lawyer

Expert: L. Gappy - 12/18/2007

Question

I am applying to law school. I graduated from a smaller-sized state college two years ago with a 2.95 GPA and I am expecting to score in the mid 150's on my LSAT in February. I was not overly involved in extracurricular activities (one honor society, a sorority, and student government) and I have no exceedingly diverse characteristics (white female from the South). I have spent the past two years in the army reserves on a full time basis and I am finally realizing that my calling in life is law. I am applying to five schools in the fall. of those five, two are 2-tiers, two are 3-tiers, one is a 4-tier; I am very worried that I will not get into any ABA law schools for the fall because of my mediocre resume and lack of extraordinary circumstances to explain my GPA. Bottom line, I was more interested in social life than academics in college, and I am paying the price today! Being that I cannot change my past, what do you honestly think my chances are for acceptance into any ABA school? How strongly are LORs weighted? Should I apply to more than five schools? Is there anything you can suggest that would strengthen my application? Also, one of the tier 2 schools I am looking at offers both spring and fall admission. Do you know if for any reason, historically speaking, it may be easier to gain access into law school in a spring semester? Any response will be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer

Your screwed.

Just kidding.

You need to play up the Army Reserves, which I think is fantastic. You need to draw on every experience you had unless you were a guard at some prison in Baghdad and it involved pictures with a guard dog and naked prisoners. It's late, I'm listening to Zeppelin and I'm trying to write comedy, so sue me.

But seriously, your military experience is your saving grace and you need to draw on every experience that you had, a very good friend of mine went to college and then on to lawschool because he also joined the reserves. He was going nowhere in life and joined the army reserves and that gave him the discipline to do more with his life. You need to find lawschools where the JAG recruit from, not because you want to join the JAG but because the lawschools are receptive to people in the military and give life experience points on the application for that. Try to be a good story teller, did something happen in the military that makes you want to become a lawyer. Did you meet someone who made you decide to go to Lawschool. Why are you going to lawschool, put a different twist on it, try to get a good story teller to write your personal statement someone who is a journalism major.

It is unfortunate, but you will have to play the odds with your grades and future LSAT. You will need fee waivers from every lawschool that you apply to you may also want to study harder for the LSAT because a couple of points will make a huge difference. Here's how it will break down, you have high odds of getting into a fourth tier school and the odds decrease as you keep climbing tiers. So apply to three tier fours (think application fee waivers) two tier threes and two teir twos. Forget about tier ones unless you are very good friends with someone who went to a tier one and they will write you a great letter of recommendation and call the school on your behalf and offer to build a new wing on the lawschool.

Just something to think about, the current president of the United States couldn't get into the University of Texas Law School and his father was Vice President of the United States at the time. So how much pull do you have to get into a first tier school.

Spring gets fewer applicats because it involves people who start in fall and quit a few weeks in and restart in spring so your odds may be better.

Best of luck, you may want to re-up and spend a couple of years with the JAG, great experience and you will increase your chances of getting into a better lawschool.