No one gets “auto-dinged” for softs. People get “auto-dinged” because of their numbers or because of some ridiculous C+F issue (like…you killed a dude or something).
Plus, these certainly can’t be considered, “no softs”. Not everyone applying to law school worked for well-known businesses or are published authors.
Those are all softs. Your LSAT and GPA are the hard numbers, everything else is a soft factor. If you can fill out a resume (you can), write coherent and error-free essays, and get LORs from professors who know you and like you, you’re fine. It’s a numbers game. Softs tend to matter when they’re really awesome or really negative. The vast majority of candidates have similar softs. You’ll get in based on numbers. The problem is that’s not terribly helpful advice because you’re a splitter, but that’s about the best TLS can do, save for telling you to apply broadly and see what happens.
Also this. If you’re not happy with your options this cycle, it might be wise to reapply next year. Rolling admissions are not your friend if you apply late.
What do you think of sending that Blog post to my recommendors? I’m thinking if I word an email correctly, it won’t come off too presumptuous. It might be a good resource for them (if they want to be helpful, which I think they will) and would definitely be beneficial to me. They are both young professors who I have developed a relationship and are pretty cool people.
Without knowing your personal situation, there is a 95% chance that this thought it complete nonsense. You are just getting out of undergrad. There are not a whole lot of reasons why someone would HAVE to go to law school next year. There are plenty of reasons why someone needs to stop going to school, but not vice versa. You will not explode if you don’t go to law school next year.
Taking a couple of years off to work was the best decision I made with regards to law school. Im not telling you don’t go this year, but I dare you to come up with a reason why you HAVE to go. I bet you most people here won’t be convinced.
WUSTL is a great school but with a lot of debt I don’t know if it’s the best option. Especially if you waited a year and gave yourself a legitimate chance of getting into NYU, Michigan, GULC etc.
I agree with Mal Reynolds that it is best to take a couple of years to work first. I had very minimal softs, but a few years of solid work experience and I ended up getting into HLS with very borderline numbers. I think that my work experience helped to play a big part in that (as well as my references and personal statement).
While WUSTL is a good school, I think that you can get into a much higher school. If I were you and didn’t get into any other schools, I would wait and work a couple of years and then reapply.
Good idea. I sent it to my youngest recommender, who just got a TT position and hasn’t written many law school recs yet. I basically said that I found an interesting blog post on law school recommendations from the dean of Yale, made a joke about one of the samples, and said I hoped it would help for future recommendations they write. I didn’t even mention my own rec, which she hasn’t written yet.
Nice. That’s exactly how I was going to do it. Make a little joke about some of the quotes in the blog but sort of present it as a resource for them if they want it.
If that’s true, that may be one of the only legit reasons someone HAS to go to law school this cycle. Free @ WUSTL vs. CCN (which would be sticker no matter when you applied) is still sort of a toss-up because you bear the risk of paying the costs of attending WUSTL many times over throughout the course of your career, but it’s at least possible to do well there and get a decent job. NYU might happen depending on what numbers they need at this point, Columbia’s a long shot, and there is little to no hope of getting into Chicago at this point because they tend to be super harsh on late applications. Also, you don’t lack softs in a detrimental way.
Wow, I wax poetic on all of the reasons why you don’t have to go to school next year and you come back with a legitimate reason you need to go next year. Now I guess Im the asshole haha. Having school totally paid for is a compelling reason to go anywhere. And WUSTL will give tyou enough opportunities without the debt to make it a good decision. I don’t think your cycle is over quite yet. So maybe wait on your decisions and try to see if you can get this sweet ass deal extended to next year. Good luck.