Labor Day has passed and that means it is time to get serious about completing your college applications.

Here's a question I hear all the time: "Should I write about [topic X] in my law school application essay?"

That's the wrong question to be asking, but I completely understand why people ask it: essay prompts in the applications can be bewildering.

Here's a real example of what a non-bewildering essay prompt looks like:

I took my first LSAT last year in Oct and got 157.

If you're applying to law school this coming fall, you probably already know that you'll have to submit recommendations for most of your applications. When you're setting up your LSAC account, though, you'll see references to "recommendations" and "evaluations," and you might wonder why they're using those two different words.

It's important to understand the distinction between an "evaluation" and a "recommendation," because when you enter information about your individual recommenders in your online account, you'll be asked to label each one as an "evaluator" or a "recommender.

I'm trying to figure out my timeline for applying to law school. Harvard, e.g., opens their application on September 15. Is there any advantage to submitting on the 15th rather than the 22nd? If not, at what point in the calendar does the "earlier the better" maxim become relevant?

Great question, and I know you hear a lot of conflicting advice out there.

As part 5 of my series on getting yourself into tip-top shape to apply to law school this fall (you can catch up with parts 1, 2, 3 and 4), I bring up a topic you'd probably rather not deal with: disclosures. And for that, you'll need to get a head start on thinking like a lawyer.

As future lawyers, one of the tasks you will get really, really good at (and very, very bored with) is called document review.

Marching forward in my little series about preparing yourself for killer law school applications this fall, here is a post devoted just to recommendations. (If you missed the previous installments, here are one, two, and three.) Judging from the emails we receive for the blog, this is a very popular topic.

Early summer is the right time to start thinking about whom you're going to ask for your recommendations, because recommendations can take a while to wrangle.

In the last couple of weeks, we explored the very first things you should be doing to prepare yourself for applying to law school this fall. (Here are Step 1 and Step 2, in case you missed them.)

By now, you should have created your LSAC account and registered for the October LSAT.

Planning on applying to law school this fall?

Last week, I posted the absolute first step you should take if you want to be prepared to apply this fall.

This week, you'll take step #2: Register for the LSAT. Test dates and registration instructions are here.

School is out, summer is here, and some intrepid souls are turning their thoughts to law school. If you're thinking of applying in the coming admissions cycle, it's not too early to start planning. For the next couple of weeks, I'll be devoting each post to a concrete step you can take so that you're ready to go when the fall rolls around.

Your first step: Make friends with LSAC, which stands for Law School Admission Council.

LSAT guru Steve Schwartz over at LSAT Blog drew my attention to some evidence that studying for the LSAT makes you smarter. Really!

Here's the technical language from the study:

[W]e examined the effects on cognitive performance and brain structure and function of 3 months of intensive preparation for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT).

The NYT published an exposé last year about conditional merit scholarships ("Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win").

In case you missed the article, it profiled the plight of law students who had accepted scholarships that would be renewed after their first year only if they maintained a certain minimum GPA.

I've received a few follow-up questions in response to my recent blog post on managing multiple waitlist offers: Is it really not OK to put down multiple deposits? Is there a rule about that? And how would anyone know, anyway?

Those aren't bad questions, not least because LSAC has danced around the subject for years, and tends to bury its official (and vague) position out of plain sight.

What's the protocol and etiquette for turning down an offer from a school?

First check the language of that school's offer letter.

I recently passed my master's examination which is equivalent to defending a thesis.  Should I notify law schools of this?

Passing your master's exam is a big step towards completing your master's degree, so congratulations on that.

I've been reading your blog a lot as I have been going through the admissions process.

If you're planning on submitting law school applications this coming fall, now is a good time to start thinking about your recommendations: Whom are you going to ask? And when?

The first thing to know is that most law schools prefer academic recommendations.