WaitlistMeHarderDaddy '21–'22 app cycle Class of 2025 class year

Update 05.11: no, Penn is not a better law school than Harvard. Please look at employment stats over USWNR. Please be aware of regionality issues. #happyrankingsday

More accumulated advice: https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/qf400l/machos_guide_to_admissions_an_effortpost_by_a/

I am remarkably unimpressive as a human being, but I Can Write Gud and have a cohesive narrative about why me, why law, and why now. More detail regarding optionals/UR3/etc are included below if you hover over the “result” column for each school in the chart. There’s more info/advice at the bottom of this lil essay also.

Don’t do what I did & fall into the “dream school” trap. If you are choosing between T13s, pick the cheapest option (unless HYS, but only if you have unicorn goals). I promise you that at schools of this calibr, the miniscule difference in jobs is self-selection. Remember that clerkship numbers can be skewed by 1) the New York thing (those judges like work experience; ask NYC schools for their ultimate clerkship rates, which are much higher than those immediately upon graduation) and 2) a more conservative student body (Chicago, UVA). Conservative judges hire off-plan, and have less competition. The culture differences between schools exist, but they aren’t worth an extra $100k of debt; your classmates are all going to be bright, nerdy, determined, incredible individuals. You will find your people. It may take you a little longer, and it might not be as easy as some schools as others. Saving $100k is worth that extra effort.

DC is the most difficult legal market to break into for biglaw. I’m starting to wonder if wanting DC is a “unicorn goal” that would have justified coughing up the money for a fancier school.

Waitlist Stuff
Withdrew from Michigan, UCLA, Texas, Fordham and BC the day of decision.Chicago- : sent LOCI on 03.28 talking about the Dr. Alexander invite because Hail Mary/YOLO.
GULC- : sent full LOCI day of WL decision (Friday, 12.03). Sent a less formal check-in email mid-February. 2nd LOCI early March. Less formal check-in email after the waitlist webinar in April. Got the second interest form.
Duke- : Waitlisted Friday, 01.07. Sent two informal check-in emails, one in January, one in February. First LOCI early March.

Scholarship stuff
Sent GW UVA ($45k), WashU ($150k) and BU ($120k) on 03.04 via form on admitted students website. Received update on 03.31.- Sent NDLS Penn ($105k) and WashU ($150k) on 03.18 via form on admitted students website. Received update on 03.30.

• Emailed UVA Penn ($105k + Sadie invite) and NW ($90k) on 03.24. Followed-up on 03.30. Phone call on [] telling me no more money for me.
• Sent NW Penn ($105k) on 03.24 + Penn (Sadie invite) on 03.27 via the form requested from admissions. Received $150k on April 14 at 12:50 EST via email. CEASAR updated around 10 am EST.
• Penn randomly gave me more money without solicitation twice, and then an additional $30k right before the deadline.

Misc:
Optionals/Why X’s:- SLS, Chi, NYU, Penn, UVA, Duke, Michigan, Cornell, GULC, Texas, Vandy, NDLS, ASU, GW, BC, W&L
Toured- : UVA, Duke, Michigan, GULC, GW
Requested interview:- NW Kira, Vandy alumni + video interview

Fee waivers:
Unsolicited fee waivers (TURN ON CRS)- : Vandy (given after webinar attendance), NDLS, Penn, Duke, Michigan, Cornell, UCLA, ASU (CAS waiver unsolicited),
Waived for everyone:- GW, WashU, W&L
Solicited waivers via form on website- : GULC (denied), Northwestern (doesn’t ask stats)
Email solicited waivers- : UVA (received), BU (received), BC (received), Chicago (denied), NYU (denied), Texas (they said no in the email response but then my fee mysteriously ended up waived on the app itself. wild)

Advice
Just make the fucking effort. Write the optionals, do the awkward-ass interviews, go to webinars, tour if you can. Please. Try. Someone else (probably with better stats than you) is making the effort where you are not.- A why X should be as much of a why YOU as a why THEM. They’ve read their website, they know what’s on it. They want to see how you, as a person, fit into their school and their class.

• Turn on CRS and solicit fee waivers. This is too expensive.
• Your stats twin is not you. Stop comparing yourself. You have no idea what is or is not in their app compared to yours.
• Pay attention to employment outcomes and regionality instead of rankings. Understand LRAPs, minimize your debt.
• Talk to adcomms directly. You’re going to hear a lot of truly bonkers shit on here, on reddit, and on discord; please use your best judgement and talk to the schools themselves if you have questions. Get things from the source instead of through hearsay.
• Both softs and numbers matter. Softs are everything about your app that isn’t quantitative. Whether it is a “good” soft is a matter of framing. In the words of Dean Andy from GULC, this is basically pole vaulting; the bar is set by your numbers, and the pole is your softs. People with 4.0/180s have an easier time, but aren’t guaranteed entry. People with a 2.0/150 have a harder time, and a much higher bar, but can still build something to overcome.
• Softs are about your narrative. Please don’t think about them in form of tiers; think of them as “how can I sell this to a school? What will this contribute to the class and/or the legal profession?” I promise you adcomms are not sorting you into piles based on how many T3 or T2 softs you have, but are genuinely trying to get a feel for what XYZ thing about you will mean for their incoming class. Tiers were made up by applicants to tell KJDs that no, that congressional internship is really not that special, and that you don’t need to have gone to a Top 10 undergrad or worked for MBB or FAANG or whatever. Seriously. I went to a non-prestigious state school & worked somewhere unimpressive and I did fine. You will too.
• Getting plugged into the tea leaves about UR1 vs UR2 vs UR3 isn’t going to make your mental health any better, or cause decisions to come any faster.
• Financial aid is going to be messy and intense and very, very late. Chill the fuck out about how fast or slow the cycle is going: an acceptance means nothing until you know how much it is going to cost you (unless you’re ED), and aid isn’t going to come until March (or later!) for some schools anyways.
• Only do a non-garaunteed scholly ED if you are okay with paying sticker, ffs. They really mean it when they say you have no room to negotiate. Don’t be surprised Pikachu by $0.
• 7Sage’s regression modeling “chance me” thing-a-doo is shit for outliers such as URMs and splitters, let alone URM splitters.
• Be careful on the internet. It isn’t just adcomms that are watching, but also your future classmates, and some of them are crazy. If you hear weird rumors about things people claim other applicants have or have not done, please, as a future lawyer, remember that you should believe in things such as due process and innocent until proven guilty. Trust but verify; get receipts and proof.
• Seriously, line up a therapist, or at least a very strong community. This process sucks and is incredibly damaging to mental health so like. Just in case.

