thehill '23–'24 app cycle Class of 2027 class year

Pretty happy with how my cycle went. I wish that I would’ve gotten more $$$ from Northwestern, but can’t complain too much. One piece of advice I can give would be to treat people with as much respect as possible throughout the process. I think that I got my scholarship increase at NU because of the essay I attached to my reconsideration request. Made it very clear that I wanted to attend the school, but that it was hard to justify when considering the other offers. Initially turned down, then they increased the offer about four or five days later. I have to imagine the letter made the difference. Also recommend holding out until the deposit deadline to send it in. Honestly, I probably would have bit the bullet and gone to Northwestern even with just $30k, and I’m not sure if they would have increased my scholarship had I put my deposit down earlier.

My biggest liability was that I lacked a clear line of reasoning for why I wanted to attend law school that matched up with my past experiences. I want to get into transactional/corporate Big Law and wrote essays about wanting to work with entrepreneurs. Talking about my father’s local restaurant helped some, but my undergrad degree was in Political Science and my extracurriculars were politics and public policy-focused. In hindsight, it may have been better to just pretend that I wanted to get into public interest work, but I could be wrong. Hiring an admissions consultant may have been helpful as well. I didn’t have the money for it, but if you can afford it and you’re right around the medians of your target schools like I was, I’m sure that it helps.

This should go without saying, but if they have optional interviews or essays, you need to do them, full stop. It can be a pain in the ass, especially when applying to a lot of schools, but I do not doubt that if a school is on the fence about your application, and you didn’t write the optional essay, you will get waitlisted. At the highest-ranked schools that I was accepted to (Vandy/Northwestern/Cornell), I went the extra mile, attended webinars, and did the optional interviews/essays. For the schools that I felt like I didn’t put my all into the applications (NYU/UCLA), I did not get in.

I only attended two Admitted Student Weekends. I let my parents talk me out of attending ASWs for schools that weren’t at the top of my list, which I regret. Part of why I chose Northwestern over Vanderbilt was that I felt very different vibes from these weekends, and though I enjoyed both for different reasons, I decided Northwestern’s professional atmosphere was best for me. However, it would have been helpful to have visited more schools because I believe it would have allowed me to better clarify what exactly I wanted out of a school.

If you’re reading this and haven’t taken the LSAT yet, the studying is worth it. The test may be less learnable now that LG is out, but each point is worth so much. There is no better return on investment available to young people than LSAT studying, through both unlocking future earnings potential and accessing more scholarship money. I probably studied ~300 hours and took ~25-30 PTs. It was the hardest and most frustrating thing I’ve ever done, but it was so worth it. My PT average at the end was around 175-176, so I probably should have taken it again. I was just so scarred from my experience with ProctorU during my first LSAT attempt (literal nightmare), that I was just happy to be done. Reading Comprehension was also just so treacherous on the official LSAT (I’m fairly certain that all but 1 or 2 missed questions from my real test were from reading comp). On the older PTs, I would often go -1 or -2 on RC, but on the official tests, I got crushed every time.

In your free time, you should listen to the PowerScore LSAT Podcasts. These guys are the best and the podcast can help you feel less alone while you go through the studying process. For admissions, the Spivey Consulting blog and podcast are also great resources. Don’t get too caught up in the LSD data or the Reddit stuff. It’s helpful to set expectations and maybe to track waves, but people lie on these things and it’s better not to get too caught up in it (much easier said than done).

I love helping people out with this stuff because I know how hard it is to go through this process on your own. If you want to reach out for any questions, my phone number is 980-229-9925. Send me a text and I’ll give you my email (don’t want to attach my email here for confidentiality purposes).

Lastly, I’ll attach an interesting report that I found recently. There is so much public data out there about every school’s employment outcomes, so there is no excuse not to do your research on this stuff. I’ll attach the ABA 509 report link as well. I’ve completely blocked out any thoughts about the application process after committing to attending Northwestern, so this turned into a super long stream of consciousness haha. Hope some of it helped.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/cew-roi_law.pdf

https://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/MainHome.aspx