What, Like It’s Hard? | Choosing where to apply and avoiding pressure

There is a specific group of law school applicants out there in the world who will make you feel like shit. 

And, more specifically, they will make you feel like a special kind of shit — because even if they recognize that your LSAT or GRE score is phenomenal, your GPA is top of your class and you have a never-ending resume of extracurricular activities and internships, they will always tell you that it is not good enough. Unless you have a 180 LSAT score and a 4.0 GPA with multiple years of work experience, they will tell you it is not worth it to even apply. And no matter how good your hards — LSAT, GPA — and softs — extracurriculars, essays — are, you might actually start to believe them.

These are the people who retake the LSAT when they score a 174 instead of a 175. These are the people who say that you must get your applications done before September is over and you stand no shot of making it anywhere. They believe that unless you go to Harvard, Yale or Stanford Law, you will never find success. 

I call these people “Harvard-or-busts”, and they are the worst kinds of law school applicants. Of course you can want to go to HYS. You can even seek perfection on your LSAT or go out of your way to get all the best softs, but under no circumstances should anyone be a Harvard-or-bust applicant. 

Not only would you be limiting yourself from all the other amazing law schools out there, but in the meantime you are attempting to de facto delegitimize degrees and education from the 198 ABA accredited law schools out there. Of course, ranking and notoriety come with more open doors and success at your fingertips, but that doesn’t mean your dreams aren’t possible elsewhere.

On a surface level, law school applications seem formulaic — if you’ve got the score and the GPA, you should be getting in — but unfortunately, it’s never that easy. 

I thought for the longest time that if I didn’t have an LSAT score at least somewhat near the median, I stood no shot and shouldn’t even bother applying. That was, however, when I met multiple people who go to excellent schools tell me that their scores were not just below the median, they were significantly below the median. I also know someone who scored at Yale Law School’s LSAT median and didn’t get in, despite getting into nearly every other amazing school. 

As much as we would like to assign a formula to things — after all, you have to be a little bit of a logic nerd to want to go to law school — we never know who is going to be reading our applications and what experiences admissions counselors are looking to add to their incoming class.

Choosing where to apply has been, honestly, one of the most difficult parts of this application season for these very reasons. I could play it safe and just apply to schools whose medians are below my LSAT and GPA, but I could be limiting myself from other incredible opportunities. 

I will also fully admit to getting hung up on rankings, but when you really go and look at data and information that is easily available online, you’ll see that tons of people find success in highly competitive fields if they put the work in. It might not be so easily handed to you, but you can find success at schools below the T-14 if you work hard, which is a secret online Harvard-or-busts don’t want you to know.

I won’t pretend like law school applications are cheap. Without Credential Assembly Service waivers from the LSAC, at a base cost every school you apply for will be $45, notwithstanding the school fees that range from $60 to $100 on top of it. Despite this, I would recommend you have a decent spread of safety, target and reach schools. 

The number one advice I would give — make sure you actually would go if you got in. Don’t apply to a school you wouldn’t actually attend. Don’t waste the money.

Choose to apply to schools where you can actually see yourself going. Personally, as of writing this, I am planning on applying to 11 schools — two safeties, four targets, three semi-reaches and two true reaches. It took a long time for me to pare it all down. Most law schools teach the same courses your first year. However, I really made my decisions based on the clinics they offered, where the law schools are physically located, what journals they had available to write on and if they had opportunities to pursue LLMs.

I am only applying to schools in cities because I want to be surrounded by as many opportunities as possible and have an active Bar Association available at all times. I am also applying primarily on the East Coast, because I know that this is where I would be happy to spend the next decade of my life. I want to continue writing and pursue as many pro-bono activities as I can, which is why clinics were imperative to my decision.

You need to decide what is best for you based on the schools themselves and ignore Harvard-or-busts who try to tell you that you’ll never make it. Look at the kinds of focuses schools have, their bar-passage rate, study abroad programs, moot courts or anything else you believe is important to your education and success as a future lawyer. 

Law school will be what you make of it, so choose to apply to ones you actually want to attend, not just ones you think you should attend. Be smart and recognize that opportunity does come with ranking, but that doesn’t have to be the driving force behind your decisions.

Choose the schools that are best for you and you only. Try not to listen to Harvard-or-busts online — we are all the blind leading the blind, after all. Be smart and realistic and apply where you actually could see yourself going, but more importantly, be unafraid to throw your hat in the ring, even if people try to persuade you otherwise.