A current law student wrote to us seeking advice:
I was curious if you could speak to what factors a law student should consider when choosing between firm offers during this unique recruiting season.
Anna Ivey gives you ruthlessly practical admissions advice
Since many law school applicants are working on their resumes for this year's admissions cycle, I decided to follow up on my June 29th article, Top Tips for Legal Resumes and Cover Letters, and provide resume DOs and DON'Ts specifically for law school applicants.
What you should DO:
The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) converts applicants' undergraduate records to a standard 4.0 Grade Point Average system, so law schools can compare candidates according to a uniform standard. Applicants often have questions about how their GPAs are calculated by the LSAC, and they may see differences between their undergraduate GPAs as calculated by their colleges, and their LSAC GPAs.
One potential law student wrote to us as follows:
I have a very strong undergraduate GPA (3.
Yesterday we received a question regarding letters of recommendation:
My son is applying to law school. I am a senior civil services officer of the Delhi Government in India, and I wish to know whether, if I write a recommendation for my son, it will be accepted and considered seriously. I think I know him better than any other person and I can be very objective in my assessment.
It's not surprising that this mom -- like many moms-- wants to do everything she can to help her son with his application But a letter of recommendation from mom or dad is not going to help this student, at least with U.
I received an email recently about my advice in the column “Marshmallows, Delayed Gratification, and Test Prep.â€Â In it, the writer asked a very important question: “How does one truly study one’s wrong answers?†He elaborates:
My problem is that I choose a wrong answer and then I look at an explanation and I don’t really take much away from it….
We received the following question from a blog reader and future law school applicant:
I have some concerns and don't know who to turn to for some solid honest advice. I am starting a one year program at a youth centered clinic predominantly focused on family planning and reproductive health. I will be a health educator there who will see the patients before they see the doctor.
Will more conservative law schools be hesitant to accept me based on such endeavors?
In my last post, I wrote about my plan to work my way through LSAT problems and try to discern best practices to solve them.
For this post, I tackled LSAT test number 24.
Are law schools churning out too many lawyers? That's the question asked in today's Chronicle of Higher Education. The article is subscription-only, so for those of you who have an account, here's the link. For those of you who don't, here are some excerpts for you to mull over:
I just received the following email from a law student:
"I've got a couple of informational interviews coming up and I've never really had an informational interview before. Is there a protocol for what to wear or discuss? Should I bring a resume or cover letter? How does the tone for this sort of (what I perceive to be) informal interview differ from a job interview, if at all?"
This student is making a smart investment in his future by taking time to schedule informational interviews.
Having trouble finding a summer job? It seems as if everyone is, from high schoolers to lawyers-in-training. This Sunday's New York Times has an interesting article on the unemployment issue facing teenagers and college students.
I entered the MBA application process believing that my academic and professional background positioned me well for the top MBA programs in the country. But a challenging economy had sparked one of the most competitive and unpredictable application cycles in decades, so I turned to Anna for her counsel to navigate this environment.
In my view, the most challenging aspect of the MBA application process is surveying one's complete academic, professional, and personal history, gleaning the most informative and illuminating experiences, and connecting and communicating them effectively through often vague essay prompts, limited recommendation submissions, and narrow interview windows.
As in many facets of life, sometimes the simplest question can have the toughest answer. I’ve been kicking around such a question for the past few weeks, and I’d like to share it with you.
Is there a ‘best’ way to study for the LSAT?
For those of you who haven’t read a column by me yet, I consider myself a reasonably smart guy who has a somewhat curious fascination with standardized tests.
There are several reasons why this BBC article is very, very funny. Among them:
For those of us old enough to have used Walkmen (Walkmans?
To add to the list of things that can keep you from practicing law: taking on so much debt that you can't pay it back and get dinged by the bar committee.
Today's NYT has an astonishing story about a 47-year-old who started at Hastings Law School back in 2000, decided to throw in a master's degree, and then found himself trying to carry student loans of $230,000.