Law School Admissions Tips with Stratus Admissions Counseling – Part 1: Your Application Strategy Overview
Trying to get into law school this year? Most schools’ applications are open by now, which means it’s time to get your materials together! Our newest partner, premiere admissions counseling firm Stratus Admissions Counseling, wants to help make this confusing process crystal clear for you. To that end, they’ve authored this Law School Admissions Tips series.
In this first installment, we’re taking a high-level look at the law school admissions process, focusing on what law schools are looking for in their applicants, the components of a law school application, and what your overall application strategy should look like.
Let’s dig in…
What are law schools looking for?
Admissions committees are looking for three basic qualities in their candidates:
- The ability to become a successful law student and lawyer
- A reason to go to law school, and, ideally, a reason to go to their law school
- Numbers that will improve their school’s US News and World Report ranking
A powerful application will present these qualities by highlighting elements of the applicant’s profile that speak to strength in each of those qualities.
Application Components
With a few variations, the law school application process is uniform for every law school. For every school you apply to, you should expect to submit:
- An LSAT score from a test administered in the past five years*
- Transcripts from all schools you have attended since you began college (including graduate schools)
- Essays:
- Personal statement
- Diversity statement (optional, depending on your circumstances)
- Addenda (optional, depending on your circumstances)
- School-specific essays (as applicable)
- Letters of recommendation
- Resume
*Want to boost your LSAT score? You can attend the first session of any Manhattan Prep online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free! Check out their upcoming courses here.
It is through the examination of these components that admissions committees determine your academic and professional potential, why you want to go to law school, and how admitting you would affect their schools’ US News rankings.
Crafting an Application Strategy
Now that we know what the application entails, it’s time to turn to strategy. Putting together a strategy for your application is the process of using each component of the application to advance your key themes and address any weaknesses or holes in your profile. Identify how each theme and weakness could be best addressed in each application component, and how you can weave these themes together across all parts of the application.
Ultimately, you want your application to be a cohesive set of components that advance a few key ideas, leaving the admissions committee with a clear sense of who you are and what you bring to the table as a future law student and lawyer.
In a Nutshell…
When most people begin to think about preparing their law school applications, they focus almost entirely on the personal statement. The personal statement is no doubt a very important component of the application (in fact, our next post will go into depth on the personal statement), but it is one of many components. Knowing what law schools are looking for, and spending time at the beginning of the process considering every component of the application and what you want to convey with each component, are key first steps in preparing your application.
If you have any questions about what was covered in this post, the law school application process in general, or how we at Stratus Prep can help you craft the strongest possible application, reach out to us at consult@stratusprep.com to talk to one of our candidate strategists. We look forward to hearing from you!
In our next post, we’ll discuss your personal and diversity statements. ?
Stratus Admissions Counseling is a premier admissions counseling firm that can help you achieve your dream of attending law school. Stratus’ unique approach has helped students gain admission into all of the top schools worldwide for undergraduate and graduate work, including Harvard University, Yale University, The University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Columbia University, NYU, UCLA, MIT, and dozens of others. Stratus authors regular columns for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes. To learn more about Stratus and schedule your free consultation, follow this link.