The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More

217 Pages·2005·3.96 MB·English

by  Anna Ivey

About the Author
Anna Ivey, JD, is both a graduate and the former Dean of Admissions of the
University of Chicago Law School. She founded Ivey Consulting, an admissions
counseling firm that advises applicants to college, law school, and business
school.
Learn more at www.AnnaIvey.com.
© Anna Ivey. All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Getting Inside the Head of an Admissions Officer
Chapter 2: The Numbers
Chapter 3: The LSAT
Chapter 4: Your GPA
Chapter 5: Sensitive Questions that Admissions Officers Don’t Always Like to
Answer Honestly
Chapter 6: Essays - The Big Rules
Chapter 7: The Personal Essay
Chapter 8: The Professional Essay
Chapter 9: Writing the Essay
Chapter 10: Recommendations
Chapter 11: Your Résumé
Chapter 12: Non-Required Addendum Essays
Chapter 13: Required Addendum Essays
Chapter 14: Writing the Addendum
Chapter 15: The Interview
Chapter 16: The Waiting Game
Chapter 17: How to Pick a Law School
Chapter 18: Financial Aid
Chapter 19: Final Thoughts
Appendix: Brainstorm Questionnaire
CHAPTER 1
Getting Inside the Head of an Admissions Officer

All law school admissions officers face a dilemma. There are certain things they wish they could tell
applicants because it would make their own lives so much easier, but they can’t say, “In all honesty, we only
spend about five minutes on each file, so you’d better cut to the chase,” or, “Please, for the love of God,
don’t make me read another essay about how your two weeks exposed to third world poverty made you a
better person.” And they certainly can’t say, “Don’t bother applying with a 160 LSAT. . . unless you’re a
minority and then we’ll throw in a scholarship.”
No one will risk getting fired or sued over that, not to mention the PR disaster that would ensue. So they
grumble to themselves, prop open their eyelids with matchsticks, and keep reading thousands upon
thousands of essays about “effecting change” and “giving back,” year in and year out. (Even more
dispiriting: the number of college graduates who write “affecting change” instead of “effecting change.”)
How do I know this? Because that was my daily life when I was dean of admissions at the University of
Chicago Law School, and it’s been my daily life since I began advising applicants one-on-one.
Picture this, a typical day for me when I was an admissions officer, and for just about every other
admissions officer: I’m surrounded by hundreds of files stacked on every flat surface in my office. (Here’s a
great example of what an admissions officer’s space looks like during file-reading season, posted by
Tulane.) I have, on average, five minutes to read each one and make a decision on its fate. I’ve already
worked my way through more than a thousand files this month, and I’ve read more than thirty today.
I turn to the next applicant’s file on top of the pile. I scan her application form, her LSAT scores, her
Academic Summary Report, and her college transcript for about a minute and conclude that her GPA and
LSAT score are just above our medians. As dean of admissions, I could easily write an “A” for accept or a
“D” for deny at the top of her file based on this hard data alone, so the fate of her application depends
entirely on the remaining four minutes I spend scanning the “soft stuff” of her application: her essay, her
recommendations, her résumé, and any optional and unsolicited materials. Four minutes, maybe less. That’s
it.
Many applicants go wrong here — not necessarily because the soft stuff of their files suggests that they
can’t handle law school or reveals them to be arrogant jerks (although that happens, too). They go wrong
because they have failed to persuade me that I should choose them over thousands of other applicants with
acceptable numbers who I know could succeed at this law school. Sometimes applicants hand us reasons to
deny them — there are many ways to do that, and I’ll go over those in detail — but more often than not,
there’s nothing wrong with the application; the application just doesn’t wow anybody. It doesn’t stand out.
This book shows you how to wow an admissions officer. I’ve written this book to say all the things that I
could never say when I was an admissions officer, even though I really wanted to. But I’ve also written this
book because it’s the kind of book I wish I’d had when I was applying to law school. I’ve been in your
shoes. I remember well how daunting the application process was, especially the essays. Did they want me
to write about law? I didn’t know any yet. Did they want me to prove that I was a genius at logic and
rhetoric? Was I supposed to entertain them and tell them charming stories? Did they want me to prove that I
was applying out of pure motives, for the public good? Was I supposed to dwell on hardships overcome?
The process was a mystery to me, and the essay questions themselves didn’t help much. “Tell us something
about yourself that will help the admissions committee get to know you better.” I didn’t find that helpful as
an applicant, and I bet you don’t either.
The essays were difficult, but at least I had some control over them. Faculty recommendations, on the
other hand, felt completely beyond my control. I had no idea at the time what my professors really thought
of me, or if some of them would even recognize me if they passed me on the street. I hadn’t actively
cultivated any relationships for recommendation purposes, because I hadn’t appreciated until I sat down
with my applications how important those relationships would be, and by then I was certain there wouldn’t
be enough time for meaningful schmoozing. I also didn’t know the appropriate protocol or etiquette. I didn’t
know whether it was kosher to draft the letters myself (some recommenders ask applicants to write their
own letters), and I didn’t know how to deal with the professor who kept saying he’d get around to the letter
