Gaming the System

Though you wouldn’t know it by the attendance at my last Chucky Cheese birthday party, I do have a few friends. One of them happens to be writing about the law school admissions process, and is looking for some good stories, specifically stories about stuff like:

1. Students being encouraged to apply by a school that is likely to reject them .

2. Students being rejected or better yet, "wait-listed" at schools to which they surely should have been accepted.

3. Students actively poached from other law schools come second year.

4. Schools where there is a HUGE influx of transfer students.

5. Students only accepted as part-time, but then admitted full-time in second year.

6. Students without jobs hired by their law school upon graduation for intern work or in some other capacity.

7. Any other odd admissions behavior you may have experienced as a student.

If you have anything, feel free to post it here (preferably with some sort of contact info) or to e-mail me. Because this friend was sort of desperate, I’ve been promised a substantial percentage of my weight in Jolly Ranchers if you guys turn up anything interesting. So, do your best, and maybe I’ll kick you back a Green Apple.

Comments

[Erik]

I went to undergrad at Case Western Reserve University, a small school with a good undergraduate program and second tier law school in Cleveland, Ohio (stated goal: to become "the most powerful learning environment in the world.") I had some pretty good grades and an excellent LSAT score, and was applying mainly to top 15 schools. A law professor at CWRU, who I had become relatively close to, said that he figured I'd get in there with a full ride. "Sweet action," I thought to myself. So I applied, and as time went on I heard back from Georgetown, Michigan, Chicago, et. al., and still no word from Case. I finally got a letter from them sometime in mid-April, notifying me that they were going to put me on a preliminary wait list, but that I could end the agony right away by telling them I was going somewhere else. I had more or less narrowed my choice to Georgetown and Michigan, but I wanted to see where this CWRU thing went. Right about graduation, I got another letter detailing some summer wait list. Despite the fact that I was comitted to Georgetown by then, I didn't opt out of the list; I wanted to see if my alma mater would have the gall to give me an answer. They tried their hardest not to respond and to let me do their dirty work for them, but finally in mid-August, I received my official rejection letter in the mail, telling me that I was welcome to apply next year.

[kristine]

Not sure if this qualifies, but the boards are full of stories of Georgetown offering overqualified students admission for NEXT year. It seems most were relatively late apps (late Jan. and forward), but all with excellent numbers. It also seems sort of like a glorified wait-list, since a student who has received such an offer can ask to still be considered for 2005 admission.

Meanwhile, Georgetown has extended their admissions deadline three times (it's now at April 1).

I'd say if your friend wants some better confirmation of this, s/he can pop over to LawSchoolDiscussion or xoxo and try and get in touch with some of those folks.

[Patrick]

When I received my acceptance email from Rutgers-Camden, I really appreciated the part where they told me that "the admissions committee was particularly impressed with my personal statement." I mean, honestly, we all think that our Personal Statements are God's gift to the application process. And mine was about Chelsea Clinton.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't why I accepted their offer. I was going to accept it anyway to escape the impending tyranny of Hofstra.

But it was also amusing to find out that they included that phrase in every single acceptance letter/email that they sent out.

[Scott]

The summer after my 1L year the admissions department hired my fiance as assistant director of admissions. Since then I've learned a lot about the evils of the admissions process, it seems this one is especially dysfunctional. Just name the topic and I'm sure I'll have a story for it.

[buddha]

2, 4, 5 and 7 here.

I'll give you details of 2 and 7 over email if you like. 4 & 5 are both very common at GTown.

Extending the deadline happens pretty much every year I think, at many schools.

If I recall correctly, Penn did the same thing -- offers for the next year -- 2 or 3 years ago. This year's 3L class at Penn is huge for the school, and I know it created some problems. Their yield (percentage of enrollees from those admitted) exploded one year.

[DannyNoonan]

I'm from Wisconsin so when I was applying to law schools I sent the obligatory applications to the two law schools in Wisconsin-UW and Marquette. UW is first tier school usually ranked around 30th. Marquette is a second tier school that is ranked around 90th, I believe. My GPA and LSAT were about the mean for people accepted to UW and would be about the top 10% accepted at Marquette. I sent the two applications out the same day. I was accepted at UW about two weeks later. I heard from Marquette that I was wait-listed about a month later and was eventually rejected. I had already been accepted to the other three first tier schools I had applied to and had commited to UW by that point so I didn't really care but it always struck me as odd.

