Background (2024-25 Cycle)

Applied last year with a 163. I want to preface this next part by emphasizing that this is absolutely not an excuse, but I was working an average of about 55 hours a week for a year at that point and had just come off of a position where I was traveling (300 miles plus) three times a week for the year before that.

Started LSAT prep in late August 2024, scored 162 in November, retook at the next available (January 2025) and scored 163. Submitted all apps in February or early March of 2025. I also submitted some panic applications in April. Results were less than ideal haha. It’s not depicted in the table, but I eventually withdrew from all WLs and my singular A in early August.

My degree GPA is a 3.Mid, which in many ways made my situation slightly more difficult/unique in that I had to explain what changed between my first attempt at college and my second, and also why the latter transcript was much more indicative of my academic ability than the former. Would not recommend, just do your best at school the first time and save yourself the headache.

2024-25 Cycle Results:

Context

I probably started thinking of R&Ring around March 2025 and cemented that decision in April. Started studying again that same month (switched from 7Sage to LSAT Demon) and I could honestly make an entire separate post just on what changing up my study strategy entailed. Also worth noting that my job came back down to a 40ish hour work week, so I was able to effectively double my daily study time during the work week.

Improved my LSAT by 10 points in August, but its my belief that I could have scored higher. 173 was the bottom range of my 5-PT trailing average. Unfortunately, I was one of the unfortunate souls who took all of my LSATs in-person at the Brooklyn testing center (IYKYK) so I didn’t exactly have an optimal testing environment in August 2025 lol.

1. Timing: For the 2026 cycle, I set a goal to have every single application done by Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t be opposed to applying to schools post-Thanksgiving, but I would submit all of my “core” applications NLT 27-Nov-2025.
2. Materials: My softs, in my humble opinion, are incredibly unique but that simply didn’t come through in my writing. I went back and reviewed my 2024 cycle applications and while they weren’t technically weak, they did a poor job of emphasizing what I would offer an incoming class. I decided to hire Spivey for half of my applications. At the time, I was unfamiliar with admissions consultants prior to this cycle, but after doing a hotwash of my cycle with a college classmate that was already in law school, he encouraged me to hire one after I got my August score.
   1. Side note: This is NOT a Spivey ad. I went with them because they have a large presence on r/lawschooladmissions and my friend recommended them. I could have gone with 7Sage or another firm and probably gotten similar-ish advice/results. The important thing to note is that consultants don’t have a lot of value if you’re a traditional non-splitter (imo), but if you have something “different” or “wrong” with your app (super splitter, C&F, non-traditional, etc.), you should absolutely speak to someone well-versed in this. A stress-reduced application process is almost 50% of what you pay for lol, and that is priceless imo.
3. LORs: I previously had two employment LORs, one academic LOR, and one mentor LOR. I would juggle the four and always max out the LOR option. My consultant stopped me from doing that this cycle. Their advise boiled down to using them more strategically; don’t just dump them all in.
4. Resume: I have 14 years of work experience and I was using a 2.5-page resume. I cut it down to 1 page for the 2025-26 cycle. The name of the game for me was making sure my application never felt like a chore to read. Trim the fat.
5. Narrative Cohesion: My packets were kind of scattered theme-wise in 2024. If you are R&Ring, I really recommend downloading your entire application from LSAC and reading it through as if you worked in admissions. I bet you’ll find it disjointed! Read the entire packet before submitting. It takes less than 30 minutes and you’ll start to understand why a “great” packet (LSAT and/or GPA-wise) can still get immediately waitlisted or rejected.

Hard Metrics

LSAT: 173, three attempts

GPA: 2.72 LSAC (3.mid degree, not relevant to ABA reporting/admissions criteria, but important for other sections in this post)

Soft Metrics

Applicant: Non-traditional, more than 5 years out of undergraduate education.

Undergraduate Institution: Service academy, famously non-grade inflationary. For example, I was a dean’s list student for all 8 semesters with a 3.mid cumulative. From any other school this would be really bad, but according to LSAC’s own numbers I’m a top percentile student from my alma mater when it comes to applying to law school. It sucks that most schools inflate grades like crazy and that some schools even do A+ (giving some students a 0.3 LSAC GPA boost for the same grade) but admissions officers can at least see what grades from your school looked like at the time of your matriculation. Obviously that doesn’t matter for reporting purposes, but that least helps them normalize performance. “Oh, they have a 3.75 from Wellesley? That’s impressive as hell!”

