Neerav got a shockingly happy phone call from U. Texas, and life doesn't get much better for a Houston guy. Nic is finishing his first semester's exams at South Texas as I write this. Rocquael chose Drexel over both Northeastern and Lewis and Clark, proving once again that money talks. Walton got boxed in by military regulations that excluded many of the schools to which he'd applied. Indiana at Indianapolis is the school that satisfied him, wife Elaine, and the USAF. To this wonderful group with whom I've spent my last year, as well as the 40,000 other people who were admitted to law school in 2008:
June 3 -- Hard ChoicesAs the admissions year ends, the hardest choices face everyone. Admissions officers are looking for a few more people to round out the class from among hundreds. Residents, women, theology majors, working mothers, can all help to balance a class. High GPAs and LSAT scores can bolster a USNews ranking. While the admissions staff chooses that last lucky person, you too are making a final choice. What will make the decision for you? USNews ranking? Location? Intellectual Property program? Or finances?
Without knowing which assumptions have been made, you have no idea whether the budget you're looking at is realistic for you. When two law schools in the same city allocate vastly different living amounts, how can you know which one is realistic? In 2008, for instance, UCLA allocated less than $20,000, while USC allocated more than $23,000. The two schools are only miles apart, and the demographics of the student body are very similar. Which amount is accurate? There's no way to know. Accurate budgeting is even more important for applicants with limited personal resources. If UCLA's budget is too low, you'll only be able to borrow $20,000; where will you find an extra $3000 at the last minute? These issues affect a great many applicants, including a number of my clients; in order to help them out, I'll research living budgets at various law schools this fall, and will share my information with you here. In the meantime, ask questions, as you would with anything else that matters to you. The New MathComparing scholarships and grants from one school to another can be tricky.
In order to realistically compare offers from different law schools, you should make an effort to determine what your debt load will be after three years; otherwise, you're comparing apples and oranges. You should call any law school that you are considering to determine the answers to these questions; the likelihood of your grant's renewing or of your establishing residency is something the admissions office should be prepared to tell you. June 11 -- Time to Let GoIf you're holding seats at more than one law school, it's officially time to make your decision. Second seat deposits are due, and many law schools are including warnings and ultimatums in their notices. Cornell's letter says: At this point in the admission process, you should have only one outstanding commitment to a law school. To the extent you have more, now is the time to make your choice. Not having done so means that applicants on waiting lists (probably even some of your friends) are being materially harmed by your delay. Please understand that this does not mean you need to withdraw from waiting lists, it means you need to withdraw from all but one school that has offered you admission. Both New York Law School and the University of Texas have adopted similar wording, and I'm sure a number of others have as well. Unfair?Absolutely not! How often did you gripe that you hadn't heard from them yet, and you needed to make decisions? Now they need to make decisions, and your friends need the extra seats you're holding on to. More importantly, with the Overlap Report of June 15 (referred to in Cornell's letter above) the law schools will be given the power to make the decision for you. Someone's going to make a decision, and you'll be happier if that person is you. Wait List TimeIn the next two weeks we should see some movement from wait lists as well. If you've moved recently, make sure the law schools have your current address, phone number, and email. June 17 -- Two More Weeks ...Or Maybe Three.One law school has very kindly given its wait-listed applicants a detailed explanation of the process:
As you can see, it will be at least a week after June 26 before any law school has a reasonable sense of who's going where. Then the Independence Day holiday will stretch the waiting a bit more. Look for the dust to start settling around July 10. July 4 -- I Blew It!On June 17 I posted that letter and said, "No wait list action for two weeks." The electrons didn't even have time to dry before I was proved wrong. Phone calls and emails were buzzing around by June 20. But if I had to be wrong, this was a great way to do it; my clients were thrilled when the wait list calls came. Carlos R. accepted a seat at Wisconsin; Ashley was thrilled beyond imagining to be offered a seat at Georgetown, as was Helen for getting a seat at George Washington. In the meantime, Carlos J. and Gary had their first exams at Thomas Jefferson's CLEO Summer Institute, and Chanel had her midterms at Widener's conditional program. You should hear the groans! If all goes well, we may yet get a few more wait list calls, either when the Overlap Report is available on July 15 or when the final CLEO grades are available for admissions officers at the end of July. If You Could Have Dinner with an Admissions Officer...Whether you've already been admitted to a law school, are waiting to hear, or are just beginning the process of applying, there are probably questions that you'd secretly like to ask. They may involve problems in your past (like low grades or encounters with the police), confusions about your file (perhaps involving grades for more than one college, or multiple LSAT scores), or concerns about addressing your racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, or cultural background. Every time you've had a chance to meet an admissions officer, you've been surrounded by other applicants, and thus reluctant to publicize your concern.
Don't look for any talking heads here; I haven't become nearly that fancy. What you'll find will be magazine-style questions and answers. I can't promise who will join us or when; as many of you have heard me say, I don't own the admissions officers, but I'm lucky enough to occasionally have their attention. I'd be happy to ask them whatever you'd like to know when I get the chance. The only catch is that I don't know what that is. So please contact me with your questions, and I'll do my best to get you answers straight from the source. July 22 -- Surprise!Usually those words mean something good, but not this time. US News has announced two possible changes to the rankings for next year. But allow me to quote: "The first idea is that U.S. News should count both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for median LSAT scores and median undergraduate grade-point averages in calculating the school's ranking." As is my habit, I approached this proposal by crunching numbers. I took the median gpas and LSAT scores (as reported in the 2009 ABA/LSAC Guide to Law Schools) for full time students; I ranked them and assigned ordinal numbers for both gpa and LSAT, then combined the ordinals, counting 40% of grades and 60% of LSAT score, to mirror US News's approach as closely as possible. I then performed the same operation for the medians for all students (i.e., full and part-time combined.) I discovered that schools that admit part-time students with lower LSAT scores will suffer in the US News rankings. In order to prevent this from happening, schools may choose to become more restrictive in who they admit to their part time programs. So it may be much harder next year to get into a part time program than it was this year. "Another ... proposal calls for U.S. News to compute our bar passage rate component (school's bar pass rate/jurisdiction's bar passage rate) using only the data of first-time takers who are graduates of American Bar Association-accredited schools. ... This distinction is perhaps most meaningful for the state of California, which has a large number of non-ABA-accredited schools." I opened the Excel software yet again, and figured out that the bar passage rate for the ABA-approved law schools in California is about 72%, instead of the overall rate of about 65%. This will lower all the California schools in the US News rankings. Here's how that works
Is this change appropriate? I guess it depends on whether you ask Stanford or Harvard. :) Seriously, I have pointed out in an earlier analysis of the USNews rankings that the California law schools get a "false high" from the low state bar pass rate. The Bar passage data still has other drawbacks (especially in a state with one law school, where the bar passage rate is 100% of the state's average). But the change will make the numbers a bit more equivalent. Most importantly for you, next year's rankings may lower the California schools and schools with part-time programs. Then those schools will get fewer applications, which will lower their yield rate and perhaps their median LSAT score. Then those schools will get fewer applications... And so it goes. More wait list action?Yes, but not much. Most schools used the June 15 Overlap report to confirm their class size. A few schools are overenrolled and hoping to lose applicants, but most are happy right where they are. What's next?The Forum schedule. Drop by around August 3 to see where and when I'm travelling. |
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