Resources
the LLB discord helped me a lot: https://discord.gg/ubrEZ4rDear Future Colleague is a great FREE resource for all forms of underrepresented (low SES, first gen, etc): https://dearfuturecolleague.org/Read ABA employment reports and 509s: https://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/EmploymentOutcomes.aspx
Latine Specific Stuff
If you are Latine, only Latine “counts” for ABA report purposes, regardless of your race: you are not “counted” as white, black, native, mixed, or Asian on the reports, only as Latine.- There is a difference between racial whiteness (lowercase w) and Whiteness (uppercase W) as a structure of power. Non-ethnic whites tend to be White. Latine whites tend to be white.

• It’s not a “boost” so much as we are compared intragroup instead of intergroup. The top 5% of Latine is still the top 5%. It doesn’t mean our stats are going to shake out quite the same as the top 5% as non-ethnic Whites, however, in the same way their stats don’t shake out quite the same as the top 5% of non-ethnic Asians. We’ll see what happens after the most recent SCOTUS decisions come out.
• URM is not a magic wand that overcomes all sins, it just helps schools take more of our softs into account. There are URMs who strike out every year, even with great stats.
  More than just PR/MA “count” as URM (for now; affirmative action is on the docket). I want to direct you to the following profile: https://www.lsd.law/users/creep/UnsuitableExoticTiger. She’s Uruguayan (and also absolutely incredible). The case commonly cited as limiting URM status is Grutter vs. Bollinger- , which isn’t followed by a lot of schools. Also, Latine is 18.4% of the US population as of 2019, but only 5.8% of lawyers as of 2020, and that feels pretty damn underrepresented to me? As discussed above, all Latine, regardless of race or country of origin is marked as Latine for ABA reporting purposes, so there isn’t really a method of sorting us out one way or another.
• A DNA test isn’t going to tell you what your ethnicity is any more than it will tell you what time the sun is going to shine tomorrow. Race is DNA; ethnicity is heritage and culture. They are NOT the same thing.
• Explicitly state your ethnicity in your essays, some schools will scrub that info off applications otherwise. Even schools that “don’t do affirmative action” do affirmative action, if you look at the data.
• There’s going to be a lot of casual racism on reddit, often by well-intentioned non-ethnic Whites who think they are “helping 💙.” They can shove it.

Personal reflections on my app
My GPA is bad to the point where AdComms probably have a genuine concern about my academic abilities. The rest of my app is basically trying to alleviate that very legitimate concern. - I have a chronic illness that is classified as a disability which is now (thankfully) very managed. I also was diagnosed with a learning difference halfway through college, and my grades changed dramatically after handling both. Non-punitive academic warnings are still considered C&F at some schools, and I also have one from a community college because I was dumb at 19 and didn’t understand how transferring credits worked. None of these are excuses for my poor GPA, though.

• There is no such thing as “yield protect” for someone like me, just complete and utter thankfulness for not being straight rejected.
• Retaking a 172 is okay. A 173/174 is where it gets iffy.
• I tried to actively avoid putting my Big Sad on a platter for the Law School Trauma Farm, and instead focused on the qualities and characteristics that certain events will allow me to contribute to the class and legal profession.
• I sent everyone a DS. I wrote a why X/other optionals for every school except Yale, Harvard, WashU, UCLA (in hindsight, not writing out the programmatic contribution was a bad idea), Northwestern, and Fordham.
• Sad and confused about only getting into one Catholic school directly.
• My app is risky. I make poop jokes in my C&F addendum, my resume is formatted in an um interesting way, and I am very, very cavalier. While I personally view those risks as having paid off, they are not for everyone and I would recommend strongly considering how your risks fit into the context of the rest of your application. I did amateur stand-up for a bit, and so humor felt called for; just always be aware of your audience and the full context of your application.
• I was explicitly told that a lot of applications ask for an emotional commitment from AdComms, who can get exhausted when emotionally investing in each of our trauma, and that my app only works because I don’t ask for that. There’s a lot of pressure to Trauma Farm in admissions, and that is again something to carefully consider about what is genuine to you and a reflection of your why law. Always remember that you are more than your scars.