Undergraduate Major: Philosophy with an engineering track. My alma mater requires a broad amount of courses in order to graduate (2 semesters each of calc, physics, chemistry, english, philosophy, amongst others) and also requires a 1.5 year engineering track if you’re not an engineering major. So everyone graduates with a B.S., not sure how much that moves the needle with admissions, but I mention it for detail.

Work Experience: My strongest soft. I was active duty military as of a few weeks ago and was still a soldier when applying. I started off as an enlisted combat medic in an airborne light infantry unit at 20. Easily the most foundational point of my career. After my performance in that role I was nominated to attend a service academy where I had an incredible amount of success as a cadet. I also started participating in an incredibly niche sport where I became a two-time national collegiate champion. Nearly made it to the national team. My dumbass never even mentioned it last cycle lol. I’m still active in that sport as a coach. After college graduation I was selected for flight school (very competitive at the time, no clue if it still is) where I became rated on two different aircraft. I spent the rest of my career as a pilot in air assault, medical evacuation, and some maintenance test flight. I also had the great opportunity to work in aviation maintenance and high level leadership while a company grade officer. I’m not suggesting that I have a silver star or anything lol, but I certainly had a pretty damn storied career where I participated in quite a few politically relevant operations. I was also able to interact with a lot of notable folks.

LORs: As mentioned, originally I had a mix of employment and academic LORs. This cycle I kept my academic LORs (because I was lucky to have them tbh, as I was pretty far out of school) but I decided to try for some moonshot employment LORs from my career. Some of them came a little too late for certain schools, but I was able to obtain LORs from general officers, a congressional office, and a high ranking academic that I was able to attach to some of my apps. Just email their admissions, you never know if you don’t try. I also decided to submit targeted LORs this cycle. As in, an LOR that I asked them to write for a specific school. I think these changes tremendously boosted my LORs strength.

Writing: Another big change. I rewrote every single piece of writing available to me and also wrote novel statements for certain prompts. I consolidated them together and worked with my consultant to bucket them together into themes. Its not enough to be a good writer. If each statement is great alone but disjointed together you might as well have written poorly because it will not be an effective and persuasive bit of writing. I also decided to throw a little caution to the wind and write in a more narrative style. I wanted the reader to be engaged and focused on my softs/work experience rather than my GPA. I wanted them to remember my background, name, and story as much as possible. I focused on subjects that I knew would make me unique (either the only person in the entire cycle that they read about with that attribute or the BEST person they read about with that attribute). As a consequence my writing shifted from my childhood/upbringing much more to life as a military aviator, experiences I’ve had in extremis, my college athletics, and so on. The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of FGLI students who don’t need a GPA or LSAT addendum. I’m not saying that being FGLI isn’t taken into account when an admissions officer is evaluating the candidate as a whole person, but the truth is if they have two applicants with tragic backgrounds in front of them (I’m being dramatic) why would they not prefer the one that’s above their medians? Overcoming a difficult upbringing just isn’t unique enough to overcome being a splitter, not trying to be harsh, just pragmatic.

C&F: I went to college right after high school at 17. I won’t get into it for privacy, but I ended up having to drop out. This is the period that dragged my LSAC GPA down (although I would be a splitter at most school regardless). Originally a lot of my materials wrote about this difficult period in my life. My consultant advised me to only mention this in my GPA addendum and to otherwise stop talking about it. “Just take accountability for the grades and don’t emphasize it”. Looking back, they’re completely right. I don’t want an admissions team focusing on the worst academic period of my life, even if its a nice “redemption story” haha.

School List

I reapplied to some school and also added some novel schools (like UCLA). The Spivey list was UPenn, Pritzker, SLS, HLS, UC Berkeley, CLS, Duke, UMich, UVA, and GULC. That probably just doxxed me to Spivey, but oh well lol.

Still waiting on SLS and NYU, also not sure where I’m committing but leaning to Cornell or Penn.

Anyway thats it. Any splitters feel free to DM me on discord @kingkaang. I might edit to add more at some point.

PS: I know someone is probably going to read all of this and still go, “well yeah, you’re URM” and tbh if that’s all you took away from this I don’t know what to tell you lol.