If you are a prospective to law student this article will give you the inside track to gaining admission at a top school. These questions should help frame for you exactly what we will accomplish together in this article. Are you investigating possible law schools to attend by looking at catalogs and visiting each school's websites? Have you spent money buying guide books, school ratings magazines and other materials? How about time spent online searching for the perfect school? If you answered yes to any of these questions than you have already invested yourself in the process of finding the perfect school. Now, you'll master the law school admissions process.
First, you will need to carefully consider which schools are right for you. This doesn't mean the schools that are closest to home, the easiest to get into or the one where your girlfriend is going. Nor should your search focus on just finding the schools that you think will accept you. Chances are, even if you have a mediocre LSAT score and undergraduate GPA, you will still be able to get into some excellent highly ranked schools. Take the extra minute and try and find the school that is the best fit for you. Going forward this will pay you back with interest.
Your acceptance at a top law school will be based on a killer application that sets your skills, interests and desires out to fill a specific need of a certain law school. For example, your passion about public interest law might carry great weight at a school like CUNY, because they are a law school built are public interest law. Thus, getting into top schools becomes more about finding out what types of students your favorite schools are looking for and then positioning yourself to fulfill that need.
How do go about identifying these schools:
Search Google News about the school. See what news is coming out of the school. Perhaps, one professor is dominating a field your interested in or their mock trial team is winning on the national level. If you find interesting, news worthy things going on at the school and then tie into them, you're giving yourself a great advantage.
You'll also be able to do some comparative analysis. For instance, if one of your top choice schools doesn't appear to be making news at all or at least regularly you may want to think twice about going there. If a professional school like a law school isn't making news that is probably a symptom of a mediocre faculty and a body of alumni who aren't very successful with their practice of the law.
Stand alone law schools, meaning those that are not part of a larger university or college system, also merit special attention. A thorough Google news search will help you find out exactly what is happening at that particular school. Is it scandal ridden? Does it have a new dean every few years? Are students suing the school? Stand alone law schools deserve your special attention because of all of these questions.
Thus, from something as simple as a Google news search you will have armed yourself with very important and valuable information. Keep copies of what you find and build folders for each of the school's you are pursuing. Be sure to send away for school's catalogs early enough to give you plenty of time to weigh all your options. Put these catalogs in the same folders. This will make your planning and ultimate decision making process a lot easier in the long run. Go back to the clip files often and review them. Which school do you most want to be associated with? Why? Have any schools lost any luster? You'll reap the rewards from doing such a comprehensive search. Those rewards will come in the form of the identification of a school that really interests you and you will be armed with powerful knowledge that will assist you in writing an application that will really be of great interest to the school.
In future articles I will look at some of the additional factors that you need to consider in choosing a law school. For now, building your clip folders will be a great start to your successful career as an attorney.
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