as months went by and deadlines loomed.
The numbers were the biggest mystery to me. Were admissions officers being honest when they insisted
that it wasn’t just a numbers game, that they took a “holistic” approach? (They love that word, holistic.)
Were there some schools I shouldn’t even be bothering with? How reliable were those LSAT and GPA
grids? Would it be a waste of time to continue with my extracurricular activities if they were going to bring
down my GPA? Should I be loading up on gut classes, or demonstrating my intellectual grit by taking
harder classes with lower grade prospects? Would they even be able to tell the difference between the gut
classes and the hard ones on my transcript? What classes and activities meant something, and which ones
did they consider fluff?
Of course, some things have changed for applicants since I applied to law school back in the early
1990s. The biggest difference has to be the way the Internet has changed the application experience, and not
just because you can now apply electronically and don’t have to sit there gumming up your typewriter with
white-out. When I was applying, there were no discussion boards where applicants trade admissions war
stories and statistics, critique each other’s strategies, compare results, talk trash and waste time (“My List of
the Ten Sexiest Ugly Women on TV”). It’s way too much for any one person to process in a meaningful
way, and it’s hard to gauge what information is reliable. (Brain science now shows us that there is such a
thing as too much information that can lead to poor decision making.) There is some good information out
there, but the signal-to-noise ratio is low. Applicants may feel empowered by all the opinions and purported
facts floating around out there, but from where I sit, the discussion boards succeed mostly at making people
act a little nutty.
Electronic applications (which weren’t around when I applied) have also encouraged what I call the
Spaghetti Method: throw lots of applications at the wall and see what sticks. That development, too, causes
anxiety among applicants, because then you go into the process treating it like a lottery. And indeed there
are some lottery-like aspects to admissions (particularly in the waitlist stages), but the Spaghetti Method
does not make the process easier on you, not least because it creates a vicious circle: admissions officers
know you’re using the Spaghetti Method (they have ways to gauge your interest, and I’ll talk about those),
and they know that some applicants put down multiple deposits, so they can’t get a true headcount until
they see who does and doesn’t show up at orientation. The end result? Deep, excruciating, seemingly
interminable waitlists. You stay in limbo for a long time because of this collective exercise of the Spaghetti
Method. That’s been an interesting and far from positive development to observe.
What hasn’t changed is the black-box aspect of law school admissions. Although we now see a number
of admissions officers blogging about the process — a great development — they are still limited in what
they can share with you. Law school admissions officers can’t and don’t speak candidly about affirmative
action, for example, or what kinds of essays make them want to stick their heads in the oven from boredom.
Nobody wants to be the school that goes on record in the blogosphere as saying, “Please, no more facile
essays about ‘effecting change in society’ or ‘giving back’. No more essays about your blazing commitment
to international law that is totally unsupported by your track record.” Both current and former law school
students, while helpful and important resources in other ways, generally know little about the behind-the-
curtain law school admissions process except that they got in. And other applicants are even less informed,
no matter how easy it is these days to find each other and compare notes.
With this book I hope to offer applicants straightforward, practical tips from an insider’s perspective. As
an admissions officer, I read thousands of files, conducted hundreds of admissions interviews, and traveled
across the country to meet with and counsel tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of
prospective applicants at law school forums and pre-law society fairs. More than that, I made the tough
choices, the final choices, about who got in and who didn’t. Since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of
applicants one-on-one and seen over and over again what approaches (and mindsets) work better than
others. I also write from the 360-degree perspective of someone who not only applied to and attended law
school but also (briefly) practiced law and stays active in the law-related world. (While most of this book
focuses on your applications and getting into law school, one of the later chapters — Chapter 17: How to
Pick a Law School — deals with how to weight different factors like cost, prestige, location, specializations,
and pedagogical approaches as you are evaluating different law schools, and how to tailor your training
appropriately for your future legal career.)
This book offers you the benefit of that 360-degree experience, although you shouldn’t treat anything
you read here as gospel truth. It attempts to depict reality without sugarcoating, without the law school PR,
without massaging your ego or telling you that you’re a “unique snowflake” and can be “anything you want
to be,” and I hope without causing unnecessary panic. By the time you’re done reading it, you should be
able to think through the following kinds of questions that keep many applicants up at night and cause a lot
of kerfuffles with parents, roommates, significant others, and the innocent bystanders who get pulled into
the process:
• I have an LSAT score of X. Will that get me into my dream school? Is it even worth
paying the $70 to apply? Am I delusional if I think I can jump 10 LSAT points in three
months? Can I write my way around an unfortunate LSAT score?