My theory, and I stress that this is only a theory, is that I was denied admissions because of some of my youthful indescretions and run-ins with the law. Marquette is a jesuit university and probably cares more about college kid screw-ups than most schools. I had to disclose an underage drinking/fake ID ticket as well as a "deposit of human waste products" ticket. It's not what it sounds like. I didn't get it for emptying the shitter of in my mobile home in the K-Mart parking lot, I got the ticket for taking a leak in the woods at a graduation party at a campground. You would have done the same. I was a little worried about disclosing it but most of the schools I applied to obviously didn't care and I had been told that most things like that won't be a problem as long as you disclose them. However, I was also told some time later that Marquette gives more weight to that sort of thing than most schools because of its conservative ideology.

[EH]

I was rejected from my safety schools both low 4th tier and was admitted to my long shot "no chance in hell" 1st tier school.

When I got my first rejection from my very safety school I sort of freaked. I sent them a letter saying that I would be happy to be considered for thier part time program that is easier to get into. They dinged me from that too! Go figure.

[MattP]

Haven't we had enough commentary about admissions to college and grad schools? Seems as if it's been a little overcovered. Soliciting for stories only will make the final product even more skewed towards those who have reason to complain about the process. The whole game seems arbitrary. What more need be said?

[SecretStudent]

Skewing admissions data isn't cool, but to me the really nasty part about admissions is the way law schools mis-represent the quality of the product they sell -- namely, employment opportunity. This is also part of the law school rankings game, and in my opinion it's the most harmful type of distortion.

I'm sure everyone who applies to law school looks at the "average starting salary," and "number of students with a job at graduation/in 9 months" statistics.

Of course, we all know now (or at least those of us in non-top-tier schools know) that those numbers are cooked much of the time.

First, schools list the "reported" employment and salaries.

This means that only students who actually responded to the career services office requests for information get included. Students who get jobs through on-campus interviews (generally those at the top of the class) are far easier to reach, because their employment situation, and often their salary, are available pre-graduation.

On the other hand, students who end up getting jobs months after graduation are harder to reach, and probably (I'm guessing here) less likely to respond, since they often don't have impressive news to report, and are hopefully very busy.

The biggest problem here is that the 9-month-out employment percentage is of *students reporting* to career services. At my school, the percentage of students reporting employment status 9 months out is usually around 75-85 percent of the class.

Of this 75-85 percent of the class, 97-99 percent are employed. Average reported salary is in the high double digits. What an opportunity that looks like! Virtually certain employment, at a salary twice the national average.

But since this is of "students reporting," these numbers aren't worth much. That extra 15-25 percent of the class who didn't "report" are the ones most likely to be unemployed, or working at low-paying non-legal jobs -- they're the ones career services couldn't find. Who's hardest to find? Transients without a job who aren't listed on Martindale.com, that's who.

I'd like to see a system that presumed non-reporting students were unemployed. As long as it was uniform, it wouldn't unfairly hurt schools' rankings because everyone would have to report lower employment rates. But the incentive to contact every last student in case they had a job would be way higher. So the relative rankings might not change at all, but prospective students would get a much more accurate picture of what they're buying.

Also, don't gget me started on the offers of "professor's assistant" jobs to graduating 3Ls the month before graduation ... I noticed that one year nearly 1/5 of the "reported" employment at my school was "academic" in nature.

I don't go to a school that produces law professors, which means that a good portion of the "academic" jobs were 20-hour-a-week summer jobs helping out a professor at the school. Nothing permanent. Of course, every one of those jobs gets "reported" (and, interestingly, in the detailed breakdown hardly any of these academic jobs "reported" salaries).

[Bob]

US News isn't going to go anywhere. The only thing we can hope for is that schools play by the rules. Perhaps a few good anecdotes with specific examples of unethicaql conduct will deter schools from cooking the books. I'd like to hear more first-hand experiences.

[E]

I don't know if this counts, but....

I never bothered to inform any of the schools I got accepted to that I wasn't planning on attending (except, of course, the one I go to), because I'm lazy like that. So back in January I get an email from the admissions office at UCLA informing me that I should fill out the continuing student financial aid forms before the dealine if I wish to receive financial aid for my second year of law school. I'm kind of curious if I'll end up with two JDs.

[Chris]

I sent out 4 applications on November 30th and heard back from all but 1. I was waitlisted at UW-Madison & Bloomington, accepted at CWRU... and still waiting from Villanova. I called them a week ago and they said that they might have a decision by April 1st. That could be a result of what Noonan said above... 'Nova is a Jesuit school and I've had some youthful (read: alcohol-related) indiscretions as well.

