r/lawschooladmissions

This r/sub is a great source of comfort, comradery, stress, (and stress reduction) for many people.  Here are 25 hot takes. Would love to hear more!

1. r/lawschooladmissions consistently says “I would go to HYSCCN at sticker.” r/biglaw consistently says “I would take the $$$$.”
2. If you don’t search r/lawschooladmissions or Google before posting your question, then you might not be ready for law school.
3. Your undergraduate major and university matter way less than you think.
4. Data on LSD.law are not representative and not necessarily accurate. Posts on r/lawschooladmissions are not representative and not necessarily accurate (including this post).
5. Top law firms are hiring your law school admissions resume plus at most one semester of grades. This was always true, but even more so with the demise of OCI. That’s why 2+ years of real work experience (and getting promoted into manager roles) proves you are employable, which is job #1 for law school admissions folks. HLS and YLS admissions deans admit to now looking for "formed" applicants.
6. Any KJD tax varies significantly by school. In an "Approach the Bench" podcast with HLS Admissions Dean Kristi Jobson, she said "..the percentage of the applicant pool that applies as a college senior [K-JD] is like somewhere in the high teens, and the percentage of 1L class this year is in the high teens as well. A couple of years ago, the faculty committee had me measure the admit rate...for college seniors versus non-college seniors, and actually the admit rate was the same--or in one year even higher--for the college seniors from the non-college seniors in the admissions process. So, I mean, data don't lie, right?"  But this is just HLS.  Minimum_Two_8508 did some LSD.law analysis for 170+, 3.9+ applicants over 2 years and found Michigan drops from 17% to 6%. Duke drops from 33% to 18%. NYU drops from 51% to 39%, Columbia drops from 42% to 31%. Meanwhile, for Cornell, acceptance rate actually goes up a bit for KJD.
7. LSAT and grades show you can handle the academics of law school and pass the bar.  You may not like it, but LSAT scores consistently have been shown to be the single best predictor of 1L GPA, even more highly predictive than undergraduate GPA.
8. Submit one app early, preferably not one of your top choices, and then sleep on it for a few days. You will have nightmares/waking thoughts after you submit your first app. Spelling errors, typos, word choices, wrong headers, etc.  If you have regrets, you can fix for your remaining apps.
9. LORs are the most overlooked part of your application. Recommenders can say things about you that you cannot, and they can say things that emphasize important themes across your materials.
10. By April 1, most people on this r/sub will have more waitlists than decisions. I've posited that GULC admits about half their class off the waitlist to manage yield and finances.  When I posted schools should publish how many applicants were admitted off the waitlist, Spivey posted "would shock you it’s so high ⬆️ for most school as yield is very low for virtually all schools including T 14."  Also, many schools will ghost your application well past deposit deadlines. This sucks.
11. LSAC costs way, way, way too much. LSAC earns $~75m/year for administering LSAT, CAS, and sending reports to law schools.
12. Incoming law students are wildly overconfident about their academic performance. 95% believed they will end up in the top half of the class.  More than 22% of students predicted they would be in the top 10%.  In reality, students who ended up in the top quarter of their class slightly underestimated their eventual ranking, while those in the bottom quarter significantly overestimated their rank.
13. No law school has ever rescinded an offer because of what someone wore to admitted students’ day. 
14. For Fall 2025, there were 525 GRE admits and 41,778 LSAT admits.  GRE admits were down from 701 in Fall 2024.  About 1/3 of the GRE admits are in the T14. Columbia increased dramatically to about 10% of the class, just above Harvard and Yale. Georgetown and Cornell reduced significantly.  Almost all GRE admits are above GPA median.
15. LSAT Writing will be valuable as a check when there are concerns the PS appears to be better written than the rest of the application would indicate the applicant should be expected to write (e.g., international, STEM).
16. Write your PS in the first person. But after you've written your PS, edit to take out as many of the "I" and "me" and "my" words as you can. Don't make it awkward, but you can probably cut half of these words and it will read better.
17. KJDs with great grades, high LSAT, and great campus involvement/leadership have a good application and will get good results. But not unusual. Same for the same applicant with 1-2 years of paralegal experience. Good, but not unusual.
18. Your resume says more about your politics than your law school.  Consider two people:  FedSoc@Columbia vs ACS@GMU.
19. Listen to the Navigating Law School Admissions Podcast with the Harvard and Yale admissions deans, starting with the first episodes. Good info even if you aren't aiming for Harvard and Yale.
20. No one on this r/sub knows what is going to happen with BL hiring in 4+ years or how AI is going to impact the legal profession.
21. LSAC guidelines state that member schools should "Allow applicants to freely accept a new offer from a law school even though a scholarship has been accepted, a deposit has been paid, or a commitment has been made to another school."  Many schools don’t abide by these guidelines.
22. You can accept a late offer.  You may lose deposits, but no one can make you attend and pay tuition.  In fact, tuition isn’t actually due at many schools until after classes start.
23. Shame on GULC (and others) asking for binding commitments without giving financial information.  This clearly violates at least two of the LSAC Member Law Schools' Statement of Good Admissions and Financial Aid Practices.
24. You and your application are unique. What you submit is 1000 times more important than all the other applicants and applications combined.
25. It only takes one acceptance.