• What kinds of essays do they like? Do they want to hear about my work fighting
poverty? My backpacking trip through Europe? My parents’ divorce? My marathon
training? My deep philosophical commitment to diversity? My analysis of The
Simpsons as a reflection of the American zeitgeist? My passion for slow cooking? My
struggles reconciling the values of my immigrant parents with my life as an American
twenty-something? My reasons for applying to law school? What if I want to write
about something really dark but ultimately meaningful to me, like my experience being
abused as a child, or my alcoholism?
• How do race and sex really affect my admissions chances? What about legacy status?
• Should I write an addendum explaining my unrepresentative LSAT score, my D in
Organic Chemistry, my attention deficit disorder, my stint in rehab? Or will that make
me sound whiny?
• Should I submit my poetry, my photography portfolio, my master’s thesis, my
karaoke tape?
• What about all my presence on online social networks? Will they bother to look me
up online? Will they care?
• Am I at a disadvantage as a forty-five year-old stay-at-home mom who has always
dreamed of going to law school and is applying to law school now that my kids are off
to college? Will law schools take me seriously?
• Can I use the same résumé that I use for job purposes? Can I list all the cool things I
did in high school? My mom thinks I should.
• For my recommendation, should I pick the English professor who says she’ll write me
“a great letter”?
• Do I look bad if I cancel my LSAT score and retake it?
• My sister has a friend who teaches at X Law School. I should ask the friend to call the
admissions office on my behalf, right?

You’ll find that the advice in this book is mostly geared toward normal people — people who haven’t
founded and sold their technology startups to Fortune 500 companies for millions of dollars, played pro
football, published bestselling autobiographies about their misspent youth, emigrated to this country after
surviving the pillaging of their sub-Saharan villages, grown up the children of radical fugitives, or served as
test-case plaintiffs in the most pressing constitutional cases of our time. People like that don’t need much
help making their applications stand out. (But understand that those people do apply to law school, and they
are among your competitors and often end up at the top schools.) Instead, I wrote this book for the vast
majority of applicants, the mortals who have distinguished themselves on a less dramatic scale and want
practical advice on how to present their accomplishments and goals in the best possible and most interesting
light, and how to discuss their missteps and bumps in the road without sounding lame or whiny.
Ideally you’ll start reading this book early in your college career, because some of the strategies I
suggest for improving your prospects as a graduate school applicant can’t be executed overnight. However,
I’ve also tried to write for people just as they sit down to start work on their applications and need quick
answers, as well as for older applicants who are considering a career change and want to get a bird’s-eye
view of the application process before deciding whether to invest their evenings and weekends in that
pursuit.
This book is also written for the parents of prospective law school applicants. With the best of
intentions, some parents do their (grown) children a real disservice by failing to educate themselves about
the current state of the legal profession and the things admissions officers really care about when they’re
putting together an incoming class. If you have strong opinions about the benefits of a law degree, for
example, or of the necessity for going to law school straight out of college, this book is also for you. I know
you want what’s best for your son or daughter, but ask yourself what you really know about law school, or
the legal profession, or the law school admissions process today — not ten or thirty years ago — before you
exert your influence one way or another. I am not encouraging “helicoptering” — I’m a vocal critic of that
tendency, and all that hovering can actually hurt your child in the eyes of the outside world, including
graduate schools. (See here, here, and here.) But there is a helpful role for parents in the law school
admissions process if they want to get involved, and in various parts of the book I’ll include advice that’s
targeted at parents. That’s not meant to scare applicants who are flying solo. Rest assured that your
independence and maturity are assets, and they will be noticed in the application process, in law school, and
on the job market.
I hope this book helps demystify the law school admissions process. I’m always curious to hear from
readers, so if you have suggestions, please email them to me at [email protected]. I also welcome
submissions of sample application materials for possible inclusion in future editions (as long as you don’t
mind an honest critique).