Of all the different parts of the law school application process, the application forms are the ugly stepchildren.

Because many students and parents are "newcomers" to college admissions, they are often unable to distinguish good information from bad information and they get confused by what information they should heed.  Unfortunately for them, bad information abounds.  Just last week I was dismayed to read an opinion column in USA Today that had all sorts of bad information in it about what college admissions officers look for when evaluating applications.

As applicants progress with their work this time of year, I often find myself giving this piece of advice: Keep control of your message.

What's that mean?<!--break-->

You have 100% control over some parts of your application, like your personal statement and your resume.

A great post for aspiring career changers:

I got an email from an accountant in his late 20s a few days ago, who is considering going to law school a couple of years from now.

You have six choices of topics for the personal statement on the Common Application, including “topic of your choice.”  So what do you choose as the topic?  Having read thousands of personal statements over the years, I want to offer some dos and don’ts about topic selection based on my experience as an admissions officer:<!--break-->

1)   Do choose a topic that allows you to highlight something about you that I wouldn’t know otherwise.

As future lawyers, one of the tasks you will get really, really good at (and very, very bored with) is called document review.* Doc review means going through boxes and boxes of documents (or lots of PDFs), often in a windowless conference room, searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack on the chance it will be useful to the case** you've been staffed on.

It's time to put on your doc review hats as applicants, because law school applications will be released in a matter of weeks, and they will require you to make certain disclosures.

Good people can give you bad advice about your applications? Really? Says who?

The dean of admissions at Stanford's business school, for one. "Good People Can Give Bad Advice" is a headline in a post by Dean Derrick Bolton on Stanford GSB's admissions website, and I'm sharing his advice here because (1) it's great advice and (2) it applies just as well to law school and even college admissions.

“Missed opportunity to tell me something that would persuade me to admit.

Here's a question frequently asked by law school applicants, with variations on a theme:

My LSAT instructor says I have to write about public service in my personal statement.

My mom says I have to explain why I switched majors in my personal statement.

My dad says I should write about The Law in my personal statement.

My friend who's a 2L says I have to write about a big dilemma in my personal statement.

As the application season gets into full swing, I field lots of questions about whether a student should apply early.

A [recent] ClearAdmit post discussed addressing gaps in employment on a resume for MBA admissions.

I love July, because I get to write posts that serve both rising 1Ls as well as applicants who are ramping up for the admissions season ahead of us.

Both groups often ask me to recommend reading for the summer, because that's when people have a bit more time on their hands.

There's been a lot of press lately about the poor prospects of many law students and recent law school graduates. Prominent examples include

• Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! (NYT)
• Consumers Finally Figure Out That Law School Is Overrated (Time)
• Served: How Law Schools Completely Misrepresent Their Job Numbers (New Republic) and
• Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win (NYT).

 I've also written on that subject, including

• "We Should Be Ashamed Of Ourselves"
• Feast or Famine For Law School Grads and
• Advice to Law School Applicants on Sunk Costs, Merit Scholarship, and Transfer Plans

The timing of the most recent NYT piece coincided with a message I received the other day from a former client and one-time law school applicant, updating me about the interesting things he's been up to.

What are the biggest mistakes I've seen over the years in law school applications?

Thanks to a recent interview with Vault's Law Blog, I had a chance to ponder that question. Here was my reply:<!--break-->

[T]he biggest mistake I see is a failure to think -- really think -- about what you are being asked to show [admissions officers] and what you want to say, and then a failure to protect your story from well-meaning but misinformed third parties, especially parents.

I know a lot about U.

All you June LSAT takers have a lot on your minds right now, and I hope you spend the next couple of days recharging your batteries so you feel fresh as daisies on Monday.

So for today, I'll keep things short and sweet, and point you to some LSAT-related advice I've posted over the last year and a half:

• Yikes! Should I Cancel My LSAT Score?
• Addendum for Multiple LSAT Scores
• A Pep Talk (of Sorts) for June LSAT Takers

Good luck on Monday.

I'm planning on applying to law schools sometime in the near future, but this won't be my first time applying, as I applied to several last fall.

Thought for the day:

The study found that students who took courses that required both significant reading (more than 40 pages per week) and writing (more than 20 pages per semester) had higher rates of learning.

(From "Lack of Emphasis On Reading, Writing Impedes College Student Learning, Study Says" by Jamaal Abdul-Alim in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, via Learning vs. Efficiency by Daniel Luzer)

The fact that reading 40 pages a week or writing 20 pages a semester counts as a lot of either (in college!

A private eye's office from an L.A. Noir movie? No. That's the MIT Admissions Office. I keep waiting for Sam Spade to emerge.

The door alone says so much about the school, the culture, their values: "We're looking for beautiful MINDS, not beautiful BLINDS. Fancy admissions offices are for punks." That door is intense, but also funny: check out the emoticon.

You can learn a lot just from strolling around a campus, especially if you go off-tour.