Free WiFi. I’ll keep this going for the next 3 hours as long S the WiFi stays running and unless they start offering free mimosas

GPA question

I was interested in medicine originally, which is why my undergrad degree is in biology. I love biology enough that finishing the degree was completely worth it to me (I would also be interested perhaps in patent law). However my gpa is a 3.6, and the average gpa for law school is insanely high; I assume this can be attributed partially to the majors. My question is will this below average gpa hinder me despite having a hard/ unique major?

Idk if anyone knows this, but would an admissions officer know, when looking at your GPA/ grades, that your school does not offer A+'s? Had no idea about this LSAC gpa thing until recently and am slightly annoyed lol

Posted this in URM + BlackLawschool subs but didn’t get any traction. Anyone have any positive stories??? Schools in T50. Also this is just out of curiosity guys.. I’m still studying for the LSAT 😩

Take a 5 minute break from the LSAT and make sure youre good to go in November!

Hi, odd question. I saw a post talking about how next year lsac wont make people count their duel enrollment courses in their lsac gpa.

This leads me to wonder, does lsac make you submit transcripts from duel enrolled classes (university classes taken during highschool)? Mine are all technically on my high school transcript, but would I have to submit the transcripts from the colleges that my school used too?

Im hoping not as I have zero idea how to access them after a literally 9 years and I never transferred them in for my university degree, they are just on my highschool degree.

On the other hand, I have an undergrad gpa of 3.75 and I took 4 or 5 duel enrolled courses with had 100% grades (5.0 on their scale). Do you think this would increase my lsac gpa to the point it would be worth submitting it or could i save the money?

Hi! I’m 19F and I just got my AA at community college and I have come closer to needing to decide what I want to do for a career, I am thinking a lawyer. That being said, I need to declare a major for my bachelor’s and I’ve read that law schools really only care about GPA.

Right now I’m really looking at psychology as it was an interest of mine when I graduated high school a year ago but then I just focused on getting my AA.

My concern is, in case I get indecisive again and don’t want to be a lawyer, I don’t want to regret going through the course of my bachelors a year or two in so I want to choose something that speaks to me, but also has a good fall back plan. I’ve read that psychology majors have the lowest salary after high school. Especially since my scholarship only covers a certain amount of credits. Fall semester starts in a week and I need to choose classes depending on my major so I’ve been trying to make a choice.

I’m asking for advice on what possible majors could stick out to me that are like psychology or poli sci, but would also help me in my career to becoming a lawyer. LMK!!

So I am a first gen law applicant and about to go into my senior year of undergrad. I am planning on taking the LSAT in the spring and apply in September. My current undergrad gpa is 3.2 but I just calculated my LSAC GPA and its a 2.9... Im super scared. What makes it worse is that my school doesn't do "A+" it cuts off at A even if my grade percentage in the class does reflect an A+. I'm assuming I would have to get at least a 170 on the LSAT to even be considered for the schools I want to apply for (which is essentially just the UC's plus potentially Mcgeorge and San Francisco). Does anyone have any advice or agree with my thoughts? I just need some guidance or thoughts on my chances. I also just found out what "softs" are and based on a google search I have T4 softs.

Stats: 3.5low/17mid, international, basically KJD, no C+F, reapplying this year after getting WL everywhere except HYS (applied Nov-Dec).