Or they misplaced my application for 3 months.

Not that it matters at this point, I've decided against going to law school altogether. The employment data is just too frightening for me, if I'm not going to a top 15 school.

I'll find a better use for my precious time... my oh-so precious time.

[reckless murder]

1 and 2 here. Waitlisted at an instate safety school that I was in the top 25% GPA and LSAT for. The school also had 70% in state students. I even kept up the interests forms with them so they thought I was still interested.

[sheila]

got into bu, but rejected from university of washington... which is what? some crappy school in washington state. not the most drastic story, but there it is

[Chris]

Back when I was applying to law schools, the University of Oregon was high on my list, and also figured to be a school that I was fairly certain that I would get into. Thus, I was surprised when I was wait-listed. In the meantime, I was accepted at the University of Wisconsin, where I hadn't expected to be admitted, and where I ultimately decided to attend. A few weeks after my acceptance at Wisconsin, one day my roommate told me that I someone from the Oregon admissions office had left a message for me. I returned the call, and after I tracked down the right person, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I’m Chris ______. I’m returning a message that you left for me about my wait-list status.

Admissions Lady: Oh yeah–I called you a few hours ago. So, you wanna come to school here?

Me: Actually, I’ve decided to go to the University of Wisconsin. I was actually sort of surprised when I wasn't admitted right away, and I tried to make other plans.

Admissions Lady: Yeah, I was surprised, too. There were a couple of fools on the admissions committee who didn’t like the fact that your application arrived in the mail one day late, even though you sent it a few days before the application deadline. Good luck, anyway.

After encountering such an informal attitude, I was almost ready to re-think my plans and book a plane ticket for Oregon. If only more staff members were like that woman.

[Samples]

During Univ. of Michigan's admitted students weekend in April it was snowing; although I thought the snow was "cute" at the time, current students assured me that cold weather in April generally and snow in particular was unusual. I ended up attending Michigan. I do not know what is worse: the fact that the admitted students lied or that I believed them?

I think both. It's in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's /going/ to snow.

[Samples]

My comment was meant to reflect that current students claimed that snow in April was unusual; while that is true, cold-weather even in April is common. Plus, the comment detracted from the intense cold throughout most of the year.

[SadPunk]

I received invitations to apply, along with waivers of the application fee, from several high-end schools (e.g., Columbia) when they saw my LSAT score.

When they saw my unergrad GPA, however, the response was chilly.

"High test scores + low GPA = underachiever"

[Roy]

There are some interesting stories here. To "SadPunk," "reckless murder," and "SecretStudent," any chance we can chat offline? Feel free to email me at lawschoolgames@yahoo.com.

[FS]

Many of these stories just confirm the fact that schools do look at more than LSAT and GPA. They really do. As somebody who does this, I can tell you that files with identical statistics are voted up and down based on personal statements, interesting undergraduate backgrounds, "youthful indiscretions," diversity (it means more than just "race"), and a myriad of other factors. Some people with high credentials seem, from their application materials (or their obnoxious behavior to the poor admissions personnel), to be complete jerks. Who wants to spend three years with people like this? Conversely, some people with low stats have a file that makes you really like them, think they'll be terrific lawyers, and want them to be in your class. The obligation of the faculty in admitting students is to get not the "most qualified" group of students, but the best group from among those who are "qualified." A good many students who are above the median LSAT and GPA figures for any given law school will, in fact, be turned down.

It's not just the numbers. Yes, it's MOSTLY the numbers, because in many cases that's really all we have to go on, but not just.

[wingsandvodka]

Uh..."Roy" may or may not be my friend who's working on this story...I'm not sure. But whether he is or not, "Roy" sounds like a "child predator," so he should probably "work on his approach," lest he "sound fucking creepy."

[DBS]

When Harvard offered me admission they called and asked me first whether I would accept. I told them I was still interested, though I did not end up going there, but I got the distinct impression that I would not have received an offer otherwise. This might have the effet of keeping the percentage of applicants accepted low if the practice is sufficiently widespread. Also, while the admissions officer who called me did not insist that I accept the offer over the phone, asking whether an applicant plans to accept the offer before sending it out puts pressure on the applicant that might be objectionable.

[Ian]

I was waitlisted by the schools in my middle range, and accpeted by the schools in the "sure thing" and "no chance." I had a weak LSAT, but a gaudy GPA. I also applied to all as soon as it was possible.

[Ian]

Oh and I will collect in jolley rancher or TLR hours.