For people with experience--does being waitlisted mean if I apply with the same stats + this past year of WE, I have some chance of getting accepted to these schools? What are some realistic targets and safeties I can apply to with a 3.5low GPA?? Do I even count as a splitter anymore loll should I just aim for T50-100? 😭

Sorry this is a rant but I just feel so hopeless and dejected. I feel like I have all the odds stacked against me and I feel stupid for not trying harder earlier and stupid for wanting to try now. My GPA is below the median for basically every T120 LOL. I was a little proud of my LSAT but now I wish my dumbass retook it sometime earlier this year so I can have an 17high and still apply by September to balance out my ridiculously low GPA. Every cycle is getting harder and I'm dreading the results this year. I am unaccomplished potato and I fear I may be one forever.

Is it even worth going to the states to study anymore? Is it safe for international students still? Will I have to pay 100,000 USD just to apply for a work visa or whatever the fuck Trump said last week? And the climate is going to shit and oh my god I hate being born in this generation.

(apologies for the gloom and doom)

Hi everyone I’m a recent pre med grad. After doing a lot of reflecting I don’t believe the medical field is a place for me. Insurance companies dominate the field and after years of training the entire process of becoming a doctor doesn’t seem worth it anymore.

A college advisor recommended I check out healthcare law since I minored in political science. It seems really interesting and am wondering if it’s a path I can go down.

I have a 3.81 GPA, but no relevant work experience to law, mainly hospital volunteering and medical assistant experience. Should I try to get some entry level legal adjacent job? Would schools look down on my app if it looks like I got scared of med school and turned to law?

I want to shoot for the stars of course and get in to the best school possible. I also want to get the best quality education i can of course. But i have aspirations to be a public defender and nothing else. Do alumni networks and all that really matter?

Basically what the title says. As data from the last cycle trickles out, I think I’ll be sitting directly at the LSAT median for a lot of schools I’m interested in, rather than 1/2 points above.

Is being at the median treated similarly to being slightly above? Do people think that schools will aim for a higher median this cycle? (which would presumably put me below the median for the new target)

Nearly half of my college coursework was completed in high school through dual enrollment. My parents made me do it and I was just really bad at school when I was a teenager. So despite graduating from undergrad with a near perfect gpa 2 years ago, my high school classes just tank it. I had always wanted to go to law school, but my LSAC gpa was just wrecked by my high school grades. I calculated it myself to be around a 2.97 gpa undergrad + dual enrollment. It sucked. I literally dreamed of being a lawyer as a kid. But instead I had to actually go work postgrad in an industry I didn’t even like.

Well a few weeks ago, as you all know, LSAC came out with the news that they would no longer factor in dual enrollment classes to their gpa calculation. I was elated. I was literally so excited I would just randomly bring it up to people who had no idea what LSAC even was. At a party last weekend I literally turned to a group of people (after not speaking that entire night) and just blurted out “did you see LSAC removed high school dual enrollment classes from their gpa calculation??” People thought I was crazy. I quit my job to study full time for the LSAT. And told my boss I didn’t actually care about the boring weekly reports he makes me send out, saying I’d make a brilliant legal mind one day on my way out the door. I told my parents they “no longer provide much utility to me”, and that they could take me off of their insurance because in a few years I’d be making the biglaw payscale ($240k starting salary). I abandoned my friends because I thought I’d make smarter, cooler, higher status friends at the T5 law school I was probably going to. I estranged my little brother, telling him that I’d only tolerate him if he gained the prestige similar to what I’d have upon attaining my juris doctorate. All of this may have been a little premature, but with my new gpa I had no doubts. I dreamed again.

I woke up this morning with a smile on my face (per usual these days). I cracked open my laptop and fired up lsat demon, along with the
r/lawschooladmissions sub. I saw a strange post and people freaking out about some decision made by LSAC. I clicked it. My face slowly twisted in horror as I realized what had been done to me. LSAC took away my dream- again. I hadn’t even gotten the chance to submit my transcripts to LSAC yet. They wined and dined me, then took me to bed and never called me back. I don’t know what to do. I totally uprooted my life to go all in on this cycle. I don’t even have a job right now.

If anyone has any advice on how I should proceed, I’d really appreciate it. I feel like such a dirty victim right now and I need answers from LSAC.